Adventures Had by Helping Others

Chris Parker, the SSB weather reporting guru, was describing a near perfect storm that hammered several boats returning back to Cape Hatteras from the Bahamas. Sadly, one young group of sailors perished on a boat and 3 other boats were abandoned. For our area, 10’ swells that would become breaking waves in our anchorage were predicted, so we moved further east on St John's to avoid the possibility of being a surfboard. Fortunately, the waves never reached that far south and all was well.

The next morning, we visited the remains of an old sugarcane mill. While climbing and milling about the ruins of previous human existence, we wondered what it once was like. While there, we met the Crouse family on St. John's for a holiday. Being homeschoolers, they could vacation whenever they wanted. We invited them onto Side By Side for some lunch and snorkeling. A particularly great memory was the thousands if not millions of silver minnows that surrounded us. Moving our hands like a conductor made the fish dart in unison with our hand motions.

They insisted we join them ashore and so we piled into their cabana covered pickup truck. We meandered through the lush mountains to the house they had rented on top of one of the mountains. The view was nothing short of spectacular. That evening we once again piled in to the cabana truck and went to dinner, their treat! We had the kids table and the adult table which worked out very well. The food and the company was terrific. It was well past dark when we arrived back at the dinghy….and we were leaving for an overnight passage to St Martin! Wine and passage making do not mixed. Luckily, the BVI's is not that hard to sail through.