Back to Christiansted St Croix and then on to Frederiksted USVIs

We had a very pleasant sail back to Christiansted from Buck Island on the morning of Friday 27 April.  With the wind blowing at about 15 knots from the east-southeast we were very lazy and just unrolled the genoa and pottered downwind under that sail alone.  It’s only 5nm from Buck Island back to ‘our’ anchorage off Christiansted so we hardly needed to race there and, even so, the whole passage only took us 75mins from engine on just prior to raising anchor to engine off having dug it in again.

We spent the day doing chores: Nicky visited the laundry and the food store, whilst I tried to make a dent in the backlog of blog entries – and failed to make much of an impression. But the reason that we had returned to Christiansted was to attend the Jazz in the Park concert, a weekly event in season and one which sounded great fun.

And it was.  We arrived shortly after the band had started and, not having deckchairs, managed to find a seat on a public bench some way from the bandstand but still in good earshot as well as being in a decent position to people-watch. It was a lovely evening: the band and the singer were excellent, the crowd enthusiastic and the mosquitoes kept a low profile until late on.

Back on BV we enjoyed dinner on board with a view of the lively boardwalk before retiring for a not-so-early start the next day.

Saturday 28 April dawned bright and quite brisk.  We had decided on a leisurely start and didn’t raise anchor until 1130. Unfortunately, that meant that we had to stooge around in the harbour and yacht channel whilst we waited for a gas tanker to make its way into the main channel, where it was met by a couple of tugs (one very elderly looking) to accompany it along the winding ‘deep-water’ channel, past myriad sandbanks to the gas and oil quay.  We both commented that we wouldn’t have cared to have had responsibility for the tanker going into that port and wondered what the weather limits for it are.

Passing (top) Salt River Point and (bottom) the entrance to Salt River, close to where we had dived a few days previously

It was another downwind passage along the north coast of St Croix so, again, we just unrolled the genoa and with a brisk 16+kts from the east-southeast BV bustled along making a reasonable speed.  As we passed the reef off Salt River where we had dived only a few days previously, we agreed that we had been very lucky with the weather then.  It certainly didn’t look like a great place to moor a dive boat today!

Sailing down the sheltered west coast of St Croix – it doesn’t look like the same day as in the photos above, but it was!

After an hour or so we reached the northwestern tip of St Croix and gybed.  Shortly thereafter, and with the land now providing shelter from the sea, the clouds began to clear and suddenly it seemed like an entirely different day. But with the wind off the land our progress slowed and as the wind dropped away to just a few knots we decided to switch on the engine, rather than remove the sailcover and hoist the main for just a couple more miles.

Frederiksted from the pier

We reached the anchorage, just to the north of Frederiksted pier, shortly before 1500.  The seabed off Frederiksted comprises a relatively thin layer of sand covering a rocky bottom.  The sand layer is deeper to the north of the pier but on out first attempt we put the anchor down either on a very thin patch of sand or on rock and so, unsurprisingly, it wouldn’t dig in.  Happily, our second attempt hit an area of deeper sand and the anchor dug in well, but it’s certainly a place to be well aware of your anchoring transits and to keep a close eye on the weather.  It’s a true roadstead anchorage, with the only protection being from the island to the east, but the diving/snorkelling on the pier is said to be excellent so we were looking forward to that the following day.

Frederiksted, St Croix USVIs

Buck Island off St Croix USVIs

Lying 1.5 miles off the northeast coast of St. Croix, Buck Island and its reef is an 880-acre National Maritime Park.  The 176-acre island is surrounded by 704 acres of water and coral reef system which we read, “is a paradise for snorkelers, and the deep grottos and labyrinths are perfect for experienced scuba divers to explore”.  It seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.

Buck Island from the west

We found that there are quite a lot of restrictions on what we could do but the priority for us was to apply for a permit to visit the island because that could take up to 5 working days to be processed.  As it turned out, by talking face to face with one of the Park Wardens in the office at Fort Christiansvaern in Christiansted, we were able to submit the right form and get our permission back the next day.

