Christiansted, St. Croix

December 20-23

I’m too afraid to ask Chris for clarification because it will bring back too many bad memories, but it was somewhere around this time that he realized that the watermaker was not working after all.  I’ve blocked the memories, because, at that point, I was ready to rip the watermaker out of the boat myself.

 

We ignored the watermaker situation long enough to analyze the weather.  We needed to decide where we would be spending Christmas.  We stocked up on food in St. Thomas and played the usual game of “Store the Food”, which is starting to get kinda old.  I don’t think I have mentioned it, but because of the sketchy storage and shipping conditions in the tropics, we must remove all food from its cardboard packaging before it is stored on the boat (which is a total hassle, since the boxes help to avoid crushing foods like crackers and other essentials, like Poptarts).  You see, cockroach eggs lie dormant in the glue that keeps cardboard boxes together, and in the moist, dark conditions on a boat, they can hatch and wreak mayhem (you are SO jealous right now, aren’t you?  admit it!).  Once you get bugs on a boat, it is really difficult to get rid of them because there are so many dark and moist places to hide.  Especially when you are a Buddhist and have vowed not to harm sentient beings.  So our goal is to avoid bugs all together (Spoiler Alert: bugs are not avoided all together in the very near future.)

We decided that the weather was perfect for getting to St. Croix, so we headed for Christiansted on a clear and sunny day with following seas.  It would have been a perfect sail, but the night before, Chris worked on our (still smelly) head and discovered that the vent was clogged.  He cleared it and we all breathed a (tentative) sigh of relief.  But the vent was exposed during our sail and it was still clearing itself the whole 5 hours over.  The smell was wafting right into the cockpit.  You have NO IDEA how bad it was,  unless you live on a boat, which means you are just nodding your head in empathy right now.

We found the free moorings in the outer harbor of Christiansted, but it was really rolly.  Sometimes (like 99% of the time), the swell (waves) from the ocean makes its way into a harbor.  A boat at anchor points in the direction from which the wind is coming.  If the swell hits the SIDE of the boat, it makes the boat roll slowly from side to side to side to side to side to side, until you want to scream your head off if that d@%$$ pencil rolls back and forth across the table one more time.  Apparently Chris saw the look on my face as I held on to the grabrails just to walk through the main saloon.

So we dinghied in to the inner harbor and found our Salty Dawg friends on s/v Virginia Dare.  They showed us the perfect place to anchor, right next to them, and assured us that the depth was adequate for our boat.  We were so happy to get a calmer spot to keep the boat.  Plus, the kids thought it was really cool to be anchored near the sea plane dock.  We were entertained all day long (starting at 0640…) by the planes taking off and landing.  I walked to town and found a really cool grocery store.  I made friends with the butcher there and scored us a brisket that he had made that day.  It was amazing (good meat is getting harder and harder to come by down here.)

When you enter the harbor at Christiansted, you are greeted by the bright and saturated colors of the Danish fort and the surrounding Danish-style architecture.  It felt a little like sailing into Norway, except there weren’t any fjords…We took a walk through town to look at the historic sights, including the fort, the government building, the historic church, and the old scale house, where they used to weigh the imports and exports to determine the tax to levy.  I loved taking pictures here.  The juxtaposition of the bright colors with the crumbling walls and the evidence of today’s somewhat challenged society was almost more than my aesthetic mind could handle!

 

Reese sleeps through Dinghy-Gate.

That night, we got a late call on the VHF from our friend’s Bob and Christine, on s/v Virginia Dare.  Their dinghy was gone!  Chris jumped in our dinghy with his flashlight and his (big) knife and picked up Bob to see if they could figure out what happened.  Chris was ready to wrest the dinghy from thieves, but the dinghy had simply come undone from their cleat.  It had floated off to the beach, so they just needed to pick it up and bring it back.  While Bob and Christine were happy and thankful for our help, I could tell that Chris was slightly disappointed…

The next morning, Chris and Bryson went for a dive with the local dive shop.  In the afternoon, we went exploring again, searching for the bakery and a local street fair.  We discovered a delightful little shop with local and Caribbean artwork and handicrafts.  The owner was really lovely and we purchased some gifts to take home with us.  The bakery, however, was a bust.  It’s pretty hard to impress a bunch of New Jerseyans and one slightly diva-like New Yorker with baked goods.  When we got back to the boat, Bob and Christine surprised us by showing up with some fresh mahi-mahi they had just scored at the dock.  We split it with them and Chris made a great dinner.

