Vacation with a purpose.

I debated whether or not to keep this thing short. I tried to be brief, but it just turned into a more detailed account. I swear that it happened organically. My apologies in advance.

We left on a Saturday night and flew through Phoenix, where we had to change airlines. The Phoenix airport is laid out in such a way that we had to walk outside and catch a bus that must have traveled 2 miles before we had to walk through the terminal and clear TSA security again before getting on our next plane. Somebody in power should have to do push ups non stop until that debacle of an airport is fixed.

We arrived in Atlanta at like 5:30 AM on Sunday. Heather's sister Jennifer and her fiance Steve happened to be in Atlanta at the time, and Heather's mom, Michael, Steve and Jennifer all got up before dawn and drove an hour to the airport to have breakfast with us during our layover. Now that is showing the love. Go team.

We arrived in St. Thomas delirious from lack of sleep and exhausted from travel. Couple of things: St. Thomas is a crime infested shithole. The people are not nice, except to warn you to get back to your hotel before you get mugged and/or raped. They get 2-5 cruise ships a day and the downtown is covered in jewelry stores and other high end shops. When the cruise ships leave, all the stores close and the beautiful old downtown turns into some kind of hip hop version of an old west outlaw town. We got on a public bus and they were blasting radio edited gangster rap at full volume out of blown speakers. Also, they drive on the left, but the steering wheel is on the left. I hate that Island.

Our hotel was pretty cool. Gia has a close friend named Bonnie, and Bonnie's folks own and operate a Bed and Breakfast downtown in the historic district. The rooms weren't particularly nice, but they hooked us up with a good rate and the view was slightly better than the view from my back deck at home. It was a cool place with a pool and the front lobby was an outdoor patio with tables for breakfast and the same view as from our balcony.

We were to meet our charter in Red Hook at noon on Monday. Red Hook is about a half hour cab ride from Charlotte Amalie. Ian and I woke up Monday morning to Heather saying "Guys, we need to get up; it's 12:30". We jumped up out of bed in a panic and Ian checked his cell phone. It was 6:30 AM. Heather had read her watch upside down and it showed a Portland time of 3:30 to her. Why does she have a watch with no numbers on it anyhow? After breakfast, we took a cab to Red Hook to meet our charter. Captain Phil swooped us in the dingy and we sped out to his boat. Storm Petrel is a 44 foot Roberts Offshore sloop built of Steel. She was made with 3/8" thick plates and rigged with extra heavy duty rigging. She weighs in at 40,000 pounds. She is a stout, oceangoing vessel. She is rigged with twin headsails on roller furling and has a 4' bowspirit for a total length of 48' overall. She has a rounded underbody with a long fin keel and a skeg hung rudder. She's got lots of space belowdecks, but only one small head. There is a v-berth cabin up front and a private aft cabin where Heather and I slept. Our hosts slept in the main salon. Storm Petrel has huge tankage. 300 gallons of freshwater and a shower hose on the stern meant that we could rinse often and bathe regularly. (So long as you don't mind bathing al fresco)

Heather, Ian and I took the helm immediately. We hoisted sail and tacked our way over to St. John where we grabbed a mooring in a national park. We went for an interesting but exhausting hike to a place on the interior of the island called the Petroglyphs. There were bitching carvings in the stone surrounded by pools of water and waterfalls. There were some nice views along the trail and the bays were beautiful.

We hit up a little settlement called Coral Bay for some Ice and a beer at a beach bar full of locals instead of tourists. We continued on to a totally private and isolated bay called Newfound Bay. We had to navigate in through a small opening between two coral reefs that protected this beautiful little bay. We stayed there all day, the evening, and most of the next day. We snorkeled a lot and learned to windsurf. I'm telling you, it was paradise. The water was turqoise and clear.

