St. John Practice Swim

Over Memorial Day weekend, the Beach-to-Beach Power Swim Race is taking place on St. John. The race includes three different distances to choose from - each has the swimmer finishing at a different beach (all on St. John). All swimmers start at Maho Bay. One mile swimmers finish at Cinnamon Bay - the first beach to the west of Maho. Intermediate distance swimmers finish their 2.25 mile swim at Trunk Bay. Long course swimmers complete 3.5 miles at Hawksnest Beach. The race is sponsored by the Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park, among others.

This morning Dave and I participated in a practice swim, which was the one mile course. I'd called the Friends of the VI National Park earlier in the week to find out more information about the practice, after seeing a blurb about it in the paper. They told us to take the 6:30 a.m. ferry from St. Thomas and offered to pick us up at the ferry in St. John. The race organizer also offered to let swimmers place backpacks, shoes, etc, in his car which he'd drive over to Cinnamon for us.

So this morning, a fellow swimmer picked us up around 7 a.m. along with one other St. Thomas swimmer. Along the long, windy, steep road to Maho, we saw a biker and a runner. The biker ended up showing up for the swim. She's about our age and has never swam much but is interested in doing the St. John triathlon so she figured she should start. She gave me some tips on getting a bike here and I gave her some open water swimming tips.

There were three kayakers along the way for support, and they asked us to buddy-up for the swim. For the record, Dave and I both left our buddies behind. oops! so don't trust us as buddies in the future I guess... Chelsea (the biker-swimmer) asked if she could buddy with us, but I knew I couldn't keep up with Dave so he found another swimmer by looking for someone who planned to finish in about 30 minutes. Right after we started, it was clear that Chelsea and I were at very different paces. Lucky for me, an older guy (Bryce from St. Thomas too) wasn't very far ahead of us (at the very end of the pack) and seemed about the same pace as Chelsea. So, after arranging it with the two of them, they became buddies and I went solo. It was a fairly easy swim, just some mild swells as I rounded the point between the beaches. After I finished - in 34 minutes - I swam back to see how Chelsea was enjoying her first open water swim. Dave had finished first in 26 minutes. But this wasn't a race, right?

St. John is quite different from St. Thomas. There is a lot more open space because so much of the island is National Park. People are also a bit more friendly, probably in part because so few people live on the island that they see each other all the time. Everyone seems to either hitchhike a lot or give rides a lot. That was evident when the race director was heading out of Cinnamon with 3 swimmers sitting on the tailgate as he said to the four of us from St. Thomas, "You're all good to get back to Cruz Bay? I'm sure you can hitch a ride." We started to walk back towards Cruz Bay (the town where the ferry is) and within 5 minutes someone came along and offered us a ride. She'd actually been one of the kayakers for our practice swim. She's usually stationed at the last beach for the race, so she told us a little about what it's like at the end too.

The swim this morning didn't seem that long to me, but we did have the current working with us. It was a decent workout though and it made us hungry! After getting back to St. Thomas, we felt it only appropriate to gorge ourselves at one of the resort champagne Sunday brunches. After various difficulties (some of the resorts apparently don't do Sunday brunch in the off-season!), we ended up at the Marriott where we ate lots of fruit, salads, omelettes, waffles, key lime pie and other delectables. They even had a whole roasted pig! Strangely, they also had plantains available but they were labeled as sweet potatoes. Maybe they think some visitors to our islands don't like new foods? Dave had soursop juice along with the champagne but other than that, this brunch was a fairly standard one you could have anywhere in the states. For anyone keeping track, the Ritz sunday brunch is our favorite, followed by the Marriott. The Ritz regular brunch is highly ranked as well - for me it's about the same as the Marriott. Best Western is on the bottom, even though it includes our favorite steel pan player, Aben Marrero, the food just isn't quite as good.

Carnival officially kicks off tomorrow, though various events have already taken place. Expect a few more posts soon about the festivities!