Reese had been designing her own restaurant for days, so we all sat down and played restaurant.  She made menus and pretended to deliver the food.  We had a great time together and I thought about how difficult something like this would be if we were home and busy with all the work that seems to accompany this time of year.

We had a quick clean-up so that we could head over to the Christmas parade.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but we meandered through town and came upon a bunch of locals lining the road.  They instructed us on where to stand and we were happy to see that the parade was on its way toward us!  We enjoyed watching the cars go by with the “Princess” and her “Court”, the majorettes, and the marching band.

At the end of the parade was a big truck with the sides cut out.  A full-on hip-hop band was in the truck.  The speakers were gigantic and the parade goers start walking behind the truck after the parade follows.  It’s called “jump up” and it’s kind of like a half-march, half-dance.  We would find out in the weeks to come that this is a typical part of a parade sown here (what I wouldn’t give to see one of these bands playing calypso, shaking the streets of Ho-Ho-Kus on Memorial Day).  We “jumped up” behind the truck for awhile, but then we ran ahead so that we could listen to the marching band again.  I love drums, and it was loud and good, so we just stayed with them till the parade reached the ball field.

At the field, there was a carnival set up and a live band.  We had some carnival food, St. Croix style.  No funnel cake for Erica, but we enjoyed the johnny cake (definitely not the same).  The rides were expensive and the games were too difficult for the kids, so we shouted over the loud music to Bob and Christine for awhile and then we all walked back to the marina.

 

 

 

 

In the meantime, we were busy getting ready for Christmas!  The boat was decorated, the presents were ready, and we spent several afternoons listening to holiday music and decorating gingerbread houses.  Chris spent hours rewriting “Twas the Night Before Christmas” with a sailing twist.  We love our holiday traditions, but we enjoyed adjusting some of them to celebrate our year of adventure.  The one piece we couldn’t quite accept was not having a tree.  I had been on a hunt for a table-top tree, but had had no luck at all.  We finally hung some ornaments from the grabrails in the cabin and tried to accept it.

We emailed Anything Goes, who were back in St. John, and told them how much fun we were having in St. Croix.  They agreed to take the trip over to check it out.  The timing was perfect-they would be here for Christmas!  It was a Salty Dawg reunion when Anything Goes, Flight Plan, and Goldilocks arrived in Christiansted, joining us and Virginia Dare.  The kids were very excited to play again and Chris and I were happy to have some adult time with Wendy and Craig.

Unfortunately, Chris hurt his toe by SMASHING it into the jib lead (a metal piece on the side deck that the jib sheet (rope) runs through.  Kind of like a pulley.)  He was in so much pain that he could barely let us clean it out.  Craig had to come over with his medical supplies to help clean it up and wrap it.  It seems that feet are the weak link on a boat.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I thought about what we would be doing if we were at home.  Traditionally, the kids and I head over to DialAmerica, where Chris works, for the Christmas Eve party.  We have a great time seeing all our DialAmerica friends and the kids get to play with their cousins.  We take our annual picture with Santa and then we head home to cook Christmas Eve dinner.  This year, we woke up in St. Croix and I ran to the market to pick up the shrimp I ordered for Christmas Day.  On the way back, I stopped at a hardware store in a last ditch effort to find a small Christmas tree.  Who’s Your Daddy??!!!  I found the perfect sized tree for Patronus and carried it back to the boat with our Christmas shrimp.  I even got through to my friend Christina on the way back, wishing her and her family a special holiday.

When I got back to the boat, it was time to leave Christiansted harbor and head for our special holiday treat: a few days at a marina!  Meanwhile, here are a few bonus pics from this quaint little town….