Closing the Loop --the Final Week

After decompressing for the day at gorgeous Watermelon Cay in Leinster Bay St. John, on March 17th we rounded the bend and picked up our home mooring in Great Cruz Bay St. John. We had closed the loop. In six weeks we had cruised to Grenada and back, with over 1200 nm under the keel. I don’t have my log book to analyze and report statistics, so that will have to wait for a future post. (Oh joy, you say.) The important thing was, we were were all smiles and we had one more week to chill... I mean bake. Emily strung up the courtesy flags of every country that we visited from the starboard spreader and we gloated for an hour or two.

Emily and Jay Back in St. John, Under the Flags of 11 Countries

That evening my son Ben and his girlfriend Nina joined Marie, Dave, Adam, Emily and I on Heron in St. John. They commenced their spring break crash while the rest of us headed over the mountain in a bus to meet up with the Codys at Skinny Legs in Crown Bay. A knife fight was threatened during a loud abusive argument between two local ladies, but otherwise the bus ride was pretty tame. Skinny Legs has quite a reputation and we did our best to observe, then reinforce it. To the best of my fuzzy recollection, I believe that it was St. Patrick’s Day. The one dollar bus ride back was a high speed roller coaster ride without rails. Everyone clapped when it ended back at Cruz Bay, glad to still be alive. There is something about those St. John busses!

We spent Marie, Dave and Adam’s last day aboard, on the beach at Water Island near Crown Bay St. Thomas.  It was wonderfully peaceful.  After they left we cruised on to stay at: Christmas Cove, Maho Bay, Great Lameshure Bay and Great Cruz Bay. We sailed, snorkeled, eat, read, and slept. I could do that loop a dozen times over, it’s that beautiful. But all good things must come to an end, and honestly, we wanted to go home.

On March 24th, Emily and I suffered a horrendous flight –a final adventure story in and of itself. Bottom line: I’ll never fly U.S. Air again. In the future I’ll pay more or change plans to get onto non-stop flights. This was the second time that they had to repair a plane that completely disrupted our plans –poor reliability and resilience. This time our flight was delayed several hours for repairs, causing us to miss the connecting flight and to crash in a hotel in Philly. On the sunny side, it did make our arrival home that much sweeter!

Thanks for following us.  Stay tuned for more.
Jay and Emily P-A