Life is a State of Mind

We got back from a fantastic Windjammer Cruise late last night. A brief log of the adventure follows…

On Saturday the 18th we flew to St. Thomas and U.S. Airways lost one of our checked bags. We checked into the Galleon House B&B hours late because we waited in a line of 80 odd families who had also lost luggage on the same flight.

Galleon House is nice, and we had a terrific view of Charlotte Amalie from the balcony of our room. It is quite a hike up stairs with luggage to get in and out of Galleon, but it is right above Hirve restaurant and 1829 (another inn or b&b). The pool at Galleon made up for a frustrating travel day. We had a very good dinner at Tavern Inn (Hirve was booked already), and enjoyed some live jazz and folk music there too.

Sunday we continued to call U.S. Air every few hours looking for our luggage and we got a different story from them with every call. We also decided to accept an invitation to hear a presentation on Travel Club International, which we decided to try out despite being burned in the Med Resorts International time-share rip-off scheme in the early 1990s.
I had to buy shorts, t-shirts, and sandals because I had no available clothes. U.S. Air’s ever-changing story about our lost luggage was that it was now found and it would be delivered as soon as the 5pm flight came in from Charlotte, NC. We boarded the Windjammer ship S. V. Legacy late in the afternoon, and had dinner on board. Still no luggage, but we were not scheduled to set sail until mid-afternoon Monday, so we encouraged U.S. Air to deliver the allegedly found luggage as soon as possible. Erci’s diver certification cards, my clothes, and the batteries and chargers for our underwater lights and cameras were in the missing bag, so we were unable to plan to SCUBA dive on Monday, though we signed up for the rest of the week in the hopes that the bag would arrive on time.

Monday we took a shore excursion to Megan’s Bay, which is a very nice beach for swimming and relaxing. The ride over the mountains of St. Thomas was pretty, and we found ourselves wishing we had more time to explore the island. When we got back to the ship, the bag was not in our cabin as expected, so we contacted the purser and U.S. Airways again – this time they said the bag was on St Thomas, and the driver was trying to find the ship. He did not find us by scheduled departure, and we set sail missing one bag. Our purser said she’d try to recover the bag on Tuesday as she had to ferry back to St Thomas from St John anyway. Another passenger was also missing his luggage, with all his dive gear and certification cards as well. Sailing was beautiful, though the Legacy is a heavy ship and continued motoring even under sail, but that is the price we pay for some luxury I gather.

Tuesday I dove with the other SCUBA divers on Legacy, minus both my wife and the other passenger/diver who had lost luggage. Diving out of a rigid inflatable (Caribe) is a challenge, and a ton of work, but the Legacy dive master team does most of the work for the paying passengers (those guys really earn their pay), and it turned out to be far less of a problem than I imagined. Waters around St Thomas, St John, and Grass Cay are calm and clear this time of year, and we saw some pretty cool life below. Erci went to Cruz Bay to get a copy of her dive certification just in case the luggage never arrived, and explored St John a little while I was diving. We tried to sea kayak but were unprepared for it, and bailed out for a relaxing afternoon on the ship (can you say “Rum-Swizzle-Time!”). Our lost bag (and the other passenger’s lost bags) finally arrived late in the afternoon, thanks to the heroic efforts of our favorite purser, Laurie. There was $60 in extra fees, which we’ll be charging back to U.S. Air soon.

Wednesday was awesome, we swam with dolphins on Tortola, and then took a catamaran sail over to Peter Island for some excellent snorkeling and then sailed back again. Later in the evening the ship’s crew and passengers threw a pretty amazing party on board, and we’ll just leave the details to those who were there…

Thursday morning I dove the Chimney and Coral Gardens and Erci relaxed on board, her ears were bothering her so she decided to skip diving. We then went to The Baths on Virgin Gorda, which are an amazing collection of large rocks and caves on a lovely beach by the sea. We snorkeled, scrambled, and hiked away a few thousand calories, then had another great party on-board the Legacy while the ship sailed for Jost Van Dyke and then the party moved ashore to Foxy’s beach club.

Friday morning we sailed for the West end of Jost Van Dyke for a beach BBQ, then sailed from there back to St Thomas to conclude the cruise.Saturday, we went into Charlotte Amalie to order sandals from Zora’s and shop for rum.Full directory of pictures is at http://scottnolan.org/Legacy_Cruise_2006/ (warning, they are large).