Buck Island
St. Crouix, USVI
17.47.151N
64.37.763W

We left the marina about 8 am this morning in order to drop by the National Park Service to pick up our anchor permit for Buck Island and then continued on to the center of the island to return our rental car. The young lady who drove us back was really a sweet kid. When we started talking about Hurricane Hugo devastating St. Croix back in the late 80’s, I realized that she might not have been born yet. She was kind enough to say that she had been born by that time but that she was still a baby.

We checked out of the marina, which took us a lot longer than we expected, then waited for a rain shower to pass before we left the dock at about 10:30 am. We retraced our rather tortuous route back out of the harbor and made our way to Buck Island. The entire island is protected by the National Park Service and in 2001, it was expanded to preserve “one of the finest marine gardens in the Caribbean sea.”

We anchored at the west end of the island and dinghied to the east end where we jumped in and found the underwater trail we’d heard about. The snorkel trail meanders through coral grottoes out to the reef protecting the island and has signs directing you through the grottos or indicating the types of fish that are usually located in the area. Dale had to dive down to clean off most of the signs as they were covered with quite a bit of silt. The elkhorn coral in this area was so thick that it formed its own patch reefs. Sadly, most of the coral we saw was either dying or just bouncing back from being damaged in the various storms. It seems the soft corals bounce back quicker than the hard corals.

We saw lots of blue tang and several different varieties of parrotfish along the way. Dale said that it looked like I had been trapped when we got to the end of the trail and 3 barracuda blocked my way from either continuing forward or scooting to the side to get back to the dinghy. I took the route with only 1 barracuda to contend with. None of them were over 2.5’ long but still, I don’t want them to think I’m threatening by invading their space.

We returned to the Palace and secured the dinghy for an open water transit by taking the outboard off and putting it in on its perch on the back of the boat, then hoisting and snugging the dinghy itself as tight as we can to the transom and davits. Apparently, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of tightening it down since the area where the ropes go have worn right through the canvass cover we purchased a few months ago. Once we get to Puerto Rico, I’ll have to remedy the situation.

There are only 2 other boats in the anchorage with us tonight, so hopefully we won’t disturb anyone when we leave bright and early tomorrow morning for St. John.