Exploring Water Island

[Note, I'm having difficulty getting photos to show in the blog, so I've inserted links to them with a note on what the picture is of. I'll try to get the photos added to the website later.]

While Debbie was here, we went to Water Island, known as the fourth Virgin Island. It is a very short 10 minute ferry ride from the Crown Bay area of St. Thomas to Water Island. The ferry had about 5 other people on it who all seemed to be carrying back groceries to Water Island. Water Island has no commerce on it except for two restaurants - Heidi's on the beach and then Water Island Deli. We planned to go to Honeymoon Beach for awhile. When we started walking, a couple that had been on the ferry asked us if we were going to the beach and if we wanted a ride. So the three of us hopped on the back of their golf cart, and away we went! [picture of the "cars" at the ferry dock.]

The island is just under 500 acres and has about 50-200 residents depending on the season. As far as we could tell, most of the cars did not have current license plates and we saw many golf carts. The empty beach was a little less impressive than I'd hoped. Of course, I judge my beaches by how few boats are moored there and what the water is like for swimming. I don't like beaches with lots of boats around because they get in the way for swimming, and they make the water "smell" like gas. There wasn't much of interest to look at in the water as it seemed like a big seagrass field covered the entire area. To entertain ourselves, Debbie, Dave and I had races crawling in knee deep water and played on the big floating thing we could climb onto, sunbathe on, and jump off. [pictures: Dave and me on the beach; Dave's artistic view of the beach.]

Apparently Saturday nights are the big nights to have dinner on Water Island. According to one resident we met, Heidi makes a fancy dinner and uses real plates and silverware. Everyone goes to the dinner. Sometimes a pizza boat anchors in the bay. There are swim-up bars, so why not a swim-up pizza joint? The island was very quiet and the people seemed very friendly. I bet that when cruise ship visitors go on the mountain bike tours on the island, the population and noise-level doubles! There were a lot of caucasian people there which was pretty different from St. Thomas.

When we headed back to the dock, we had some extra time because the walk was much shorter than we anticipated. The ferry docks right by the mail box area. There were shelves to leave a book or take a book too - their version of a public library. [picture of library.] Notices are also placed here, such as what Heidi is having for dinner that Saturday night. We also saw a "We'll miss you all" note from a family that (from what we could deduce) had left the island for a few months to await the birth of the newest addition before their return to the island. (I admit, it's a little weird living in a place where people always leave for any planned medical procedures.) You can even leave your gas tank here with your name on it and on a weekly basis someone takes the tanks to St. Thomas and fills them up. Water Island is clearly a very small community where everyone knows everyone and they all seem to get along and watch out for each other.

Beach to Beach Power Swim Race

On Sunday over Memorial Day weekend, Dave and I swam the middle distance course for the Third Annual St. John Beach to Beach Power Swim. It was the same 2.4 mile course that we did a few practice swims for over the past few weeks. Dave won overall with a time of 47 minutes and 29 seconds! And I won overall among the women in 1:06:47!

There were lots of people at the race - over 140 participated. A bunch of us from St. Thomas took the early ferry over and got a ride on a safari bus to the starting line. (We dropped my friend Debbie off at Trunk Bay where she took this nice photo of our finish line beach.) We got our numbers written on us; we got our green swim caps to show which distance we were doing; and I put some vaseline under my swimsuit straps to prevent chafing. It seems like 2 miles is about the distance for which I need to worry about that. Of course, I forgot about putting it where my swimcap would be, so I ended up with some little scabs around the back of my neck. Then we put our belongings in big trash bags that they later took to the beaches at which we'd finish and did a little bit of warm-up swimming. I remember thinking it was weird at the St. Croix swim race that people were doing warm-up swimming before a 5 mile swim race. But there we were, warming up for half the distance. We both really wanted to win, but I also wanted to beat my previous time of 1:09.

The race organizers started us in waves, letting the longest distance swimmers go two minutes before the middle distance swimmers. It was fun to see our friend Bryce off on his journey. Dave told me he planned to go out super fast to work on the intimidation factor. I was weary to do the same - it's not real fun to be swimming when you're trying to catch your breath! When Dave's brother Jon was here the week before the race, we swam a few mornings at Magen's Bay, and one day we did a "practice start" - all running into the water at the same time. We'd done that once before during a practice swim. It's nice to be familiar with the feelings of running into shallow water, deciding when it's deep enough to dive and start swimming, and avoiding getting kicked or clawed by someone else. One of my favorite things about starting races right next to Dave is that I know I'll have an empty space near me almost immediately after the race begins as he shoots off ahead of me.

