With an I

Wednesday 19 April, 2006
Road Town, Tortola, BVI
N 18 degrees 25.157 minutes
W 064 degrees 36.825 minutes

We anchored in Road Town, the biggest town in the BVIs yesterday, to reprovision and prepare the boat for our guests, Devin and Bridget, who will arrive on Tortola by ferry this afternoon. The town itself is not one of Tortola's best attractions, though there is some interesting West Indian architecture near the harbor. As we were walking toward the grocery store, however, we were shocked to see somebody we knew: Norm Martin!

No, Norm is not part of the clan of my distant relatives who never changed the spelling of his last name. He is, or was, our delivery captain back when we first bought Delilah and were attempting to sail her up the coast, almost exactly five years ago. Many of you will remember that we made it all of 50 miles before returning to shore and putting Delilah on a truck, sending her north across dry land. Neither she nor her crew were in any shape for offshore sailing back then.

Norm used to live in Charlestown, so we would see him from time to time, and we would feel duty-bound to report that we were still progressing toward our goal. Norm was always very nice about it, but I suspect that he did not believe for a moment that we would ever make it past the Harbor Islands. What a thrill it was to run into him down here, and when he asked how we got here, to say, "We sailed! Delilah is in the harbor, right next to the cruise ship."

To repeat a phrase of Dad's, "We've arrived, and to prove it we're here."