Roger Family Sailing Adventures: Hanging around St. Thomas

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Hanging around St. Thomas

Jackson, Jen and Luke left us last week and we have been hanging around, enjoying the island and doing small chores. We are currently at Water Island 'cause there is a great wifi signal. We go ashore, do our boat chores, and listen on the radio to the passenger ferry, "Rabbit," as they leave Crowne Bay Marina.

Rabbit says, "Permission to leave the marina with 5 passengers on board." Crowne Bay says, "Roger, Rabbit." It never gets old.

We’d had a problem with our roller furler and we were able to find a rigger to put it right. If you need rigging, we would highly recommend Skip the Rigger at Compass Point Marina. He probably has another last name – but we don’t know it.

Brad will be here on Saturday so we are just lounging around, making sure we are seaworthy for his 2 weeks with us. We don’t know much about St. Croix – except in Captain Ron they went to an island near there. Remember that part?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhwM_vVQLxo

St. Croix is about 40 miles so that will give Brad a chance to do a nice crossing. Our tentative plan is to give him a day or two to set his clock to island time and then head to St. Croix. After a day or two exploring there we will likely come back to St. John and then clear into the BVI. (It’s a mile from the closest point of St. John to Tortola.) Then, like with Jen’s family, we will hit the highlights, Soper’s Hole, Norman Island, the Baths and the Bitter End on Virgin Gorda, Foxies on Jost van Dyke, Cane Garden Bay and whatever else looks interesting.

We have made arrangements to put the boat to bed for the hurricane season in Puerto Rico at Palmas del Mar. Again, Glen’s fluency in Spanish has been invaluable as our communications with the marina have progressed. After Brad leaves, we will make our way west (might actually get a chance to use our sails!) for a couple of weeks before hauling sv Blue Pearl.