Apr 23, 2007

Still here working at St John. Since I'm not doing a lot of sailing, I haven't been too good about updating the web site.

Since Sally left last month, my daughter Christy and her son Chris came down for a few days of sailing. It was the first time either had sailed on a big boat so there were lots of new experiences for them. The weather didn't cooperate too well and we did more motoring than sailing. They got into St Thomas a couple of hours late due to storms in the midwest so we spent the first night at anchor in Lindberg Bay, close to the airport.

The next day, we headed for Culebrita to spend a couple of days snorkeling and exploring. Culebrita has a great little harbor with 9 moorings in it and I've been there several times. The winds were light so we motor sailed over, about 15 miles. When we got there, we were greeted by a bay full of boats. It was the Thurs before Easter and it seemed like every boat in Puerto Rico decided to go to Culebrita. We walked up to the lighthouse and I checked Bahia Almodavar on the east end of Culebra to see if it had less boats but it was packed too. We went to the Jacuzzis and snorkeled for a while and then back to the boat to watch the circus. About 5:00 they started to leave and by 6:30 there were only about 5 left so we stayed and had a nice quite night. I thought that maybe people would stay closer to home on Good Friday and that it may not be as crowded. They started coming in by 8:00 and by lunch time there were at least 75 boats there, ranging from 18 foot runabouts to 60' plus yachts. A large sailboat came in beside me, dropped his anchor just off my port bow and then proceeded to let out about 80 feet of chain. The water is only about 10 feet deep so I only had about 40 feet of chain in the water so if the wind shifted, he would swing into me. Then another sailboat came in and anchored just off my starboard side. I decided it was just too crowded to be safe and decided to head on back to St Thomas. The wind was a little stronger but right on our nose so we had to motor back. We spent a couple of days in Brewers Bay swimming and snorkeling and left for Lindberg Bay. Lindberg Bay in on the south side of the airport and next to the terminal building while Brewers Bay is on the north side of the airport. It's about a three mile trip to go around but the winds were nice so we went out for a little sail. It was the first time we had sailed without the motor and we had a nice sail. After anchoring we still had time for some more swimming before dinner and packing to return home. There flight was early so we were up at 5:00 to get them to the airport in time. After they left, I went back to the boat and left for St John, another motoring trip with light headwinds.

On the way back to St John I went through the channel between Great St James Island and Little St James Island. I was told that Little St James was owned by Sean Penn but he recently sold it to developers. It's not a large island, I'd guess about 6 acres, but it's located at the east end of St Thomas between St Thomas and St John. It has great views of both St Thomas and St John and on a clear day, the tops of the St Croix hills. It is a beautiful spot with a fair amount of work still going on.

Last week I did a short hike with the other volunteers. There are only 4 other volunteers here now and one guest. Bob, aka the Trail Bandit, is here for a few weeks. He comes down a few times a year and restores old trails through the National Park. The park service should be maintaining the trails but they don't have the manpower to do it. They still threaten Bob for the work he does. He has a web site at www.trailbandit.org where the only accurate maps of St John are available to download. He hiked the Johnny Horn trail to the Brown Bay trail and then took it back to the East End Road. There were some ruins at Brown Bay, the Brown Bay Estate. The ruins were the largest I'd seen for residential type ruins but they have gotten to the point that you can't tell too much about them. I have added a page to the Hikes page with pictures.

It has been really dry here since I arrived. VIERS relies on rainwater for all their water supply. They have a 60,000 gallon cistern at the compound, a 10,000 gallon cistern at the lab plus a few other tanks that hold a few thousand gallons. The main cistern was down to about 2,000 gallons so we started hauling water from the lab up to the main compound about 1/2 mile away. The plan was to empty the cistern at the lab and then clean and paint it. One of the volunteers hauled water for about a week until they left and then I started doing it. It's a slow process doing about 200 gallons a trip. It was down to about a foot in the lab cistern when it started raining. It has rained some for each day for the last 4 or 5 days and last night it rained most of the night. When I left yesterday, the compound cistern had collected about 7,000 gallons. I don't think we will get the lab cistern empty this year. If they ran out, they would have to buy water which is about $0.12/gallon plus delivery.

April 24, 2007

I am back in St Thomas today. I came over yesterday and have a friend from Lexmark, Dan Sullivan, coming in tomorrow for a week of sailing. I think we'll probably go back to the Spanish Virgin Islands for a few days. Since it will be the middle of the week with no holidays, it shouldn't be as crowded. They only think I have to worry about is the swells from the north. Right now they are pretty big, from the bad storm that went through the northeast US last week. They should settle down some by Wed so we should be OK.