US Virgin Islands - March 26th - April 1st 2009

We had a lovely 4 hour sail from Virgin Gorda, down the Francis Drake channel, between Tortola and the small islands to the south, past St John's and into Charlotte Amelia, the main town of St Thomas. As we drove into the anchorage, we had a pleasant surprise to see Serephim - we had thought they were still in BVI's but it turned out they decided to take advantage of a nice weather window and get moving (they are heading up to USA). Charlotte was happy especially as we fixed up a play date for her the next day with Jack and James on their boat.


One of the main reasons for visiting St Thomas was because Jimmy's friend Wade was coming into Charlotte Amalia for the day on a cruise ship. He came over to the boat with his brother and sister-in-law for lunch - we got out the smoked salmon but don't think we were any competition for the food on the ship!! Thanks Wade for the slide show and video below:


St Thomas is much more built up and commercialised than the BVIs. Its owed by USA and with that came all the benefits, that we enjoyed - big stores, cheaper prices, more availability and choice, fast food, cheap fuel, .... You would never guess how excited we were to go and stock up at K Mart!! also 3 trips to Wendys and dinner one night "All you can eat Shrimp" at Hooters!!

St Thomas was the "Turn around" point, we had come as far north as were were going this year. On Wednesday April 1st we left St Thomas about 8am to sail back to St Martin, starting our journey back south. We had to motor all the way as the wind was on the nose, and arrived St Martin 16 hours later at midnight.