In 2022, right before we purchased our own boat, we took a trip to the BVIs to sail with Derek and Diane. I had such a good time in the Bahamas years prior that going back to the Caribbean for my birthday seemed like an awesome opportunity. Also, given that it was my birthday, Angela did all of the planning/booking/etc - which was great for me - but I still ended up being the designated captain given I had the most sailing experience.
But first, we had to send Sara off to stay with Grandma Joan for the week. She ended up flying back to Colorado for the week and had a great time!
2022-07-09
Getting there is half the battle. We did a full day of travel to get to the BVIs - with three different legs and a very worrisome almost delay in Charlette NC. We ended the day on a high note though - arriving in the BVIs to stay at a very fancy hotel that Angela picked out.
2022-07-10
We work early took a short flight to the Tortola island the marina was on - landing on the smaller Beef island connected to Tortola by bridge - and then we took all our bags onto a small boat which ferried us across to Scrub island were the marina was located. The whole process was relatively smooth, but we had a lot of luggage that made it a bit complex.
The process is pretty straight-forward with these charters - you check-in in the late morning and wait for your boat to come back in from the previous charter. There’s a couple of hours of cleaning before you can move on and then you spend a few hours unpacking and stowing your food. Then a captain comes by to walk you through the boat systems. The whole thing is relatively efficient, but of course you are eager to leave so the process takes way too long. We opted to have the boat stocked with food for us this time, which removed a chore that would have otherwise probably kept us more occupied.
Our boat was named the “Silk Pants”. It was a 42 foot Lagoon catamaran and it was quite a bit nicer, although well used, vs the 38 footer we had in the Bahamas. One of the most amazing features was AC - which we ended up using extensively on the trip…
After you get a walk through of all the systems, one of the captains gives you a possible itinerary that you can follow for the week - this is a huge benefit as it allows you to make the most of your trip and hit up all the fun places. This was my notes from our itinerary briefing.
That evening, we stayed in the marina and planed to disembark the following morning. Some crews will leave the marina and anchor nearby on the first night, but that’s pretty stressful in my opinion. Either way, we slept soundly thinking about all of the amazing adventures we had ahead of us.
2022-07-11
Our first sail was to Virgin Gorda where we were going to grab a mooring ball near the bitter end yacht club - a place that Angela’s parents had been 20 years earlier (although it had been destroyed several times in hurricanes between then and now so the whole place was different). We had great winds - which held for the entire trip - and we were able to sail the entire way, which was awesome. I did track all of the sails on this trip, but then I lost my phone in the water later in the trip. All of the photos backed up, but the tracks (sadly) did not.
We did a stop off at the Baths - which was an amazing little maze of rocks to explore. Much of it was partially submerged and you were either wading or swimming through the rocks. I somehow managed to lose all of my pictures from the baths, but they were really cool!
The bitter end yacht club was a pretty fancy little place and we went ashore to grab some dinner and explore a bit. We had a nice, relaxing evening before heading back to the boat for the night.
2022-07-11
The AC needed the generator to run, so we decided to run it all the way up until we went to sleep and then turn it off to save fuel - not fully realizing that the generator uses very little fuel and the winds were so great that we rarely used the motor except for docking. Either way, the night ended up being pretty warm and Diane moved up to the hammock in the early morning. We did some fuel calculations during the day and decided we were fine to run the generator all night after this first night.
We had a big sail today to Anegada - big still being less than 10 nautical miles and we made it to the island before noon. We were leaving at the same time as a bunch of other boats - a little Anegada Regatta. We saw some flamingoes fly past on their way to Anegata, which was super fun.
We also watched a several boats motor the whole way - which looked miserable. The sails kept us pretty steady in the wavy seas, and the boats that were motoring were getting kicked all over the place… We held a pretty steady 7.5-8.0 knts the whole way - not bad!
We got to Anagada and grabbed a mooring ball - and right as we pulled up, a little turtle friend came by to say high. :)
The thing to do on Anagada was eat the lobster. But before you ate the lobster, the thing to do was rent mopeds and drive around the island - and that’s just what we did. We grabbed our mopeds and drove all around - again following a little itinerary that the rental shop sent with us. Oh - and Angela got a very pretty pink helmet!
Our first stop on our moped tour was the flamingo lookout - there are a few salt ponds where the flamingos frequent on Anagada and this lookout was “nearby” one of them. There were several nests near the pond as I guess these ponds have a lot of their favorite little salt shrimp. These flamingos are transplants from the 70s (or something) and they just seem to thrive here without doing damage to the native species - so they have been allowed to stay.
