The pandemic continues to worsen and rules/regulations are changing by the day. We are staying put in the USVI until we see how everything plays out – and until country borders start opening. We are a hard 9-10+ day continuous sail from Florida, and all the countries between are closed. All the countries heading south are also closed. We are – for all intensive purposes – stuck. Fortunately, the USVI is about the absolute best place we could be stuck. We are trying to remain positive and make the most of our time here, even if its not what we had planned. They say, “sailors plans are written in the sand at low tide.”
Wreck diving at Buck Island
It’s a bit confusing that there are two Buck Islands in the USVI – one in St. Croix (STX) and one in St. Thomas (STT). Previously we had a great stay at Buck Island in STX and now we are headed to Buck Island, STT. We enjoy a nice leisurely motor-sail out to Buck Island, after making a quick detour to empty our tanks. That has been an interesting change since entering the Virgin Islands. Before, we were always crossing open water when traveling from one island to another in the East Caribbean, but here in the Virgin Islands, everything is so close together there is rarely a need to go 3 miles offshore – except to empty tanks.
Tangent: When living on a boat, your toilets flush into a holding tank where the waste water sits until you empty it. This is known as “black water” and is illegal to dump when close to shore. For personal vessels (i.e. that’s us!), we have two options: 1) go into a marina where pump out services are available to pump the black water out of our tanks and into a larger sewer system/tank onshore or 2) travel more than 3 miles offshore (hopefully in deep water) where it is legal to empty black water straight into the ocean. We don’t throw any toilet paper into our toilets (only into the trash), but it is generally considered okay if your black water contains toilet paper outside 3 miles as well. As with every rule, there are exceptions. In some areas, you must go 7 miles offshore, and in other areas they have “no dumping” at all – meaning you must get a pump out.
As we approach Buck Island, we are surprised to see several mooring balls along different areas. Based on reading Active Captain reviews, we thought there were only around half a dozen balls in this one particular bay. It’s encouraging to see some open moorings, but I’ve still got my eyes set on that bay since it is said to have good diving. We see a couple boats pass by and I get nervous, afraid they are going to take our ball (i.e. the last open mooring). Once we round the corner, I realize how silly I’m being. There are several open moorings and we are able to pick our preferred spot. Everyone camping out on their mooring ball in St. John has got me stressed out! It’s completely unnecessary.
After getting everything settled, we hop in the water for some freediving before the sun starts to go down. The main attraction here is said to be a wreck – often frequented by local dive shops for a shallow(ish) dive. We swim the area of the bay, eventually locating the wreck. Sadly, we spot almost no coral during our swim – which means it’s really all about the wreck. We’re not super into wreck diving, but it is fun to freedive down for a while checking out different parts of the wreck. Small, pretty coral is growing among different areas as it creates an artificial reef.
After getting our fill, we climb back onboard to enjoy a nice sunset and start cooking dinner. There is a bit of a swell wrapping around the rocks and coming into the bay, but it’s hitting us mostly on our stern which helps keep the boat more stable. Tomorrow we plan to head to another dive site and hopefully find more coral – and marine life!
Cow and Calf Rocks
There are four dive moorings situated around two rocks that stick out of the water off of STT, known as Cow and Calf Rocks. We motor up and grab the one that we think looks best! Shortly after, two other power boats snag a mooring as well. There’s a bit of roll, but nothing crazy and we are only planning to stay long enough to dive. It is enough movement, though, for Monster to get locked inside while we’re in the water. We can’t take any risks of her falling overboard without someone right there to fish her out – my biggest fear.
Almost immediately after jumping in the water, we spot a reef shark. What a great start! That gets us even more excited to explore the area. We discuss a game plan for covering all the reef and then set out. Right away we spot an awesome swim through, but before we can dive down I spot another reef shark! Immediately distracted, we set off after the shark, but he seems to be a bit camera shy. No worries, as he disappears a graceful eagle ray swims by! We set off after the eagle ray and are delighted when a second comes over. They swim around in our general area for a few minutes as we take turns diving down to capture up close video.
Even more excited, we continue snorkeling our way around the first rock (not sure if this is “cow” or “calf”). We spot some game fish not commonly seen among reefs including horse eye jacks and permits. As we continue along to the second rock, we see yet another eagle ray and several lobster. Normally when you spot a lobster, it’s hiding under a ledge and the long antenna-like things are what catch your eye. Not today. Today numerous lobster are out walking freely among the reef (normally only done at night), and two are even engaged in a fight! It’s wild.
As we round the second rock and head back towards the boat, we spot a nurse shark shoot off into the shallows. This time, we make sure to stop at the awesome swim through we got distracted from before. We take turns going under the coral ledge and capturing fun video.
We spend a few more minutes swimming around enjoying the reef before heading back to Monster. As we approach the boat, I hop out but Matt stays in for just a minute longer. He spots a leaf-like thing floating a few feet below the surface and goes to check it out. Turns out, it is not a plant but a live animal! He records some video of it and then we ask my Facebook scuba diving group for help identifying it. Turns out, it is a Leopard Flat Worm. One diver we spoke with says he has done over a thousand dives around USVI and has never spotted one of these. What a cool find!
