CANEEL BAY

0800 hours, December 23, 2014, Caneel Bay St John's Island, USVI: We raised anchor and headed east. Our 5 day stop at Sapphire Beach Marina on St Thomas had been to clean the boat and re provision. We left on December 22,  with our first stop Caneel Bay just across Pillsbury Sound. This was special, as it was our first stop on our honeymoon 42 years earlier on a bare boat charter out of Red Hook (next door to Sapphire Beach).  My Father's pictures and stories of his stay at Caneel Bay 10 years before our honeymoon had been part of the inspiration to bare boat in this location. 

The beauty of St Johns so impressed Laurance Rockefeller, and he bought most of the Island.  The 170 acre Caneel Bay Resort was subsequently built with its main buildings on the site of old sugar mill, and added to his chain of resorts. The original site planning concept, which remains today, was to blend into the environment with one and a few two story buildings set back between palms and well trimmed mangroves along the Resort's fantastic beaches with acres of rolling lawns in clearings between. The tree lined beaches with manicured green grass behind white power sand and aqua colored water, include all the elements of the perfect beach.  And, the Resort has seven. Rockefeller then donated the remaining portion of the Island he owned as a national park which curround, and separates the Caneel Bay Resort from the remainder of the Island. 

After anchoring we went ashore to pick up friends to join us for sunset aboard. The Resort was every bit of what we had remembered from 42 years earlier. 

With our travels up and down the East Coast, and through the Bahamas the last four years we had not anchored in deep water for several years.  At Caneel Bay we were anchoring in 60 feet of water plus 10 for freeboard is 350 feet of chain. With our 64 foot boat that  is a 400 foot radius. It took us a couple of try's with changing wind strength and currents to realize that wind and current could not be counted on to keep us aligned with others. With a 400 foot radius we  simply could not anchor close to any one. 

Forty years ago they didn't have near the  inter island ferries and passenger vessels they have today. There are a lot, and they all seamed to be on a route past Caneel Bay leaving us their wake on our beam to roll in. Fortunately we had our stabilizer system which we deployed to dampen the wake driven rolling.