Saturday, March 6. It's a very welcome rainy afternoon in Coral Bay, the first real rain we've seen in about a month and a half. The islands are very dry, and there have been warnings about flash flooding all day on the NOAA weather channel (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration - some handle, eh? Everyone just calls it "Noah"). Tune in to VHFchannel 5 or 6, and there's a computerized male voice that gives deadpan coverage of the weather, in Spanish and then English, current conditions and a forecast. There's entertainment value too: an occasional computer rendition of a word that just isn't quite right. It's hard for real people to sort out the proper pronunciation of "Mayaguez," but our digital forecaster really chews it up good. Also his rendition of "haze" is somehow hilarious.

So we knew the rain was coming, and we were glad of it. During the first downpour, I donned my bathing suit and a stupid hat, and busied myself on deck with the deckbrush and some soapy water, and scrubbed all the seats and cushions and then went at the teak, and dug the crap out of the scupper drains so the cockpit wouldn't flood.

Our raincatchers - big one on the foredeck that drains right into the tank fill, and two aft that collect from the awning - are so great. Free water! While I was scrubbing and splashing around on deck, I also emptied about 16 gallons from the aft raincatchers into the tank, and we figure we caught at least that much from the main raincatcher. So I felt justified in treating myself to a nice shower, shave, and shampoo (I include these details to make up for the lack of laundry news in this issue).

Still raining three hours later, and our tanks are full.

We've spent several days anchored here in Round Bay, on the south side of St. John, with one day "out" when we took the bus to Cruz Bay. Two mornings in a row, I was awakened early, like 6, 6:30, by the sound of pelicans crashing into the water, over and over. I gave up on sleep and joined Randy on deck for coffee and carnage.

For the next two hours, we watched the pelicans diving so close they were banging into the boat and landing copious splats of salt water on deck. They gorged themselves on the huge roiling ball of tiny silver fish that had camped out under the boat. Sometimes the pelicans just floated around and dipped their beaks into the margins of the mass of fish.

A lot of the fish under the boat were safe from the overhead diving of the pelicans, but herding the tiny fish under the water were dozens of pompano, big eye jacks, blue runners, bar jacks, trumpet fish, and huge tarpon - 3-4 feet long - zooming around. At one point, a couple of fishermen in a small boat noticed the commotion and came over and threw their cast net right beside the boat - in two casts they had enough bait for their morning's fishing.

Below all this action near the surface were big brown nurse sharks and rays. It was a wild scene. They dispersed in time for us to enjoy a late breakfast in relative peace. Just remoras and sharksuckers circling and picking up stray bits.

I waited until late afternoon for a swim.