Sailing Ohana

Our first few days on St John were peaceful and fun. We stayed in Fish Bay with our two buddy boats. Our friend Stirling from Colorado who moved to St. John in 2020 also joined us with his youngest son on their family’s catamaran. Our four boats were the only boats in the bay while we were there, probably because it’s known to be a rolly anchorage. It was perfect while we were there though, because the winds were from the E/NE and there were northerly swells, which was avoided by being on the South side of the island. Each night we shared potluck meals and during the days took little excursions out to explore. We celebrated St. Patrick’s day with some reusable vinyl decals and green thrift store shirts for the boys. We spent a day at Reef Bay where we ran into several other kid boats we know, who had hiked or jogged over from the other side of the small island. There are some fantastic ruins of a sugar mill just a short walk from the beach. I snorkeled around the bay, although there was not much to see. I did get to swim with a spotted eagle ray for a long time though, which was lovely.

90% of St. John is National Park or National Monument, so its natural beauty and waters are very well protected. There is no anchoring allowed around most of the island; instead there are National Park mooring balls for $26 pretty night. When the winds changed, we got mooring balls at Francis Bay which is a nice spot close to three great beaches. Spencer and Otis from SV Cosmic Convergence wanted to go to the surfing beach, but dinghies are not allowed there. I had to drop them off by the “no boats” bouys, and they had to swim a long way to shore. When I came back to pick them up, it was very challenging to get them back to the dinghy because the crashing waves made it hard for them to swim out, and I couldn’t approach the shoreline. I was impressed by Spencer’s strength and how hard he worked.

The boys and Otis started making bracelets, anklets and necklaces out of embroidery thread and sea glass, coral or shells, and selling them to the tourists on the beaches. Nearby Maho Beach is perfect for that. It is a popular place where tourists go to have drinks and food from the little shacks, and snorkel with the many green sea turtles that live there. The boys are making a good amount of money and have had to work on their marketing strategies and sales techniques. It’s pretty cute to watch, but it looks like we’re running a little sweatshop on our boat.

We moved to a bay called Waterlemon where we had to race a bunch of charter boats to get mooring balls. It was so stressful because we were going with our two buddy boats and there were not enough empty balls when we arrived. We were messaging each other as we circled like vultures waiting for a spot to open up. It’s a bit like looking for a parking spot in a full parking garage… Not fun. We learned that in the Virgin Islands there are a lot of charter boats out all the time. Cruisers have to adjust our schedules to avoid the charter crowds, and if we move, we have to move in the morning, otherwise the charter boats who have very limited time will typically fill up the moorings first thing each day. Waterlemon had a nice snorkeling spot, so we finally had a good snorkeling session after several disappointing ones.

There is another historic sugar mill and ruins above Waterlemon Bay, so we decided to hike up and check them out, then hike over go to Coral Bay for lunch. The sugar mill hike was beautiful, along the water and then up into the hills and mountains overlooking the ocean and other islands. A woman called Miss Olivia was there making “dumb bread”, which is a traditional dumpling bread from these islands. She made it in the original stone oven in the bakery building at the sugar mill. She served sweetened ice tea with the bread which was a huge hit with our families, as it was getting hot and humid. Europeans who came to the Virgin Islands and forced the slaves to build and work the sugar mills for them became unbelievably wealthy. The industry almost totally collapsed and most of the mills closed when the slaves rebelled, because the only way the business could be profitable was with the free labor of the slaves. Our hike continued over to the other side of the island, but our group didn’t pay a lot of attention to the topography when we were mapping it. Unlike the Bahamas where a hike to the other side is a nice sloping hill climb, this was brutal. It was very steep, long, hot, and humid. Spencer tried to quit a few times but Tommy stayed with him and got him through it with lots of patience and encouragement. Our friends even made little refreshment stations by waiting with Skittles or Gatorade along the route. By the time we made it up and over and down to Coral Bay for lunch, everyone was totally exhausted. We stopped at the outdoor patio of a restaurant called Skinny Legs, where we had a decent lunch and I drank about a gallon of water. The kids bought candy at a little shop after lunch, so we took advantage of the sugar energy and hiked back to our boats. I walked with Spencer and he talked the whole way home. We hiked around 7 miles that day, with significant elevation.

We moved back to Francis and spent more time with our friends from Colorado who moved to St. John, as well as our dear boat buddies who we thought we would not be seeing again once we left for St. Croix. They had even had a farewell breakfast for us which was wonderful. Everyone gathered on our back cockpit that evening to say goodbye, and we sailed to Rendezvous Bay for the night so that we could get an early start for St. Croix the next morning.

There were some kid boats at Francis that had fun water sports gadgets on board like e-foils, wakeboards, sailing dinghys, and things like that. A few of them are very into their Instagrams and YouTube channels, which is not our style. Jackson was included when kids went wakeboarding a couple of times, but we really had to encourage him to leave the boat and seek out the connections he had. This season there are some slightly exclusive cliques, which we didn’t have as much last year.  Last year kids would take a dinghy from boat to boat, inviting and collecting kids to play. I think the disconnect is exacerbated by the prevalence of Starlink…. Everyone is communicating in private WhatsApp groups instead of over the VHF radio, which is much more inclusive.

This is the time period that I wrote the post about the struggles we were having on our boat, with Jackson’s tween-age moodiness and Spencer’s sometimes fiery attitude. Neither of them are in love with the Virgin Islands because it is not as wild and uninhabited as the Bahamas, which they love. Spring Break was coming up soon, so I think Jackson was getting a lot of questions from his friends at home regarding his return.  We very seriously considered sending him home with our friends after they visit us in St. Croix, but ultimately decided that this is our family’s journey together, and our shared experience. We will stay together and continue to try to choose the path that’s best for everyone.