September 7, BVI's
If you like happy hours, Woody's in Cruz Bay, St. John can't be beat. $1 domestic US beers and well drinks!?*#&!! No, it's true. And way fun too - great people. We provisioned up there in Cruz Bay, did chores, TRIED to get propane (the usual drop off the tank to be picked up the next day - then come back each day to hear the latest excuse on why it wasn't done - then finally take your empty tank back to the boat to search again another day...Bahamas-style). And had jazz-night one night just off our bow at the beach. Nice.
Then off to the famous Trunk Bay for the
underwater snorkeling trail. Pretty cool with the plaques underwater,
but just totally crowded (I can only imagine high season). So over to the
BVI's we went. First stop Jost Van Dyke. Ah, now we're talking.
The BVI's are just stunning. After checking into Customs and
Immigration (mostly by the large young schoolgirl complete with BVI
schoolgirl outfit who asked for 20 cents - I can't make this stuff up), we
went to White Beach and swam up to the Soggy Dollar bar. This is a
working environment - can you figure?
Yeah, times are tough. Talk about lazy too. No one has removed
this washed up outboard motor for a decade it looks like.
People just have to step over it. Ah, well island life, you know.
We sailed east, downwind, one day due to odd
weather (which you can never do) and I laughed all the way to Sandy Cay - a
few miles away, and put Gypsy Cat on the beach with us.
You can see the ever-sleeping Christine by the water sprawled out.
(No she is not dead - she just knows how to REALLY relax). (And her
FOG is coming soon......I think). Island time really took hold of her.
In Jost, at Foxy's
A few miles south across the Drake Channel lies Norman Island and Peter Island. Norman is famous for "the caves". In addition to the usual pirate lore and buried treasure (which is everywhere here) the caves are said to be the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". You can swim into these caves and one of them goes 70' deep into the island but they are a bit spooky and dark.
"The Indians" are rock outcroppings just off Norman with superb snorkeling.
Peter Island's Deadman's Bay
was a nice stop. In the top left corner of the picture you can see
part of Dead Chest Island just offshore. That's where, allegedly, the
infamous Blackbeard marooned 15 of his errand crew with only their sea
chests and a bottle of rum. You know the song: "Fifteen men on a dead
man's chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
Well, it's not always all play and no work here. Besides the standard
boat maintenance, and usual chores, one has to be prepared for whatever
weather may come. And when what is now Hurricane Ike was developing
and on our latitude, heading in our general direction, I decided to go back
to St. John and find a spot to "dig in" as we are now in September and that
is the worst hurricane month. Well, this is our secret spot in the
mangroves
and it is marked with our name on it. We are lucky, as the area, being
a great hurricane hole, (thus the name Hurricane Hole), is packed with
claims on mangrove spots. Well, we are in the shallows, (why?, because
we CAN!), which is the best spot and no one can get back there but us.
So, we are good. But we need some luck too. But, after Ike went
safely north, and Josephine is little threat and days out anyway, we went
had some Ponzu tuna,
and then went back to the BVI's, where we are now.
September 12, BVI's
9-9 6:00 AM: Back in Road Town, Tortola, I was able to figure out a little motor problem. Here’s an example of what is needed at times. (Hope this is not too technical). Not as much water was coming out of the exhaust, so it was running a few degrees warmer and had a bit more “throaty” sound and water-vapor smoke. I had kept the RPM’s down until I could locate and fix the problem. This was going on for many days. I had earlier identified the problem as being something before the water pump as I removed the hose just past it and watched the flow (so I knew it wasn’t exhaust-related). So I had checked and cleaned the raw water intake at the bottom of the hull, checked and cleaned the raw water strainer of seaweed, checked the seacock valve, checked the rubber impellor, checked the belt for slippage, checked the raw water zinc – which needed changing, cleaned out the heat-exchanger and made sure all holes were open, but still had no idea. And the cover plate for the heat exchanger came off in pieces so now I had a huge leak at the cover plate (with no spare) also. Hmmm. Well, to fix the leak, after trying a homemade cardboard gasket (from a six-pack beer carton) and gasket repair (which didn’t work), I cut a gasket from a wetsuit material beer bottle holder and gasket repair – that worked. Good thing we like to drink beer!
Then, I poured through a Yahoo group for Gemini owners, and saw all of the things I had already done, except one: someone suggested pumping water backwards through the system to clear out an obstruction. So, I took a large hand pump and squirted the water backwards from the water pump intake hose. That worked! And off we went.
9-9 10:00 AM: First stop, was Salt Island. The proprietors pay annual taxes to the Queen. How much? One bag of salt. Ha! Reason we were there was that in 1867 a 310’ ship, the Royal Mail Ship Rhone, was taking on water at anchor next-door at Peter Island. A hurricane came through so they rushed towards Salt Island to get sea room to escape but went into the rocks and sunk with 313 people aboard. (That hurricane sank 75 ships). It is in shallow enough water to snorkel, so we tied up. Christine was at the bow with boat hook in hand attempting to pick up the mooring line and accidentally dropped it, because the handle fell off in her hands. The tube filled and it sunk in seconds. This was the second time this happened and I had retrieved it the first time. I looked at the depth at over 50’ and told her that it was gone – forget about it. And we have two other boat hooks anyway. But she was persistent that I go dive for it (free dive). I ignored her pleadings.
Well, the wreck is fantastic.
In fact it is, apparently, the most
photographed wreck in the world, and much of the movie “The Deep” was filmed
here. You can see most of it clearly, even at the surface. But if you dive
it is right there, of course.
