One month into the Caribbean, by Annie
Hmmm.... I'd start it with "long time no blog" again, but it seems that many of my posts start that way. There is really enough to keep us engaged right now that it is hard to find the time to sit down and write a blog!
We have been in the Caribbean about one month now, and have loved it. It is not without challenges of course - salt, sand, bugs, too much sun, and cacti are all new enemies. And we still have chores: cleaning the boat, finding groceries and propane, and (hardest of all) freshwater showers. But overall, this is the part of our sailing year that we were dreaming of the most, and it has not let us down. The dirty water in the Erie canal, the long trek down the Jersey shore, and slogging through the Delaware Bay were definitely worth this.
Most of our free time now is spent snorkeling, body surfing at wave beaches, sailing to nearby islands, or procuring parts for an optimist sailing dinghy that the boys were given by a nice guy in St. John. We have been in or around Culebra, PR, the most, but we did spend about a week in the US Virgin Islands, which was different both culturally and in terms of the sailing and snorkeling there, despite being so close that St. Thomas is visible from parts of Culebra.
Most of the rest of this post is just a lot of photos. At the very end, I also included some text about an octopus that we spotted and were able to take some pictures of.
These last several pictures are a series of pictures of an octopus that Jack and I spotted. It is rare to see an octopus, and even less common to get a series of pictures where you can see them change their camouflage. The following pictures are all in order.
We have been in the Caribbean about one month now, and have loved it. It is not without challenges of course - salt, sand, bugs, too much sun, and cacti are all new enemies. And we still have chores: cleaning the boat, finding groceries and propane, and (hardest of all) freshwater showers. But overall, this is the part of our sailing year that we were dreaming of the most, and it has not let us down. The dirty water in the Erie canal, the long trek down the Jersey shore, and slogging through the Delaware Bay were definitely worth this.
Most of our free time now is spent snorkeling, body surfing at wave beaches, sailing to nearby islands, or procuring parts for an optimist sailing dinghy that the boys were given by a nice guy in St. John. We have been in or around Culebra, PR, the most, but we did spend about a week in the US Virgin Islands, which was different both culturally and in terms of the sailing and snorkeling there, despite being so close that St. Thomas is visible from parts of Culebra.
Most of the rest of this post is just a lot of photos. At the very end, I also included some text about an octopus that we spotted and were able to take some pictures of.
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| Fox and Jack snorkeling in USVI. |
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| Beautiful tide pools or "baths" as they are called locally on Culebrita. Daisy is hunting crabs. |
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| We had to improvise on pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving - no place to buy a pie or prepared crusts, and no pie tin! We used our bread pans, which actually worked well, except for one of them ending up face down in the galley. |
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| This is the size of our galley and where we cooked our Thanksgiving meal. Very cramped but it worked! We roasted a chicken instead of a turkey due to our small oven. Also, our oven heats unevenly, so we had to rotate it every 10-20 minutes. But it tasted great! |
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| Fox with a chicken leg and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. |
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| Sunset at the reef anchorage off of Culebra. |
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| Jack and Fox on their new (free!) sailing dinghy. They are still improvising with the mast and sails, which are our boat-hook and sunshade in this picture. |
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| Rogge's mom, Whitney, visited us for a week. Here she is walking along Tortuga Beach on Culebrita - one of the most gorgeous beaches we have been to. |
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| Cloudy sunset in USVI. Took this picture because of our hailing port on the back of the boat - we are still representing Madison, all the way down here. |
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| Almost every day there is a ten-minute squall, and then we are treated to a rainbow afterwards. |
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| Southern Culebra is basically a desert. Here are some crazy-looking cacti near Carlos Rosario Beach. |
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| View of the USVI from the top of a hill on St. John's. We were visiting the ruins of an early settlement on the island. |
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| Nausau Grouper hanging out under a ledge in a reef off of the USVI national park. |
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| So many sea turtle in the USVI national park. |
These last several pictures are a series of pictures of an octopus that Jack and I spotted. It is rare to see an octopus, and even less common to get a series of pictures where you can see them change their camouflage. The following pictures are all in order.
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| Octopus pic #1. The octopus is right in the middle of the picture - if you look at the tan thing just under the fish, that is it. Shortly after this, it noticed that we were interested in it and so it went on the move. |
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| Octopus pic #2. It is moving down through the coral ridge trying to ditch us. It is again right in the center of the picture. |
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| Octopus pic #3. Still on the move. |
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| Octopus pic #4 |
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| Octopus pic #5 |
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| Octopus pic #6. Check out how it is changing its camouflage. |
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| Octopus pic #7. Still settling into new camouflage. |
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| Octopus pic #8 (ha!). Certainly my worst picture of the octopus (I was in waves, trying to avoid other coral, so I did have some other items on my mind!), but I included it anyway because you can at least see the octopus's final camouflage. It is in the upper right corner (head not pictured) but here you can see that the color has really fully changed to match its new surroundings. |
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