I'm glad I was familiar with the race course, as I rarely had to pay attention to where I needed to swim. It was a little strange catching up to the slower 3.5 mile swimmers. I recognized one woman (I won't mention names!) who was wearing a wetsuit (really) and when I started to swim past her, she sped up to try to keep me from getting ahead. It was very weird because I was clearly not competing against her since we were swimming different distances and she was in the fins division. I didn't swim over anyone, but I did swim through a couple people. I managed to avoid most of the swimmers because during our practices I'd noticed that the water was very deep next to the land mass we were swimming around, so I knew I didn't really need to stay that far away from it. So I cut that corner as short as I could. Once I got past the turn towards Cinnamon beach though, the swimmers were more spread out.

I was nervous about the Cinnamon area because I really had no idea where the buoy gate would be that we needed to swim through. The buoy gates were just two orange buoys - maybe 2 feet big - that we had to swim through a few places during the course to avoid disqualification. It was a little hard to see the buoy gate at Cinnamon so I just swam towards their finish area like we'd been told. (The ones pictured here are at Trunk, but it was the same idea at Cinnamon. Just picture trying to see them when you're at water level with waves and it's 200 meters away.) The finish areas were very visable since it was made up of a few banners about 8 feet off the ground. Finally I saw the gate and noticed a boat directly behind it, so I used the boat to sight on until I got closer to the gate. The gate was a lot closer to shore than I'd swam during our practices (where we had no buoys and just kind of guessed how far to swim in), but I knew I'd gained some time by cutting the corner from Maho so short.

The swim away from Cinnamon towards Trunk was a little stressful. I hadn't noticed any other swimmers with green caps but they could be anywhere! I knew one of the women was training for an Ironman, so she intimidated me a bit. It felt like it was raining, but it might have just been my own splashing. My friend Chelsea said she felt rain too but nobody else mentioned it! The water was definitely a little rougher than it had been during any of our practices. I didn't notice the sea life during the race; guess I was paying more attention to my swimming! As I got closer to the buoys marking the last turn, I sped up a bit because I wanted to end the race feeling like I couldn't swim another minute, and I hadn't felt that way during the previous practices.

It got a bit cloudy while I was getting closer to Trunk so it was harder to see the shore. I was really surprised when I was suddenly at the last turn buoy and I was free to swim straight to the finish line on the shore. I sprinted as fast as I could but I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. The current felt really strong, pushing me towards the cay and the water felt really rough. I swam as hard as I could, knowing it'd be easier once I got to the part of Trunk's beach that is more protected. It felt like the longest stretch at Trunk I'd ever done. I kept breathing to the right to avoid swallowing waves of water that were being pushed at me from the left. Once I got to the protected area I breathed to the left, hoping I wouldn't see anyone coming up behind me all of a sudden.

Since Debbie was on-island visiting us, she volunteered for the race at the beach Dave and I finished on. As I climbed out of the water to run under the finish banner, I heard her yell "Go Kendra!" It's nice to have a cheerleader! I was glad to discover I beat my previous time. But nobody could tell me definitively if I'd been the first solo female swimmer out of the water, so I didn't know that I won until we got to the beach party and they posted the results. Dave knew he won because they had a little ribbon finish line for him to run through. (If you're wondering about the ironwoman-in-training, she finished a little after me and then went for a twenty mile bike ride....)

After the race, there was a beach party BBQ. In addition to a free hat and shirt, Debbie even got meal for being a volunteer. She bought our lunch and beers for us too. When the Virgin Islands Pale Ale workers came around to document the event, Debbie was still working on hers, so they snapped a photo of her and someone who has a cool job in my building. I also met someone I'd chatted with on the US Masters Swimmers open-water swimming forum. She's got some photos of the race on her blog. Our friend Bryce won an award for being the oldest participant - he finished the 3.5 mile course at age 69.

At the awards ceremony, the announcer thought it was pretty cool that the men's and women's winners were a married couple. We're mentioned in the Daily News article covering the race as well as on the race website that summarizes the results. I think that makes about five or six times that we've made it into the paper. For some reason the St Croix Avis newspaper had listed the results from the first practice swim, just by first name, but I happened to see it and I know who "Dave" and "Kendra". :)

For winning, we got little duffle bags full of goodies like sunscreen, beach towels, and beach hats. We also each won a $50 gift certificate to a shop on St. John (we bought ourselves some nice platters with hand painted star fish on them) as well as framed paintings of fish. Dave tells me the "fish" don't really exist, but I don't mind. They're pretty! I have to admit, it was great to go from coming in almost last in the 5 mile swim, to winning a 2.4 mile swim. We had a really good time doing the practice swims and doing the races and meeting all these other swimmers on St. Thomas and St. John. Hopefully we can put together another group swim before the St. Croix race in October.