Sail Tom and Becca

A Bay for Ourselves

2010-06-08T12:11:00.000-04:00

We were lucky enough to have this anchorage all to ourselves for lunch today. There's a very extensive reef you have to weave your way in to make it here, so that does a great job to deter others from spoiling our privacy. You can't tell in the photos, but our bows are only about 100 feet off the beach, and we only have about 2 feet of water under our keels! Tonight we're headed to Leverick Bay Marina in the North Sound of Virgin Gorda for a little fun dockside.

~Tom~

St. Croix part II

2010-05-28T10:16:00.001-04:00

Here are some more pictures from our trip to St. Croix.

While sailing from the wall over to Christiansted (the largest city on St. Croix, located on the center of the north shore), we were treated to a sail-by on the Schooner Roseway. She is an absolute beauty, especially under full sail.

A good shot of Becca with Roseway in the background. Finally visual proof that she does make it out of the galley from time to time!

A shot of the fort protecting the harbor in Christiansted.

The next day we rented a car and explored the island by land. As the sign in this photo says, Point Udall is the most eastern point in the United States. It also has an unbelievably scenic view since its a point surrounded by three sides of approximately 100 foot cliffs.

The south shore of St. Croix has a lot of barrier reef, as you can see in this photo.

What trip to St. Croix would be complete without a visit to the Cruzan Rum distillery? 5 dollars gets you on a tour and is topped off by free cocktails at the end (their insurance company forced them to start giving out the free drinks only at the end of the tour, though I can't imagine why).

This, my friends, is the lovable face of a beer drinking pig. You read that right; there is a bar in the central rainforest that has pigs who love beer. You drop the can straight into their open mouths (they go nuts as soon as they see the cans) where they crush the container and gulp down the contents. Now that I have witnessed this, my life is complete.

If you can read the label of the can, Becca is feeding this lovely fellow a non-alcoholic beer. The owners had to switch to non-alcoholic beer for what now are pretty obvious reasons.

We were treated to a wonderful sunset on our next to last night.

Unfortunately it wasn't all fun and games. If you look closely, that's me at the top of the mast mending a broken main halyard.

For our last night, we decided to anchor off of Buck Island, an outer island approximately 3 miles north of St. Croix. It has a wonderful beach and features and underwater snorkel trail, that has placcards explaining some of the things you are looking at. We were the only boat there and was a fantastic way to wrap up our visit.

Now, this picture kind of embarrasses me. Before working on Hypnautic, Becca and I worked on a 96 foot power boat. It happened to be in St. Croix while we were there so our old captain came out to visit us at Buck Island. The picture above is the tender (that's a fancy word for dinghy) that I used to drive. If you notice, it is all of 10 feet shorter than Hypnautic, and that's just the tender! There are many things that I will not miss about the mega yacht world, but driving that (with its triple 250 horsepower engines) is not one of them.

Just when we thought we had seen it all, on our sail back to St. Thomas a group of over 14 dolphins decided to tag along and ride with us for a bit. There were even a couple calves (i.e. babies) in the group.

Another shot of the dolphins. They stayed with us for over 10 minutes and were amazing to watch. We couldn't of asked for a better ending to an already fun-filled journey.

~Tom~

St. Croix

2010-05-28T10:13:00.001-04:00

St. Croix, one of the three major US Virgin Islands, is typically well outside the usual cruising grounds. Its approximately 40 miles south of St. Thomas and the other Virgin Islands, so it takes the better part of the day just to sail there. Because of that, very few cruisers make it over to the largest of the Virgin Islands. Lucky for me and Becca, good friends of ours used to own a dive shop on St. Croix and were more than happy to show us around for a few days. It was a wonderful trip and a great chance to see the "Other" Island, as it is sometimes referred to on St. Thomas.

So the cool thing to do on St. Croix if you have tons of money is to buy an old sugar mill and then build your modern house around it. Some of these places get pretty swanky.

Our first dive on St. Croix was actually their cruise ship pier. Cruise ships only come in to St. Croix about once a week and on the days they're not in town, you can swim amongst the pilings which are now covered in life.

(previously mentioned life)

This is a Green Sea Turtle who has decided to take a nap in a large basket sponge. I've never seen a turtle do that before, and all in all looks like a scene out of a Disney movie.

A cool shot from the surface looking under the pier.

This is Frederiksted, the second largest "city" on St. Croix. Its on the west end of the island and is also where the cruise ships dock. All of the west end is protected by the easterly trade winds and tends to be flatter than the rest of the island.

We dined in Frederiksted at the Blue Moon, which along with having absolutely stellar food, had this excellent jazz and blues band.

Our next dive was called Armageddon. The previous cruise ship dock was destroyed in a hurricane over a decade ago. They took all the debris from it and dumped it in 80-100 feet of water. Along with having lots of marine life hiding in all its nooks and crannies, it really does look like Armageddon since it resembles a destroyed sunken modern city.

More of Armageddon

Most of St. Croix is quite hilly, and the northwest corner of the island drops straight down into the water. This makes for some wonderful wall diving, where the water will go from a depth of 20 feet to 2500 feet in only about 50 of horizontal movement.

A underwater shot of the wall. This really doesn't give it justice to how steep it really is. Divers really have to watch their gauges when diving the wall because if you start chasing a fish around, the next thing you know you will be WAY deeper than you were planning!

That's it for now but I will post some more photos from our trip in a bit!

~Tom~

Stowaway!

2010-05-28T09:21:00.000-04:00

While on the dock in American Yacht Harbor preparing for a charter , I noticed this little fella making a nest on the end of our boom. Needless to say, I think he was a little upset when his new apartment started moving.

It was fun watching him (or her) working with his partner, where one would stay by the nest and the other would go out looking for more material.

