Tag Archives: Waterlemon Bay

Jon & Cathy Visit Us in the Virgins — Feb. 24 – Mar. 3, 2014

Chuck’s niece Cathy and her husband Jon arrived in St. Thomas late in the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 24.   We barely had time to drop off their luggage on Tusen Takk II, anchored in Elephant Bay, before jumping back into the dinghy to proceed to the ferry dock on Water Island, from which we walked over the hill to Honeymoon Bay.   Yup, we were there to watch the movie shown on a screen fashioned out of two sheets strung between two palm trees.  The movie?  Rush.  The meal?  Chicken sandwiches and/or cheeseburgers, washed down with beer and followed with popcorn.  (Except for yours truly, embarked on a month-long experiment of total avoidance of all things gluten, in the hopes of a further lessening of arthritis symptoms.   So no beer or buns for me.  I miss the beer more than the buns.)

That “quick start” set the pattern for their entire stay; we visited, in order:  Great Harbour and Diamond Cay on Jost Van Dyke, Pirates Bight, the Indians, Soper Hole, Cruz Bay, Cinnamon Bay, Francis Bay, Waterlemon Bay, Hurricane Hole, Great Lameshur Bay, Salt Pond, and Drunk Bay before returning to Charlotte Amalie after a week of fun in the sun in order to send our guests off to the frozen north of Bismarck, North Dakota.

We did a lot of snorkeling during their stay, but also played some cards and watched a movie on-board and did some boat projects, including installing new gas struts under the master bed and fashioning a new dinghy seat when the original finally gave up the ghost.  Jon felt responsible for the seat breakage, but the truth of the matter is that the seats provided by AB are notoriously vulnerable to breakage; a number of years ago we had one break from the weight of a slight pre-teen girl who was sitting in the middle when the dinghy hit a wave.   (Of course, Jon is no slight pre-teen girl 🙂 , but the breakage really wasn’t his fault.)

Jon and Cathy make lovely guests.   Easy to get along with, easy to please, and always helpful.   Watching Cathy help Barb thread our yoke through a mooring pennant eye is a joy:  Barb uses a long boat hook to grab the mooring painter.   She pulls the painter up to the high Krogen bow and hands the boat hook off to Cathy, who sets it out of the way and then immediately grabs the other yoke line, feeds it around and under the bow roller, and then hands it to Barb, who by this time has secured the first line through the eye and up snuggly to the bow so as to keep the eye within reach for the second line.   Barb feeds the second line through the eye and lets out some of the first line while Cathy adjusts the length of the second line.   Pure poetry in motion.

Meanwhile, Jon is pinning the stabilizers while I am closing down the electronics.

What a team!

Thanks for coming, Jon and Cathy.   See you next year.

Friends from Savannah; BVI & USVI — Jan. 14-21, 2014

Friends from Savannah, Beth Logan and Steve Ellis, arrived at Charlotte Amalie late on the afternoon of Jan. 14.  We got them settled in and oriented and had dinner aboard.  Steve was heavily medicated for his cold – an affliction that nearly caused the cancellation of their visit – and was much quieter than usual, but as the week wore on he became more and more his usual voluble self.   Next morning we departed Crown Bay Marina and motored up to Jost Van Dyke, where we checked in to the BVIs and had lunch at Foxy’s.  Later that day we caught a taxi over to the Soggy Dollar, where our guests did some swimming and we all did some sunning and some drinking of Pain Killers, the libation which became the drink of choice during their visit, with those served at Soggy Dollar clearly the best.

On Jan. 16 we moved around the corner to the east end of the island, where Beth and Steve got in some serious beachifying on Sandy Spit.  When they were suitably browned and toasted, we moved over to the mooring field just off Foxy’s Taboo.  We took the dinghy in and hiked the short distance to the Bubbly Pool, where Beth and Steve enjoyed being thrashed about by the breakers that occasionally came crashing in.  Next morning I returned alone and photographed the White-cheeked Pintail ducks (and several other birds) that populated a path-side pond.

When I returned to the boat we headed for the Indians, but found all of the moorings occupied.  So we went in to Pirate’s Bight on Norman Island and took a mooring and dinghied over to the Caves and snorkeled there instead.   Then, a visit to the restaurant/bar/beach at the east end of the Bight, for more Pain Killer sampling.  And then a trip to the famous Willy T’s, for, um, a Pain Killer.   We were on the upper deck when a couple of young things decided to honor the Willy T tradition and bare their upper torsos and jump over the edge.  I had only Barb’s camera, which suffers from the usual point-and-shoot malady of a long delay between pressing the shutter button and actual image capture.  #$*@!!!!

