St. Croix We Love You
Karen:
2 glorious weeks on St. Croix.
We sailed from Culebra to St. Croix after saying goodbye to our dear friends, doing a last Costco run and picking up our liferaft from being repacked. The liferaft cost us a whopping $1800usd, including $500 to replace a strobe light - incredibly expensive. But its now good for another 3 years.
Packing the boat took us 3 dingy loads - we used our old dinghy we have named 'patches' who is still with us; although I’ve had 100s of messages on facebook marketplace, only 1 person came to look and he passed. She came in handy to load all our groceried and we will keep her with us and continue trying to sell her as she’s still got some good miles in her.
After our friends left we were both feeling a bit burnt out - Michael from all the responsability of leading a boat for 8 and me from the galley. So we agreed that I should take more of the navigation and helming and we have a new meal system - Michael does breakfast, kids do lunch and I do dinner. I love cooking but when I do it all there isn’t time for much else! The kids do like it and are learning an important lifeskill. Michael is now very confident in captaining the boat and I also want to get there.
Our anchor was up at 5.30 and we motored out of the harbour in the dark. It’s well marked with lit buoys and we've done it twice now so felt confident leaving in darkness. We had the sails up at 7 but saw pretty quickly we could not set a course for St. Croix without getting more east first. We motorsailed east and were still not able to sail as the winds shifted more southeast. With windspeeds around 6 knots it was just too light for us to close haul, so we motored most of the way, making 4.5 knots.
We arrived in Christenstead harbour anchor down at 4.45. Nice!
We had some friends in the bay - Ray & Kathleen from Ride the Wind and Torsten & Steffi from Fortitude X, an ex-collegue of Michael's from PCL who have been living aboard for 5 years and sailed here from Vancouver! They invited us over for drinks. We left the kids and went to catch up with them. We had been on their boat in Nanaimo a few years ago when we had chartered and happened to see them at New Castle Island. Since then they have come down the west coast, spent time in Mexico, crossed the Panama Canal, spent time in the ABCs and had just done an 8 day passage to St Thomas. We reminiced about Vancouver and Torsten searched for a PCL flag he had onboard to take a photo with Michael, but couldnt find it lol. Steffi asked me how i was finding it. It’s most common that this lifestyle is the man's dream in the couple and the women are along for the ride - not our case at all, but I still shared how we are trying to redefine our roles. She totally got it and shared how for them, she is the helmsperson, and that gives her the ownership she needs. Interesting!
Christensted harbour is guarded by a massive reef, that protects the bay and makes it very comfortable at anchor even with a strong breeze. We decided to go snorkel the reef. Christian & Michael grabbed the newly purchased poke spear and we anchored the dinghy out closer. We found an incredibly alive reef. We saw a stingray, lots of small reeffish and conch. A massive pufferfish the boys thought was a grouper at first, speared it, and it puffed up massively! A poisonous spiny stonefish. Then Flo saw an octopus peering up at us through a hole in the coral. She also found a shell treasure - a king helmet conch.
The next day we went back, intending on finding something to spear, and we took home 2 lobster for a delicious dinner panfried in garlic butter. We found a conch to give to our friends who said they love them and know how to clean them.
We visited the charming town and the old fort. We had a lovely curry (tried the chicken, fish and goat -so tasty!) from Singh's, a local’s place. People are very friendly and the town has lovely architecture from a few hundred years of Dutch rule. This was a sugar plantation island that abolished slavery in the early 1800s. It has a rich history and is quite multicultural. Its known to be more laid back and less richy rich than the other USVIs. We've been closely following Trump's craziness from here and are feeling pretty anti-american.
The winds have picked up and we are 'stuck' here for a week or so. We spent a day at the library and attended some crab races at the local brew pub with dangerous beer - I woke up with a wicked hangover and no phone. The kids made fun of me for days for singing in the dinghy, wooping it up and acting like an idiot. Thankfully its a rare occurance. Christian dove the boat and found my waterlogged phone.
So, we set out for the cellphone store on foot, about 75 minutes away, looking forward to the long walk. We made it to town. 3/4 of the roads were just fine but a few had no shoulder and many blind corners to navigate. We had a picnic lunch in the parking lot of the grocery store and by the time we made it back we were all quite sore not having walked that far in months.
Ray had been asking us to help scrape his boat so we showed up one morning and got to it, getting it done in an hour. The kids turned out to be great hull scrapers! Ray & Kathleen then treated us to pizza in town to say thank you. We were all very happy to have helped in some small way, as Ray has been really generous with his knowledge troubleshooting our engine and windlass problems.
Another evening Ray organized us to dinghy over to the next bay, where we beached our dinghies and did a short hike over to a small north facing beach. He came well prepared with campfire wood, smores and even a beach game and some expired flares to burn. They are so thoughtful and just love the kids! It was such a memorable night.
The winds were starting to slacken and so we started to get ready to move on to Buck Island, a National Park only 5 miles to the east. A daytrip spot from St. CROIX, we were the only boat to anchor out along with our buddies on Ride the Wind. Here we spent 2 days playing on the gorgeous beach, and experiencing some of the best snorkeling we've ever had. This area has been a huge treat and is setting the bar for the rest of the caribbean for us.
