Sailing to Culebra Spanish VIs

Leaving St Croix

It’s about 50nm from Frederiksted on St Croix to Ensenada Honda on Culebra and we knew that we needed to arrive in time to get to the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) post at the airport during working hours.  So, it was an 0600 start from St Croix on Tuesday 1 May and we had the engine on and off a few times before the wind settled down to a good 15-18knots from the southeast.

We made good speed downwind (about 7.5knots) with plenty of blue skies and a lovely blue sea to go with them.

And a large pod of dolphins spent 10 minutes of so playing around the bow wave and diving under BV from one side to the other until, suddenly, as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone.

Entrance to Ensenada Honda, Culebra, ahead.  The reef is visible between BV’s port bow and the island, with yachts anchored behind it

We arrived off the entrance channel through the reefs outside the bay at about 1230. Unfortunately we arrived at exactly the same time as a huge black squall and so made our way in through the wide, well-marked channel in torrential rain.

Passing the reef out to our port side

The channel runs really rather close to the reef in places, which was particularly disconcerting in the poor light conditions, but we were soon past all the buoys and into the bay beyond.  From there we had a further 2nm to go to the anchorage off Culebra Town.  With the wind from the east there is space for a good fetch here, though it is possible to anchor behind Pirate Cay for added protection.  Not intending to stay too long, we anchored between Pirate Cay and the town quay, quite close to a very familiar looking yacht – Wild Iris.

Ensenda Honda, Culebra, Spanish VIs

Frederiksted St Croix USVIs

BVat anchor off Frederiksted

By the time that we got ashore at Frederiksted on the afternoon of Saturday 28 April, it was getting late and most of the shops were closing up for the day/weekend if they had not already done so.

Frederiksted’s main square close to the root of the cruise-ship pier

So it was a very quiet town that we wandered around, looking for signs of a food store (for perishables, like bread) and a bar.  In comparison to Christiansted, Frederiksted struck us as a real sleepy-hollow, with little to see, but because it has the deep-water pier it is the entry point to St Croix for cruise-ship passengers.  It seemed a little odd to us, but I guess most of the passengers are bussed into the interior of the island [Ed: or to Christiansted!] or jump immediately into dive boats for a spot of diving or snorkelling.

Frederiksted’s main street – a bustling hive of activity for a Saturday late afternoon!

We had a pleasant wander around the town and made a note of the bus stop and the tourist office.  On the Monday we would need to clear out of the USVIs and one of us probably needed to get to the airport to do so.  We hoped that we would be able to catch a bus or a public taxi to the airport, rather than an expensive private hire cab but our biggest hope was that a Customs official would visit the port to clear in the cruise-ship that we knew was due in on Monday and that we would therefore be able to clear out with them.

Views of Frederiksted.  Top left:  Nicky with the pier behind her.  Top right:  tourist office in one of the older buildings in the town.  Bottom:  The old Customs House

Fort Frederik.  A National Historic Landmark in need of some TLC

Frederiksted from the pier

On Sunday we dinghied across to Frederiksted pier and joined the several other snorkelers and divers around the pilings.

Snorkelling between the legs of the pier.  There’s a profusion of sponges and corals growing on the uprights.  Even though a vast amount of damage was done to the flora and fauna by Hurricane Irma the dive-shop staff members we spoke to said that the ecosystem is making a good recovery

Patrolling barracuda

Very soon after entering the water we spotted 2 patrolling barracuda that loitered around for the duration of our swim.  Happily, for once, they didn’t decide to spend the whole time following Nicky! Despite their presence we saw many large schools of fish in and around the pier’s legs.

Left:  Smooth trunkfish.  And to think that for months now we have thought that this was a Pufferfish! Thanks to our new Pocket Guide to Corals and Fishes (Florida, Bahamas and Caribbean), purchased in Christiansted, we might do better with underwater identification

Left:  Fire sponge (reddish-orange) Right:  Square fire coral

The pilings are all hugely encrusted with corals and sponges, apparently much depleted since Hurricane Irma’s ravaging in 2017, but still very impressive and, by all accounts, recovering well.

We had great fun swimming up and down the legs, joining the shoaling fish and taking a close-up look at the various creatures on display.

Left: azure vase sponges?  Top right:  yellow tube sponges developing

Close to the surface the colours were spectacular.  Lower down, where the water filters the colour from the sunlight , everything was much bluer but still the variety was impressive.

Top:  Christmas tree worms with mustard hill coral. 
Bottom:  Finger coral and barrel sponges?

We must have been in the water for well over an hour and still we felt we could have stayed longer but we had jobs to do back on board and so, reluctantly, we returned to BV.

A small school of sergeant majors

One of those jobs was cleaning BV’s hull something we hadn’t done for a few weeks.  It’s usually quite a fun chore as frequently lots of fish join us for a free feeding session as we scrape weed and slime off the hull.  This time, however, few fish came our way, probably all intent on eating from the pier.  Nicky was feeling somewhat dizzy from so much descending and ascending in the morning and got out of the water much sooner than usual, so I rather had my work cut out.  But the job was done in the end and BV will sail a bit faster for it too I am sure!

Monday and the cruise-ship is in. No diving on the pier today!

Nicky got up early on Monday morning to call Customs to see if they would be sending anyone down to the pier to meet the incoming cruise-ship.  Unfortunately for us, it was on a domestic itinerary and so did not need to clear in or out.  So Nicky went ashore with the ship’s documents to visit the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) post at the airport.  Having asked at the Tourist Office she was informed that there is no public bus or taxi service to the airport but one of the ladies in the office took pity on her and ran her out to the airport herself.  Customs paperwork complete, Nicky took a long walk to the main road and caught a public taxi back to the town; only $2.50 as opposed to $20 in a private hire cab.  In previous years CBP have manned an office in Gallows Bay at Christiansted but it was wrecked by Hurricane Irma and has not yet been reopened.  But the lady in the airport office said that it was only temporarily closed and should be reopened for winter 2018/9.  We have our fingers crossed that is the case as it’s a far more convenient place to get to, even allowing for an 18nm passage there from Frederiksted, most of which is to windward.  With our check-out paperwork stamped we had 24 hours to get BV clear of the USVIs.  Our next planned stop was Culebra in the Spanish Virgin Islands (Puerto Rico) where we would be able to complete BV’s customs clearance for entry to the USA.

Frederiksted, St Croix, USVIs

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