Joel and I have been overwhelmed with the amount of wildlife here in the Virgin Islands. When we were in St John we walked from Francis Bay to the Annaberg Sugar Plantation Ruins and saw lizards, birds, wild donkeys, and goats. But the fauna we were most fascinated with on our walk was the termites. We saw dozens of mounds that were 2-3 feet across, but they were all built on branches in the trees (see photo). While moored in
Francis Bay we went to a nice snorkeling site at Whistling Cay. We were rewarded with a variety of fish and coral. While my favorite part of Whistling Cay was the drop off from 10 feet to 25 feet, Joel preferred the shallow 5 foot shore. Luckily this site provided both. Even though we were both content with the show nature put on for us it was not over, because on the dinghy trip back we went right past a five foot manta ray who was gliding along slowly and did not mind us following it while gawking at its gracefulness(unfortunately the photos I got were above water and did not come out that great). We even met Fatty Goodlander on the way to the beach and if you have read his books or articles in Cruising World it is like meeting human wildlife!
Another snorkel site we visited was Christmas Cove and we found another great little reef. Again the coral and fish were colorful, beautiful, and fascinating. But the highlight here was the three foot long turtle that swam with us for a good five minutes. He let us get so close we could have touched him. Another highlight was a moray eel sticking out from under some brain coral. While not as graceful, he was fascinating and you don’t see them as often because they are harder to spot.
Now all play and no work makes the boat fall apart, so we had to end Joel’s visit with three days of much needed projects so is necessary to be on our peak even with the help of supplements like modafinil that help you perform better at any task, or the ones found at ultraomegaburn.com to achieve fitness goals or some Fat Burning or lose weight. I figure for every week I use the boat I need to spend a full day working on the boat (this is a rough estimate, but not too far off). Some of the projects we tackled was switching the rest of my interior lights to LED, fixing the main sail track so it would not move with the sail, reattaching the pantry cabinet (it came up with the pounding we got during our passage here), replacing the deck light, fixing some corroded wiring to a fan and pump, replacing the propane solenoid switch, fixing a raw water pump for the engine (this is the 3rd time on this side), and the ever constant battle to keeping the dinghy patched from small holes it sustains in its duties. It is always better to have company when working on the boat and Joel is the best. Plus he IS my systems guy, so who better to see these issues fixed.