Category Archives: Virgin Islands_U.S

St. John, St. Thomas, St. Croix

Limin’ in St. Croix

Now that Wayne has his sea-legs, we raised the sails and headed for St. Croix. It was a magnificent day to sail with an easy beam reach, full sails up, good seas, and blue skies. It took a short 5 hours to get to the largest of the Virgin Islands. There are two anchorages, Christiansted Harbor and Frederiksted. St. Croix is three times the size of St. Thomas and they have roughly the same population. I found a funny Crucian (local person and language of St. Croix) dictionary so I will be peppering new phrases into this blog. “Limin” in the title means “hanging out”. We decided to anchor in Christiansted which has well marked channels, but if you go outside of them, or miss a buoy you will be aground quickly as this bay is filled with reefs. We tried anchoring in one spot but quickly realized it was not a good hold and moved to the side of the channel where we had 2 meters of water (6’), we draft 1 meter (3’) so it is shallow. Good thing we moved, as the first spot is in the direct path of the sea planes.

Cool graffiti art!

We received some good intel from the local bartender who told us we should take a Tan Tan Tour around the island, so we scurried up to their location only to be told that they could not give us a jeep tour until Wednesday. Well, that won’t work. So we rented our own jeep and headed to the east side of the island. Of course, Matt had to get used to be being behind a wheel again, and driving on the left side of the road. No easy task for someone who has been on a boat for 6 months. Since we were our own tour guides and had a four-wheel drive jeep, we took a lot of roads less traveled and found many beaches, paths, and sites off the grid.

Observation deck at the top of the hill with great views of the reefs below.

Sun dial celebrating the turn of the century.

Super huge castle that I so wanted to tour, but it is privately owned.

We quickly came across the Captain Morgan Distillery or as they call it the “welcome center” and had to stop. “Fa True” (do you mean it), yes! Really nice plant they have here, you are buzzed inside, buy a $10 ticket, watch a short 15-minute video on the history of Captain Morgan, and start your tour. They load you into an open-air cart and take you around their huge plant where they can produce 2 billion gallons on rum a year! After your tour, you are given two tokens that you can exchange for drinks made from a variety of their flavored rums – “Fa True!” (do you mean it) and yes I do! So, basically you get the tour for free. We each tried different concoctions and shared- Sweet! (see recipes)

Visitor Center or drinking adventure?

Matt gettin some captain in him.

Love this quote – wish they had a flag!

What? This is for “Captain Morgan” not “Christine Mitchell”

We hopped back in the jeep and continued our adventure. We did not make it far before we came to the Cruzan Rum Distillery. “Wha, leh we go nuh” (What? Let’s Go). Cruzan Rum is a local rum that is currently co-owned by Jim Beam and a Japanese company. They are still operating under their own label and producing many types of flavored rum. We arrived just in time to hop on a tour. You can certainly tell the difference between a national rum tour from a local rum tour, but none the less it was a lot of fun. There was no movie in a fancy theater, or open-air cart, but we had a “sweet mout” (person who flatters) tour guide with lots of energy. She told us a little about Cruzan Rum’s history, how their rum is made, and showed us around the plant. They distill their rum differently than Captain Morgan, but both plants get their molasses from other parts of the world and both have their final product and bottling done in the U.S.

Wouldn’t it be sweet if this were filled with rum?

Variety of rum drinks enjoyed by all

Local Cruzan Rum workers (I’m in my beach attire, not slutty dress)

Matt found barrels of rum from 2009. They will be well aged.

It was getting late and we wanted to get back to The Brew for their Monday night entertainment, crab races. “Cheese and bread” (denotes surprise). Yes, we wanted to see crab races. We arrived just in time to pay $2 per crab, we named them “Larry, Curly, and Mo” and awaited the start. The ring leader was very nice, said that he gets new crabs every two weeks, puts tape on their shell to write their names so as not to damage the shell, and handles them with care. They had several races and to be honest it was pretty funny. Our little crabs did not win, but it was fun.

Crab races in St. Croix. We had “Larry, Curly, and Mo” and they did not cross the line.

Since we did not get to see the entire west side of the island, we decided to keep the jeep an extra day and continue our self-guided tour.

Funny Phrases:

“Lala” means “Talking nonsense”

“Skylarking” means “Talking about oneself”

“A crab never forget he hole” means “There’s no place like home”

“Dutty han mek greasy mout” means “Work hard and you will eat well”

“Wha’ sweet got mout” means “We pay for everything in life”

All fish does bite but shark does get di blame” means “Those with a history of bad behavior are always the first one accused”

St. Thomas: Kmart, Wayne & Bean Bags

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We left Yost and sailed the short 19-mile sail to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. The winds were light and coming in at 125-130 angle which means we could not fly the kite, but we had our full main and jib out. Matt and I had never been to this harbor before and were looking forward to a new view. However, when we arrived it was not what we expected. Charlotte Amalie is a large bay with two smaller bays divided up by two islands in the center: Water Island, which is in Crown Bay, is the home to luxury resorts on one side and Hassel Island, which is in St. Thomas Harbor, is a nature preserve. There are three channels that bring you in and out of Charlotte Amalie. The east channel leads into St. Thomas Harbor and is home to a giant cruise ship dock; the center channel between the two smaller islands, and the west channel (to the west of Water Island) leads into Crown Bay.

