Jim and the Jellyfish

Photos:
1. Merry Christmas from the Island Bear.
2. One of the grottos in the Baths on Virgin Gorda.
3. We found this cairn on the southwestern end of Virgin Gorda.
4. Out on the rocks at the western end of the Baths.
5. I found this beach babe at the Baths and decided to take her back to the boat!

While anchoring at Prickly Pear Bay, we used the dinghy to get to the Bitter End Yacht Club to post the blog and once again enjoy the amenities.

At the WiFi Hot Spot we met a fascinating gentleman from McClellanville, SC (originally from South Africa). He was sailing the Virgin Islands for a couple of months with his wife before returning to his investment bank in South Carolina. While sorting his hundreds of emails he announced that one of them notified him that he had just won the Pulitzer Prize for the book he wrote documenting his solo circumnavigation in a sailboat he built. On the rare occasions that he is home, his home office is in a tree fort that he built on their property. Quite an interesting chap! Goggle him at Neal Petersen, his book, “Journey of a Hope Merchant”.

We then sat near Richard Branson again with his crew of family or friends (or both) and are now convinced that he is stalking us. If he keeps showing up around us, we may have to look into getting a restraining order….

Since the girls were enjoying the sun and sand, Jim decided to try AGAIN to catch a bonefish. He spent several hours wading on a flat in howling winds (imagine the fun fly fishing) and occasional rain showers. He began to get a little nervous when a 5’ reef shark swam by about 10’ away. When he saw its MUCH bigger brother (the distance between the dorsal and tail fins could FIT the 5’ shark) cruising in the area, he decided that bonefish weren’t that important, and there is something about large marine life that makes you wish you could walk on water. He retreated to the safety of his floating friend, Mr. Dinghy.

We relocated to the main Bitter End anchorage for Christmas Eve (shortening our dinghy rides). After dark, a parade of boats with Christmas lights and blaring Christmas music wound their way through the anchorage and gave us all quite a show. Some of the megayachts sounded their enormous horns and Emily added to the festivities with a well-timed conch blat! Such a musician! Her parents are so proud!

After that all settled down, we went (by dinghy at 10pm) into the yacht club for their Christmas Eve service (run by the local Episcopal Church). It was quite well done and the pastor (reverend?) asked Jim to read one of the Scripture passages. We all agreed that the Christmas message of hope was exactly what we wanted to hear.

On Christmas morning, the parents got up before the girls (as is our 20+ year tradition!) and got underway for “the Baths”. This is a popular snorkeling spot with a series of house-sized granite boulders providing wonderful little sandy-bottomed grottos and pools in which to view a lot of fish. After mooring (anchoring is forbidden), we had a nice Christmas breakfast and then hiked the overlook trails before snorkeling.

These trails wind through the boulders that haven’t fallen in the water and provide some really cool overlooks and some seriously strenuous routes through the labyrinth of boulders.

The afternoon snorkeling was met with disaster!

We left the boat in pairs. Jim and MJ then Lara and Emily. As Jim was about 40’ from the boat he felt a searing, burning sensation on his left shoulder. Fearing that a barracuda had bitten him, he yelled, “Owwww” and began to back petal in the water when he was hit again in the belly, “Ahhh”. (Note: Jim doesn’t recall any yelling, merely a stoic and manly endurance of the pain.) Lara could see the gelatinous shape of a Jellyfish floating away from Jim - its pink-rimmed form barely perceptible. As he swam back to the boat he met face-to-face with a very curious barracuda and had to actually swim around it as it was determined to stand its ground (which was apparently just under our boat).

Once out of the water, two large (2-3” diameter) welts resembling burn marks arose along with searing pain that lasted a number of hours. This pretty much ended his swimming for the day as he tore apart the boat looking for a “remedy”.

The girls tried to continue to explore this exceptionally beautiful area but this particularly persistent barracuda chased them out of the water and we decided that we had had enough of the Baths and headed west toward the US Virgin Islands. (The jellyfish sting pretty much kept Jim up all night trying a variety of various unsuccessful remedies…and no, urine does NOT help….).

Once again, Lara was concerned that this entry was not funny enough and once again I had to remind her that near death experiences are rarely funny!

We had nice sailing most of the way and sent another night in the Bight on Norman Island before heading through the Customs rigmarole enroute to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. We did have a perfect dockside landing at Immigration in Cruz Bay (it’s always nice to do that with witnesses!).

The weather was so nice along the way that we detoured by Buck Island for some snorkeling and saw a big moray eel and some spectacular living shells (Queen Conch and a King Helmut – both alive) and some more very fun (and very fast) sea turtles.

Then it was off to Charlotte Amalie and Pacqereau Bay where we anchored and once again raided the Marriott’s fresh water swimming pool and accepted several glasses of their Welcome Punch!