St. Croix is well worth the effort. A fantastic respite from the tourist and cruiser circuits up in the BVI/St. John, the isolated retreat of St. Croix was a great place to call home for the past two weeks.

Prior to crossing the Atlantic for the upcoming hurricane season, we found ourselves with a few weeks to kill. The boys made their final push on “boatschool”, and only have a couple loose ends to tie up. (As of publication time, all WIDAGO crew have completed Grade 4 – Whoop Whoop!!!).

The highlight of our visit was meeting Morning Haze (http://blogmorninghaze.blogspot.com) and her crew: Isabella, Rebecca, Demi, & David. This fabulous French Canadian family from Quebec is about to wrap up their Atlantic cruising adventure.  Lucky for us, we were able to experience cruising life with another family boat. Hiking, snorkeling, pig spotting, and a “science field trip” were just some of the crowning moments of our time spent with the Haze Crew.

The island of St. Croix lies about forty miles south of St. Thomas, making it a bit too far for the Crusiers’ Circuit, or troves of tourists arriving by water taxi.  Although the oil refinery is now shut down, the island still maintains additional industry besides tourism: RUM. Both Captain Morgan and Cruzan Rum have distilleries on the island. Check out our field trip video. Due to the largess of the island, the terrain varies in extremes from Tropical Rain Forests with drinking pigs (yet another field trip video), to arid foothills great for hiking (yep, you guessed it, another quick video). The snorkeling was spectacular. We saw an octopus, spotted eagle ray, shorty spiny lobsters, and more conch than you’d want to hammer.

The folks at Green Cay Marina were gracious hosts to us transient types. Marina cocktail parties, Disco Bingo, Queen of Heart Raffles, and some really sweet dockside doggies.

The only downside to St. Croix was that I dropped my new fancy hair shears in the water. Guyon refused to rescue them, David made an attempt but then realized what else might be in the marina water, and I won’t even pretend to say I tried. Looks like the boys are going au natural/mullet or else we will be working up some nice crusty dreads.

Next stop is back to Tortola for our final prep before leaving for Bermuda in early May!