Sailing Away - 3

St. Thomas at sunrise

Sunday was a day at sea, and we arrived in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, February 18th. Now one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas was founded by the Danish in the 1600s.

We were in the first group of passengers getting off the ship as our excursion began at 8:30. The four of us decided to try the BOSS Underwater Scooter Adventure. That stands for Breathing Observation Submersible Scooter, and we had never heard of them until now.

I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous about this one since I have never gone scuba diving and like the sense of control I have with a mask and snorkel. In this, you stick your head inside a bubble, hop on your scooter, and they lower you 8 feet below the surface of the water. In the meantime, you hold your nose and keeping blowing out to pop your ears as you go down. But once we got going, it was so much fun! We were allowed to ride for 30 minutes, but it felt like only 10. Due to the size of the group - there were 38 of us, I believe - we went down in groups. We were allowed to snorkel after our turn on the scooters.

BOSS

After cleaning up and having lunch, we had some time to do some exploring of Charlotte Amalie. You could see that some areas are still recovering from the hurricanes of 2017, but a lot of buildings look remarkable intact.

Charlotte Amalie

The ship pulled away from the port in St. Thomas at 4:30 p.m. It was another beautiful day.

leaving St. Thomas