We cruised on over to Tortola in order to clear into the British Virgin Islands. We then cruised over to a little uninhabited island called Norman Island. There were several places like this in the BVI. They would take a beautiful bay and drop a bunch of moorings. (Moorings are like permanent anchors that boats can pull up to and grab) Then they would pick the corner with the best beach and build a restaraunt/bar with a dock. All the empllyees are brought over by boat from a larger island. Early in the day the place is a family friendly beach where tourists get brought from the larger islands by special tour boats (the locals call them tea bag tours because the tourists get dipped in the water briefly). Then the bar is happening at night; often with live music. Sailboats typically pull in and grab a mooring in the afternoon. People hop in their dingies at night and head in to the bar's dingy dock. Before we went to the bar, we took the dingy over to a place called the caves and did some snorkeling. It was really cool. Not surprisingly, there were places where you could swin into some caves. I was underwater at one point and Laura pointed down below me. I looked down to see a four foot Baracuda staring up at me from just below my fins. I looked over towards Heather and she had already swam quite expeditiously behind Ian. I left the area pretty quickly myself. Laura was releasing handfulls of rice out of a ziplock causing hundreds of fish to sworm the area. We grew fond of the snorkeling in the Virgin Islands.

We got up the next morning and did another hike. The views were satisfactory. We then cruised over and dropped anchor close to the wreck of the HMS Rhone. We totally snorkeled around that bad boy. By this time, the students were handling all of the anchoring/mooring tasks. We would take turns being the person at the helm or the person at the bow. Captain Phil and Laura just coached us. There were times, when we were cruising between islands, when Cap'n Phil and Laura would both go below and leave us in charge of the boat. We handled all of these duties with no trouble. We gained a huge amount of confidence in our boat handling and general seamanship abilities.

Following our snorkeling at the wreck of the Rhone, we headed over to the island called Virgin Gorda. There is a largish town there called Spanishtown. We dropped anchor just outside the entrance to the yacht club. We're just not the yacht club type- ya know? We got dingied over to shore and thrown into a taxi with instructions to go wander around a place called the baths. It was brilliant. I have never seen anything like this place. Gigantic boulders everywhere with caves full of turqoise water and little cracks leading to one breathtaking place after another. It was truly amazing. Phil and Laura didn't send us there until very late in the day so that most of the tourists would be gone. During the hour that we wandered around the baths, we only saw two other people. I cannot explain how bitchin' it was. Check out all of the pics on my Flickr page.

The next morning we went over to a very private beach called Savannah beach. We had to sneak in through a bunch of coral heads. One person had to get up on the bowspirit and direct the helsman around the coral heads. Once inside, we located a sandy area and dropped the hook. We dingied right up close to beach and waded on in. Ian did a bit of snorkeling and we all logged some beach time.

After the beach, we weighed anchor and cruised over to Peter Island. It had a similar setup to Norman Island with a beach bar in a bay full of mooring buoys. There was great snorkeling right off the back of the boat in that little bay. We did not eat dinner at any of these restaraunts. The food was included in our boat charter. Laura did a great job with the food. We got breakfast, lunch, happy hour hor-derves and dinner with dessert every day. The meals were delicious. We filled out a preference sheet before the charter, and Laura made sure to cook food we all liked.

Heather woke me up in the middle of the night, a bit startled, talking about bugs in the bed. I quickly determined that this was just a case of some unfounded paranoia and told her to go back to sleep. SAhe switched the lights on, and it was creepy. There were bugs everywhere. Little guys with big wings. We jumped out of bed wildly hopping from one foot to the other and attempting to exfoliate our bodies with our hands. I feared that some bugs living in the boat had hatched or something. I pulled up the matress and thankfully found nothing. I had to pee, so I pulled myself up through the hatch and made a startling discovery. The deck of the boat was covered in these bugs. Just like in our room, about half were already dead. We cleaned all the bugs out of our bed, tightened our hatch down snug and actually managed to get back to sleep.

Come to find out, they were termites. Captain Phil had never seen anything like it before. He called one of his buddies and got the scoop. It had rained very hard that evening, and the termite nest had flooded. The termites abandoned their nest and flew out to sea to die. Our boat was moored right next to land, so the dumb-ass little termites flew right into the boat by the hundreds. They slammed into our open hatch on the stern and fell right down into our bed. OOOOOOOOOHHH!!

Heather spent the morning cleaning dead termites off the deck of the boat. On the bright side, the wind was blowing nicely. We decided to poke our nose out into the open ocean. We dropped our mooring and hoisted sail. We were cruising along nicely on a broad reach for about an hour and a half before this suddenly happened. Ian was chumming; which was totally helpful because we had lines out in a futile attempt to catch some dinner. We went a bit further before deciding to turn around and head back to the islands. Right before our turn, Ian spotted a whale. We turned the boat and then shortened sail to slow the boat and look for the whales. We never did see the whales. While the boat was slowed, the motion became more intense. I began to feel a bit queesy. I never did get sick, but I felt nauscious until we got back the shelter of the islands. I took the helm most of that day, but Ian and Heather were steering as well.

