Day 8: Saturday, June 13, 2009

So, after much talking and deliberation, and "are you sure?" from me, we decided to go back to St. John Saturday to do Leinster Bay/Waterlemon Cay again.  I felt bad taking another half day of detecting away from Adam, but how often do you get to experience amazing snorkeling like that? Plus, Adam noted, his detecting wasn't going very well... lots and lots of coins, but so far not much jewelry.  Therefore, we decided to get up early and have our typical morning (Adam decided to detect the Ritz, but the beach was rocky and hard to dig, so he went next door to Cowpet Bay again), and I ran then made breakfast.  As we were sitting down to eat, I checked the time and realized we had to hurry if we were going to make the 10am car ferry.  So we (literally!) wolfed down our food, threw our clothes on and ran out the door.

Turns out, the ferry never leaves on time and we would have had plenty of time, but I was happy to be sure we were on it.  We settled in then went up top to take pictures.  Since it was later in the day, it was much sunnier than the first trip over to St. John, and I got a little camera-happy.  We arrived in St. John and this time, didn't get lost as I drove straight to the parking lot at Leinster Bay to begin our hike.

We made the mile-ish hike around the Bay, admiring the blue, blue skies reflecting in the aqua waters... it's seriously too beautiful for words.  We got to the end point, got our snorkel gear on and hit the island once again for surreal underwater glory.  This time, I noticed a large grassy area off the the right of the island I hadn't caught before and remembered people saying online they kept seeing turtles in grassy patches.  Swimming over towards it, I saw two dark shapes in the distance, and as I approached about jumped for joy (as well as I can jump in water!) when I realized it was not one, but two large sea turtles!  I popped my head up and yelled for Adam to come join me.  He tried to get some pictures of me swimming with them, but unfortunately they didn't turn out real well.  It was amazing though!  One took off shortly after we got there, but I stuck with the other one, swimming with it for about 10-15 minutes, bobbing up and down with it, touching and holding on to it, watching and floating around it.  It was so cool.  He swam a lot, deeper out into the reef, but I was out of pix by that time to get some of him and the colorful coral and fish.  I finally left him to go back over to Adam and start the tour of the reef again.  Just as beautiful, if not moreso, than I remembered from a few days earlier!  I simply love this spot; it's truly gorgeous.  We saw tons of tropical fish, and even a 20-lb snapper!  I saw another turtle, Adam spotted my gimpy turtle from the other day (but I never saw him, boohoo!), and a large barracuda. After completing the circle around the Cay, we headed over to the grassy spot again, where we saw another turtle!  Adam and I both stayed and swam with this one for a while, and he had a bright yellow sucker fish cleaning him.  Pretty cool!

After getting out of our snorkel gear, we dried off and warmed up a bit in the sun, then decided to move our bags down to the beach (about a 1/4 mile), so Adam could read a bit and I could snorkel the Bay.  I got in and immediately saw a couple rays, then found some good patches of coral and some schools of fish, but not what I was looking for - the starfish beds the Bay is known for.  I was heading back in when I spotted another sea turtle, and knowing it would be my last chance, I went over to him and started swimming with him.  It was weird, I felt like he was leading me to something, I can't really explain it.  But just as I knew it was time to turn back to the beach, I saw something dark and kinda star-shaped down below... sure enough, it was a starfish!  The only one I saw.  I looked back to Mr. Turtle to thank him, then headed in to shore.  Still would love to see a whole bed of starfish, but maybe next time; guess it's not the time of year for them, as a family on the beach said they saw tons of them at Christmas.

Adam checked his watch and realized it was 2:30 – we weren't going to make the 3pm ferry.  Oh yes we were!  I needed to get him back so he could get a couple hours detecting in again, plus, we STILL hadn't snorkeled our home beach, Sapphire!  So we darn near ran the mile back to the car, drove the windy roads fast as we dared, made it there at 3:15 and they were still loading.  Yay!

So upon our return home, we both headed down to "our beach" in front of our condo and got our snorkel gear on again.  Sapphire was supposed to be very good snorkeling, but after Waterlemon, I have to admit I was expecting much.  I was surprised at how very good it was, though!  Lots of the pretty orange elkhorn coral I like so much, and at the rocky point around the pool area there is a large reef with quite a bit of coral formations and schools of fish on it.  It was actually as good as Coki Beach, but with one exception.  The waves crashed harder here, and there was a current, so it made swimming much more difficult.  Not really hard or anything, but not the calm bay like we'd had at other sites.  Also, the marina is next door, so boats and waverunners were passing by a little too close for comfort at times, plus the engines were distracting.  But all that aside, the actual snorkeling itself was very, very good and we had a great time seeing a new site, one that had been right under our nose all week!

Adam then detected Sapphire Beach again for a bit while I (wah!) started packing us up.  I just couldn't believe we were leaving the next day.  It had flown by.  That night I sat out on the balcony soaking in St. John, the lights of the marina, the waves crashing below me, pictured the beautiful reefs and just wished I could suspend time and stay in that moment forever.  Adam came out and put his arm around me as I cried sad but happy tears and we planned future visits to make us feel better about leaving the next day.