This has probably been our best dive of the season. Check out the full underwater video!
Slowing down in Rendevous Bay
We decide to head back over to St. John after leaving Cow and Calf. This time, though, we head around the south side to the large Rendevous Bay where anchoring is allowed. This is nice for a couple reasons: 1) more space to spread out than when on mooring balls, and 2) good cell service. When on the north side of St. John, we often pick up cell towers from the BVI – which is fine, but means that it’s international roaming. We have to largely rely on the Google Fi data or activate Matt’s phone under the $10/day international plan. Here on the south side of St. John we pick up USVI towers which mean both our phones function just like in the mainland US. Netflix here we come!
Rendevous Bay has a couple boats already anchored, but there’s tons of room for us to find a nice spot. As we are anchoring, I spot a large red starfish laying in the sand. I make a mental note to jump in and check him out later. First, Monster thinks it’s most important to paddle her into shore for a nice walk along the beach. Unfortunately, the beach is pretty rocky but there are parts of it that are sand where we can enjoy walking. There’s also a private brick path that we sneak up just to get a few more steps in!
We spend a handful of nights here in Rendevous Bay – just taking life slowly. Matt is super busy with work right now, and I’m doing lots of troubleshooting on our generator. It has seemed a bit off all season, but lately has just gotten ridiculous. When running it isn’t putting much charge into our batteries and definitely can’t get them up to “float” or even “accept.” Having been over 1.5 months since we’ve been in a marina on shore power, it’s becoming a serious problem. Every night we have to set alarms to wake up in the middle of the night to turn our freezer off in order to save battery power so that we can make it to morning without dropping below 12.2 volts charge. It’s awful. After lots of troubleshooting, seeking help from online groups, and finally calling the manufacturer we realize that our generator is running at too low of RPMs. After borrowing a hertz meter from our new friends in the bay, we are able to get it fixed and are elated to have our generator actually charging our batteries again!
I try to make time to get in the water every day or two. We are both getting ansy to get back to a dive site soon. Living on a boat is really no fun unless you’re moving and exploring new places. Otherwise it’s just really hot and difficult. Luckily the water here is gorgeous, especially over the sandy areas so we are able to cool off in the afternoons. I get a photo with the gorgeous red starfish and a couple times try coaxing Monster to join me – she’s not impressed.
Hiking to the petroglyphs
After how ever many days it’s been now, we know that we need to move and go do something for our own sanity. We motor over to neighboring Reef Bay where there are two park mooring balls. Upon arrival, we are happy to see that we are the only boat here. We grab a mooring ball and then make some sandwiches for lunch. The main activity we have planned here is hiking. The National Park covering most of St. John is covered with hiking trails. Due to the pandemic, all trails are actually closed, but given our remote location here we plan to give little Monster some time to stretch her legs anyways.
We take both paddle boards to shore and are surprised to see three people coming out onto the beach from the hiking trail head. We exchange polite hellos before continuing on our way. I guess we’re not the only ones skirting the rules and still hiking. Almost immediately after exiting the beach, we come across some sugar mill ruins. These ruins are quite expansive and still in great condition. You can see much of the machinery and equipment that was used to process the sugar cane.
Continuing on, we walk towards our intended destination where there are petroglyphs carved into stone ledges. Monster is very excited to be on land and running without a leash, but she’s also really struggling with this incredible heat. At least we won’t lose track of her with all that loud panting. As we round a corner, we are a bit surprised to be face to face with a deer. Monster chases it off, though. We pass another couple hiking before arriving at the petroglyphs.
I’ll admit my initial reaction is that the petroglyphs are a bit of a disappointed. Once we look up the significance and time period they were drawn, though, I’m more impressed. These petroglyphs date back to AD 900-1200. Monster couldn’t care less about the stone carvings, but is thrilled to lay down in the cool water.
We make our way back to the beach and ultimately our boat. It is so. freaking. hot. We decide to hop in the ocean just to float and cool off. Monster is content to dip in her freshwater pool onboard.
Sunset sail
We have a peaceful (but hot) night on the mooring ball in complete isolation. The next day a couple small boats come and go, but by late afternoon it’s just us again. We are loving the solitude, so we decide to stay a second night. It’s about time to empty the black water tanks again, though, so we decide to take out for a sunset sail. We put both fishing lines in the water and turn on the stereo, making it a fun evening activity as the sky begins to turn golden with the setting sun.
We don’t catch any fish, but we do feel slightly rejuvenated as we head back towards shore. Unfortunately, as we approach our mooring ball we see that another catamaran is tied off on the second mooring which is very close. It’s almost dark and too late to change our minds at this point, so I guess we’ll have neighbors for the night.
We always hear others talk about cruising/sailing being a slower pace of life. Although, the boat literally moves very slowly, we find that we are mentally and physically racing to the next spot – the next adventure. Now with the pandemic, we have been forced to slow WAY down and spend WAY more time in the same area than we ever have before. On one hand it’s kind of nice, but for the most part we miss racing to our next destination. For now, we will continue to try to enjoy the slow pace the best we can and wait for news when borders start to reopen and we can continue north.
