USVI’s – and guests!

Hello again, we’re still in the U.S. Virgin Islands…..

We’ve also had guests aboard Mehari! Although it’s a small boat, and obviously pretty full with our family, Rachel’s sister Stacy and niece Kelsey were able to come for a week-long visit. They arrived in St. Thomas and we were all there to pick them up from the airport. Rachel and her sister are very close and there were a lot of tears at the reunion. They had not seen each other for 3 years and she had never met Miles, so it was pretty emotional. No one has ever come for a visit before any longer than a day sail, and it’s been really fun to be able to show people how we live.

Levi, Kelsey, and Emma rising the local "Safari"

For the last few days, we’ve just been taking our time poking along the southern coast of St. Thomas and over to St. John, doing a bit of exploring in the old town and the ‘duty free’ shopping and trying to find calm anchorages, not always an easy task with the peak season here. There are boats everywhere, but with our catamaran, we are usually able to ‘sneak’ up in from of everyone else and anchor close to shore. Then we headed over to St. John, only a few miles away.

St. John is largely uninhabited, being about 80% U.S. National Park, and it has some of the prettiest beaches we’ve ever seen. There's even have a underwater snorkeling ‘trail’ with signs you can read as you snorkel through the ‘path’ describing different coral and wildlife you can see. Apparently it's a huge cruise boat destination, but it was empty the day we were there......no complaints from us! The kids had a great time going through. Miles, meanwhile, had a great time wandering the beach in his birthday suit and playing in the sand. :)

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On our way back to the boat in the dinghy we got hit with a rain squall which had quickly rolled in and dumped on us! We were racing back to the boat, and we could watch the rain on the ocean, quickly approaching….and we had left all our hatches open......oops!  Oh well, it was warm and we needed the fresh water rinse (us, not necessarily the inside of the boat), and after a few towels inside, we were back to normal. I’d MUCH rather have rain inside than waves; we’ve been through that before!

So, a few more days to scoot around to the airport again, and I'm sure more tears as we say good bye, or more accurately, see you later. 

Then we are off to the Spanish Virgin Islands on our way to Puerto Rico. 

Talk to you soon, 

Hems