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  • Day 174

    St. Johns Rams Head & Coral Bay

    March 12, 2016 on the U.S. Virgin Islands ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    We spent the rest of our day grabbing a mooring in Salt Pond Bay and hiking Rams Head and snorkeling crystal clear waters. Rams Head is a high jagged bluff on the south east side of St. John and has a bloody past. In 1733 a great slave rebellion took place on St. John, lasting for several months. French & Swiss troops eventually arrived putting a stop to the insurrection. The grim denouement of the rebellion ended with a group of 300 slaves jumping to their death at Rams Head point instead of returning to the overlords and torturous life of a slave. We arrived at the SW summit and looked around at the steep and dramatic cliffside and jagged rocks below. An impending rainstorm brought strong winds tearing over the summit so we looked around silently and quickly returned to the boat in awe. A tiny lizard attacked me on the way back, jumping onto my hand for an instant before flinging itself off into the bushes. Taking me by surprise, I screamed. Mike laughed and recounted the time a flying fish almost hit me in the cockpit on our passage to Bermuda.
    Our next anchorage was a sporty sail into Coral Bay where we made an impromptu stop at a floating bar. We were only going to check it out but the proprietor was so damn friendly…. And how do you say no to rum punches at a floating bar, I have not yet found the strength or craziness to say no …. So out of the dinghy onto the floating pontoon. There was a bed on the other end with a long curtain to partition his room off and in the center there was a circular glass floor under a glass table. At night, you could turn on underwater lights and watch the tarpon swim underneath. There was a full kitchen/bar setup, bathroom, and even a second floor to sunbathe on. He explained how he built the entire set up from scratch and wanted to put it up on a B&B site. He plans to offer a package deal where he’ll captain the vessel out to anchorages around St. John and leave you with a couple kayaks, then he would return and move you to a next destination. For a more adventurous demographic, I could see this working out beautifully.
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