The permit allowed us to anchor in just one area, off Turtle Beach at the western end of the island, and that turned out to be a beautiful spot.  However, having received our permission to anchor we had to obtain an additional permit to spend the night off the island.  That permit was easily obtained, though.  All we needed to do was to speak to the Park Ranger at Fort Christiansvaern and our request was agreed.

We left Christiansted mid-afternoon on 25 April for the 5-mile passage to Buck Island where we joined 2 other yachts in the anchorage.  A tripper boat trimaran was moored right up on the beach and, at the other end of the beach was a small motorboat; it was hardly busy.  The beach looked pristine and so we made up a sundowners picnic and took the dinghy ashore to explore.

There was no-one on the beach except for a couple of people from the motorboat…

… and around the corner we had a beach to ourselves other than some pelicans diving into the surf to catch fish. It was a beautiful place to enjoy our sundowners cocktails.

Our permit allowed us to anchor off Buck Island for 2 nights and so in the morning we took advantage of the fact that our new outboard was now fully run in and had a fast dinghy ride around to lagoon inside the reef at the eastern end of the island.  We had read that in the shelter of the reef there is a snorkelling trail and so we left the dinghy tied to a mooring buoy and set off to try to find it.

Nicky’s little follower: a Bar Jack

Barracuda circling nearby

Almost as soon as we were in the water we found a new friend.  A small bar jack with a distinctive blue strip on its back took an immediate interest in us and followed us closely for the next half hour.

Slightly spookier was the barracuda circling about 10 metres away.

Stoplight Parrotfish (bottom left with initial colouring)

A shoal of Blue Tang

The snorkelling trail was not immediately obvious but that hardly mattered because there was more than enough to keep us entertained looking at the mass of colourful fish feeding off the coral.

Cleaning the signs on the snorkelling trail

We’d read that each of the trail sign was marked by a buoy on which swimmers could take a rest if needed, but we saw no sign of any such buoys.  Eventually, we did find the snorkelling trail plaques but they were all covered in sand and needed a clean so that we could read them.  I guess that with tourism numbers down after the hurricanes, sorting the trail out for this season had not been a priority.

All the same, once we were in the right area, we had lots of fun finding the plaques and some were quite informative such as the one for the Brain Coral head which is apparently over 150 years old.

After about 45 minutes we both felt that we had explored inside the lagoon enough but were tempted by the odd gap in the reef that we had seen.

These gaps led to the deeper area outside the inner reef which was marked on our park diagram as the scuba diving area.  Most of the gaps that we had seen were too small for us to swim through but we took the dinghy to the western area of the lagoon on the northern side of Buck Island where there were mooring buoys laid for dive boats.  Close by we found what we were looking for and swam out through a slightly wider gap into the deeper area.

We found the outer wall to be covered in live coral, far more so than in the shallower part of the lagoon which had been affected by hurricanes.  You just needed to be able to dive down deeper to see the best of it…

… and to keep your eyes open. Nicky spotted a huge lobster walking along on the seabed about 10 metres below us and we were also spoilt by the fabulous sight of a stingray cruising past.

So, with both of us satisfied that we had seen the best of the snorkelling, we returned to BV to kick back and relax. Our guide book suggest that Turtle Beach is one of the prettiest in the Caribbean and we could not help but agree.  What a great place to be at anchor.

Sadly, after 2 nights our permit to stay ran out and so we left Buck Island at 9am on the 27^thand sailed back towards Christiansted.  The original plan had been to sail further on to Frederiksted on the western end of St Croix. However, we’d read that there was a ‘Jazz in the Park’ event planned to take place in Christiansted and so we thought we’d listen to that before moving on.

Buck Island off St Croix USVIs

Diving near Christiansted St Croix USVIs

On Wednesday 25 April we made our way over to Dive Experience at 0830am. When we had booked our dives the previous day we had been the only 2 people going out but in the morning the dive shop was full of people milling about. Just after we had booked our dives, 5 other people had done the same and, additionally, they had 2 chaps with their sons arrive that morning wanting to do a dive refresher course. The result was that the dive shop was rather busy getting gear ready and it took a bit longer than expected to get going.

