A New Era

​As previously mentioned, most people are starting to leave the USVIs. Hekla and Liberty have already left, taking most of my friend group with them. Tanner from SV Dorothy Rose is still in the Virgin Islands, but his family is trying to get their fill of the area before they leave for their Grenada dates a week into June. So that has left me in a similar situation to my time before quarantine. Just me and my parents.
It was nice. In the absence of everyone I was reminded of how it was before there was a consistent number of children on the boat…quiet.
Only a week into our solitude and it ended. We visited a boat called Sephira, who were friends with Hekla, and we were hoping to talk with when we got a chance. Hekla and this boat are both Chris White designs which probably doesn’t mean much to the people who are reading this. It doesn’t really mean much to me either because I’m still not “in” with boat talk. From what I can gather, it means they are by a man named (unsurprisingly) Chris White and they are almost always extremely fast.
Sephira was an interesting boat to tour. Though they are more than twenty feet longer, they had one less bedroom in exchange for a large engine room. The salon was almost double the size of ours and they had a cockpit near the steering wheel. However, the most interesting detail of this boat wasn’t in the interior but on the exterior. Unlike basically every sailboat in existence, this boat had two masts and two sails, each on a different hull.
After our very educational tour of the boat we just enjoyed talking to new people. There were no kids but there was 20-year-old that has further my want to learn how to surf. She lives in California and was visiting her parents for the pandemic and she loves almost all the watersports I recognize and some I didn’t.
So, it became official! I’m going to learn how to surf. After we clear our quarantine in Grenada- that will last two weeks-I’ll be taking a kite surfing course. That way not only will I learn a new sport but it will also help with my balance so next year when we return to the Caribbean, I can take a surfing course and possibly not make a fool of myself.
Most of our quarantine has taken place on the boat but the towns were slowly starting to open. So, the next day we took a taxi from Magen’s Bay to Charlotte Amalie. The area was still mostly closed so ended up being a flunk, but it gave us a chance to go for a much-needed walk.
While we were in Charlotte Amalie there was a small amount of time when going to McDonalds was considered. We’ve had nothing special for months, the potential for French fries was almost too good. But it only took us a moment to realize how awful and probably unsafe that would be with COVID still something we needed to take precautions against. It still doesn’t fail to surprise me that even though everything was closed, McDonalds still had its drive-thru open.
We did get to visit the Magen’s Bay beach in the following days and over a couple weeks we sailed from place to place, me learning the negatives of not being on open water for weeks on end. I used to have good sea legs, now I’m sick almost anytime I’m not at the helm or in the cockpit. I’ve had to put on one of the bracelets we keep for guests that’s supposed to cure sea sickness. I’m not sure it worked.
I’m happy to be back on the water. It has taken almost two years, but I am finally starting to learn how to sail. I can finally become a mate! I am a squab no more!