Fueling up at St. Thomas’ Charlotte Amalie
can be quite an adventure and a serious reality check on how small you really
are.
After our long and tempestuous ride up from
Culebra with not a boat in sight, it is, as always, a shock to motor in to St.
Thomas’ busy harbor and thread through the busy sea traffic snarled like LA’s
405 at rush hour and park at the ferry dock.
The traffic is a virtual whirlwind of steel and fiberglass,
tempestuously circulating around you from high and low and with motors fast and
sailing canvas slow.
There are sea planes landing and departing
with no real designated route other than deciding it’s particular trajectory
depending on the current wind and whatever stretch of water seems clear of
boats at the time of its departure or landing.
Then there are the gargantuan cruise ships bustling in like bullies in
the play yard with packs of oversized private yachts following suit. Then there are the private sailboats that are
also so huge they should be classified as yachts. The harbor looks like a swirl of bathtub toys
at the command of a hyperactive three year old.
There are two massive long docks that
parallel one another like the two stripes of a single parking lot space.
Alongside the right-hand dock, the cruise
ships park. On the left dock the rest of
us park. All traffic comes in through
the middle, motoring up the center space between both docks. It is far more narrow that the above picture
implies. Under normal circumstances this
can be harrowing, but this dock is no normal circumstance.
Those cruise ships hunkering over the dock to
the right, they are filled with passengers gathered on the port side of the
cruise ship, clad with binoculars and watching your every move. And if you should motor in during breezy
harried conditions and accidentally scuff, say, a 32 million dollar yacht, you’d
have about 2,000 witnesses to testify against you in sailing court. If there is such a thing.
The pressure here to get your boat parked just
right is enormous. Not only that, parallel parking is the standard procedure as
there is little room in-between boats yachts. This is not your standard
Park-At-Costco-On-A-Busy-Saturday routine wherein if you accidently hit a car
in the crammed parking lot you can just leave a note with your insurance
information.
Worse case scenario is hitting a yacht with
thousands of looky-loos.
If it were possible for you were to trace your family lineage back to Adam and Eve, your entire family’s earnings from the start of time wouldn’t even come close to replacing just the name plate on these yachts. And even if you dock things perfectly, floating next to these behemoths is a bit ego crushing. While our catamaran looks fairly decent for family vacation photos, in real life, on this posh dock, we look like the Clampitts arriving in Beverly Hills. Which, frankly, does little to recommend the confidence of our billionaire neighbors who we're attempting to park next to. They are all keeping a watchful eye and a twitchy hand on their extra boat fenders as we come in.
If it were possible for you were to trace your family lineage back to Adam and Eve, your entire family’s earnings from the start of time wouldn’t even come close to replacing just the name plate on these yachts. And even if you dock things perfectly, floating next to these behemoths is a bit ego crushing. While our catamaran looks fairly decent for family vacation photos, in real life, on this posh dock, we look like the Clampitts arriving in Beverly Hills. Which, frankly, does little to recommend the confidence of our billionaire neighbors who we're attempting to park next to. They are all keeping a watchful eye and a twitchy hand on their extra boat fenders as we come in.
So here we enter the bay, threading past
float planes and cruise ships, million dollar yachts, with designs to fill up with gas and fresh water. As we come in, there is, of course, only one teensy tiny little spot left which must be parallel parked into.
We deckhands scurry topside and fetch the
fenders from the locker and stand on the starboard side giving us a clear view of the stadium of spectators on the cruise ships towering high above us. Then Mark, will spin a cautious 180, so that we can now see the side with the yachts. We begin to sweat.
Let it be noted that we were the only private boat without uniformed deckhands scurrying about the boat polishing and cleaning. And the only ones not having lunch served by private chef on shaded yacht decks.
Let it be noted that we were the only private boat without uniformed deckhands scurrying about the boat polishing and cleaning. And the only ones not having lunch served by private chef on shaded yacht decks.
As we come in looking like a raft full of
Rastafarian refugees, clinging to our fenders, Mark pivots the boat ever so
cautiously threading us into the tiny open space—all of us holding our breath, including
those on other boats. The dock manager,
also decked out in a smart uniform, waited for us to near and toss our
line. Mark brought it in with impressive
control only needing the fenders to ward us gently off the dockside—the
preferred thing to scuff over the yachts.
Connor tossed the line with his right hand and dipped the fender down
the side with the left cushioning our stop at the rear.
Now for the front, which Mark propelled forward ever so slowly, throttling the engines gently forward so that Sev could toss
his line from the bow. Sev, repeating
Connor’s performance, tossed the line with one hand and dipped his fender the
the other. Chloe and I stood mid-ship
manning our fenders as well. With no brakes, the fenders were used to lightly bring us to a full stop, which became sandwiched between our boat and the dock like oozing marshmallows between a graham cracker smore. The pressure of our motion subsided and we came to a full and injury free stop. Relieved we hadn’t lost our life’s fortune getting to the gas pump, the five of us breathed a sigh of relief. (I'm sure our neighbors did as well.)
Our total gas bill came to only $37. Hitting a yacht would have added a bit more to the cost.
So relieved were we, we forgot that within a half hour
we would have to exit the ramp under the same taxing circumstances. We filled up with gas and fresh water while the
kids sat at the aft of the boat and stared at the young family in the yacht behind us, as we floated stern to stern, who were being served a glamorous
lunch by a staff of three. I meagerly
offered to make them PB&J’s which they declined.
On our way out, the doc manager held tight to
our line at the bow of the boat so that Mark could gently put the starboard
side engine into reverse. This maneuver is
called a spring line which skillfully pitches your stern out and away from the dock. Once our backside was swung from the doc Mark
eased the bow into the center of the channel and off we went.
Everyone could now breath. The Clampetts had left the neighborhood.
Here’s a couple links to two of the yachts parked along the
dock as we came in:
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