We headed back to St. John and grabbed a mooring in yet another beautiful bay. There was an eco-camp on shore, and we hit it up for some ice and a cold draft beer after our big day out on the open ocean. There was no dingy dock there, so we dingied right up to the beach and tilted the motor up right before we hit the shore. We all jumped out and pulled the dingy up on shore where we tied it to a tree. The view from the eco-camp restaraunt was fantastic. I was wearing my Georgia shirt, and when I walked up there, there was some guy working there who was wearing an Auburn shirt. The peace and serenity of the bay was obviously in dire jeopardy. Disaster was narrowly averted as I took the high road and left the premises.

We got up the next morning and started windsurfing around the bay. It became very obvious that we were not going to be dropped off at noon; which is when our charter ended. Captain Phil and Laura knew that we weren't flying out for a couple of days, so they asked us if we wanted to hang out a while longer. We windsurfed all morning and then goofed around swinging from the halyards. We had to leave in order to clear customs before the ferries arrived in the late afternoon and jam packed the customs office. Our dream vacation was nearing a close.

We cruised over to Cruz Bay and dropped the hook right next to the harbor entrance. We dingied on in to town and cleared customs. We then cruised on into Red Hook where our charter would end. We went to the laundromat with Laura and had some drinks at an "Irish Yacht Bar" on the waterfront where iguanas were crawling around the whole place. We said goodbye to Captain Phil and Laura and then we caught a safari taxi across the island and back into the armpit of St. Thomas; downtown Charlotte Amalie.

We checked back into the Galleon House and nearly passed out due to exhaustion. We had envisioned lounging on beaches and swinging from hammocks while reading books. Instead; we were constantly on the go. Hiking to see cool stuff, learning to windsurf, sailing, and lots of snorkeling. We slept very soundly that night.

We checked out the shopping scene on Tuesday. (After all, that's all Charlotte Amalie is good for) Following our mingling with the cruise ship losers, we headed back to the hotel for some much needed pool time. We hung out by the pool and sucked down some drinks. We slowly built up the courage to brave the rough and tumble streets of the city and walked two blocks to a local restaraunt that came highly recomended. The walk was short, but the street was narrow and dark. I was even a bit nervous considering all the warnings we had gotten. The meal at Cuzzins was my favorite of the trip. All local food served by local people in a reastaraunt full of west indians. I took the leftovers back to the hotel, even though I knew I could never eat them. That food was so good, I just couldn't bear to see them throw it away.

We made it back to the hotel alive despite our unbelievable paranoia. We sat on the balcony enjoying the harbor view for one last time.

The following morning we lounged around and ate breakfast on the great patio at the Galleon House. We were in no hurry as we were adjusting to "island time" quite nicely. What we hadn't counted on was having to clear customs and account for a delay by our cab's arrival. When we arrived at the airport, the self service kiosk said we were too late to check in. The very nice airline employee realised our dillema and rushed us to the front of the customs line and the security line. We made the plane barely. It was an appropriate start for a day which would consist of us spending all our time on the ground rushing around airports. In Puerto Rico, we were kicked off of our next flight and had to go see customer service just in time to get new seats and make the plane. When we arrived in Orlando, we had to take one shuttle to the main terminal and clear through TSA security again before taking another shuttle to another terminal where we were rushed onto the plane. Since when is an hour layover a tight connection? We finally had an easy time of it in Salt Lake and arrived back in Portland just before midnight on Wednesday night.

I don't think that I can write anymore. This vacation was fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone. Our hosts could not have been better. After you spend a week on a small boat with people, you know them quite well. I am confident in saying that a friendship was forged between all of us. If I was going to continue my life in the rat race with an annual vacation, I would definately schedule a charter with Storm Petrel for next year in Antigua. That will not happen, however, beacause this vacation has absolutely inspired and instilled the confidence needed to begin the long process of casting off the restraints of land life and heading for a vagabound life afloat. I may not be a real sailor yet, but I'm getting there.