Saturday, June 11, 2022
It’s been a whirlwind of a month and a half here in the USVIs! From visiting with family and friends to adopting Bosun, all while island hopping, our days have been full and we’re not complaining in the least bit.
So many highlights to share. We started in St. Thomas and feel like we explored almost every nook and cranny. There are some beautiful beaches and amazing lookouts allowing you to see the neighboring BVIs and every color of blue water imaginable. We, of course, taste tested the famous banana daiquiri served at the highest point of the island. We can confirm that it is quite delicious!
We eventually made our way to Water Island, a favorite little island of ours, where we swam with sea turtles (postcard image above). It’s a fun spot with a dog friendly beach. We also made friends with some Water Island residents and had a delicious beach barbecue.
We checked out Buck Island, where we hiked to an old abandoned lighthouse, before we sailed to St. John and bounced around a few more anchorages. A national park, much of St. John is pristine with beautiful beaches and awesome, strenuous hiking. It was definitely a memorable experience complete with a hitchhiking adventure to get back to our boat on the other side of the island.
After leaving St. John, we found our way to Great St. James, the sister island to Little St. James - an island with a dark history. We suggest googling it if you haven’t heard about it, but we’ll leave out the details here as we would rather remember these islands for their natural beauty. Suffice it to say Jeffrey Epstein owned it. The anchorage was beautiful and we were greeted on arrival to a concert off the back of a rather large catamaran. We took the dinghy over, tied up to others floating behind the catamaran, and enjoyed the free entertainment.
We eventually hopped around a bit more - back to Water Island and St. Thomas. We had a meet-up with two other Pearson sailboats with electric propulsions, SV Revery and SV Saoirse, now collectively dubbed the Electric Pears ⚡️🍐. It’s incredibly unusual to find another electric boat, nevermind two! And Pearsons at that! One of which is actually another Pearson 424 and now our buddy boat.
Our buddy boat, Revery, and us left St. Thomas to bounce around St. Croix. We’ve enjoyed Christiansted, Buck Island (a different Buck Island), and Teague Bay.
Between Buck Island and Teague Bay, our autopilot stopped working. Unfortunately, it’s not the first time. We had been having issues with it for some time now and it all came to a head back in Puerto Rico. After troubleshooting with technicians from B&G (the company that sells our autopilot), it was determined the cause was the autopilot computer, for which there is no fix. From Ponce, Puerto Rico, to our first landfall in St. Thomas we had been handsteering only. Our friends, Will & Jessica brought the new computer down with them when they visited. We installed it and all seemed to be working. Welp, after a couple uses, we were back to square one. After some more troubleshooting with B&G, it was believed to be a faulty solenoid coil that controls the clutch of the hydraulic ram. After chatting with Dave from Precision Marine Services in Rhode Island, who is a distributor of the part we thought we needed, it turns out we didn’t need a part at all. B&G was wrong yet again. We just needed to disassemble everything to clean out the solenoid valve. Well, easier said than done, as it’s a sealed unit full of hydraulic fluid. Dave walked us through how once we broke the seal we could MacGyver a way to refill the unit without the special fittings to prevent leaving any trapped air bubbles inside. Despite some foul language and hydraulic fluid on our cockpit floor, we were successful. So far, our tests show a working autopilot. Knock on wood as we plan to use the autopilot tomorrow… and not just on a light day sail. It’s time to head south.
After a month and a half in the USVIs, we are planning to leave US waters for Martinique, a French island further south in the Caribbean chain. SV Revery and her crew of Evan, Trixie, and their sailing pup, Sadie Jane (Bosun’s new best friend), will be making the passage as well. We hear tales of French wine, meats, cheeses, croissants, and baguettes. To say we are all excited is an understatement.
We’ll catch you later… a few latitudes further south.
Much love,
Keith and Becca
Love the picture!