Sunday, March 18, 2012

Virgin Islands finale

Not that we've had our fill of the US and British Virgin Islands, but there's a break in the weather during the next few days so we're going to head to St. Martin. It's been an especially windy winter here and it sounds like lots of people are going to take advantage of the lighter winds and smaller seas to move around. 

We've spent the past two weeks visiting with sailing friends and with Miles and Lex who came to stay at Maho Bay Camps for a week. It's been chilly (really!) and we haven't been swimming much so I have no slow fish photos for this post. Here are a few non-wildlife photos though. 

Pretty beach on Prickly Pear Island - overlooking Eustatia Island (recently purchase by the "Google Guy" as he's known here.)
I know I can make something with this defunct kite we found on Prickly Pear.
We both need haircuts. Miles took this photo of us on Saralane in Francis Bay.
Madeline, Skip, Miles and Lex at Maho Bay.
Everyone here travels by boat. I wonder if goats have to pay full fare?
Saw this little guy having a snack in Trellis Bay... I'm not quite sure how to caption this photo. 
The first Super Yacht regatta took place up in the BVI this year and the boats were based at the new megayacht dock in North Sound on Virgin Gorda. We dinghied over to check out the hardware. These boats were really big - anywhere from 100 to 200 feet. You can see the crew on some of the boats which gives a better sense of the size of these boats.



We counted at least twenty people on deck on "Bliss" and they could have fit another twenty. To give a little perspective, on Saralane we can comfortably lean over the boom - on Bliss, the underside of the boom is a few feet above the crews' heads. Wow.


This powerboat comes with it's own tiny crew to hose the salt water off the bow.
Super yacht Kokomo is 191' with a 26' draft. No cruising in the Bahamas for them! The hatch on the foredeck (just in front of the mast) is open so they can pull out their dinghy which we guessed to be about 30'. So... just to recap.... their dinghy isn't much smaller than our boat.



We sailed by this yacht after the races were over. Cool spinnaker!
I'll blog again from St. Martin where we'll hopefully arrive with a freezer full of mahi mahi. One thing we'll need to do fairly soon in St. Martin is find a computer guru - my Mac crashed spectacularly two days ago and, among other things, I have no access to email addresses for anyone I haven't exchanged emails with recently. So - email me. I need to recreate my email address list until I can get this *@#^*% computer fixed!

3 comments:

Cindy Barnard said...

Always, always a treat to find you online and to see glimpses of your island life. Can't wait to hear about St. Martin. And extra glad you had a chance to see Miles and Lex on their brief excursion. May the breezes be warm and work for you wherever you wander.

Miles said...

Great to spend some time with you guys. Thanks for the 'drive-by' on your way out of Francis Bay. Safe Travels to St. Martin.

Anonymous said...

great to see you guys. Sail on! Came home to a week of 75 degree weather. EVERYTHING is in bloom. We got all the cool weather veggies planted this weekend. Supposed to be 80 on Thursday...very weird. Looking forward to St. Martin pics.