Our next stop was actually two stops - the Big Bamboo Beach bar and Flash of Beauty. We grabbed drinks at both and got the most amazing conch fritters at the Flash of Beauty. We were low on cash and wanted to pay with card, but apparently they didn’t do that here. We canceled our order, but she made them for us anyway and let us pay what we could - We felt bad, but all of us gave her amazing reviews, so hopefully we made it up to her.
Our next stop was on the south end of the island where there is a small town and a historical - Conch Island. There are a lot of conches living in this area and this was basically a century’s worth of discarded shells from harvested conches. The island was about 20 feet out of the sea and it apparently was in 20 feet of water - so 40 feet of conch shells. That’s a lot of shells!
We also did a small boardwalk hike to a conch harvesting area that had conch shells all along it.
We wrapped up our moped ride and headed back to the boat for some chill time before dinner. We had called in over the radio in the morning to put in our lobster order - and we were all very much looking forward to a fancy lobster dish. For now though, it was beer o’clock.
We jumped in the water for a quick snorkel around the anchorage and saw a ray! Diane was able to get a great video of him - you can actually hear him sucking in the water…
Our lobster dinner was amazing and it carried us into the early evening - where there was some dancing and merriment. There were a few kids there and it made us miss Sara - she would have really loved this trip.
We were very full by the time we finished up with dinner and we headed back to the boat for a food coma induced sleep (with AC this time!)
2022-07-12
The following morning, we took off on an early sail back to the main group of islands. We had some lovely lunch prepared by Angela and Diane and basically a perfect calm sail back.
Sailing was very smooth for the 20 knts of wind we were getting - the seas were only a little rough and the catamaran cut right through them - stable as can be.
Our first stop of the day was at Monkey Point for a snorkel stop. We also found a fun hike up the side of the hill (involving a rope climb on the steep parts) for a really great view of the bay and surrounding area. There were tons of fish at Monkey point - big schools of tiny little fish.
After a couple of hours at monkey point, we headed to Cane garden - which was to be our anchorage for the night. The trip was quick and when we arrived we were greeted with a more built up/town area vs the previous two nights. The buildings were all painted in fun colors and it made for some really great pictures/views from the boat.
We went ashore for a resupply run - not that we needed anything, but there were some wants (like chips) and we decided we might as well stock up on beer - because that’s what this boat runs on… The walk to the grocery was nice and we passed a few restaurants - which we passed on this time around.
We got back to the boat and had some drinks while we watched the sun go down a the little town light up for the evening.
2022-07-14
The following morning, we woke slowly and had some coffee before setting off. Angela and my side of the boat had the AC fail in the middle of the night and we did not have the wherewithal to try to fix it.
After coffee and breakfast though, we did. We tried a few things and the called the charter company who walked us through a few troubleshooting steps. At the end of the day, it was the sea strainer on the seacock that had been clogged and it was a style that we had not seen before so we didn’t think that it was a sea strainer that needed to be cleared. Before too long though, we had it fixed.
Next on the list was refilling our water - which we had used about half off. This is a catamaran, so docking was easy and after about 10 min of refilling water - w were off again!
Our goal for the day was to sail to Green Cay for a stopover and then on to Diamond Cay for the night. Green Cay had the famous sandy spit and marriage palm - which is a palm tree out on the middle of this spit that is supposed to be perfect for a proposal.
Unfortunately, right as we were pulling into the anchorage we got hit with a big squall - we were able to grab our mooring with much consternation and clearly visiting the marriage palm in these winds was out of the question.
We waited for the Squall to subside, and then we headed ashore to visit the B-line for lunch. This was a fun little seaside bar with all the boater propaganda that is common in these bars - and we added to it! Hurricanes generally tear out all of the wooden roofs (they call them sacrificial roofs) so it’s unlikely it will last more than a few years - but for the time being we left a little piece of our trip in the BVIs. Lunch was good too!
We managed to swamp our dinghy while we were having lunch somehow - I think the waves managed to knock the bung out and then the rising tide started to fill it. However it happened, we had to carry it up on shore a few more feet and spend 5 min waiting for it to drain before departing.
We took the dinghy over to Jost Van Dyke island after lunch to do a small hike out to the Bubbly pool - which was a small bathtub place that filled with the waves from the bottom and had kinda a cool effect. Unfortunately, the waves were coming at the wrong angle so we got a cool pool - but no bubbles.
We got back to the boat in the late afternoon and did another small sail over to Diamond Cay - which was less than a mile away, but more protected than the Green Cay spot. We got hit with another Squall on the way - they came and went faster as you could blink!
