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It’s been a rainy and cloudy weekend on St. John. Squall after squall with an occasional thunderstorms along with some unusually strong winds.
Today, however, there’s some sunshine peaking through and it looks like a decent day for swimming and snorkeling.
Scratch that!
Right now (2:00 pm Sunday July 18) there’s a monster thunder squall happening. I could see it coming out at sea in the east; the dark line of clouds, the sea boiling with white caps, (“sheep’s in the meadow,” say the old timers) and then the leading edge of the squall with violent blasts of wind and then the storm arrives with wind-driven rain so hard that it’s coming right in the house under the sliding doors. I had to line the bottom of the doors with towels so the whole place wouldn’t be flooded.
The cistern’s overflowing.
Lucky thing. There will be plenty of water to wash all those towels!
Green Turtle, Leinster Bay, St. John US Virgin Islands
When you look at a green turtle swimming about, one of the first things you may notice is that they are not green, but rather brownish in color. Their name comes from the green color of the layer of fat lying under their shells. Green turtles can get quite large, the biggest one ever found had a shell five feet long and weighed 871 pounds. Unlike many other species of turtles, green turtles cannot pull their heads back into their shells. Adult sea turtles are vegetarians eating mostly sea grass and algae, but the babies will eat small crabs, sponges and jellyfish. They mate in shallow water near the beach every two to four years and using their flippers, they dig a hole in the sand, where they lay their eggs. They then cover up the eggs with sand and return to the sea. When the eggs hatch the babies make the short but dangerous trip back to the sea. Those that survive the onslaught of predators like seagulls and crabs may live to be 100 years old.
Sunset from the overlook on north face of Caneel Hill
Viewing Tower at Caneel hill Summit
I usually don’t like the way photos come out on days when the Sahara dust makes the sky gray instead of blue and obscures the contrast between the white clouds and the background sky. Nonetheless, I brought my camera with me on a late afternoon hike up the Caneel Hill Trail.
I began the hike at the Caneel Hill Spur Trail to save a little uphill work and because it was getting late.
With all the rain we’ve had lately, St. John is as green as can be, but walking on the trail, I was still amazed at how much the bush had grown. The Guinea grass, in particular, had sprouted up to a height of more than three feet almost obscuring the trail in some areas; very lush and very beautiful.
Sunset from the overlook on the North Face of the Caneel Hill Trail
I arrived at the summit of Caneel Hill in less than a half an hour and shot some photos from the viewing tower, none of which amounted to anything worth saving. Returning down the trail, I stopped at the overlook a hundred yards or so down from the hilltop, where there’s a wooden bench and a north view comparable, if not even better, to the view from the tower, especially now that the overlook was cleared thanks to Jeff Cabot and his volunteer trail crew.
From this new angle I could get a clear shot of the horizon and as the sun sank lower I could see that even the Sahara dust was working in my favor, filling the late afternoon St. John sky some beautiful shades of red, yellow and orange.
When I returned home, I was happy to find some pretty nice sunset shots worthy of being shared with those who didn’t happen to be at the north face overlook just shy of the summit of Caneel Hill on the Caribbean island of St. John in the United States Virgin Islands, at sunset which included every single human being on the planet Earth … except for me.
The Charlotte Amalie waterfront in the 1970s presented a picturesque scene of native sloops, fishing boats and local cargo vessels tied up to the seawall. On the paved walkway along the harbor front were numerous kiosks selling fruits and vegetables, meats and fish.
In those days, St. Thomas was a sailing Mecca. The harbor was full of yachts of all sizes and classes, some itinerant, some local and some there to take part in the charter industry. Experienced captains took adventurous tourists to the then sparsely developed British Virgin Islands or further away to the down island chain of the Lesser Antilles or west to Culebra, Vieques and Puerto Rico.
Yacht Haven Marina was the center of this industry and the center of the center was Fearless Fred’s Bar at the Marina where charter captains would pitch would be charters and old salts would spin tales of adventures and misadventures at sea.
This was before the popularity of the bare boat rental system in which charterers rent a boat for a week or more and sail it themselves.
By the 1980s the nature of charter boat industry in the US Virgin Islands had changed with bare boats predominating over crewed charters. While the US Virgin Islands’ government imposed complicated restrictions, taxes and fees on charter yachts favoring instead the cruise ship industry, the British Virgin Islands actively courted the charter yacht companies and tried to make it as easy as possible for them. As a result many USVI companies changed their base of operations to the BVI whose government was more responsive to the needs of the industry and little by little most of the sailing yachts left the Charlotte Amalie Harbor setting up shop in places like Sopers Hole and Roadtown on the island of Tortola.
The Yacht Haven hotel and Marinaf closed down, went into a state of disrepair remained so for many years.
Recently the charter industry on St. Thomas has made a comeback of sorts. More and more you can see luxury mega yachts tied up stern-to along the waterfront seawall, at anchor in the harbor and alongside the docks at the Yacht Haven Grande, the new incarnation of the old Yacht Haven now featuring a modern marina, a high end shopping mall and a condominium complex. The operation was designed specifically to attract the mega yacht business and has had a limited degree of success, but not to the extent that was predicted.
