Life has been moving pretty slowly aboard SV Sea Monster during this pandemic. We continue to hop around to a new anchorage or mooring ball every few days in attempt of keeping life interesting. We’ve found that we don’t particularly enjoy living on a boat, just for the sake of being on a boat. For us, it’s really about moving and seeing new places. We focus our attention on visiting the different anchorages around St. Thomas that we haven’t seen yet and try to find excitement in some of the small things – like a gorgeous sunset or pleasant walk on the beach.
Christmas Cove
After such an awesome dive at Cow & Calf rocks a week or so ago, we decide to head back there to enjoy our Saturday with the fish. Unfortunately when we arrive, we see that the waves are quite rough. We tie up to a mooring and Matt hops in for a couple minutes to check it out, but we decide it won’t be much fun snorkeling and freediving in these conditions. We release the mooring and look for a new spot. We decide on the Ledges dive site at Little St. James. Fun Fact: this island is (or was) owned by Jeffrey Epstein. We tie up to a mooring and are happy to see that the island is providing some protection from the waves here at this site.
Once in the water, we are pleasantly surprised by how nice the reef is. It has some pretty similar characteristics to Cow and Calf rocks – which isn’t that unreasonable since it’s less than a mile away. Sadly I didn’t take the GoPro with on this dive, so I can’t show you the eagle rays we saw or all the cool ledges that give the site its name.
After our dive, we motor a very short distance over to Great St. James Island. It is best known for it’s one anchorage, Christmas Cove. This is a very, very popular anchorage among cruisers and made infamous by a boat that serves up pizza known as “Pizza Pi.” If you’re thinking that sounds like my type of heaven – pizza and math – you’re right. This anchorage was the first stop on our charter in 2017 and we did indeed pick up pizzas for dinner. Today, the anchorage is absolutely packed with boats but no Pizza Pi in sight. It is closed due to COVID.
We choose a spot at the very back of the anchorage in order to gain a bit more room from neighbors. The holding here isn’t great, being mostly turtle grass. We hop in to check the set on our anchor and just laugh when we see it – it’s definitely not up to our usual standards. We backed down at 2200 RPMs with both engines like normal, but with the depth and shear weight of the chain it still didn’t fully set the anchor. We swim over several other anchors and notice they’re even worse. We decide to leave ours, but set an anchor alarm and keep a close eye on the winds.
We take little Monster to shore for a walk, and then enjoy sunset on the boat. The sunsets from this location are phenomenal. Since the wind typically comes out of the east, when anchored here the stern of the boat will normally be facing directly west overlooking St. Thomas. Perfect for sunset viewing.
Like most places nowadays, we plan to stay for a few nights. This makes the days move slower, but also gives us more time to relax and enjoy the every day – like sunsets. Today, we take the dinghy over to a nearby dive site, The Stragglers. The waves are a bit rough and creating a type of surge as they pummel over the rocks. We’re still able to enjoy some time kicking around, though. We spot a couple turtles and large schools of fish.
It’s about time to do another provisioning run for fresh stuff. We also need to empty our trash – we do that about every 2-3 weeks, which coordinates well with grocery shopping. We load up the dinghy and set out on a very rough and wet ride over to Benner Bay. As we enter the bay and marina, guess what boat we see – Pizza Pi! It’s just waiting to get back out to Christmas Cove.
Our first stop is the Budget Marine. Because, guess what, our water maker broke AGAIN. No, seriously it did. One of the hoses split right in the center of the run. That really shouldn’t happen, especially given the type of hose – but whatever, we’re use to it. It should be a fairly easy fix once we buy a long enough run of hose to replace it. We also need a couple tool replacements lost to the sea, some fuel/water separator (because the generator is also not working), and some gas stabilizer because the Brownie is struggling. It’s probably shorter to list the systems that are functioning properly on the boat right now rather than the ones that are broken. Alas, here we are at Budget Marine paying crazy high prices that would make even West Marine blush. If you just add everything up in boat dollars, though, it’s only nickels. (For those that don’t know, a boat dollar is $1,000.)
Next we head to the nearby grocery store to get some fruit and veggies. We also happen to find Dean’s French Onion Dip, which is Matt’s kryptonite. In the Bahamas, when we made it to major milestones – like arriving in the Exumas, we would celebrate with prosecco and Dean’s French Onion Dip. Obviously, we buy not one, but two containers.
Empty streets in Charlotte Amalie
It’s time to check out a new area. Originally, we didn’t think we would go to the main town and cruise ship port, Charlotte Amalie. Then again, we didn’t think we’d be spending the entire spring in USVI. So, off to Charlotte Amalie we go!
It’s a huge, pretty well protected bay with a large cruise ship dock and several marinas. Ah marinas – how nice would 24/7 AC and WiFi be right now? All the marinas around here are like $4.00 (or more) per foot per night, plus separate charges for water and electricity. For our 40 foot boat, that’s a lot of cash. Instead, we continue to anchor and hopefully get to run our generator (when it works) for a couple hours in the evening to bask in AC. Monster spends most of her time in her splash pool.
Once settled into our spot in the bay, we take the dinghy into town to let Monster stretch her legs. We are really impressed when we see a large, gorgeous, outdoor shopping type complex where we can walk Monster without worrying about any cars. Normally, I’m sure it would be packed with tons of people, but now it’s almost completely empty and Monster gets to run off leash. Possibly better yet is the empty cruise ship terminal, which we wonder around. There is even a fountain where Monster can take swims to cool off. This is pretty awesome! It becomes our nightly routine.
