Surf’s Up

Yesterday was another productive day for us. While we didn’t hit any new tourist attractions, we did leave Trellis Bay fairly early so that we could meet up with our lawyer in Roadtown to complete some business. Following that, Rebecca and I took care of our BVI customs checkout, something that unfortunately slipped our minds the last time through. We found the customs agents in Roadtown and also in Cruz Bay where we checked into the USVI to be very pleasant, a welcome change from what we have experienced in other ports. Hopefully that is a sign of things to come.

As we motored along the North Coast of St. John en route to Cruz Bay, I wondered to myself if certain sailors ever check the weather. Or perhaps they just have a larger tolerance to having their boat roll around at anchor than we do. For the last few days there has been a fairly significant north swell running which affects most of the anchorages with northern exposure. We signed up for a mailing list and receive an email notification whenever safety flags are issued on BVI bays. I find it very helpful. It is one of the bits of info that we used when making our decision to visit The Baths by land instead of by swimming ashore from the mooring field. It is also good info to have when selecting an anchorage. For example, Savannah Bay, which we had a beautiful night’s sleep in, had large rollers flowing over the reef when we drove by it the other day. This was due to the north swell that I mentioned. With that in mind, there is no way I’d want to stay in one of the bays of St. John that are open to the north.

With a bit of chart checking and some reading of Active Captain reviews on our iPad, we chose to move around to the southwest end of St. John after clearing in and it definitely paid off. We essentially had Monte Bay, a smaller sub-bay of Rendezvous Bay, all to ourselves. The water was as calm as a mill pond and so clear that we could easily see our anchor bury itself in the sandy bottom 20′ below the surface. What’s not to like about that?