Our clear out from the BVIs on Dec. 8th went very smoothly. We were able to grab a “first come, first served” mooring ball in Great Harbour (Jost Van Dyke) and it took less than a hour for Mark to dinghy over to the customs and immigrations office, get cleared out, pay our $15, drop off some garbage and get back to the boat. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you can pick up a mooring ball for a few hours for free so we didn’t have to pay for the ball!! We were sailing the 5nm to Francis Bay, St. John (USVI) by around 12:30pm. The whole journey from Lee Bay to Francis Bay (with our stop in Great Harbour) was only 17nm and we sailed the whole way!! It was grand!
We arrived at Francis Bay mid afternoon and found this lovely national park area was quite busy with sailboats on mooring balls and people on the two beaches. Most of St. John Island is part of the US national parks and in an effort to preserve the seabed (coral etc), the park has installed many mooring balls to stop boats from anchoring. The balls are cheaper than the BVIs, only $26/night so we’ll be secured to a mooring ball as long as we’re here. We also had to check into the USA when we arrived. Using our new Starlink for wifi, I submitted our entrance request using the ROAM app. The normal process for entering the USA (as a foreign boat) is to submit a request through the app and ask for a cruising license. The request is processed and then you have an interview – video call usually, and then your request is approved. Well that’s the normal way when entering mainland USA – all bets are off when entering USVI or Puerto Rico. Back to our request – it seemed to take a bit of time to process (maybe 30 minutes or so) but in the end we were approved – no video call and no questions!! We also didn’t have to request a cruising license because USVI and PR accept the boating decal. If you’re confused so are we all! It’s never an easy process and you never know how it’s going to go.
Today, Dec. 9th, we ran the water maker in the morning and Mark did 1 boat job. He installed a 12v usb charging station in our cockpit cubby so we can charge our communications headsets. In the afternoon we dinghied to the beach, had a nice walk and did a bit of snorkelling. It’s very quiet here today – many boats left and the beaches were not as busy, probably because we had quite the rain storm overnight and most of the morning.
We’ll be exploring this side of the island (north and west) for a few days. There are some walking trails close by and a few ruins that are supposed to be interesting. We’ll check those out and also just relax in this lovely, calm anchorage!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 