We had specifically asked to dive on a sea wall and so after a 30-minute boat ride we picked up a mooring buoy at our first stop, Salt River Reef East Inner. It turned out to be less vertical than we had expected (the really vertical one is at the western end of the island) but it was a brilliant dive despite that.

A nocturnal nurse shark resting under a rocky ledge

As well as lots of corals we spotted a nurse shark sleeping under a rock…

Michelle spikes a lionfish

… and it quickly became apparent that lionfish were not welcome on the reef. The diver centre actually runs specific lionfish hunts and the divemasters always kill any lionfish that are seen because of the damage that they do to the reef ecosystem. Lionfish, are an invasive species from the South Pacific, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and they are doing immense harm to the balance of small and juvenile fish on the Atlantic reefs. They have voracious appetites, no natural predators on the reef and a mature (1 year old) female can release a staggering 10,000-30,000 unfertilized eggs every 4 days. Currently, divers are the main defence against them but you have to be careful because lionfish are armed with 18 venomous spines that easily penetrate human skin delivering a very painful sting. We did our bit by pointing out any we saw so that they could be spiked by Michelle, our divemaster.

Later on in the same dive we were lucky enough to see a stingray…

… as well as lots of large corals and reef fish.

Our second dive was in Turquoise Bay, a much flatter area than the reef wall we had dived on earlier. Even so, we still found plenty of undulations and on one of these, Turtle Ridge, we saw half a dozen or so Green Turtles resting on the seabed.

With 7 divers in our group there were lots of eyes to spot interesting things. We saw another nurse shark snoozing under a rock and several brightly coloured fish. At the 25-metre diving depth most of the red colour is washed out and everything looks blue and grey, however, most of the other divers were carrying a flashlight and we learned that was good gadget to reveal the wonderful colours. For example, the red fins on the fish pictured above only stood out as red when they were illuminated. Looks like a couple of underwater flashlights are going to go onto the wishlist.

Nicky watching a circling reef shark to check that it stays at a safe distance

Just on the periphery of the underwater visibility we saw a couple of reef sharks. As the dive progressed they became braver and came much closer which was a little disconcerting. The reason for their interest became very apparent a few moments later.

Sam spears another lionfish

Sam, our divemaster for the dive, tried to spear a lionfish that had hidden in a deep crevice. Unfortunately, he didn’t get it on his speargun, so it may well have survived his attack, but the sharks immediately sensed the blood in the water. From a lazy patrolling stance, one rapidly became quite agitated and when Sam switched targets to another lionfish out in the open, the moment the killing blow was struck both sharks became very active. As soon as the dead fish was off the spear the sharks rapidly moved in, each trying to eat the body and, as you can see from the photographs, it happened right in front of us!

Sharks are incredibly sensitive to blood in the water and the fight/flight/fear hormones and electromagnetic impulses that other animals produce but it seems likely that there is also an element of their learning that the divers here kill lionfish which can make an easy snack for them. Seeing the sharks so close up to us was definitely an unexpected highlight of the dive. Michelle told us later that you have to be very quick in getting the dead lionfish off your spear or risk the sharks coming in and taking off both the dead lionfish and the spear.

Both dives were great experiences and we learnt a lot, particularly as we were, for the first time, in a large group with much less detailed supervision from the divemaster. A difference in opinion on how long we should stay at the 5-metre safety stop and the failure of Nicky’s depth gauge early on in the dive, led us both to agree that we should get dive computers to monitor exactly what depths we had been to and to tell us the exact safety and, if necessary, decompression stop times that we would need at the end of a dive.

Also, having really enjoyed these dives, and wanting to do a lot more, we decided that ideally we should start collecting our own diving gear; the only problem is finding the space in BV to store it.

Christiansted, St Croix, USVIs