Virgin Islands

Blog 

 Well, we had a nasty upwind sail to St. Tomas (USVI) from Culebra. Then we went to St. John (USVI) and Tortola (BVI). We spent the morning of my eleventh birthday in Tortola that was followed by another nasty upwind sail  headed for Virgin Gorda. Did I mention that my one birthday wish was to see my friend, Julia? I thought that that was't going to happen, until we called them on the radio and changed our course to Marina Cay, where they were moored. I had a wonderful birthday making a 'Happy Birthday Cake' out of sand with Julia and Remi. This perfect day was ended with tacos and cake. We also went to Virgin Gorda, Norman Island, Jost Van Dyke, and finally back to Culebra with Arwen. We took the ferry to mainland Puerto Rico, where we went to Wal-Mart, a rainforest, and West Marine. We had to wake up at five to catch the 6:30 ferry. We planned to take the 7pm ferry back to Culebra and arrive at 8:30 pm, but it was delayed by two hours. We finally got on, but the captain told us a wire broke and that they needed to fix it after the cars got on. It was an extreme high tide and the cars could barely get on, so it was a good hour and a half before the cars were on and the wire was fixed. We left for the one and a half hour journey back to Culebra. It was a bit rolly and people who had never been on a boat before got seasick. I tried to take an unsuccessful nap when a crew member started passing out barf-bags. When we finally got there it was almost 1am and I was ready to go back to the boat. Our friends on Arwen are flying back to Germany soon, so we had to say goodbye. They are planning to visit us when we are back in Stow.

Here's more of my story:

We are in Tobago Cay, Grenadines now. This anchorage is filled with charter boats that can drive the boat just as well as I can and I can't drive the boat without breaking something. Anyway, Quinn, Desiree, and Jade are out snorkeling and I offered to stay behind because I didn't want to tell them that I don't know how to use fins. I was watching other boats run into each other and putting out fenders as a precaution, when I heard a beeping sound. Thinking that was on another boat beeping, I tried to read one of Desiree's books, Stowaway. It is hard to read when a beeping sound is being very annoying. Suddenly it hit me, could this be the anchor drag alarm Desiree was telling me about? I ran down-below and, yep, sure enough the GPS had red, flashing letters on it "ANCHOR DRAG ALARM". What should I do? What should I do? I racked my brains and started the engine. There was a small chance that my plan would work, but it was the only hope I had. I went to the bow and pushed on the button that supposedly pulled the anchor up. Nothing. Then I remembered that there was a switch that Quinn had to flip for Desiree to be able to put the anchor down. He always switched the wrong one and Desiree had to yell "THE WINDLESS! IT'S ON THE TOP ROW, ON THE FAR RIGHT!" So I ran below again and flipped the switch and ran up. Sometimes it's nice to have Quinn around. I pulled the anchor up and carefully navigated to a nice spot in front of where Quinn, Jade, and Desiree were snorkeling.

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Desiree looked up and said "Wow, that boat looks just like Skipchaser!"
Jade looked and said "Yeah, we should talk to them on the way back." All Quinn said was "OW! I stepped on a sea urchin!"

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I anchored, remembering the five times the depth for amount of chain, ratio. I pulled backwards on the anchor with the boat to make sure it set well. Then I attached the snubber and lay down. It wasn't five minutes before Quinn, Desiree, and Jade were back on the boat. I told them about what happened.
"You're getting better at this. I think you're better than Quinn!" said Desiree
"Is not!" Quinn said indignantly and then fell head first down the stairs hitting his head on the table. "Guess what? I just got that water out of my ear."