04/23/2009 British Virgin Islands (Round 2)

04/15/2009 John took off this morning. I received a call from Cliff. He was stuck in Philadelphia and would be a day late. No problem with that, I was ready for a day off. Cliff’s flight was delayed due to weather and he could not make his connection. That gave me some time to catch up on a few items around the boat.
04/16/2009 Cliff arrived around 3:30 today. We went off to the market, loaded up on our groceries. I decided I had enough of Red Hook for one week and we took off immediately for Jost Van Dyke. We are racing the sun across the channel to get in before sunset. We lost. We did make it into Great Harbor though.
After getting the anchor set, we took off for Foxy’s again. The atmosphere was the same, but Cliff was in love with the setting. It does sometimes take someone’s eyes to see the scene. The little town there on Jost is a few buildings along a main street that is sand. It sits right on the beach. This is such a different place for Cliff as he has just flown out of a cold dreary Michigan. We had a couple of drinks and worked our way down Main Street to Corsairs. I had to try their pizza.
When we arrived there, sitting in the dining area was Bruce and Dianna along with Margaret and Dave Wolf. Margaret and Dave are also members of CSYC. We sat and talked awhile and made plans to have a Past Commodore raft-up party Saturday night. I do recommend the pizza. The crust was fantastic.
04/17/2009 I am thankful for all of the friends I have. Here I am in the BVIs and I have Cliff on the boat, I was sitting with Bruce, Dianna, Dave and Margaret last night, just last week I had John on the boat and two weeks earlier I had my daughters on the boat. I am meeting another friend, Fred Rampey for drinks and dinner tonight in Road Town. Fred and I raced on his U20 in Colorado at several regattas. He is down in the islands working and had sent off an email indicating he would be in the area and was wondering where I was.
So with dinner plans in the making, and a lazy morning on the boat waiting for Customs and Immigration to open, we sailed out of Great Harbor and headed through the cut at West End. The plan was to sail over to the Indians and Caves. Cliff is one to always get a line in the water for some fishing. There hasn’t been an edible fish on the boat since he and Titus were on the boat in The Bahamas. We had a hit on the line and caught a Bonito. We had caught several of these when John was on the boat the week before. They are from the tuna family, but not an enjoyable edible fish I am told.
The wind conditions weren’t in sync with our plans. With the late start in the morning and the light winds, we decided to just sail over into Road Town. We were able to sail right into the anchorage. After working awhile to get the anchor to set in the grassy harbor, we went in search of Fred. We found him at his hotel that overlooked the water. We set off for The Pub. It is located on the water and a local favorite. Fred introduced us to the bartender that made a killer rum punch. It is good to connect with old friends. I had not seen Fred in a couple of years as he took off for Italy to work for a company and after he came back to the States, I headed off for my trip. Small world to be connecting like this.

04/18/2009 We had Fred on the boat for breakfast. Fred had a need for coffee in the morning and he had not found a place around the hotel to get any coffee before 8:00AM. I picked him up, gave him the 30 second tour of the boat and we cooked up some breakfast for the three of us. After dropping Fred back off to get ready for his next flight to somewhere in the Caribbean we took off for the snorkeling we did not get in yesterday.
We sailed over to the Indians for the beginning of a bunch of memorable swimming excursions this week. It is one of the great things about nature, you never know what you are going to encounter as it is always changing.
The water was a little churned up and made it murky, but the back side of the rocks was incredible with all of the fish swimming around. The amount of fish and different types that were grouped there was incredible. We saw schools of different fish that I have not seen in the past and had a good time swimming throughout the reef there.
After that we took off for the caves on Norman Island. Cliff got a big kick out of swimming into the caves and checking them out. I don’t believe he has swam into a cave before. They are not large caves, but they are deep enough that you need to let your eyes adjust to the lack of light. We then swam towards the north end of the reef. There I saw a sting ray and swam with it for about ten minutes watching it’s graceful flying motion.
We then made a stop at Willie T’s. For you that have never been here, it is a replica of a sailing ship that is converted into a bar. The stories we always heard about it was that this was a rowdy bar to go to. If a woman was to jump off of the upper deck topless, she would be given a Willie T’s t-shirt. Don’t think that is true anymore, as the first signs you see when entering the bar is “No jumping or Diving from the upper deck”.
We have dinner plans tonight. We are meeting to have the first annual CSYC Past-Commodore Raft-up Party in Great Harbor on Peter Island. We meet up with Bruce, Dianna, Dave and Margaret for a spaghetti dinner on No Rush. We had a great time just hanging out and swapping stories of our different adventures. Cliff had everyone in stitches from his funny stories of life. Next year Bruce is in charge of making this a bigger event (I just volunteered him).
04/19/2009 We slip the bonds of the raft-up this morning and sail off for more of Cliff and Bill’s Adventures. We sail east in Sir Francis Drake Channel towards Virgin Gorda. We have favorable wind and I am racing two other sailboats out here, even if they don’t know it. There is a 40 foot mono-hull, also known as a half-cat, and a 45 foot catamaran. I am pleasantly surprised on how well we sailed against them, even though we need to slow down to haul in another bonito. We are pointing higher and faster than both.
