Lameshur Bay,
St. John
18.18.852N
64.43.315W

Bright and early this morning several of the Sunsail boats headed out. Probably due to the fact that during the night when the winds died down, all of the boats danced around their anchors and could have made for some interesting encounters. In fact, at one point I could hear water splashing on what sounded like a dinghy but since ours is hoisted each night, I looked out the port to see a catamaran passing closely behind us. I went top side and saw all of the boats circling around their anchors. A short time later, we passed behind the cat with barely enough room for its dinghy to clear. Still, as far as we were concerned, the night passed without incident.

This morning we hoisted anchor about 8:15 and headed for the Indians, a group of boulders in the channel between St. John and Norman Islands. We were lucky when we arrived and found a mooring within a few minutes but Orpailleur loitered for almost an hour waiting for a mooring to become available. All of a sudden there were about 3 that dropped their lines at the same time. Then it was like Christmas Eve in a WalMart parking lot. A free for all with swimmers in the water, the least of anyone’s concern. We saw boats charging across areas where snorkelers were and wondered how someone hadn’t been hurt.

We hopped in the water and expected Orpailleur’s crew to join us but they never did. Apparently the guys decided to wait this one out and the ladies went by themselves.
With my new toy (underwater camera), I found myself regretting not bringing our dive gear. I knew that if I could just blow out a little air and sink just a few feet, I’d have a better angle on the slippery little devils. I was still able to snap a few pictures.

After we were done at the Indians, we decided to skip the Caves (I think Gerry had had his fill of milling about smartly for awhile) and made our way towards Salt Pond. Buddy on Indigo Moon heard us talking on the radio and called to say hello. They were out towards St. Croix on a day sail entertaining some guests. As he and his wife, Melissa, are bay sitters on the other side, they thought we should just head on into Salt Pond as the last time they were there, it was completely empty. We took his advice and motored on around.

However, once we got to Salt Pond, it was filled with day boats and only a single mooring was available outside of the protected area. Gerry took it while we checked out the inside but when we found that nothing was available inside, we all headed over to Lameshur Bay, the next anchorage to the west on St. John. We’ve never been here before and after paying our fees at the National Park Service, we dinghied around the harbor and found that Tom & Doris on Exit Strategy were also here. They said that they wanted to kick around the BVI’s for a few days before heading over to Culebrita. Since they were in the neighborhood, we invited them over for hor d’ouvers later in the evening.

There was still time for one more swim, so we headed out towards the rocks at the entrance for some snorkeling. It wasn’t as good as we remembered Booby Rock to be (outside of Salt Pond) but it was close by, so we took what we could get. There were a couple of good sized colorful angel fish but they were very shy and darted away when I came within camera range.

As luck would have it, we climbed back into the dinghy and watched several day boats heading west; we guessed that they were the ones from Salt Pond. If we had waited for them to leave, we wouldn’t have had enough time to snorkel and certainly wouldn’t have found a free garbage drop off. You takes what you can get.