And Then There Were Five

We regret to inform you that one of our number has left us, never to return to our boat. His passing from the waters of the BVI and USVI are much mourned. It was a somber moment for us all.

Let me explain.

Sunday morning I took a nice, long luxurious shower ashore. I also uploaded some of the movies for the blog (see previous post). We breakfasted on blueberry pancakes. I went to a clinic to get something checked out while Ben packed.

Ben, you see, had a conference to go to and as such only was going to be with us for two weeks. He had a plane to catch that afternoon to fly back to New York. We had to leave the dock at 1:00, so the question was, should he leave us early and take a taxi to the airport, or should we sail to Charlotte Amalie and let him off there? I was in favor of sailing, because I thought we might be able to see some sights in Charlotte Amalie the next day. Ben looked at the map and saw that there was a Bay right next to the airport. Perfect.

It took forever to get out of the dock. As we were pulling out and trying to maneuver our boat (which is really hard to back up), lots of men from all the neighboring fishing yachts got out and shouted words of encouragement and advice. It was both highly reassuring and highly embarrassing. Sammy told them we'd be there all week.

After we got out of Red Hook, we set sail (and motorsailed) towards Charlotte Amalie. We got up to 8.5 knots! That's pretty fast.

We avoided where this boat was nestled up close to the rocks...ashore:

When we got to the bay by the airport there was only about an hour before his flight took off! But the bay was literally right next to the airport. We could see the planes take off and taxi down the runway.

While Sammy steered, Amichai quickly took down the jib, and I took down the mainsail, Yoni, CG, and Ben hopped in the dinghy. But then the dinghy didn't move! Sammy shouted to close the choke and the dinghy began to go.

They dragged it onshore fast. Ben rolled up his jeans to wade through and he and CG ran over rocks, went over a gate to the street (definitely was illegally done) and then...saw his plane pull up!

They tried to wave down a taxi, but he waved back that he wouldn't stop. No other cars would stop for them. So they started running for the plane.

They ran through the airport, into check in, and - no one was at the desk! Was it closed? Could he check in? The ran to a kiosk screen and endured painful waits for his credit card swipe to go though before tickets finally came out. They ran through doors that said "Ticketed Passengers Only" and waited in line for customs, filling out his customs form while in line and using a borrowed pen. When they got to the customs booth the official asked why CG was there. She said that she must not have seen the sign and then was told that it was probably best that she left immediately. So she did.

About twenty minutes later I got a text message from Ben:

Made it! just waiting to board. my lord that was epic. thanks for one more ridiculous sailing memory, friends!

Here is our boat in the Bay, as seen from Ben's seat in the plane above:

In the meantime, Sammy got a phone call from TMM about the impending Tropical Storm Emily. They wanted us back over there and we would have to leave early in the morning to make it. Sammy had wanted to head over to the beautiful island of St. Croix for the week, which we all agreed would be great. "Let's not go crazy about this guys,", he said about the hurricane. But orders were orders, and this took all the wind out of our sails (yes, I just used that metaphor).

But we needed to get some groceries first, so Yoni, CG, Amichai, and I took the dinghy ashore and went looking for a supermarket. We got directions to one and began walking, but stopped in a convenience store on the way to buy drinks. We happened to pick the convenience store that turned out to have a large photo of Yassir Arafat by the cash register, which was manned by a very Arab cashier. He asked where we were from and then told us he was from Virginia, and showed us his VA drivers license, when we didn't recognize the town he was from. It was a little hard to understand him from his very heavy accent and weak English in general. But he gave us a dollar off our purchase, welcoming us to the island.

The supermarket we went to, Pueblo’s, was huge. It was like a combination between a supermarket, a dollar store, a liquor store, and a small hardware/home-goods store. We got enough stuff  that it made more sense to taxi back to the dinghy, so we took up the offer of one of the men outside the store to give us a ride.

This taxi driver was holding a Winnie the Pooh doll, which he said was left by a previous passenger. He was from the Dominican Republic and spoke to CG in Spanish most of the drive (which also veered onto the right side of the road at certain points). At the end of the drive he asked if CG was interested in going dancing, but she said she was too tired.

We had salmon for dinner. Afterwards, CG, Sammy, and Yoni watched Aladdin while Amichai and I both read before going to sleep.