Photos from 3/8-3/15 Eastern

[mobetsy]

Those are great pictures! What a lot of fun...

I was curious about the kids and snorkeling. My boys will be 9 and almost 6 when we go next year. I'm pretty sure the 9 y.o. will do okay, but not sure if he'll definitely need a vest (we're bringing our own equipment); he's sort of low-intermediate swimmer. And I don't know if our 6 y.o. will be willing to try it at all. In your group, it looked like you had some who snorkeled and some who didn't...any thoughts on this?

 

[haddockck]

The beaches you visited in St. Maarten and St. Thomas looked gorgeous! How did you get to them? What was the name of the beach at St. Maarten?

 

[joy_to_the_fishies]

mobetsy --
Re: kids and snorkeling, my 8 year old was a little wary at first, but I REALLY wanted to snorkel on this vacation, so I signed us up for two snorkeling excursions (Golden Eagle Catamaran on St. Maarten and 5 Star Snorkeling Tour on St. Thomas), plus we snorkeled on Castaway Cay. St. Maarten didn't go so well because the undertow was kind of strong that day, but DS8 loved Trunk Bay, and by the time we got to Castaway Cay, he was a pro. As for my 6 year old, he wasn't quite ready. He just liked playing on the beach, so my husband and I had to do tag-team snorkeling. But it was still great. We absolutely loved it. We're from Minnesota and are snorkel novices, so we're easy to please. I couldn't really tell you if the coral reefs were good, bad, or otherwise, but to us, they were spectacular. Here's some advice, maybe don't even introduce your 6 year old to snorkeling until you get to Castaway Cay. There, they have all kinds of underwater "treasures" (sunken submarine, anchors, etc.) to look at, plus lifeguards. It's not worth ruining the Castaway snorkeling experience for them by forcing them to snorkel where they're not comfortable. But don't NOT go on a snorkeling excursion just because of your 6 year old. Tag-teaming went fine for us, plus our DS6 could ride in a little rubber motor boat on the Trunk Bay tour, rather than swimming back out to the boat. On the catamaran tour, they gave him a noodle to swim to shore with, and he loved that.

haddockck --
The beach we visited on St. Thomas (actually St. John -- the 5 Star Snorkel Tour includes a ride on the Leland Sneed oyster boat over to another island) was called Trunk Bay. I guess it's a national park and it has some kind of "snorkeling trail" somewhere with underwater signs that point out the different kinds of coral, but we didn't see that. I think we were on a more secluded side of the beach or something. Anyway, it was gorgeous... the white sand, the aqua water... ahhh... As for St. Maarten, the Golden Eagle catamaran tour dropped us off on an island, but I don't know what it was called. I've since tried to find out by looking on the Golden Eagle's web site (http://www.sailingsxm.com/eagle.htm), but it didn't say. If anyone knows, I'd love to know for my "someday scrapbook."

 

[mobetsy]

Thanks for the input; that is really helpful! We will bring along the snorkel stuff for our younger son, and if he wants to try it he can; we'll save the real encouragement for CC, which sounds like it's the most enticing for a little kid. On the two excursions, I'm assuming they had PFD's for the kids (actually, for everyone)? He was quite brave about swimming in a lake last summer with a good PFD on.

 

[joy_to_the_fishies]

mobetsy --
Yes, they had life vests for everyone on both excursions, and I don't even think it was optional... everyone wore one. They also had them for rent on Castaway Cay.

--Joy

 

[WDWLVR]

Great photo's - thanks for sharing. I love looking others photos. It really gets me in the mood!

 

[PinClubs]

Great photos! Thanks for sharing.

Curious question. Our family sails on June 28th and we are try to decide on excursions for St. Maarten. We are thinking about the Golden Eagle catamaran but heard that there was a chance of seeing nudity. We are bringing are nine year old daughter and we are trying to avoid those situations.

Anything you can describe about the excursion would be appreciated. Please include the destination of the catamaran if you don't mind.

Thank you,

Jeff

 

[joy_to_the_fishies]

PinClubs...

When we were on our Golden Eagle catamaran tour, I guess there WAS a nude catamaran tour further down the beach. But where we were, you couldn't see them. In fact, when we heard about them and did TRY to see them from our boat, they'd all gone and gotten some mud bath treatment or something, so we couldn't see anything anyway. We laughed about it.

There's a picture of our "view of the nudists" on page two of my online photo album (http://www.redstarcreative.com/joy). Look at the picture with the caption that reads "The water and the sand were beautiful." You can click on it to enlarge it. That was the view from our catamaran. The nudists were WAY down the beach, and they hung out behind some bushes, so you see there was really no way for us to see them from where we were.

The truth is, I think Golden Eagle is aware of the nudists and goes out of their way to avoid them. My kids were 6 and 8, and had no idea. We stuck to our end of the island and snorkeled... no mud baths for us.