We set sail in the morning and decided to go the the caves to do some snorkeling. The caves were cool, one in which would actually lead up onto the beach of an island, but i didnt stay on that for very long. So on the swim back to the boat, i noticed these two MASSIVE barracuda. The bigger, uglier, meaner one was named Bert, and he certainly was scary. But after the time span of about 10 seconds, i noticed it was much more afraid of me then i was afraid of it, so i decided to play with them for abit. A bunch of people who were swimming by got totally wigged out by these barracuda, so John and I decided it would be a little bit of fun to chase the barracuda towards all the other swimmers. That didn’t work because they would keep turning towards the bait-fish, so that plan was ruined. Later went to a bay and ate at a restaurant, followed by the usual night concluding beer quaffing and talking to a boat full of really pretty girls from New York who were on a sailing camp.
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Haha. Ok so here’s what happened through my perspective. We decide to dock on this pier where in which we’d get water, ice, and fuel. Everything’s going down, so i’m like “whatever, i’ll go talk to Leah” and such. I go downstairs, talk to Ben and Leah about stuff, next thing i hear is “AHHH!!!! STEEVE!!!”. The probably death shreak of my Mom made me wonder “what the hell?” so i decided to ascend the stairs to see what happened. In my mind i was like “$20 that Mom got sprayed with the hose, hahaha” but no, it was much worse. I peaked my head through the screen door to see what happened, and i came to find that the entire cockpit was green with diesel fuel. The smell was strong and knocked me back, giving me a booster to go tell Leah and Ben what happened. From then on it was just stress. Scrubbing that deck, trying to coordinate everything else as well. Oh my god, it was both tragic and hilarious. Like Dad says, “You learn something new every day” haha. So we then docked at this bay and went to a restaurant where i played a keyboard for the first time in 2 weeks. Ahh, it was nice. It would of been nicer, however, if it was a full 88 keys with a sustain pedal. I couldn’t play anything i wanted to! What a tease. The food was good at least, and at least i got a little bit of my malnutrition of music out of me. We learned a lot of lessons today – mostly involving diesel. Our plan for today was to head back to the BVIs. If the evening forecast was good we had an option to go to Great Tobago where we had an uninterrupted view to the west. We would have a chance to see a sunset over the sea and perhaps a green flash. The weather forecast wasn’t good so we changed our plans to stay at Soper’s Hole on Tortola. To check out of USVI we had to go back to Cruz Bay. We decided to top off with water and diesel, drop off our trash and pick up groceries before checking out. First stop was the fuel / water dock. I bear full responsibility for what happened next. What I wanted to happen was that, in an organized fashion we’d fuel, put on water and drop off the trash in a quick fashion before leaving the fuel dock where we could anchor then go get the groceries. I didn’t brief everyone on what I wanted to happen so what actually happened is everyone went off doing their own thing. While I struggled to get the things we needed done, done, I took my eye off the diesel going into the boat. The next thing was that we had diesel spurting all over the cockpit floor which got everywhere. We then spent a lot of time cleaning up diesel from the boat and the water. Helen’s view was that I simply should have kept my eye on the nozzle. My view was that I should have made sure everyone knew what they should be doing. Both views are right of course. The sail back to the BVIs was upwind but we polished of the miles in good order.  Soper’s Hole was quaint but we decided to eat over the bay in a restaurant called The Jolly Roger. We had a waterside table and fed ourselves as the sun went down. There was live music and Sam got an opportunity to play on the keyboard for the guests. He was frustrated by a lack of a pedal but did a reasonable job of it.    We set sail in the morning to a small bay which happens to be the beginning of a good hiking trail. We decided to partake in the experience, and it was fun. We went to an abandoned mill where we saw bats all over the ceiling. We also saw hermit crabs, big spiders, lizards, tree’s, deer- huh?, and a mongoose. When i saw the mongoose i was like “oh boy, where’s the snake?” but there was no snake 🙁 We continued the hike, went back to our boat, and chilled. We motored to another bay, ate an assortment of barbequed food and hit the hay. We set off early today (about 7:30am) when only John, Helen and myself were awake. We quickly raised the sails and headed south past Cruz Bay and then out into the Caribbean Sea. Our destination was Genti Bay on the south side of St John where we planned to go on a hike. As the wind was still coming from the east, this involved working our way up wind. I was keen to experience conditions away from the islands so we did this as one leg out, a tack and then one leg back. By the time we were out at sea, the rest had woken up. Sam and Leah took up their usual positions on the bow pulpits and had a real roller coaster ride as we ploughed through 4-6 foot seas and 20 knots of wind. The trip was quite exhilarating but relatively short as we covered ground quite well. Our hike took us past deserted sugar mills and old stone accommodations. It was fascinating to see how the plant life was gradually replacing the stonework. The hike was about 3 miles each way and involved a 1,000ft ascent. All the way we were surrounded by forest and vegetation and were offered no large views but the interior feel of the forest and how it changed as we ascended was rewarding. Along the way we also saw wildlife including a mongoose and a large spider.  Continue reading Day 13 – Genti Bay, Little Lameshur Bay |
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