Charlotte Amalie
St. Thomas, USVI
18.20.243N
64.55.870W

Leinster Bay is one of my favorite anchorages. Not only because you can snorkel to Waterlemon Cay from your boat but also because it is so well protected. Not a ripple during the night. That, of course, meant a great night of sleep, finally!

The morning dawned a rainy grey and after we dropped our mooring at 8:45, we motored out into Sir Francis Drake’s Passage to find it rather blustery. The wind was against us the entire leg up to Road Town. The 4-5’ waves were choppy and made it a moist transit from the rain and the waves over the bow. At one point, we had to come to a complete stop in this mess when Dale noticed that our outboard motor hoist on the back arch was taking more of a beating than we had anticipated. We have a tendency to use it as another support for the dinghy on transits; snugging the dinghy closer to the arch. As luck would have it, this time the hoist bent in all of the pounding into the sea.

When we turned to enter into Road Harbor, we watched the (apparent) wind register 30 knots as a passing rain shower breezed by. There were two cruise ships in the harbor as well as what appeared to be the entire Moorings charter fleet. We anchored outside of the cruise ships amongst some other boats and Dale lowered the dinghy to go in search of the store that held the replacement sat phone we came to exchange. I babysat the boat to make sure it didn’t go anywhere in the high winds and to fend off in case other boats got too close to us or us to them. Thankfully, nothing like that was needed and Dale was back in a flash with the new sat phone. They had powered it up in the store and made sure it locked onto the satellite before Dale left, so we figure we’re good to go.

It was a down hill sleigh ride back the way we had come along Drake’s Passage, through the Narrows around St. John into the Windward Passage, along Pillsbury Sound , through Current Cut between St. James and St. Thomas and down the leeward side of St. Thomas. We arrived in Charlotte Amalie about 4:00 pm just as the first of the 3 cruise ships berthed there figured it was time to leave. Of course, we were right behind him at the time and had to turn on the engine and scurry out of the channel. We continued on into the Charlotte Amalie anchorage, circled a few times in front of the Coast Guard pier like the tired dogs we were, and found just the right spot to drop our anchor in about 17 feet of water.

Tomorrow, bright and early, we’ll hoist anchor again and head for our Puerto Rican home of Roosevelt Roads.