Leap Day Blog

I hate to bump the mantas from the top of the blog food chain, but there's so much natural beauty here I thought I'd do a mostly photo blog of some new land and sea sightings. We went to a local cultural festival at the Annaberg Sugar Plantation and felt very underdressed. These ladies put us all to shame!

Beautifully dressed local ladies.... and a shabbily dressed tourist!

We've seen female golden orbs all over St. John and this was a pretty big one. (See June 2011: 'Underwater World Briefly') It was suggested by someone who heard us commenting on her size that perhaps she was full, having just eaten her mate. Mmmm... pass the salt please!

Another lovely local lady.... Female Golden Orb

Annaberg Plantation includes a garden that's being tended by a local guy named Charles who's absolutely devoted to plants. He learned bush medicine from his grandmother and passes along the knowledge to anyone who cares to ask. He gave us papayas, sugarcane, bananas, coconuts and more. Here are just a few of the other things he grows.... 

Pigeon Peas

Flowering Pigeon Pea

Cotton

Skip models painkiller leaves for backache. You can barely see the soursop leaves tucked under his hat to keep his head cool!

Soursop - has bright white flesh with dark seeds. It's sweet and sour and delicious.

Skip with the bush doctor, Charles 

Flowering Aloe  

Aloe and cactus

How a coconut palm starts

As always I'm working on my wildlife photography skills and have discovered, not surprisingly, that the slower something moves the easier it is to photograph. Here are a few slow fish we've been swimming with lately.

Queen Angelfish

Scrawled Filefish

Stoplight Parrotfish

We've seen some really interesting fast fish too, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Happy Leap Day!

Mantas!!

There have been some new critters in Francis Bay lately.... and Skip and I took a swim with them! Two big beautiful manta rays swimming around feeding! They looked to be about 8 feet across from wing tip to wing tip. VERY COOL!!! 


Enjoy...

Pretty as a Picture

On the shelf in a local grocery store... just a little reminder of how beautiful it is here.

Living literally at sea level, we don't get the bird's eye views these covers have without some effort but it's always worth it. A hike on Virgin Gorda gave us great views of the east side of the island and back over to Saba Rock, Prickly Pear Island, Eustatia Island, Necker Island and the surrounding reef.

Saba Rock is tiny, but they fit a lot of stuff on it! See the kite surfer at the bottom right?

After a few months of lazing around in the Virgins Skip and the dinghy were both badly in need of a haircut.

The dinghy goes first...

Much better!

Then it's Skip's turn...

Also much better...

I haven't done much in the way of flora and fauna shots lately since we haven't been hiking or swimming much - (both tricky to do when not breathing well) but I'm getting back into the swing of things and we've gotten out and about more lately. So - flora and fauna!

This guy looks menacing but he was only about a half inch across! Tough guy, eh?

Orchids growing wild in Virgin Gorda

If we don't get a boat cat.... perhaps a boat goat? The little ones are pretty cute.

We've also been running into friends out of the blue! Some Outbound owners... Tom (Farasha), Tim & Sharon (Fisaga), Bruce & Susan (Andiamo) and Ted & Toni (Spree) who were staying on land up in North Sound. Vacationing with Ted & Toni were Sasha & Chris (daughter and son-in-law) along with their two little ones, Nicholas and Lara.

Sasha and Chris bring the kids over to Saralane for a visit.

Our friend Jim, who we met in the Bahamas, kept his boat "Top of the World" (great boat name) in the yard in Virgin Gorda where we hauled out for hurricane season last year and we ran into him there in time to watch the Superbowl together. There were some grim looking Patriot fans in the bar at the end of the game. We're hoping "Top of the World" gets wet again soon!

Jim & Skip on Top of the World - high and dry in Virgin Gorda.

On a quick stop in Road Town to do some errands we ran into our old friend Hank Schmitt who runs Offshore Passage Opportunites (OPO), a group that along with other things, connects crew with yachts. Congrats Hank and Kathy on your FIFTH grandchild!!

Skip & Hank

Our youngest new friend, Libby, is five years old and has already covered more miles on a boat than most adults we know (except for Hank!). She befriended us on Saba Rock and when I asked where she'd been sailing she took a deep breath and started ticking off all the places.... Turkey, Greece, Thailand, etc. She's been sailing with her parents (who we eventually met) since she was two and has such great confidence I wouldn't have been surprised to hear her say she was single handing. Sailing kids are such cool kids!

Libby finds a starfish.

A hike on Norman Island gave us a great view of Saralane in Benures Bay with Peter Island in the background.

I have more to post but I don't think the wifi signal I'm poaching is strong enough to load a MOVIE! Yep, I have a movie to include in the next blog. All I'll say is that it was just about the most incredible thing Skip or I have ever seen underwater and I can't believe I captured it. Check back soon!!

Breathless in St. John

I'm overdue for an update here. Thanks to all of you who have been checking in to see how things are. In an effort to keep this from becoming a medical blog (zzzzzz....) I can summarize the past few weeks by saying that the cure for the original breathing problem (the cause of which is still unknown) seems to have been worse than the problem itself. I ended up in a vicious cycle of side effect induced asthma and asthma induced side effects.

