St. Thomas, Olga and the Bitter End

St Maarten Neatherland Antilles

With sub-tropical storm Olga headed our way, we ducked into Red Hook Bay, St Thomas for some cover. While this sounded good, it turned out to be a bad decision. Red Hook faces east and with the strong east winds around Olga, anchor holding in the harbor was poor at best. We decided to ride out the storm in the Marina.

As the storm approached, we doubled up our dock lines and secured the boat, only to be woken up at 2:00 am to a loud crunch. After scrambling on deck to see what was up, we found a 44-foot sailboat with its bow and anchor smashing into our bow and starboard rail. We struggled to get the boat free of our lifelines and secured away from Berkeley East. In the light of day we surveyed the situation to find significant damage to our teak rail, stanchions and lifelines. Fortunately, the damage does not prevent us from continuing our travels, but we will need to stop some time in the next few months for a couple of weeks to get the repairs done.

While in Red Hook, we traveled around on the local buses to see more of the island. The bay at Charlotte Amalie was beautiful, a great place to stop, even with seven cruise ships in port.

After Olga passed and the winds and seas began to die down, we headed off to the Bitter End, Virgin Gorda, the next stop on our trip to St Maarten. It turned out the seas and wind were stronger than expected, but after a couple of days, we arrived in North Sound Virgin Gorda, a beautiful bay.

We moored up at the Bitter End Yacht Club (a well-known spot for cruisers to hang out before passages east) while we waited for a good weather window. For those of you visiting this area by land, the Bitter End Yacht Club is also a very nice resort.

After a couple of days the weather was looking ok for our passage to St. Maarten, so we left at first light. As we cleared the tip of Virgin Gorda, the seas where running nine feet and the wind was 20kts all on the nose, so things were pretty rough as we moved along.

Anxious to start fishing again (we had exhausted our stores of Mahi Mahi from the passage to the Caribbean), we dropped a line right away. Within 30 minutes we had a strike and landed a three-foot Mahi Mahi. While we were excited about catching a fish, we were very leery about getting it on the boat and cleaned while were taking large waves over the bow (some would wash all the way to the stern). We did a quick job of filleting the fish, got it in the fridge and decided that was enough fishing for the day.

By early afternoon, the seas and wind had settled down and we sailed along comfortably, but couldn’t make it before sunset so we were in for another night entry. Fortunately our friends / neighbors from California where in the harbor awaiting our arrival and helped guide us in. The anchorage at Simpson Bay is large and open, but it is impossible to see the boats anchored there because of the lights on land.