One day we decide to switch things up and walk up to Blackbeard’s Castle instead of our usual. The Castle is closed, but you can still walk around some of the gardens that surround it. There are also the quaint but exhausting, Queen’s Steps. We enjoy the brief tourist excursion, and snap lots of photos.
At this point it has been 1.5 months or so since we have eaten anything besides what we cook on the boat. We haven’t even picked up take-out, and with the exception of our prized frozen pizza, we don’t have room to store frozen pre-made meals that can just be heated up. We have been doing some serious cooking around here. Normally, I make a nice breakfast and a nice dinner. We either skip lunch or make sandwiches. I am getting really tired of cooking, and both of us are getting tired of our normal repertoire of meals. Pinterest has definitely helped out some lately. A couple of our new staple meals now include jalapeño popper chicken casserole and spicy cream cheese spaghetti. We also try to get a new type of “fun” meat each time we go grocery shopping – ribs, pulled pork, steaks, etc. to supplement our stock of chicken and ground beef. Here are a few of our recent dinners.
Arguably, we are eating really well onboard SV Sea Monster. Sometimes, you just need that greasy fast food that you don’t have to cook though. It’s that time for us. We venture out into the great unknown and pick up Wendy’s. It may be the best thing I’ve ever eaten. We get the works – burgers, fries, frostys, and pop. A true feast.
Postcard perfect at Magen’s Bay
We’re in search of our next destination. At this point, we have been to almost every bay in STT and STJ. Of course, there are always unmarked spots we don’t know about, and there are a couple spots in STJ without cell service that we’ve had to avoid. Overall, though, we’re running low. The one major spot that comes to mind is Magen’s Bay STT. It’s on the north side and kind of out there by itself. We have nothing but time, though, so when our friends SV Doublestar said we should come over – we did just that.
It takes us a while to make our way around to the north side. Normally we would just motor, but our starboard saildrive (basically the transmission) has sea water in it from a broken seal and we’re trying not to use it too much. We just changed the transmission fluid and as long as we don’t put the engine in gear, sea water won’t come back into the fluid. It’s a whole thing. We need to have the boat hauled out of the water, though, to get it fixed and there is no where in USVI that can hauls us. Technically, that’s not true – there’s one spot that specializes in LARGE vessels that *can* haul us but not until June and for about 4x the normal price. So for now, we have no way to get this fixed. Anyways the point being – we’re only using one engine and the wind is not favorable, so it takes a while.
We do arrive, though, and are welcomed by the most stunning beach. There are lots of boats anchored here, but the bay is so huge there’s tons of room. We carve out a little spot by ourselves off to the side. It’s so pretty.
We hear that the beach isn’t dog friendly (so annoying), but since everything is technically shut down, we decide to still walk Monster along the beach in the evening once it’s mostly empty. The beach is a mile long and perfect for walking. It’s just beautiful. There’s also a small beach off to the side (not connected) where we take Monster if needed during the day.
One evening, we load into the dinghy and head over to SV Double Star to say hello. We keep our distance, remaining in our dinghy even though we are both dying to see the inside of their sailboat. It is seriously gorgeous! Also, she is a professional chef so we wouldn’t say no to a dinner invite at some point in the future once this COVID thing settles down.
Back to St. John
After several nights at Magen’s Bay, we once again sail towards St. John. Magen’s Bay wasn’t the best for snorkeling, so we are ready to get underwater. That brings us back to Henley Cay. It isn’t the BEST reef, but it’s so peaceful and pretty and right under the moorings. We have to hang out and idle for 30 minutes or so until a dinghy of snorkelers leaves one of the two moorings balls, but we are happy just to get one. It’s close to slack tide, so we get geared up and hop in the water.
Once we are out of the water and feeling rejuvenated, we mosey out to the front of the trampoline to just relax. We plan to spend the night here, but then a park ranger pulls up and tells us that these moorings are for day use only and that we need to depart by sunset. Dang. He points out that there are a couple open moorings at Caneel Bay across the way, and we agree that’s probably our best choice at this point. We motor over and grab a mooring. I guess the park is considered “somewhat open” now, although none of the services nor the park office are open. They must have seen how much money they were losing out on with boats on moorings. I don’t mind, but seems like if services such as trash removal aren’t running, the fee should be reduced. It’s not. We pay our $28 for the night and continue on with life. It’s hard for us to believe that all these other boats are paying $28/night. There was a change in rules due to COVID which now allows boats to reserve a mooring for 30 days. That means you have to pay almost $900 for the month just to be tied up to this mooring ball with no services. Or you could anchor a couple miles away in a different bay for FREE. I digress.
One nice thing about Caneel Bay is that it connects immediately to the network of hiking trails on St. John. I paddle Monster to shore and we take out on a short hike. Later in the evening, we convince Matt to go hiking with us again. This time, though, we take the dinghy around to Cruz Bay so that we can drop off some trash in the public dumpsters before setting out on our hike.
After we finish hiking, I have a crazy idea – let’s pick up food and beer from the local brewery. I saw on Facebook that the brewery is offering a free 6-pack of beer with all to-go orders over $20. Sounds like a bargain. Matt and Monster are in. We pick up wings, soft pretzels, cheesy bread sticks, and beer for dinner!
We don’t really want to spend another $28 to stay the night, but we also don’t really feel like moving anywhere – our laziness wins out over our frugal-ness and we stay in Caneel Bay another night. That means another morning of hiking for Monster; she approves. The following day, we sail around once again to Rendevous Bay on the south side of STJ.
