Karen and Jon

February 8 - February 15, 2002

Karen and Jon, sailing off Anguilla

Like many of our first visitors, Karen and Jon came down while we were still in St. Martin working on Ocelot.  Since they were our first sailing visitors, they got to be the guinea pigs to see if we could actually sail our new boat.  Even motoring out through the (narrow) bridge on the French side of the lagoon was exciting for us then.  Karen and Jon have been close friends of ours for many years and had visited us on our first boat, Oriental Lady, back in the 1980's.  It was wonderful to have them on board once again -- this time with Chris and Amanda with us!

Karen and Jon are quite the divers and had already done several dives off Saba before they came aboard Ocelot.  Since we didn't carry dive gear at the time, we took them to what we remembered as some of our favorite snorkeling spots around St. Maarten.  We started with the rocks off Grande Case, St. Martin, and then went north to Anguilla and Crocus Bay.

Anguilla is a favorite old stomping ground for us - in the '80s we ran a day-charter catamaran for a year, doing a picnic/snorkeling trip from Marigot Bay, St. Martin to little reef enclosed Sandy Island off the NW coast of Anguilla.  It was a delightful trip with good coral, ample beaches, nice shade, and swimming pool quality water inside the protected reef.  Unfortunately, several hurricanes have hit the area since we worked there, uprooting all the trees and destroying the reef, so we avoided it this time and anchored instead in beautiful Crocus Bay on the western Anguillan coast.

Nesting holes in the limestone cliffs near Crocus Bay

Sunset in Crocus Bay, Anguilla

Crocus Bay has several bird colonies nesting in its interesting cliffs, and intricate rocks under water.  It's been made into a nature preserve and the pelicans have decided that they love the lack of competition for fish.  At times, while snorkeling, we couldn't see the rocks for all the fish swimming around us.  With a clear view to the west, Crocus Bay also gets wonderful sunsets.

We took a day trip out to Prickly Pear Cays and had an interesting snorkel, but the anchorage there is not good enough to stay the night so we went back to Crocus.

A delightful evening "sunset sail" on Ocelot

We sailed back to Simpson Lagoon and dropped the hook off the little island in the middle of the lagoon, as close as possible to the airport.  It was hard to say goodbye to Karen and Jon after such a short visit, but we had more visitors coming in that same afternoon!  We'd had a wonderful week of joking, laughing, swimming, snorkeling, identifying fish, and eating a wide variety of tasty vegetarian dishes.  Great fun with old friends!