– Damn, there’s a shark under the yacht! – Come on? – Seriously, it’s about two meters long.
I carefully went down the ladder and looked around. Indeed, the fish was swimming under the yacht – maybe not two meters, but something about a meter, and not a shark, but a stuck fish. It lived with us for several days, floating out from under the bottom when we threw out some food waste, just like a dog!..
I carefully went down the ladder, looked. Indeed, the fish swims under the yacht, of course not two meters, but something about a meter, and not a shark, but a stick. She lived with us for several days, floating out from under the bottom when we threw out some food waste, just like a dog!
This was the funniest thing during our trip to the American Virgins!
The most beautiful part is the Western wing of the St. John Island. There are gorgeous snow-white beaches, and you can find a completely empty beach without people when travelling on a yacht.
In one of the bays, where there are very steep villas on the shore, boats always sail and people took pictures of them. Apparently, some famous owners live there, but I have not found any information on the Internet.
We were standing on buoys without paying for parking, because there was nowhere to pay. In 2013, in every bay with buoys, there was a raft with a box where you needed to put money with a note specifying the name of your yacht and the buoy number. There were no rafts that year – apparently, the local people did it in order to attract more yachtsmen, whose flow decreased after Hurricane Irma.
We didn’t have a dinghy, but we didn’t care much about it. It was enough to have a waterproof bag, put your phone in a case and swim to the shore. Something like you go in for sports and at the same time, you land on the shore. The water was 28 degrees.
The underwater world was a little poor, not like in the Great Barrier Reef)), but we still met with corals, schools of fish, turtles, and a stingray.
Our fishing was a success. We caught a couple of Bar Jacks, a sea bass, and a tuna. Everything was caught from the Caribbean Sea at a depth of about 20 meters. In general, a very pleasant place!
We have laid up the yacht until April, when it would be loaded on a cargo ship and sent to Majorca.
My 50-day adventure ended this way! Come meet me, Moscow! ))
Guadeloupe – English Virgins. Now we are not racers or cruisers, but most likely fishermen)))
Our 240-mile journey began with a comfortable 11-knot backwind from the Peter Pontoon, which turned into a backstay after we have changed the course at the Southern wing of the island. Since we were not in the race)) we decided to put a small 80 sqm A 4 for relaxing sailing. Passing the Southern cape, a cloud caught up with us, giving us 25 knots, which we had to pass through with the 12 knots yacht speed. That was done in 40 minutes along with enjoying the smooth water, steering by hand and working on the genaker brace! We ran away from the cloud to get into a calm zone.
The engine was working for a couple of hours, and then we were relaxing by the mainsail and the staysail all the way down. At the end we were using only the mainsail, as it was necessary to slow down the speed – we planned to arrive in the morning.
On the way, we stopped at the Dutch island of Saba for lunch. Before that, two barracudas and one Bar Jack were caught on the bank of the same name. Everything turned out very tasty! We made sushi, fried steaks and fish goulash with onions.
Nevertheless, we came to the English Virgins before dawn, anchored, swam in the morning and went to look for a place in the marina.
It appeared to be not as simple as we expected! The islands did not yet recover from the devastating Hurricane Irma. Therefore, some of the marinas were only being restored. In general, we barely found a place in one of the marinas, where we were kind of given a place, but saying that first we must arrange customs and immigration documents somewhere.
We spat on that warning and went to anchor.
