Leaving St. John, sailing back to St. Thomas

Took a bit of a break from the blog-o-sphere with the holidays upon us. Enough with the Christmas music and all that stuff. Shall we return to warm topical waters & blue skies? Why of course we shall.

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 As a quick reminder, we're picking up from the last blog post. Honeymoon Beach on St. John.

 After coming back aboard the Adventuress, it's time to head back to St. Thomas. Other boats of the Champagne Cat fleet have now joined us.

 Good-bye Honeymoon Beach. For now, anyway.

 Sails up! We're making way.

 I hope you did not think this was a dry vessel. It's not called a Champagne Cat just because the name sounds good. Cheers!

 Bit of fraying on the bottom of the sail from plenty of use. Not surprising since Adventuress is in high demand.

 Meet Capt. Joe, our skipper. He's got the job we all want. We've sailed with Joe previously when he was a mate.

 Parts of St. Thomas are not the low rent district. Rock stars, movie stars and anyone else with too much money have homes here.

Where's the Facebook "Like" button?

  Vamping for the camera. Still smiling from the last post.

 

 Heading in to the dock. We'll do this again because it's a lot of fun.

Next stop on the journey: Antigua.

St. John via St. Thomas

We've cruised to St. Thomas probably 10 or so times. For whatever reason, the cruise ship industry is determined to stop at St.Thomas whenever a vessel is in the Caribbean. What's the best thing to do when on St. Thomas? Why, go to St. Johns' of course! We've taken Thunderhawks' Eco tour & highly recommend it. For the last several trips we chose to sail over to Honeymoon Beach on one of the Champagne Cats.

http://www.cruiseshipexcursions.com/adventuress.html

Early morning. Very few people moving about the vessel. The ship is barely moving to our berth at the Havensite dock. These are some of the moments forever etched in my mind.

The hotels in the distance gear up for another day of tourist check-ins and check-outs. Bake till done, then go home.

Ok, enough about St. Thomas. We're aboard Adventuress, a 50+ foot custom built catamaran. Next stop: St. John & a very special little strip of sand.

 Anne & I have sailed aboard Adventuress previously. I would do it again.

 This is rigging. Large scale. Heavy duty steel cable that can withstand the force of the wind when under full sail.

 St. Thomas really is pretty when viewed from a distance.

How to make the girl smile? Put her on a comfortable sailing ship with good breeze and no worries.

 This petite young lady was one of two female mates aboard. It was not light duty.

She brought up this huge canvas while it filled with wind. No problem. She'd done this before.

 In the distance: our destination of St. John.

 Still smiling!

 Laid back, no worries, no problems. Life is good.

 Coming upon the mooring ball. Mate signals to captain, snags the line & we're tied off in seconds.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are here. Honeymoon Beach, pristine sand, sparsely populated & crystal clear warm water I could float in for hours on end.

At this point, I stowed the camera. Donned my snorkel gear. Stepped off the side of the boat & slowly paddled into shore.

Up next: Return to St. John.

New York Citys' 6th Borough

For this post I borrow the style of Will Van Dorp. I have enjoyed his blog, http://tugster.wordpress.com for quite some time.

Way back in school grade school, we were all told of the New York boroughs. The teacher: New York City is made up of five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. But that is not the entire story. Far from it. Did you know there is a 6th borough? Yes, there is a 6th borough. It consists of the waterways surrounding those 5 land based boroughs & supports them via marine traffic.

 With the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, daily traffic moves through the borough.

 Tug and barge, the transfer truck of these waters. Who could it be?

 Not that tough guy from television, it's Mister T doing the pulling.

 Coming along, others follow the same route as Mister T.

 Here we have one of the Bouchard tankers being pushed by Morton S. Bouchard Jr.

 Here's a well known vessel in the borough. Pegasus heads down river in fine style.

 These photos were taken while tied up at the Red Hook terminal. See the previous post for the vessel we're aboard. There will be more on our ship in upcoming posts.

  Tied alongside is Mary A. Whalen. Remembering back to the storm named Sandy, a vessel of similar size broke it's moorings and made headlines after washing ashore. Tugster covered that story very well. I'll probably submit this and a number of other photos to the marinetraffic.com site as I have done previously.  

 We're underway, leaving NYC in the fading sunlight.

 Ugale awaits her dock space.

 NS Lotus at anchor. One very large vessel, with a surprise on the other side.

 Fuel for the fuel carrier. That's Pati R. Moran taking honors as the push vessel.

We close as the sun sets beyond the Verrazano Narrows bridge & we leave the 6th borough.  

Next stop: St. Thomas, with a trip over to St. John.

New York City Views From Royal Princess

It's been some time since I made the last blog post, so call me lazy. Photos from our recent repositioning cruise gives me reason to get back into blog mode. In the next few entries, we'll take a different look at NYC, then on to St. Thomas / St. John, Antigua and Aruba and views of the ship.

 Above is the NYC skyline with Governors Island in the foreground.

Here's a slightly different view of the same. That's New Jersey waaay in the background.

 Governors Island in the foreground, Ellis Island in the background.

 The Red Hook Terminal with Brooklyn in the background. Not a lot of shipping commerce happening at the terminal today.

 Big boat or little boat, either is OK with me. Being aboard most any ship makes me happy.

 And just where am I taking all these photos from, you may ask? We're aboard the Royal Princess.

That not so busy Redhook Terminal I mentioned a few photos ago is actually loading human cargo onto Royal Princess.

 Compared to the tiny sailboat, Royal Princess is gargantuan.

 Secured alongside, but not for long. We have places to go.

 A parting view of the Manhattan skyline as the sun slowly sets.

And we close with the sunset on Lady Liberty.

We're not finished with New York just yet. In the next posting I borrow some style points from another blogger in the content arena.