We had a lovely evening at Diamond Cay - making dinner and doing a bit of swimming (not much to see though). The sunset was beautiful and we got some great pictures of the pass over to Green Cay, but unfortunately Marriage Palm was just out of sight.
2022-07-15
The following morning we had a lovely late breakfast and prepped for our move to Norman island and the infamous Willy Ts.
The sail to Normal island was a longer one and we actually crossed back into the US virgin islands for a few hours (we didn’t make landfall, so immigration not needed).
We opted not to grab a mooring in Bight bay as we heard that Willy Ts can get pretty rowdy at night. Instead we grabbed a mooring in Privateer bay, just on the other side of treasure point. We did a quick snorkel when we got there and saw a few turtles swimming around the boat.
We decided that going to Willy Ts earlier in the day might be more our speed, but it turns out it’s pretty crazy at all times of the day. We had a few drinks (Painkillers are the drink of choice here) and we grabbed some food.
The Willy T rules explain quite a bit about this place.
We also discovered that there was a famous activity here where women would get a Willy T fake tattoo on their butts - by being slapped (hard) by the bartender. Men were cheering to have their wives get slapped on the ass. Again, gives you an idea of what this place is.
The last thing you are supposed to do at Willy Ts is to jump off of the top deck. You are supposed to do it topless (or fully nude), but - well - that’s not really who we are. So we did jump, but our swimsuits stayed on.
We took the dinghy back to the boat and then went for a swim up to treasure point, which took a while but it was good exercise and lots to see on the way. Treasure Point is a series of small caves in a cliff face that you can swim into. Lots of fish and interesting coral, but the cool part is the deep dark caves that have a fun glow to them. I guess there was some treasure hunt recently and we found some floating plastic coins in the water - we collected as many as we could to avoid litter and I saved one to give to Sara when we get home.
We swam back to the boat for a peaceful evening. We could hear the commotion at Willy Ts on the other side of treasure point - we made the right decision staying on this side. I don’t think we would have been able to sleep had we stayed near Willy Ts…
2022-07-16
The next morning we made the sail over to cooper island and the Cooper Island beach resort. We got hit in a couple of squalls on the way and, because of how open this trip was, you could see them coming a ways out. It was actually kinda cool - this little dark cloud would approach, then the wind would kick up to 30 knts, buckets of rain would hit, and then it would be done - sun was out again. Crazy!
I thought it would be fun to quickly sail out from behind Cooper island into the more open water - and see how the Cat performs in bigger seas. I thought she did really well, but Derek and Diane were clearly a little anxious about it, so we tacked back in behind Cooper island. I thought it was a very successful test though - it would be fun to have one of these someday.
Grabbing the mooring in Cooper island was where we had our first blunder of the trip - I was pulling up to the mooring ball from down wind and slowed down to grab it - not realizing that the current was running the other way. Then, when I realized we were going over the ball, I tried to reverse out of it - which sucked the mooring line into the prop. We were fouled. Derek dove in to take a look and he was able to un-tangle it when I used the other prop to relieve some of the pressure - another catamaran benefit, two props.
There was a ship wreak nearby - a mail ship from the 1800s - and we swam over to take a look. It was pretty deep, probably 30-40 feet, and it was tough to dive down to take a look. It was cool to try to piece this thing back together from the surface - like a jigsaw puzzle.
The Cooper island resort was really nice - knowing that everything gets knocked down every 3-4 years, it was really impressive to see how much they had built this up. This was to be our last night on the boat, so it was a bit bittersweet. We had a lovely dinner at the Cooper island beach resort - followed by drinks and lounging on a beach.
2022-07-17
The following morning we had to get refueled before heading back to scrub island. The space was pretty tight, so it took a bit of work to get the boat into the dock. Once again, the beauty of the catamaran is how easily you can turn and maneuver in these kinds of spaces - so with a bit of finesse, we did just fine.
We pulled back into Scrub Island in the late morning, packed up our things, and loaded back into the ferry boat to head back to Beef island. Bittersweet, but we had a great trip.
We stayed at a small hotel in Tortuga called the Fort Burt. It was about a 30 min taxi ride from Beef island (which we had to repeat in the morning to get back to the airport). The hotel was nice, but there was some remodeling going on and so some of the amenities (the pools on the balconies of each of the rooms for example) were out of order. We did a walk down the beach and went to a pub for dinner.
And we got our last pain killers of the trip! The following morning we did all of our flights back home - landing in the late evening.
