BVIs Part II

Still in North Sound we spent a night on a Saba Rock  mooring  and visited  Saba Rock, an eight room resort, restaurant, and bar on a rock between Virgin Gorda and Prickly Pear Island.  Happy hour is a must and here Markus fed fish to the Tarpon off the dock and was almost dragged into the water. 

Markus feeding the Tarpon

Annette becomes a proficient Conch Blower

These are some big Tarpon. Saba Rock now has three Toucans in residence which adds to the color and flavor of the place.  It was originally an old wooden bar and dive shop but when the original owner turned 86 he sold to the present people and they have taken the “Rock” to another level. While on the mooring and close we visited Bitter End Yacht Club Resort.  Bitter End Yacht Club is a resort at the end of Virgin Gorda North Sound with beautiful well-kept beaches and villas with shops, restaurants, bars, and water sports. It is all open and spread out on the beach.

Bitter End Yacht Club

We Save the Conch

 In fact at one beach a lot of small conch had washed ashore so we picked them up and put them back in the water. We also visited Scrub Island resort which is a beautiful new stone resort with restaurant, bar and pool with a swim up bar and water slide. It is gorgeous, and they let sailors tie up their dinghies and buy drinks, use the pool and hot tub, and eat at the restaurant.

Leslie slides down at Scrub Key Resort

Mariana Cay

 Scrub Island is next to Marina Cay, which also has a resort with bar and restaurant which was bought and inhabited by an American couple back in the late 30s and early 40s. There is a movie out about it staring Sidney Portiere, his first movie, called Virgin Island. 

Mariana Cay Part of the origional house

Indians Swim through

Markus comes thorugh the swim through

Norman Cay

 Of course we also sailed to the Indians to snorkel, and then to Norman Island for the night and a visit to the Wille T. The Wille T is a bar and restaurant on a boat that is known for wild parties. We also hiked up to Spyglass Hill which is where the pirates used to stand watch for other ships while their own was safely hidden in the bight, kind of a bay, in Norman Island, and we also snorkeled the caves where in the 70s a real pirate chest was found. We then headed back to Cooper to spend a night .

Sunset at Coopers Island

 The trip ended all too soon back at Trellis Bay for the full moon festival. It’s a great night with food and lighting of great steel balls and statues, and entertainment of music and the Jumbies, people on tall stilts.

Leslie at the start of Full Moon Festival

Fire statue

 The last day we went into Road Town to look at Catamarans that they might be interested in purchasing and learning to sail and putting into charter. We looked at a couple of Lagoons and another

Leslie with a Jumbie

catamaran and finished with lunch at Pusser’s, makers of rum. It was a fun time to share cruising with them.  They left with lots of experiences to think about and how it might fit into their vision of a future.  Much of the bar hopping was predicated by a book we bought and one we gave to them called the Drinking Man’s Guide to the BVI. With the book in hand we set off for Cane Garden Bay, a mile long beach with one bar after another.

Pusser's Rum Bar

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) Part I

The BVI is a wonderful place to sail with lots of things to do. With repairs made to Frolic we made a quick little sail to Cooper Island for the night. Cooper is a little island in the middle of the Francis Drake Passage. It has a little resort with a bar and restaurant and great snorkeling at Cistern rock. The anchorage is protected, but it has a current, so often you are running over your mooring buoy. It is also a quick run from there to dive the wreck of the Rhone, so we often find ourselves at Cooper Island. We have new friends coming to visit for 10 days, Markus and Annette. We had met them at Nevis and they were interested to have a little experience of what it is like to cruise, so we invited them to come with us some time and they accepted. When we told them we would be in the BVI in the end of May and June they make tickets.

Markus and Annette arrive!

The Loose Mongoose Bar in Trellis Bay

So after a resting night at Coopers Island we headed to Trellis Bay to meet Markus and Annette. Trellis Bay is literally at the end of Beef Island airport so it’s a 300 yd. walk from the dock at Trellis Bay to the terminal. It also has some resident artists as well as a little store, some bars and restaurants. With our cruising companions aboard we enjoyed catching up and showing off our “home”.  Monday we went to Bobby’s Market to provision as they wanted the experience so we are doing it all! Bobby’s is great because they will send a taxi to pick you up and take you back to the boat. If you are coming to charter you can go online and shop at Bobby’s and he will deliver it to your boat when you arrive. It’s very convenient. With provisioning done, we motored over to Copper Island with a light wind in our face. Markus had his first of many experiences at the wheel. After mooring at Cooper Island we went snorkeling at Cistern Rock and it was really good with lots of fish and colorful corals.