~Tom~

Ahhh.... Time Off

2010-05-10T20:58:00.000-04:00

So after a stretch of almost 2 months of straight charters, Becca and I have a chance for a little R and R. We're both excited to catch our breath a little, and also to get a lot done around the boat. Hopefully we'll remember to take pictures of everything we accomplish to share with everyone on here.

~Tom~

April 5th Sunset

2010-04-05T18:56:00.003-04:00

Just a quick picture of the sunset this evening, with two freshly used dive tanks in the foreground. We'll see if we can get some pictures up of the diving later.

~Tom~

MANTA RAY!!!

2010-03-22T07:21:00.002-04:00

Tom and I saw our first Manta Ray in the wild yesterday at Peter Island in Great Harbor. Absolutely beautiful creatures. Even better I happened to have my underwater camera with me so I got some great pics and even a video of it doing flips underwater. Hope you enjoy.

Animals

2010-03-18T21:25:00.000-04:00

So Becca and I have finally been able to go through some of the photos we've taken since we've been on Hypnautic. We will slowly but surely be posting a bunch of them on here over the coming days. Here is a sampling of some of the animals we see while sailing around the BVIs. Enjoy!

~Tom~

This is a hermit crab living inside a Triton's Trumpet shell that Becca found diving and was kind enough to pose with.

Pelicans are all over the place down here and can be a lot of fun to watch dive.

These are a couple of Egrets that we found on the bow one morning while anchored off Guana Island.

Lobster! Spiny Lobster, the kind that you find in the Caribbean, don't have claws but are covered in sharp spines. Personally, I think they're better eating then their Maine brothers.

This one was a first. Upon coming back to the boat one afternoon at Cooper Island, there was a giant moth hanging out on our sail bag. Becca was brave enough to lend a hand (literally) to give a little scale to the photo. Now before any of you start freaking out, I can say that in the 4 and a half years I've lived down here, this is by far and away the largest moth I've ever seen!

This little guy is a Green Sea Turtle. They get their name from their insides, as their shells and skin are a light to dark brown color typically. We see a good number of turtles on charter, typically when they come up for air ever 10 minutes or so. Becca and I actually met while working for a company that took snorkelers out to look at Sea Turtles.

Dolphins are seen every now and again in the Virgin Islands. Its always a treat for us when we get to see one, and Becca was able to get this awesome shot the last time we saw a few go by.

New rod and reel, but do they work??

2010-03-18T20:57:00.001-04:00

Indeed they do. Here are a few shots of fish we've managed to reel in while bouncing about between the islands. I even have manged to get my first "you wouldn't believe the one that got away!" story. A friend of mine and I were sailing past French Cap (an island south of St. Thomas) when we spotted a couple of Humpback Whales. Not wanting to hook our mammalian friends, he reeled in our hook, and right when he had finished getting the hook back on board, a 6' sail fish jumped completely out of the water directly behind our boat! One day, one day...

~Tom~

Divemasters!

2010-03-07T08:30:00.000-04:00

Becca and I have just completed our final requirements for being fully certified PADI Divemasters! Its been a ton of work making it this far so it feels great to be finished with it. What does this mean for Hypnautic? We can now take people diving right off of Hypnautic, as long as they are previously certified. Here's a run down:

- Diving from Hypnautic will be $35 per diver, per dive, not including air fills or gear
- All divers must at least have PADI Open Water Diver certification or equivalent, or higher
- While we don't list a maximum number of dives per week, logistically more than 5-6 will be tough to manage. Simply put, we are a boat that people can dive off of, not a "dive boat."

If you have any questions, please send us an e-mail and we'd be happy to answer it. The BVIs have some absolutely wonderful dive spots, and I show them to everyone!

~Tom~

New Toy

2010-02-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

I've always been much more of a sailor than a fisherman, but I decided it was about time I take the plunge and get myself a good rod and reel. A bit of advice - if you need to buy a piece of equipment and no nothing about it, don't tell the salesman that you have no idea how much money you'll have to spend. Your "mid-range" selection becomes a "dude - this is a really REALLY nice rig" upon checkout.

For those of you who actually know about all this stuff, its a Shimano TLD 50 LRSA 2-speed reel with a medium action Shimano rod with a rolling tip.

East Coast Blizzard? Not on Jost!

2010-02-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

We've been reading a lot in the news about the blizzard (blizzards? I think there's been more than one but I'm not sure) that has recently hit the eastern US. After living down here for well over 4 years, its hard to imagine those kinds of conditions anymore. Currently its 87 degrees F (31 degrees C) in White Bay of Jost Van Dyke with the water a pleasant 81 degrees F (27 degrees C). A slight breeze has picked up though so its nice and cool, especially in the shade. If you head over to the Soggy Dollar's website (www.soggydollar.com), we are just out of frame on the left, with our hulls approximately 20 feet from the beach.

Hopefully everyone up north is staying warm!

~Tom~

Pictures

2010-02-06T22:28:00.000-04:00

Becca and I are hoping to add pictures here and there of anything especially interesting or beautiful that happens on board. We also love collecting photos that others have taken while on Hypnautic, so please feel free to send them our way or give us a link to any online galleries that you have. I would also like to thank Alex for taking the two beautiful pictures that are at the top of the page and our profile picture. They are fantastic!

~Tom~

First Post - Welcome!

2010-02-06T22:12:00.000-04:00

Thank you for reading Becca's and my blog. We've been planning on putting this up for some time now, but life on board the new boat has been extremely busy. Our intention is to showcase life on board Hypnautic and a little bit about ourselves as well. While I can't say how frequently we will be able to post updates, we should be able to hash out a rough outline of ourselves and s/y Hypnautic. If there is anything in particular you would like to hear about, feel free to ask.

Best Wishes,
~Tom~