For this wonderful vacation, we chartered a catamaran (the Koru) with a crew (2 people: a captain (Joran) and a chef/first mate (Casey, who was an excellent chef)). The plan is to putter around the US and British Virgin Islands. The captain will bring us to different areas to snorkel every day. How cool is that!? Casey feeds us and is also the bartender. It’s an “all-inclusive” charter, so we don’t have to worry about anything. 😎

We flew from Denver to San Juan, Puerto Rico, then hopped on an 8-passenger Cessna to wing it over to St Thomas.

Here’s the map on the plane monitor showing our path from Denver to San Juan…

And our small Cessna…there were 8 total passengers, plus the pilot and co-pilot.

Yes, it was a very snug fit!

Our flights arrived in the evening, so we stayed at a nearby hotel overnight – then boarded the Koru on Monday morning. Here you can see Joran and Casey.

There was nothing special about the hotel, just a bed to sleep in. In the morning, we heard a rooster calling. It was right outside our front door. There are also cats at the hotel. Apparently, chickens and cats wander around all these islands.

And… here is our boat – Koru! What a great catamaran it ended up being. It’s a Bali 4.8 brand/model, and about 48′ long.

Here is the area where we’ll spend most of our lounging time. This particular brand of boat (Bali) is really neat. The sliding glass door you see rotates up to the ceiling with the touch of a button! Then you can open the windows along the sides so the lounging area is completely open to the breezes. But, it if was rainy, you can close it up like this. Totally cool! During the day, this area was always open. Joran just closed it when everyone went to bed at night.

This is where we’ll eat our breakfast and lunch. Most dinners we ate up on the flybridge (up on the top). Overall, it’s a very comfy boat. For our arrival, Casey provided lunch and some interesting iced drinks. She does a really nice presentation of the food and table.

When you turn around and look the other direction, you can see the very nice kitchen area. They fit in a lot of stuff for a boat! This kitchen is larger than many house kitchens!

We completely forgot to take pics of our bedrooms before they got all messy. Oh well! Because these are queen beds with the corners chopped off, we used two different rooms. It just didn’t work for tall Jeff to fit with the end corners not there if we shared a bed.

One of the beds had steps to get up on it. Jeff used that room because I just couldn’t deal with the steps at night with my bad knee (which gave out about a week before this trip started!).

Here are the steps down to the rooms from the kitchen area. Jeff’s room was left, mine was right.

This is the room I used. The door across the room is a shower. The toilet/sink room is just on the left, not in this picture.

Here is the ensuite bathroom for my room.

And, right across the hall, here is Jeff’s room. You can see the steps needed to climb up into the bed.

Overall, these were roomy and nice rooms. We were on the starboard (right) side and the crew was over on the port side. The rooms have a/c that we ran at night to make it cooler to sleep. Very nice!

For this 1st day, Joran motored us near St John’s island and somewhat near the BVI ocean border. Here is Joran piloting the boat. This area up at the top has nice benches all around it in the shade. While motoring, we hung out at the top here with Joran. It was nice and breezy, with a good view

After arriving to our spot, Joran took us on the dinghy to a nearby snorkeling area. Checkout the next post for that topic.

Casey made us a delicious dinner. We forgot to take a picture of the appetizer. Oops! It was shaved asparagus (like if you used a potato peeler on the asparagus stalks), small amount of mint, pistachio nuts. a light dressing and shaves of pecorino cheese. It was yummy!

Then on to the main course – sea bass over a bed of risotto and baked broccolini.

Dessert was brownies with salted caramel ice cream. SOOoo good! Sorry, we ate it before taking a picture!

Since the next post will have snorkeling pics, I added our next day’s breakfast below. It was mashed avocado on thick toast topped with smoked salmon and a poached egg with feta cheese and pomegranate seeds scattered on top. The pom seeds were a delicious taste with everything else.

And also a very nice fruit plate. How do they get all the fresh fruit down here in St Thomas?

OK! On to the next post!