2025-03-01 Back to St. John

Sunday we moved out of the ferry wake zone so had flat-ish water, decided to do a boat project.  Our salon table was getting worn, and the varathane was gone in a couple of places.   We picked up some epoxy at the Home Depot, so decided to give it a try.  If we like how it works, then we will probably redo the table again, maybe with a new map

Table all shiny and coated again.  

On Monday, the swell wrap was coming in stronger, so we decided to move.   We knew we did not want to head west yet, as we had time to kill before heading back to the states, so we sailed upwind, tacking many times back to Ensenada Dakity in Culebra.  Hung out a couple of days until the winds went a bit more southerly, then did another upwind sail to St. John, to Watermelon Bay.

We took a nice short hike at Watermelon Bay, saw some ruins and watched some goats.

Charm, on mooring ball in center of photo in Maho bay

Old ruins from 1600s

Why do goats like to climb on rocks and ruins?

Goat found a nice hole in the ruins to crawl into for a nap

Watermelon Bay

After the walk and relaxing lunch, we jumped in and snorkeled around Watermelon Cay.  Snorkeling, not great, but saw some of the biggest parrotfish we had seen for a long time.

Odd to see this many parrotfish, this big, with not a lot of coral around

After the snorkel, Dean did a quick clean, checking things out on the boat.  A rather large and toothy barracuda was hanging out under the boat, and did not want to move, so a section of the hull was not done.  Looking at those teeth, who can blame him.

Friday, we spent an hour or so dumping out our anchor chain and de-twisting it.  We are having issues with our chain jumping on the chain wheel when we bring it up.  Hopefully de-twisting will help, but after spending time carefully watching de-twisted chain come in, we are not pretty sure we need a new chain wheel.  

After our chain work, we moved over to Maho Bay on Friday.  Relaxed and had pizza dinner - Friday is pizza day.  Saturday we took a hike in the morning up the Maria Hope trail.  Only 1.5 miles long, but up 780'.  Nice hike to get some exercise.

Large termite next in a tree over the trail

Kris's toe is doing better, so the hike was not too bad on it.

Decent views near the top

Back to boat, nice relaxing lunch.   

Not much planned for the next couple of days.