Weekend in Newfound Bay, St. John

We tried our new crab trap Friday night. Zach caught a fish in Coral Bay off the boat and chopped it up for bait. We dropped the trap just outside of the bay. Early Saturday morning Zach went to pick up the trap, unfortunately he found an empty bait bag and two holes in the side of the trap!

I spent the morning stowing and tying down, getting Kate ready to sail while Zach ran around doing errands on St. John. By noon we picked up both our anchors and we were on our way. A steady breeze around 15-17 knots, we were in front of Round Bay in about an hour and decided to keep going to Newfound Bay. The entrance to Newfound Bay has a reef on both sides with a nice "path" down the middle with a small anchorage in about 10-12' of water. We put out two anchors and headed over to the reef. Within about the first ten minutes Zach had snared two small lobsters, just barely legal size and let another go. Hooch and I cooled off in the water.

After our swim, I repaired the crab trap with some waxed twine and filled the bait bag with more of the fish from Friday. We put it directly under the boat where we could see it clearly sitting on the bottom, 12 feet below us.

I steamed the lobsters for dinner, using old bay, lemon juice, bay leaves, garlic and onions in the water. They took only about 15 min. The best Caribbean lobsters I have ever tasted, we ate them all, legs, antennae and all, delicious!

In the VI a lobster needs to be 3.5" from base of the body to the base of the tail - this little guy is a hair larger.

After dinner we checked the crab trap. Empty! Completely empty, the whole bait bag was gone! Starting to think our little collapsible crab trap just isn't going to work, but we gave it another try. The lobster shells and heads went into the trap directly in the bottom, since we know longer have a bag to put them in. We dropped it back under the boat for the night. When we checked the crab trap first thing in the morning one of the heads was gone, but otherwise no change, no crabs.

I jumped into the water with my snorkel and found two cow fish hovering around the trap. We went for an early morning snorkel and saw lots of fish, but no more lobsters! Back at the boat, we had pork chops and eggs for breakfast. After cleaning up, we went back for another snorkel on the other side of the reef. This time we brought Hooch and our camera. Still lots of fish, but less coral unless you went rather far out into the opening of the bay.

We listened to the weather on our VHF and found a low pressure area was supposed to be coming through the area Sunday night or Monday so we canceled our plans to spend another night and sail back early in the morning Monday. We picked up anchor around 2pm and headed back to Coral Bay.

On our way home we sailed into Hurricane Hole and yelled a quick hello to Andrew, Zach's boss, before heading into Coral Bay and dropping our primary anchor behind S/V Breath.

Monday morning finds Zach back at work and I did quick sand and a second coat of primer on the cooler. I won't be able to do the first coat of paint for 16 hrs. So, tomorrow morning should be the first coat. I put up the awning and started getting the boat back in order after our weekend sailing.

When I checked the forecast this morning, I found the first Low pressure area that could really be a problem for us this year. It currently has a 20% chance of developing into a tropical cyclone and looks like it is heading toward the Leeward Islands. We will have to keep a close eye on this in the next day or two.