Jost Van Dyke & Foxy's                                                          Back
We dropped anchor off Little Jost Van Dyke. It was to be the girls first experience, other then in a pool, with snorkeling and a great one it turned out to be. By the time we got ready and into the water the bottom of the Paulota was covered with blue tangs, they had come to feed off the barnacles.
I took the girl's hands and we swam over to a shallow reef not far from the Paulota. It's amazing that they didn't break both of my hands, as they keep squeezing them every time they saw a different type of fish and we saw quite a variety: Tangs, angels, butterflies, damsels, squirrelfish, Sergeant Majors, grunts and this isn't counting the invertebrates: Starfish, Jellyfish, (No, no man of war), tubular warms, sea fans, etc. It was like swimming in a salt water aquarium. We also found a few shells: On a sea fan I found a Flamingo Tongue, which the girls thought was beautiful, a few conchs & a lightning whelk. Remember, the girls love animals, so we just looked and left them there. They talked about their first dive for months after we got home.
Me and the girls just off Little Jost Van Dyke	Two very different sailboats. I like the schooner
Our dive over, we pulled anchor & sailed to Jost Van Dyke and Foxy's. Foxy is the poet laurite of the B. V. I. and entertains his guests with calypso ballads, sometimes about them. We were surprised to find out, after meeting his youngest daughter, that she and all of her sisters went to Lehigh University just north of Philadelphia. It's a small world.
Foxy was on the beach with a group of tourists but the girls were more interested in his dog. (What else is new?) & we were thirsty. So we never got to meet this legend, maybe next time. We had a good lunch & I bought a bottle of foxy's Rum for a friend back home (He still has it, Not the Rum but the bottle, he just keeps filling it with other brands of rum. The bottle has a photo of Foxy's Tamarind Bar on the front. It's a keepsake.) & we went back to the paulota for a swim.
That night Mary Beth & Lars went to shore, actually to the bar at Foxy's. While I stayed aboard with the kids, I'd get my chance. Well, after making up stories for them for awhile, I finally got them to go to bed, but since I couldn't leave them alone on the boat, I just relaxed in the cockpit & while looking at the stars and while listening to the music from shore I wrote this.  for a girl I met in Puerto Rico many years ago.
Our next dive came off a gorgeous little island called Sandy Cay. As we were tacking to get close to the beach a boat ahead of us sailed his keel right into the sand. It took almost a half an hour to get her safely back in deep water. We snorkeled a while then explored the little island. Mary Beth worked on her tan again, (The only way you can prove you were on vacation in the tropics is to come home with a great tan.) while the kids and I followed a trail. We saw quite a few different types of birds, a few lizards & basically just had a good time.
From Sandy Cay we sailed on to Little Jost Van Dyke, where Nancy waited on the Delphina. Lars had radioed ahead to tell her we were going to moor there. Lars spent the night on the Delphina & in the morning Tiffany, Melanie and myself loaded the dingy with our snorkeling equipment and went to explore the shore line. After swimming for awhile the girls decided to check out the beach, I stayed in the water. Not long after I surfaced to hear the girls yelling that they had found a bunch of large shells and upon swimming in to see what they were talking about discovered they had indeed come across a pile of Queen conch shells that somebody had removed the meat from and discarded under a bush. They all had chipped lips but we took the two best and when we got home I finished them on a grinding wheel. They still sit on the girls dressers, a reminder of a great vacation. Oh! I forgot to mention that Mary Beth wanted to know why we hadn't brought her one back. Oh! well, she wanted to stay on the boat and work on that damn tan. (To bad.)
That afternoon Lars invited us over to the Delphina for cocktails. His wife, Nancy was not only a fantastic hostess, but also a dynamite person: Charming, interesting, & intelligent. They had been living the good life in California, real estate agents in Beverly Hills but the more they made, the more they were spending. One day they decided to abandon the RAT RACE and live a better life in the Carribean. They sold everything, bought the Paulota and started chartering. We really enjoyed our visit and still keep in touch.
The girls were elated, They (Lars and Nancy) have a Belgian Barge Dog who likes to play ball. The girls spent most of our visit playing with Osita. (Again, what else is new? Mary Beth with her Tan and the girls with their animals.)
We spent the rest of our cruise sailing and diving and eating and drinking and beach combing and partying and afterwards we sadly sailed the Paulota back to Saint Thomas and the Admiral's Inn to enjoy our last days in paradise.
Click here to see how we spent those last days.