Sailing Again

With a dry bilge and a full tank of fuel we headed to the northern tip of Virgin Gorda.

A funny little story...
We anchored out in a peaceful inlet with a few other sailboats and great swimming right off the stern...perfect....or so we thought.....

Side note...

On our journey south last year we met Captain Kent Kohlberger, who used to skipper one of Jimmy Buffet's boats, Continental Drifter.  He gave us some really good advice, never anchor or tie up close to the big sport fishing boats....they play loud music and party all night.  We always found that to be true.

Back to the story...

Well just as the sun began to set, you can imagine what happened.  A 50 foot sport fishing boat anchored right next to us!  On board were a bunch of young kids on spring break from Puerto Rico, and you got it...the music was blaring.  It went from bad went to worse when they hooked up the outdoor karaoke machine and started to sing along with the music.  It was a very long night!

Views from around Virgin Gorda Sound

Bitter End Yacht Club...

   

Necker Island.  Richard Bransons private island resort where you and 26 of your closest friends can rent the island for $46,000 per night....all inclusive!

Richard Branson's catamaran

Waiting for Kinja

Since Kinja was on the hard, we checked into the Little Dix Bay Resort on Virgin Gorda.  It is a very private, low key resort with villas tucked just back from the 1/2 mile white sand crescent beach.  Not a bad way to spend a few days ....

Path to our room....

Doorman...

Time to Have Kinja Repaired

After we got Tyler on a taxi to Cruz Bay to catch the ferry to St Thomas, it was time for us to head to Virgin Gorda to see if we could get the leak fixed.

Just to make things a little more exciting, the bilge pumps decided to stop working as we were sailing to Virgin Gorda...the boat was filling up with water!

Along the way we managed to get them working a little bit... just enough.

We reached the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor late in late afternoon and asked to have Kinja hauled out the next morning.   That afternoon we connected with the repair business at the marina called "The Work Bench".  Jeff is the owner and he came directly over to Kinja to take a look.  Originally from Zimbabwe, he has spent the last 35 years building and repairing sailboats.  WOW, did we luck out finding such a qualified guy out here!  After much discussion he said he could have the leak and the bilge pumps repaired in a day!!!

Kinja being hauled out...

The Work Bench...

With Kinja being worked on we went to stay at Little Dix Bay Resort...what a place!

Sailing Kinja...with a leak

When we got back to St. Thomas we decided to ask the diver who found the crack what he thought about us sailing Kinja around with the leak.  His comment "Well it should be OK, just keep an eye on it and if it gets worse make sure you have a contingency plan to get her pulled out of the water somewhere...quickly!"....great.

We also asked a lot of people about the best place to have Kinja repaired.  Nobody recommended doing it in St. Thomas.  Two places in The British VI were recommended.  One on Tortola and one on Virgin Gorda.  Since we also had to make plans to store Kinja for hurricane season, Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor was our choice.

Since Tyler only had a couple of more days before heading home, we decided to sail over to St. Johns again and anchor in some nice snorkeling places..

Tyler on board....

After a few days we would put him on the ferry back to St. Thomas and we would head over to Virgin Gorda to have Kinja repaired...hopefully.

OK, So give us a break.  This was posted under the influence of Rum... a lot of rum!

Tyler visits us in St. Thomas

Since we could not sail Kinja, we decided to rent a car and show Tyler around St. Thomas and St. Johns Islands.  We had a great pizza at the Pie Hole in St. Thomas which has 70 different beers from around the world.  The drinking age in the Virgin Islands is 18, soTyler was in beer heaven

We dove over to Red Hook to catch the car ferry to St Johns.

Tyler with Red Hook in the background....

There are a lot of wild creatures running around on St. Thomas...

In St Johns we stayed at the Gallows Bay Resort in Cruz Bay.

View from our room...

The pool....

Cruz Bay is a charming little beach town with many good restaurants and bars.  Needless to say, Tyler was out late...very late... every night and met many new friends!!

Hiking around some ruins in St. Johns

After a great couple of great days on St. Johns we took the car ferry back to St.  Thomas.

St. Thomas

We arrived in St. Thomas knowing we had a problem to figure out!  Kinja was docked at the Crown Bay Marina...very close to the airport and downtown Charlotte Amalie.

We needed to figure out where the leak was coming from.  The first thing to do is to taste the bilge water...really nasty bilge water.  You just stick your finger in the water and then lick your finger it to see if it is salt or fresh water.  We hoped it would be fresh water which means the internal fresh water system is leaking...much better than an external leak in the hull!

No such luck...it was salt water.  So, we checked all the thru hull fittings and hoses to see if any of them were leaking. They were all fine so now it is a more difficult thing to figure out.

We went to the marina office and they put us in touch with a diver who could come out and dive under the boat to check the hull and keel.  Long story short...he found a small crack where the keel connects to the hull and water was leaking in through the keel bolts.  Sounds like a big problem to us!

We spoke to several boat yards about how to fix it and they all said it was a major repair and could take quite a while to get it done.  You never really know how good they are at repairing things so we kept inquiring around.

In the meantime we were able to enjoy Charlotte Amalie.

The view from the Mafolie Restaurant

Downtown streets

Our favorite restaurant..Glady's

Morris...the receptionist at the Oceana Inn where we had a couple of glasses of wine

A small world event happened to us while we were sitting on Kinja one day.  A guy cme over and knocked on the hull to say hello.  He said he just had to stop by because he saw that Kinja was from Roche Harbor, WA.  He said he ran a whale watching business out of Friday Harbor (which is on the same island as Roche Harbor) and spent the winters here in St. Thomas.  But in addition, he couldn't believe the boat was named Kinja.  He lived on Water Island, just off St. Thomas and his good friend had also named his boat Kinja (after the book, Don't Stop The Carnival).  He continued to tell us that the story "Don't Stop the Carnival" actually took place on Water Island...Kinja was home!

So, back to the leak.  We are not sure where to get it repaired or if we can trust the repair yards to do the repair the correct way.

Tyler is on his way down for a visit and unfortunately it looks like we will not be able to sail with him. We will have to figure out what to do.

Life is still very good.....

What the heck happened to the Carnival?

As they say,  "better late than never"... and so it was with us getting back on board Kinja.  We left Tahoe late January with a plan to stop off in NYC to visit Laura, Wilson and Landon and to check out the posibility of purchasing an apartment in NYC.

The visit was wonderful, but we did not realize that Landon could actually read a menu so well...

We were lucky in the apartment hunting and ended up purchasing a penthouse studio apartment with its own private terrace and an amazing view of the Empire State Building.  The apartment is in our favorite area of the city just one block off Union Square.

It took us much longer than we thought it would so while we were waiting to close on the apartment we hired Captain Tom Seybold (with two other crew members) to sail Kinja from the Turks and Caicos Islands to St.  Thomas.  That sail is a real slog -- heading right into the wind --which means you have to  motor the entire way into what can be some pretty heavy seas.

Kinja arrived in St.Thomas before we did and was waiting for us....with one little surprise--she was leaking!!  The fun never ends on a boat!