Next morning (Jan. 18 – are you keeping up with this chronology?) we moved over to the Indians and were the first to take a mooring.  Great snorkel, after which we took the boat all the way back to Caneel Bay, St. John, USVI, so we could dinghy in to Cruz Bay in order to check in to the good ol’ USA.  After some shopping and some lunch at the Beach Bar, we returned to TT2 and motored over to Cinnamon Bay, where we took our guests ashore so Beth could do some reconnoitering for a possible site for a family reunion.  Later that day we had prime rib at the campground restaurant.  Next morning we moved to Waterlemon Bay, where Barb took a break and the rest of us snorkeled.   Then we took the dinghy to shore and walked up to the ruins at Annaberg Sugar Plantation.   We were back on the boat when a dinghy approached our stern and its lone occupant asked about our boat name.   Turned out he was on the boat Viking Spirit and is from Kristiansand, Norway, where our friends Lars Helge and Tove Brunborg live.  Not only did Arild Anderson know the Brunborgs, he is a former colleague of Tove!  Lite verden! (Small world!) 

Waterlemon is such a popular place for snorkeling that we felt guilty about continuing to occupy a mooring after having already snorkeled there, so we moved over to Francis Bay, where Barb and our guests did some snorkeling along the point separating Francis and Maho Bay. 

On Jan. 20 our guests did more snorkeling (along the north shore of Francis Bay) and then we moved to Christmas Cove in order to stage for our return to St. Thomas.  Next day — you guessed it – Beth and Steve did one last snorkel before we moved to Charlotte Amalie.  We had lunch at the Green Garden and our guests did some window-shopping before we sent them off to the airport in a taxi.

It was a great visit; we hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Virgin Islands – Visit by Erik and Cindy, Feb 28-Mar 8, 2013

Chuck’s nephew Erik and Erik’s wife Cindy flew in to Charlotte Amalie on Feb 28.   While anchored in the Bay awaiting their arrival, we saw an interesting sight.  Two helicopters circled the Bay and then one of them hovered over the dock at the Coast Guard Station.   It was difficult to see what was happening, but later examination of my telephoto pictures revealed that a superstructure suitable for mounting navigation aids was being tied to the helicopter.  When that was secured, the helicopter flew off, presumably to deposit the structure on some hazardous rocky outcrop.

We had a grand time with Erik and Cindy.  We snorkeled at Waterlemon and Christmas Cove, and after checking in to the BVIs in order to pick up an injector pump for our generator, visited the Bight area of Norman Island, where we snorkeled the Caves and the Indians, and of course we stopped in at Willy T’s in order that Erik and Cindy could experience that particular bit of tourist-madness.

While in Francis Bay, Barb took our guests on a walk to the Annaberg Ruins, where they were fortunate to arrive during an expo day.  On Friday night we again partook of the gluttonous meal at Maho Resort, and afterwards watched in fascination as a guest glass blower created a gnarled tree complete with green foliage.  On another day we all joined Hunter and Devi (Arctic Tern) and their guests Craig and Sharon on a hike over the Johnny Horn trail from Waterlemon to Coral Bay and back.   While in Coral Bay we had breakfast at the Donkey Diner, and then walked down to the little grocery store “Love City Mini Market”, which “has everything”.

Erik and Cindy:  great guests, welcome anytime.

Post Script:  On the day after Erik and Cindy’s departure, Mar 8, Barb took some amazing photos while dinghy-ing in to do some laundry.  See the last two photos in the album, below, of a daring rider on a “St Thomas JetRider”.  Barb later found literature which described the setup.  A 33 ft hose from the small boat to the two barrels on the jetpack unit.  Water is pumped at over 1,000 gallons per minute.

PPS:  Today, Mar 20, I am updating the photo gallery, below, to include three photos taken by Erik while he was with us.  I just got them through email a few days ago — hence the delay in their inclusion.

USVI, Dec 31, 2012 – Jan 16, 2013 – Visit by the Ringens

Jon and Cathie Ringen recently spent some time with us aboard Tusen Takk II in the USVI.  Jon and I have been friends since we were undergraduates at the University of North Dakota.

Cathie arrived first at St. Thomas, and joined a bunch of us cruisers for dinner at the Green House in Charlotte Amalie on New Years Eve.  By the time Jon arrived shortly before midnight, Cathie had retired to the Galleon B&B, and we had returned to our boat.  The next morning they took the ferry over to St. John, where they had reservations at the campground at Cinnamon Bay.  After several days of camping, they were ready to join us but the seas were large and the wind blowing hard, so we couldn’t land our dinghy on the beach to pick them up.  They took a taxi in to Cruz Bay where we picked them up at the dock. They spent the remainder of their vacation with us on the boat.  We had a grand time, with days spent snorkeling and/or hiking and/or exploring and nights spent playing cards, playing Mexican train and watching “Downton Abbey”, which we all found to be addictive.  We all also got in a fair amount of reading.  We visited Francis, Cinnamon, Waterlemon, Greater Lameshur, Saltpond and Drunk Bays in St. John, and Christmas Cove and Honeymoon and Elephant and Charlotte Amalie Bays in St. Thomas.

Alas, Jon and Cathie have not yet retired from their  university professorships, so when they left us they were returning to teaching and scholarship duties — Jon as a philosopher of science and Cathie as a linguist.  Let us bow our heads for a moment of silent sympathy.