Sailing Ohana

We arrived in St. Thomas after a short sail — the Virgin Islands are all really close together. Our first stop was to anchor at Honeymoon Bay where our buddy boat Malusi had a mooring ball. We dropped the anchor in the only open area, only to find that it was dragging when we tried to set it. A woman came by in her dinghy to tell us that boats always drag in that spot. Another catamaran had just pulled up their anchor while we were there, so we moved to their spot, only to find the holding was not good either, and there were some mean-looking rocks closeby. It was crowded and unappealing so we went to the next bay over, where it looked like there would be room for us to anchor next to a few decrepit (possibly abandoned) monohulls. We were able to squeeze in, but were uncomfortable about how close we were to one of the other boats. Furthermore, there was no room for our buddy boats to join us either, so we pulled up the anchor again and headed to Charlotte Amalie which is a city with a large port on St. Thomas. As we headed in toward the channel, we saw huge cruise ships docked there, as well as dozens of boats speeding in and out, seaplanes landing and about 100 boats on anchor or mooring balls. This is not our family’s happy place. We called Cosmic (our buddy boat who was out with us) and they had the same reaction, just feeling like we needed to make a u-turn and get the hell out of there. We decided to push to St. John. We went into the Charlotte Amalie anchorage and dropped the anchor just so we could jump on Seadragon to say good bye to them. They made us delicious lattes with their fancy coffee maker and the kids played in the salon.

There is one spot on St. Thomas that I wish we had visited, but that’s only because you can order pizza and they will deliver it to your boat in a dinghy.

We found a beautiful spot called Fish Bay on the Southwest side on St. John, where Malusi, Cosmic and us anchored happily. I made soup and Tommy made bread, so we hosted our friend boats for dinner and had a lovely evening.