Past Few Days

Tuesday, April 11
Point Colison, Virgin Gorda

We spent four days in Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke. It really is incredible. The harbor empties each morning and fills each evening with charter boats. Of course, as each charter boat has only a week, and as they are on vacation, they tend to party fairly hard. There's a little bar on the beach with a big reputation--Foxy's. It's an open air bar, sometimes with a reggae band doing such reggae hits as "Oh What A Night". You know... "Oh what a night. Late December back in '63". Priceless. Beer was drunk, laughs were had, Jill danced (but only did a little air guitar) to AC/DC, etc.

Last Saturday, we went with David from Amanzi on John's boat, Savvy, and sailed over to a small island--Sandy Cay. We snorkeled for a while, then went to Soper's Hole, Tortola, to pick Kim (from Amanzi) up. She had been visiting family in Florida. I had been planning for some time to stock up on good tea while in the BVIs, but the fancy-pants store at Soper's Hole Marina had the same old boring tea. Where, oh where, will I find good tea? Jill did pick up a bag of chocolate, which helped somewhat.

On Sunday, we sailed to The Bight on Norman Island. The harbor is absolutely jammed with moorings. We resorted to anchoring in the mouth of the harbor in 25 feet of water. On the plus side, we rowed from our boat to snorkel in a series of caves. Stunning. Fish everywhere. They even ate the growth of the bottom of our dinghy! In the afternoon, we went in to Willy T's, a boat that had been converted to a restaurant and bar. Wild things happened there. As this is a family blog, anyone wanting more details should contact us via email. In the evening, we repaired aboard Savvy for pizza.

Yesterday, we sailed, upwind, to The Baths, on Virgin Gorda. The Baths are a series of enormous boulders around which coral reefs have formed. Certain places are virtual wall dives, with rock and coral plunging down 20 or 30 feet. Once again, amazing fish are all around. In the afternoon, we motored to our current location. It took me an hour or so to set the hook, as the bottom is very rocky and has hard packed sand. I finally had to attach our Bruce anchor to our CQR. That's something like 80 pounds of anchor, in addition to the chain. I am not looking forward to pulling it up.