CAPT. MIKE IN THE LEEWARD ISLANDS PART THREE: HEADING TO CULEBRA

It's been many years since I was in Charlotte Amalie harbor St. Thomas. We picked up a charter here on a 44 foot monohull back in the 1980's named Valkerie and another time when we had a weeks vacation on board one of the Windstar cruise ships in the 90's.

We left the St. John area bound for St. Thomas in late afternoon with a favoring trade wind and tied up to a mooring for the night near the old Navy submarine base area in St. Thomas. The area now houses a marina and some cruise ship docks. The shoreline nearby was littered with the wrecks of boats whose owners failed to reason with the Hurricane season and other storms:

The next morning we dropped off the mooring and headed out West Gregerie Channel for Culebra:

We passed Sail Rock. A uniquely shape geological form that is said to have fooled many pirates to appear to be a ship under sail.

They would sometimes fire a warning shot at it. The sound of which would echo off the rock surface and make it sound like return fire. Only when they got closer would they see that it was only a rock and not another ship to be plundered.

Things were moving along nicely as OPUS towed the twenty foot dingy:



We were breezing along when all of a sudden there was a crash at the stern. The dingy had crashed into the boarding ladder and smashed it up pretty good:

Well that's sailing! You are cruising along fine and then something happens not always in a positive direction. Capt. Billy scrambled and was able to save the bottom half of the ladder but, were were never able to quite get it back into shape to use. After about three hours we were in the channel heading into Ensenada Honda Culebra's major harbor:

 After we cleared the reef at the entrance we turned to port and picked up a mooring in Ensenada Dikity.

There were a few boats already there when we arrived:

Including this boat which seemed to have something missing:

CAPT. MIKE IN THE LEEWARD ISLANDS PART FOUR Click here.