Thursday, April 2, 2020

Cinnamon Bay, St. John, USVI
18.21.271N
64.45.532W

Today finds us in Cinnamon Bay by necessity—but what a great find. 

We found ourselves rather anxious to leave this morning as it was a pretty rolly night, so we were up, dressed and moving around when we saw a dark monohull approaching rather quickly about 6:45 am.  We were surprised to see that it was Rum Truffle! 

The last we had heard, Rum Truffle was in the Cruz Bay, St. John area.  They circled around us, then dropped their anchor in front of us.  Next, of course, they lowered their dinghy where Mark climbed in and came over to say hi.  He explained that they had come in for a very short time to pick up a part for their generator from the post office and immediately were heading back to Caneel Bay where they had left a dinghy holding their mooring ball.  Dale gave him directions as to where to tie up his dinghy and where the post office was located in relation to the dinghy dock.  Mark roared off leaving Gina, his wife, standing on the back of their boat waving frantically holding a shopping bag.  Apparently, he never saw her (or forgot she wasn’t with him) and kept on going.  Dale and I looked at each other and declared that he was in BIG trouble when he got back. 

We ate breakfast, secured items within the boat, sent a few last minute e-mails, then hauled out our life jackets, headphones and turned on all of the instruments and waited for the 10 am departure time we had coordinated with Opal. 

At 9:45, we started hoisting our anchor.  With Rum Truffle resting only feet from where we had dropped it, we waited for the wind to blow them off to the side enough to scootch up, retrieve our anchor, then drift back so that we wouldn’t smack into them.  As Gina was on board with fenders ready and Dale had a boat hook in case we needed to fend off, we hadn’t needed any of it.  We did get a chance to say hello to Gina and relay our hopes that we would catch up soon.

Exiting Charlotte Amalie Harbor

We started our way out of the anchorage slowly to let Opal go through the same motions, as now their anchor was being guarded by a catamaran.  One of the joys in anchoring is that when you drop your anchor with the wind blowing in one direction, and pick it up when the wind is blowing in another, sometimes boats shift closer than you allowed for due to the differing lengths of anchor chains. 

We hoisted the main sail all the way as we were anticipating light winds and waited to clear the channel before deploying the jib.  Unfortunately, as what seems to be a normal occurrence, the wind was only slightly off the nose and we had to travel almost half way motor sailing before we turned to go through the narrow cut by Christmas Cove and turn off the engines.  This time, the current and wind pushed us along and we were able to sail doing 6-7 kts. 

Dale was on the helm when we entered Francis Bay and slowly made our way through the harbor looking for either a mooring ball or a place shallow enough to anchor.  Texas Crewed radioed information of a couple of possibilities but they had already been taken.  Although I found a couple of areas on the chart, they were fairly narrow and in a stiff wind, we might not like being on a spit of sand surrounded by deep water.  So, we motored back out and over to Leinster Bay (one of my favorite spots), circled the area without finding a single mooring ball available and the areas where we used to anchor before mooring balls came into existence, too close to the mooring field to allow us room to swing at anchor.  

Cinnamon Bay

We chatted back and forth about returning to Charlotte Amalie but for grins and giggles, we radioed Opal and let them know that we wanted to check out the areas I had seen on the charts.  Opal was in front of us so led the way.  When we approached the area, Opal spotted what looked like either swimming buoys or something farther to the west and headed towards it.  We followed.  The closer we got, the more we saw.  Here there were 5 mooring balls all by themselves!  We snagged two and settled in for the night.  We radioed Texas Crewed to let them know where we were (which was really part of the same bay, just a lot farther away). Now that we’re settled, we realize that we are totally exposed to anything from the north/northwest, regardless of whether its wind or waves.  For the moment, its fine; in fact, we love it but in the next couple of days, we’re expecting north to northwest swells.  That could prove to be really uncomfortable.  We’ll see, as we have no alternative except to return to St. Thomas.

Sunshine and fresh air seem to suck the energy out of us, so we’re off to bed early tonight.