Commodore
May 12, 2021

PCR test in St Thomas Island

Rowan’s phone woke us up a few times in the early hours of the morning, annoyingly all automated scam calls, obviously on English time! We decided to head to St Thomas before breakfast so that we could get our PCR test done in the morning and then head off somewhere nice in the afternoon. There is not much recommended for sailing around St Thomas. We found a place to anchor facing directly into the wind on some very choppy water. I had just got it all sorted when Rowan realised we were in the wrong bay. We decided to head into the marina we could see anyway, and got a taxi over to Charlotte Amalie, which is the capital of the USVI, such a pretty name for a rather miserable port town! It was a pretty gruesome dinghy ride in, the place is a graveyard of broken half submerged boats. All hurricane damage we believe, very depressing, and the water is a ghastly colour too. It was a day of going to wrong places, the taxi had dropped us off at the wrong medical centre. Thankfully we had taken her number, so we could call her back and get to the correct place. Not much of a queue but the usual endless paperwork, it was riveting though as they had a tv program on called ‘Proving paternity’. Omg what a typically ghastly American show, making a drama out of couples falling out, and then wanting to prove paternity of their child. We got through two rounds of it! The first dad loved the child so much and could not believe it when it wasn’t his child. Second dad had caught his wife with so many other men, he doubted he was the dad, but he was proved to be the dad. At least it made the time speed by! This nurse insisted we had our heads straight ahead, every other test we’ve tilted our head back. Not at all comfortable but done! Luckily we were able to flag down a taxi straight away so headed back to the boat. We were rather nervous about where we had left JeldiJeldi, the dinghy dock was two deep in boats and many half submerged. The whole area was run down, even though it is obviously a main place for charter boats, judging by the enormous amount of boats on the dock. JeldiJeldi was fine, so we decided to go and have a bite to eat at a rather eccentric looking cafe. We had a tasty lunch with huge iguanas strolling about the place. They’ve obviously been fed, so not shy! We were pleased to be back on PolePole heading back to St John. We had been given some advice about some nice spots in the national park where you can avoid all the charter boats. So we headed over to the opposite eastern side, banging straight into the trade winds, which makes sense now why the charter boats don’t come this way. We are in a lovely little bay and got the last of the 4 mooring balls, so felt very pleased. There is not a building to be seen just ruins and mountainside covered in bush. Feeling very hot we went and had a snorkel which was not great, the visibility wasn’t great and the coral in bad shape with few fish.

Heading to Little Lameshur Bay

Loads of turtles.

Deer on the beach

After filling out realms of online forms for the BVI we are feeling less and less confident about going. We’ve just discovered our travel insurance has to cover COVID and of course ours doesn’t. Then Rowan spotted that leaving the BVI in our boat is equally arduous. The buyer for our boat wants to do an inspection of our boat before we leave for the UK, so looks like we need to be in Martinique by May 25th. The last thing we need is hassle departing the BVI and rushing onto Martinique. We consoled ourselves with an evening drink which was enhanced by seeing a couple of deer on the beach. Rather quaintly the volunteer park warden arrived in his boat, at sunset, a young guy checking on us if we had any questions and informing us where to pay. In the bays the last two nights there have been floating pontoons where you pay by posting your money in an envelope into a postbox. Here we have to dinghy over to the next bay and go on land to pay.