Rumor has it that one of the big reasons that mega yachts are not stopping in the USVI as much as was previously expected is due to complications and red tape imposed by Homeland Security and Customs and Immigration regarding foreign registered vessels and non-US citizen charterers and crews. On Tortola in the neighboring British Virgin Islands and on nearby St. Martin, which have somewhat comparable facilities the governments have endeavored to make it as easy as possible for the Mega Yachts to enter and clear and captains, trying to avoid red tape and delays, will often opt for these foreign destinations instead of St. Thomas if they have a choice in the matter.
Notwithstanding the problems, it seems to me that Charlotte Amalie Harbor has been making a comeback as a sailing destination, especially in the realm of the super luxurious mega yachts.
Snorkeling Salt Pond Bay, St John US Virgin Islands (USVI)
The latest edition of St. John Off the Beaten Track includes a section called “Favorite Snorkels.” The Salt Pond Bay Snorkel, which I’ll discuss in today’s blog was not included, but it really should have been.
The reef that I snorkeled was around the big rocks that you see at the mouth of the bay. (See the Google Maps satellite image below)
This is an excellent snorkel experience involving a coral reef, surrounding several large boulders some of which extend past the surface and a healthy seagrass bed on the periphery.
Salt Pond Bay Snorkel
Blue Tang (Acanthurus coeruleus)
Pillar Coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus)
Yellowhead Wrasse at Salt Pond Bay Coral Reef
Sea Fan (Gorgonia ventalina)
Coral Reef Sponges
Caribbean Reef Squid (Sepioteuthis sepioidea)
Longspine Squirrelfish (Holocentrus rufus)
Google Maps Satellite Image of snorkel area
Video of squid swimming on the periphery of the reef
Atlantic Tarpon, Megalops atlanticus
These big silvery fish with what look like stainless steel scales and an overbite are generally five to eight feet long and weigh between 80 and 150 pounds. They are found throughout the Caribbean, the Bahamas and the Atlantic coat of the United States south of Virginia and can survive in estuaries, lagoons and rivers as well as in the ocean.
Although their bony meat leaves them undesirable as a food fish, their renowned fighting spirit makes them a favorite of sport fishermen.
The Whistling Cay Snorkel, especially around the rocks and underwater canyons on the western tip of the island is one of the best snorkels in St. John waters. The proximity to open waters, and the flow of water through the Fungi Passage and the Narrows attracts fish of many shapes, color and sizes. The underwater boulders, rock formations, canyons, steep grooves, arches and walls, covered with spectacularly colored corals, sponges and tunicates are fascinating to explore. My friend, Dan Silber, who came along on this snorkel along with his girlfriend Maddy, described the area as an underwater garden, I like to borrow from the Beatles and describe it as an octopus’s garden.
Want an easy shallow benign snorkel, then Maho Bay is a safe bet. It’s easy to get to, shallow, calm and although I wouldn’t classify it as spectacular, it’s just about guaranteed to be interesting. Snorkel the reef on the east or just snorkel over the grass just off the beach. The following photos were taken during the course of a fifteen minute easy snorkel.
St.Thomas Dockside Scuttlebutt
I rent a little dock space over at Sapphire Marina on St. Thomas and today I noticed that the marina was just about full. This is unusual for this time of year, when many of the boats take leave of the Virgin Islands during the dread Atlantic Hurricane Season. The other thing I noticed was that most of the formerly empty slips were now occupied by a fleet of top of the line sport-fishing boats.
I was told that most of these newly arrived vessels were refugees from the Gulf oil spill.
The sport fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico is in big trouble. Really big, like it’s just about not happening at all, not now and probably not for a long time to come. Consequently, those in the sport fishing industry and who want to continue doing what they love to be doing are relocating, and many of them have chosen to come here to the Virgin islands, which some say is the sport fishing capitol of the world.
A captain from the Gulf Coast, who had arrived here on his sport fisherman described coming upon part of the spill.
Being someone who has never seen an oil spill, I had imagined it to be a shimmering film of oil floating on top of the water, making rainbow like colors in the sunshine, but something you could drive a boat through. Not even close. The captain described it as an extremely large floating mass of thick gooey oil some 100 yards wide and an incredible six feet deep, a disgusting, impassable, mess that gets bigger every day.
It’s good to have new business come to the Virgin Islands, but not like this.
How Breadfruit Arrived in the Caribbean
British planters in the Caribbean during the slave driven sugar days were interested in finding low-cost high-energy foods to feed their slaves. When captain James Cook sailed to Tahiti in 1769 on the famous ship “Endeavour” one of his officers, Sir Joseph Banks, realized that breadfruit which turns out to be one of the highest-yielding food plants in the world, would serve this purpose well.
In 1887, Banks had Captain William Bligh commissioned to sail to Tahiti on the ship “Bounty” and bring breadfruit to the Caribbean. Bligh collected a thousand small potted trees for the voyage. It was a voyage that never took place, however, as the crew mutinied and cast off Captain Bligh and his loyal officers in a longboat on the high seas. Bligh and company miraculously survived and landed on East Timor some 11,000 miles away in 1789.
In 1791, Bligh made a second attempt to bring breadfruit to the Caribbean and this time he was successful delivering breadfruit slips to planters on St. Vincent and Jamaica.
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