We saw a giant cruise ship take the east channel toward St. Thomas Harbor so we decided to take the center channel toward Crown Bay. It was not a long channel, took us maybe 30 minutes to go through it, and as we entered the bay we realized this is the industrial side of the bay with huge cargo ships, containers lined at the dock, and even a smaller cruise ship. Well that’s a bummer, so we promptly turned around and headed to the east side of the bay.

There were several other boats anchored here and it seemed pleasant enough if you could ignore the view of the cruise ship and bustling town. We came to this harbor because we were meeting Wayne on Friday who was flying in from Dallas. We can hang here for a few days.

The next day we awoke early and made a game plan. We decided we were going to try to find the Cost You Less (which is sort of like a giant Costco). Matt located it on Google Maps and determined it was a short hike up a hill. We loaded up several large shopping bags into our back pack, grabbed our dolly, and parked Sweet N Low at the Yacht Haven Grande Marina. Pretty “uppity” place with a lot of high end stores including Gucci, White House Black Market, Tommy Hilfiger, and more. Of course, it was a little after 8 am and nothing was open so we kept moving. About 10 minutes later we came to a Kmart – hey let’s check it out as we need some more noodles. It was a pretty big Kmart and had a nice variety of stuff, just like a Target (of course, I never go to Kmart in the states, but in the islands a Kmart it was a treat – there is something wrong with me). At first, we did not find any noodles, how odd, but just as we were heading out, Matt notices a staircase heading down. So, we descended to the lower level and low and behold it was all the food, pool/beach stuff, house hold items, kitchenware, etc… Man alive this is a huge Kmart! They had all the U.S. brands (makes sense, we are on a U.S. island). So, we made notes of what the prices were and decided to continue to Cost You Less (little comparison shopping).

After about 15 minutes we arrived at the bottom of the “hill” and had to reassess because it turned out to be a two lane, small, windy road with no side walk, and sharp, blind corners. Hmmmm…maybe we should catch a bus or take a taxi? Matt had “that look” and I knew we were walking. Even though people drive on the left side of the car, they drive on the opposite side of the road. So, we decided it was safer to walk facing the cars coming at us. My preference anyway, but as we hit the first blind curve we decided to cross the street and walk with traffic. This lasted for about 15 minutes, until a driver politely shouted, “you’re on the wrong side of the road” – oops, so we crossed to the other side again. Keep in mind, we are actually walking in either the drainage ditch, close to the guard rail, or in worse cases in the lane. Up, up, and higher we went – our walk ended up being about 3 kilometers and took us about an hour. We were a sweaty mess by the time we arrived Cost You Less. As we walked in, we were immediately hit with the AC – thank goodness! Wow, this is a huge place too. We decided we wanted to shop here and take a taxi back so I made arrangements for the taxi and grabbed a cart. I won’t go into details, but the two ladies helping me with the cab thought we were INSANE to walk here from the marina. Maybe because it was hot, or far away, or up a crazy hill with no room for pedestrians. Who knows, I gave her a giggle and thanked her for the help with the taxi. Somehow, we managed to spend over $250 on food. Not sure where we are going to store it, but we got it. We loaded everything into the cab and headed back down the hill toward Kmart to get a few items that we could not find at Cost You Less – namely my noodles!

After we unloaded and stowed everything, we cleaned up, headed to The Green House to get some wifi and wait for Wayne. He must have flapped his arms really hard because his plane arrived early. We told a few stories over happy hour and then headed back to the boat to get him settled in.

The next day, we decided to head to Red Hook to swing by a marine store and fishing store then head over to St. James Bay aka Christmas Cove. Matt had wanted to buy a down planer to try to pull our fishing lures under the sargassum (seaweed) and we needed to buy a new fender for our dinghy since our last one “walked” away. We met a really informative and very good salesman at Neptune Fishing Supplies who practically sold Matt the store. Somehow, we walked away with a new weight (instead of a down planer), new swivels, 3 yoyos things to wrap the lines around (and prevent knots), and a new rod! Well to be fair, Wayne, Shawn, and Sharon bought Matt this beautiful new Tiagra 50 reel (for his 50^th) and that required him to buy a new rod (just go with me on this one).

Matt’s new rod and reel

As we are walking out, we see these giant bean bags that we have been considering for months. Our friends on Contrary Mary have two strapped on to their tramp and they are super comfy. Our problem was we did not know how to get them from the states to the islands so we just kept pining away for them. Until now, we see them at the fishing store. We inquired about the price and decided to think about it as they were close to $150. So, we headed to the Island Marine Outfitters to buy a fender and then headed up to Duffy’s Love Shack.

We did some research on the bags and the pricing was comparable to Amazon so we pulled the trigger and bought two e-SeaRider tear drop large bean bags. I know, I know, we are unemployed and should only be looking at necessity items, but these are so comfortable and will be used a lot!

After our little shopping spree, we motored over to St. James Bay also known as Christmas Cove. We had planned to go here to get a better angle to St. Croix but as it turns out our friends on Tranquility were heading here as well. We arrived first and enjoyed the lovely, quiet bay with some swimming, floating, and hanging out in our new bean bags! By nightfall, Tranquility (TQ) had arrived so we swung by their beautiful Matrix 76 to say hello. It is always great seeing friends in the islands! Thank you, Matt and Catherine for your hospitality!