We made it to The Baths. Cliff is in for another joy of his during the trip. I send him off to check out one area as I will take a nap on the boat and then we will take off for the south end of the Baths together. He comes back so pumped up from the beauty of not only the fish and swimming in the boulders, but of the exquisite villas along the beach there. We then took off for the Baths and Devils Bay. This was a different experience for me as I had not hiked amongst the boulders before and found the little pools and hidden areas in the rocks. We made our way down to devils Bay. I found this great rock to just sit on and watch the wave action as it went in behind a large boulder on the beach and swirled down the other side. It was mesmerizing to me.
We then sailed off of the anchor and headed north towards Gorda Sound and Leverick Bay for the evening. We sailed out past The Dogs and hooked into a barracuda. I decided that it was Cliff’s turn to release the fish. It gave a good fight, but we landed it and Cliff did eventually release it from the hook, no easy feat. We then tacked a couple of times and sailed into the Sound and picked up a hook for the night. We went ashore to get some wi-fi and test out the local drinks. There is a Pusser Store there, but they did not have their own bar. The painkillers are still not as good as the Pusser bar on Marina Cay.
04/20/2009 After stopping at the dock to pay for the mooring, pick up much needed water and a bag of ice we sailed off for Great Dog. I have not snorkeled this island before. Even though the bay opened to the west, it had a pretty good north swell coming in and crashing on the rocks. Decision time, do we go in or not. We decided to give it a try. We were use to swimming in the swells rolling through the Baths, but this is different with no baths, but a steep cliff the whole way around the bay. We started to swim I n and found that we could get real close to the rocks even with the wave action. When you got close enough to the rocks or cliff, you would be blinded by all of the air bubbles in the water and then that was the time to turn around and head to another area. The highlight of this swim was watching a school of Sergeant Majors just washing back and forth in the swirl of the water between a couple of large rocks. Cliff described it best as a bunch or elementary kids on a ride at Disney.
After hauling the anchor we had a great sail down wind. I took a nap on the coach house deck and Cliff was up in the nets. We had a gentle 2-3 foot swell that the boat rode on. I needed to gybe the boat and head in for our next stop and Cliff wanted nothing to do with it. He just wanted to keep sailing forever.
We headed in to Guana Island. This island is located off of the north shore of Tortola. When I was down here with my family we anchored off of the same point one night. We did not swim it though. The memorable part of that night was the fluorescent jelly fish we saw. This time it was a little different. We snorkeled in towards shore and I came across a school of fry. They are about the size of a minnows. It started out a pretty good size school. As I swam more towards the school it was thicker and thicker with more fish. I made it to a point when I could not see a couple feet in front of me the fish were so thick and then all of the sudden, I had a large fish swimming straight at me. My first thought was shark, but then it saw me and turned away. It was three foot tarpon. Cliff had a similar experience. He was swimming along and through the fish he was startled when he thought he was head to head with a turtle. It turned out to be a rock with a couple of sea fans attached to it. Your mind and eyes can play some funny tricks on you when you are out of your normal element.
After that great time we took off to finish the great sail we interrupted for that snorkel experience. We had a good sail into Cane Garden Bay. This is a new one for me. I had heard bad reviews about this bay. It turned out to be wonderful. My favorite bays have an opening to the west and protection from the seas and trade winds. This bay is one of those. It rivals my other favorite bay of the Virgins, Francis Bay on St. John. It has good holding for the anchor and a gentle swell from the ocean. I can see how mono-hulls don’t like as the ones I saw rocked with the swell. We just sat nice and easy with no problems. The beach is a gorgeous stretch of sand and there are several bars that sounded like they had some live music going on.
The reason I like the west openings of a bay is so you can watch the sunset. We had a beauty this evening and capped off a great day on the water.
04/21/2009 Today was an interesting animal. We raised the anchor and sailed out of the bay. We headed off for Sandy Cay. This is another park of an island that was deeded by the Rockefellers. It has a very nice white sand beach wrapped about half way around the island. Cliff swam in and I took the dinghy in with the camera and shoes for some hiking the trail. We were in there early before the crowds started to show up. It wasn’t that crowded, but it is fun when you have a whole beach to yourself. I did follow the trail around. There are plenty of lizards and hermit crabs crawling in the wooded area.
After a quick swim, we headed back to the boat for lunch. From there we went to an area I had not heard about until talking with Bruce. On the east shore of Jost Van Dyke there is a bath area. It is a series of rocks that block most of the wave action and creates a pool. You can sit in the pool and when large waves crash towards you, they are broken up by the rocks and a lot of air bubbles are created that make the pool like a jacuzzi. We met some other sailors chartering a boat there from Michigan and Florida.
Then it started getting strange after that. I became very agitated. I was agitated at the bar tender at the bar by the anchorage because he did not have a drink I was looking for, I barked at Cliff, and with Customs and they didn’t do anything that I should have been upset with. I talked with Cliff and he said his energy level was low also. We believe we had become dehydrated. The weather pattern had shifted more out of the south and Cliff indicated that he thought today was the hottest day of the whole trip for him. There was also plenty of humidity. Things did clear up after the sun set and all is well now. After checking out of Customs, we sailed the boat over to St. John and spent the night in Francis Bay.
04/22/2009 We slipped off of the mooring in the bay and made for a two hour sail to Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. We need to check into US Customs and after lunch I sent Cliff back to the airport. It was a great trip and has been a busy month with all of the friends and family I have had visit. I thank all of them for coming down and spending their vacations, time and money with me.