Next stop – Cruz Bay to make ourselves legal in the U.S. Checking in at Cruz Bay requires that you pick up a mooring ball in Caneel Bay and then dinghy round the point into the harbour. The constant ferry and dinghy traffic along with a pretty solid ocean swell makes anchoring here difficult especially with the prospect of all of us leaving the boat for an hour or two. We spied the last available mooring ball and made a race for it, but conceded to another monohull as they approached ahead of us. Strangely though, they had come from upwind and when they were unable to pick up the float line in the swell, they decided to head further down the bay. As we had already scanned the rest of the bay and knew there weren’t any other balls to be had, we made a perfect approach and were quickly secured and ready to head into customs and immigration.
All checked in, our final destination was back to Charlotte Amalie and CYOA, with one little detour to Crown Bay for fuel. Henry put Mowzer up the dock beautifully – his best one so far. It makes you feel so tense trying to slip gently up to a concrete wharf that can scratch, dent and otherwise mar that perfect hull. Watching Jay at CYOA negotiate Mowzer backwards and sideways into a tight spot between two other boats at the dock is definitely watching a master in action!
This marks the end of this journey and we will be heading back to Ottawa tomorrow. We hope to have a little time after we complete some paperwork with John and Nancy to have a quick walking tour of Charlotte Amalie before heading to the airport.
One exciting final bit of news that has put the crown on this trip: Jim just picked up his email and he has received acceptance at Waterloo for Co-Op Physical Sciences. Woohoo!!! Way to go Jim!!