After a few more frightening, frustrating and inconclusive trips to the emergency rooms both in St. John and St. Thomas I landed in the office of a fantastic asthma specialist in St Thomas who seems to have uncovered the problem and I'm optimistic that I'm on the road to recovery. I'm not ready to run a marathon, or even walk up too many steps, but I'm better than I have been.

This hasn't been an easy few weeks and I want to thank the kind and generous people who have helped us along the way. Thanks to Dan and Jackie who were there for the worst of it (and still want to be our friends!); to Greg and Barbara who shared their connections in the USVI and who continue to go above and beyond to help us; to the mysterious and wonderful Carol, a fellow asthmatic, who helped us at Maho Bay; to Nancy who offered us a ride if we needed it; to Paulette and Tom, sailing pharmacists who shared their knowledge of meds and side effects and who continue to check on me; to Dr. Tiffany (and by association, Josh and Jacques) who answered our questions about Epi pens; to my friend (the almost Dr.) Kimmie for calling on her long time friend Gershwain in St. Thomas, who called on his cousin who in turn called on the amazing Dr. Audria Thomas who scolded me for not calling her at home on the weekend so she could help me sooner. Along with her office phone number, Dr. Thomas has her home number and cell phone number on her business card. How about that.

Thanks to family and friends who have continued to call, skype and email.... especially to my sister Leslie who gave me this spectacularly useful advice: "Keep breathing." Now why didn't I think of that? Thanks Les!

So. Here we sit, still in St. John waiting for me to get better. There are worse places to be. I have no pretty photos from the past few weeks so I pulled a few at random from my archives.

Palm tree in St. Croix shot on b/w film with Diana camera 

My goldfish named Fish. I didn't expect him to live more than a month or two.... he lived for fourteen years.

Backyard furniture in the snow - a photo I took on January 28th 2009, almost three years ago today.

I did say I pulled them at random didn't I? Hopefully I'll have some new and relevant photos for the next blog!

Stop Having Fun

I've been hearing some complaints lately that it's frankly becoming a little annoying to see us happy, healthy, relaxed and having fun all the time. Well, we put a stop to all that silliness with a trip to the emergency room on Monday here in St. John.

The trip was prompted by my increasing inability to breath over the course of the weekend. I thought it was asthma related, but when my rescue inhaler failed to help I realized I needed some medical attention quickly. It reinforced how much longer it takes to get somewhere when you're going there by boat.

Apparently Mondays at the clinic here are the busiest days (plus it was a full moon which brings out the crazy in everyone and increases traffic at the clinic) but you can't plan for these things so we spent much of the day there. Diagnosis: some random inflammation of the lungs from some unknown irritant. We left with prescriptions that require abstaining from alcohol and staying out of the sun and instructions to come back if I still can't breathe in a week.

Happy now?!

A Good Start

Is it really 2012 already? Time seems especially elastic lately – sometimes it seems like we’ve been in the Caribbean for ages and other times it seems like we just arrived. Either way we're glad to be here. We spent the holidays both working and playing in a few of our favorite spots...

Skip cleans and greases the winches

I go up the mast to reattach our refined lazy jacks.

Nice view from the top - looking out toward Tortola and the USVI

Nice view looking behind us too - the shoreline at Little Harbor.

Squid in Little Harbor.

A few more of the squid squad....

I know I've already posted a squid photo but these guys just amuse me to no end. (That's fair warning that there are likely to be more squid photos in the future.) We snorkel over to check on them each time we're in Little Harbor and sadly, each time there are a few less. They're smart creatures but I guess that's just part of being on the food chain.

We've come to appreciate the rain for more than just practical purposes. It's washed our decks and filled our tanks time and again. Each time it passes by it leaves behind a little something less practical that we appreciate just as much.

Christmas morning 2011

It's a toss up whether it's more beautiful underwater or above water here. 

Beautiful conch off Norman Island

Just before the new year began my friend Susan came for a visit. She did great on the boat, despite the normal concerns about getting seasick, and she got to see and do some things for the first time!

Welcome to the islands girl!

Susan gets the hang of noodling...

... and takes a glass blowing class at Maho Bay Camps.

Between the high winds early in her visit and the big north swell later in her visit we still managed to get out and do some sailing. The Stad Amsterdam sailed by us one day with 16 sails up. Pretty impressive both coming and going.

We also did a little rafting and snafting.  Yep... snafting... snorkeling from a raft. I'm sure I didn't invent it, it may be something they teach in snorkeling 101 (see 'When It Rains It Pours' - May 2011) but I probably should have copyrighted the word before I put it out here for all to read.  It's so incredibly dorky that there are no photos of it because Skip is either laughing too hard to take any or is trying to pretend he doesn't know me. It's sort of a poor man's glass bottom kayak. Well... sort of. Here I am with my favorite new toy before going out for a snaft.

Toss me my snorkel - I'm going to visit the squid!

Skip is standing firm; he's not snafting. Perhaps it's the lack of dignity involved. Perhaps he has a point.