A Tale of Two Chemists: Tales from St Croix … Sunday 15th

Tales from St Croix … Sunday 15^th – Monday 16^th April 2018

O.K., so this is a blog with a difference. As we write this we are seated in a Brew Pub on the waterfront. The beer is excellent and we are about to eat. Gloria has just started her second club soda so will soon be dancing on the tables. As if that weren’t enough excitement we are about to start “crab races”! We are going to try writing our thoughts …

Mike: So let’s start by saying it’s pronounced “Saint Croy”! None of that French influence here! Having anchored on Saturday morning we proceeded to do very little for the rest of the day. However, on Sunday we got our act together and wandered around Christiansted for several hours. It’s a picturesque town with cool buildings, including the fort, which is a US National Park monument. There were endless opportunities for photos and I had a blast taking abstract shots of both the fort and the buildings around town. In some ways the area seems a bit beaten up, maybe because of hurricane Maria, but my suspicion is that it was already like this.

Gloria: Christiansted has a very different look and feel to many of the towns we’ve seen on this voyage. I imagine that ‘s the Danish influence. Clearly there was wealth here at one time as there are lots of substantial buildings. We wondered if the island had been prosperous when it was part of Denmark. Possibly the decline set in when the US bought the islands in 1917. Who knows?

One thing that Christiansted has in common with lots of other town is a surplus of free ranging chickens. Yesterday we saw some chickens pecking at a land crab. This makes we wonder if a chicken picks up one of the race crabs and carries it across the finish line does the “backer” still win?

Tomorrow we will rent a car to facilitate our provisioning. Also we have to go visit Customs and immigration at the airport to check out. Even just typing that gives me anxiety. Once you check out you are committed to going! Trying to get our heads around all that needs to be done.

Mike: Perhaps the beer tastes so good because we’ve (I’ve) been drinking watery lagers for the past few months. This evening I have tasted an amber ale and a session IPA – both excellent. The other possibility is that I was ill yesterday with some sort of cold / virus so that when we returned to Cotinga in the late afternoon I wasn’t interested in eating dinner or even drinking a beer. That’s about as uncommon as Donald Trump telling the truth. Happily I’m feeling much better today and we got some useful things accomplished … filling up diesel and water jerry cans, starting to cook some meals for our upcoming passages, and booking a rental car for tomorrow.

Gloria: One of the things we are hoping to get done is to change the zinc on the propeller. Mike talked to a diver today who is willing to do it. He’s going to text us regarding where and when. Fingers crossed, he will actually come through for us.

People are still in the line to select their “racing hermit crab”. I suspect that the wind up to the race will take very much longer than the race itself. One young boy was in the line—he had brought his own crab! The organizers let him enter it in the race. This must be an institution at this brew pub—little did we know.

Mike: Buffalo wings, cucumber salad, blackened mahi-mahi tacos and a pork belly BLT may have been a little too much food! Our waitress suggested we would end up taking some of it home. She might be right. Uh oh … crab races are about to start, $2 a crab but we have no entries. O.M.G. customers have started throwing chicken bones into the sea and massive tarpon, easily 4 feet long, are swirling around. Do they really eat chicken bones … what else, small children? Anyway, I digress. They are announcing the crab race prizes … 1^st place, tour to Buck Island National Park and all you can drink free rum punch, 2^nd place, something else … plus all you can drink free rum punch, 3^rd place, blah blah blah … plus all you can drink free rum punch. You get the idea. Actually, the prizes are really good, probably supplied by local businesses. St Croix is of course famous for it’s rum. We learned today that “Cruzan”, as in Cruzan Rum, or “Crucian” are the terms that mean from St Croix. “Time flies when your having rum”. Things are going downhill fast here, the lady to my left is berating her grandmother for bragging about her crabs. “Fuzzy One” just won the first heat. Apparently as it gets darker they start getting “crabbier”! “Nitro” wins heat two and “Eli’ wins heat three. I have no idea who won heat four, but the granny next to me has just been taped to her chair with masking tape to prevent her influencing the outcome! “Kaylee” and “Argo” have also made it to the final. There seem to be multiple finals and I can’t keep track of what’s happening. We are being advised that all children with entries are getting prizes, but adults “losers” do not and are being directed to the bar to drown their sorrows. Uh Oh, a large dog has just entered the ring. I’m sure that wasn’t planned! Did someone seriously name their crab “Poop”? Hah, that’s like naming your president “Trump” (which as any true Brit knows is synonymous with “fart”).

…and on that note, we should probably sign off. It’s dark and we need to pay our bill, jump in the dinghy and head back to Cotinga.

p.s. I do have some photos from the epic "crab races" but they are on my iPhone and I haven't downloaded them yet. I will add to a subsequent blog