About the 18-foot swells, that's actually shore breaking at 18 to 24 feet. I tried to post the weather report on the trips board the day we left but apparently the trips board isn't working. By that morning the report was for 9 to 11 foot swells with long intervals, 18 to 24 foot breaking waves on shore, and volcanic ash (from Montserrat which had the dome collapse the day before.) It was an ominous weather report, especially the volcanic ash part which kinda made it sound dooms-dayish.

Once I get the time to post my report I will cover how I ammended the trip plan so that we stayed south of the cays and kept the north swell on the other side most of the trip. Down here you can have massive swells on the north and the south can be calm and flat. I changed our departure time to match the tide and give it a little time to settle down out there. Each point of the trip put us closer and closer to the bad stuff so we could kind of gauge it before we went on the open-water portion from St. John to Jost VanDyke. (By the way Rob, it's "Jost" with a "J" not "Yost" which is a guy that designs kayaks! :) Also it's "St. John" not "St. John's"... not being petty, but St. John's is in Antigua and St. John in the VI.

Anyway once we got out there the swell was veeeeery long intervals so despite the 9 to 11 foot swells it didn't feel that bad except when we hit Johnson's Reef where Rob got one of my favorite pics of me with a 15 to 18- foot breaking wave behind me. The main concern was on St. John's N Shore we could see the huge waves crashing on the beach and I kept us far from it in case one of us took a spill so we didn't get in that mess.... but.... ummmm.... Rob... did anyone take a spill??? I seem to remember at one point near Jost you decided to take an impromptu free dive but I think that was to chase a Barracuda, right???

Okay, just wanted to clarify but the rest will come in the trip report.