I digress. Days before, we were in need of a good underwater flashlight to take deep into the creepy, dark, caves at Norman Island. I had attention on getting one somewhere when we go back again. Well, on one dive on the Rhone, I was inspecting the huge propeller and noticed a cool underwater flashlight resting on the ground underneath. I grabbed it and was happy with my “materialization” of it.
After we were done, I decided to try and retrieve the boat hook. It drifted on its decent and was lying on the bottom in shallower water than it was dropped in. I wrapped the newly-found flashlight around my arm with the attached lanyard and dove on it. On the second try, I got it. But I lost the flashlight. So, my victory was not as good. After awhile I went back in to try and find it. It took many 20’-30’ deep passes and about 20 minutes before I located it. You could not see it from the surface. I was able to get it but that is probably my limit on depth, at least for now. I checked it with two depth meters and it was just over 40’ on both. When you are 40’ down holding your breath and look up – it is a LONG WAY up. I am sure the Japanese pearl divers have taught their children to dive much deeper though.
9-9 2:00 PM: Then it was time to go to “The Baths”, Spanish Town,
Virgin Gorda
. This is the deservedly famous snorkeling spot amongst
boulders scattered around forming grottos, hidden rooms, coral ledges,
caves, etc. Not going here when in the Virgin Islands is like going to
Paris without going the Eiffel Tower. It is really spectacular – we could
spend days here. We saw the usual Blue Tangs in huge schools,
varieties of
Parrot Fish, Calamari aka squid, even an octopus! It was so nice; we went
back the next day. And we’ll go many times after that too.
9-9 5:30PM:
We anchored for the night at Trunk Bay,
one of BVI’s finest beaches, and had it totally to ourselves. It was not
recommended in our guidebooks or charts to anchor, but that never stopped us
before. The decision was this: our own beautiful palm-tree lined, white sand
beach, or nearby St. Thomas Bay with rocky shoreline, coral heads, and ferry
boat traffic. Well, all the boats were in the bay – only too good for us.
Next day, was split between Trunk Bay and Savanna Bay/Pond Bay where we
anchored for the night.
I am glad that everybody prefers to anchor at the
harbors. Again, our own private white sand beaches. I never would have
guessed this was possible in the BVI’s.
The
11th was our anniversary. Five years together! We went to Gorda
Sound/North Sound and celebrated.
Right now it is the 12th. We are getting our
internet courtesy of Sir Richard Branson. We are currently anchored at
his private island, Necker, just under the main house at Turtle Beach.
He rents the island for $47,000 per night, if you are interested. It
is very cool. You can get info on it at:
www.neckerisland.com/
September 25, USVI's
We're just cruising around these days going from stunning beach to stunning
beach
revisiting our favorite spots, like "The Baths"
and finding new places. I think I have a theory: No one likes to
go to the beach in the BVI's. Or at least it seems like it. Fine
with us but it is so strange. I know it is off-season but most of the
people in the virgins here seem to want to cuddle up in a harbor and sit tight without
moving. It is rare indeed to see someone at the beach and few people
are sailing.
Anyway, so far so good on the storm watch. Nothing new has come up besides local disturbances and such. "Parcialmente nublado" (partly cloudy), always on the Spanish VHF radio reports, and "scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms" repeated over and over each day. But with a lot of sunshine and rainbows in between. Yep, one outside as I look right now even.
We took advantage of the "weather window" and headed out to Anegada.
Anegada is the furthest "out-island" in the BVI's. Not many people go
here. Most charter companies do not allow their boats to go there, and
few other visitors besides boaters go. It is a coral and limestone
atoll that rises only 28 feet above sea level at it's highest. Fodor's
says, "...by the time you're able to see it, you may have run your boat onto
a reef". More than 300 known wrecks have happened here in recorded
history. Lots of treasure and flotsam and jetsam has washed ashore over the years.
They have miles of beautiful beaches but it is hard to get around - there
are only a couple good anchorages with access, and you pay a lot to get
taxied to a beach.
We went back to Necker Island
and found a lot of activity going on. There were a dozen or more "rich
kids" partying here. At night they put on a HUGE fireworks show as good as
Disney for these "kids".
A nice "wing to wing" (sails flared in opposite directions) downwind ride took us back to Jost Van Dyke. I went over to the famous Foxy's bar (it's pretty much closed in the off season) and found Foxy himself sitting by himself in a hammock drinking a beer. Foxy's Tamarind bar is kind of world famous. Voted by some as one of the top ten New Years parties on the planet, among many other things. A BVI's must-see. http://www.foxysbar.com/home.html I asked, "Are you Foxy?" He quickly replied, "Foxy's a Ni**@r" Then he broke out laughing.
After asking me where I was from (Southern California) he broke out into a 10 minute song about Socal naming a couple dozen cities and local spots - really good. Then the jokes came out. "You see that dog?" It was a HUGE black short-haired dog with it's own entire ecosystem of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes. "Most white folks think he's a Labrador. Nope - it's an island dog. 1) He's black, 2) He sits on his ass all day, and 3) He doesn't know who his daddy is."
After getting me a cold Red Stripe (beer) on the house, he took me on a complete tour of his property, shared many tales, and much of his life story. Fascinating and funny, really, but the local mosquitoes started setting up power tools and planting little flags on my flesh. I gained 12 ounces of beer weight and probably lost a pound or so of blood to these little bastards.
Then, as we were at the end of our 30 day BVI visit permission, we checked out (it cost 75 cents to do so - what the hell is that? I love it), and headed back to St. John. On the way I caught a nice Bonito which we had last night - yum.
Tomorrow, (weather permitting) we are headed to St. Croix, which is about 40 miles to the south, which is kind of off the track of the rest of the Virgins. We heard a funny mention of St. Croix: The people there are either the "wanted" or the "unwanted". Should be fun.