Fish at Cestern  Rock

Turtle we saw on the way back to the boat

The next day Markus and I rented Scuba gear and we all went to the Rhone. Leslie and Annette snorkeled the aft section while Markus and I did a circumnavigation of the entire wreck. The  Rhone is broke in half with the stern in 20 – 40’ of water then there is a gap with some wreckage and the bow is laying 90 degrees from the stern in 60 – 80’ of water. We saw a big eagle ray gliding over the bow, a 10’ Nurse Shark under the stern, and a monster Moray Eel that had to be 10” in diameter at the end of the stern section! Unfortunately Markus unknowingly knocked his Go Pro video camera off his head and into the boat when we dropped into the water so he didn’t get any shots of the dive.

Markus on the Rhone

Aft section ribs of the Rhone

Eagle Ray on the Rhone

During their stay we went to the Baths, where we hiked among the rocks and then snorkeled through them back to the beach. For lunch we hike up past Phantom’s Skull Rock to the restaurant Top of the Baths and had a swim in their pool while we enjoyed the view and drinks.

snorkeling into the Baths

In the Baths

Markus rock leaping at the Baths

Phantom's Skull Rock at the Baths

Then it was to Leverick Bay, where we had to help a couple on a monohull get their dinghy line out of their prop, tie up to a mooring, and retrieve their anchor which was jammed under a mooring block. We also took Markus and Annette hiking to the top of Virgin Gorda, the highest peak in the BVI, the view was awesome down the Drake Chanel and over North Sound.   We had lunch of famous PB&J sandwiches and beer (what better combo) on the top of the observation deck before heading back to the beach.

Lookout at the top of Virgin Gorda

Back at Leverick Bay

Night Passage and a Sailor’s worst Nightmare

With all the projects to be done in St. Martin this year complete, it was time to set sail once again. We had done a lot of work on the boat and now was the time to try everything and work out the wrinkles. The 12 volt refrigeration is working fine but needs periotic defrosting, and the Xantex battery monitor is saying our solar cells are fully charging the batteries by 1 PM! Oh, is that nice! The sail from St. Martin to BVI would mean leaving the land of $1-$2 beers, $3 wines, and lots of free anchorage and going to $4 -$5 beers, $6 wines and $25-$30 per night moorings. We prepared the boat for sea! After spending about a month in the Lagoon it was time to put away all the tools, store all the food, put the utensils in the cabinets, and check the engines. We motored out to Marigot Bay thru the French Bridge and anchored in the white sand. Carl dove into the crystal clear water and started cleaning the bottom. It wasn’t too bad, but the constant up and down and the little chop had him seasick by the time he’d finished. We relaxed a bit and just before sunset weighted anchor (picked it up) and headed west. We had the new radar working, the new AIS, Automatic Identification System, on, the backup Garmin GPS locked in, and Nimble Navigator working on the laptop as backup navigation.

Chart Plotter with Radar split screen

Instruments at night

We had laid out our route on both the chart plotter and Nimble Navigator with all our courses laid out. Leslie also did the route on our paper charts.  The winds were light 5 – 10 kts. coming from our stern as was a 3 -5’ sea so we rolled out the jib and motor sailed at 5 – 6 kts. It was the new moon with scattered clouds so as the sun set it became black. Once out of sight of land you couldn’t tell where the sea ended and the sky began.

Veiw forward for most of the trip

 The only light was the occasional star which peaked through a hole in the clouds. The autopilot kept us on course, the chart plotter kept track of our progress and the radar and AIS kept track of the few other vessels on the sea. It was a quiet, peaceful, dark night and with no horizon, Carl’s stomach couldn’t cope. He got sick a few times and a couple times went below to lay down leaving Leslie to keep watch during the majority of our passage. As the sky greyed with the coming of dawn Carl was able to let Leslie catch a few hours of sleep before we made land fall.

Leslie at the Helm

Carl can still handle the helm

We approached Virgin Gorda North Sound right on the money and sailed Frolic into a mooring at Leverick Bay. With the boat secured it was time to clear in customs. There was a new office open at Gunn Creek right around the corner from Leverick Bay. We decided to not take the dinghy as it would be a wet long ride, but walk for the exercise. We had forgotten what the walk to Gunn Creek entailed! It was 10 AM and the sun was hot. We walked the road up the mountain, well it seemed like a mountain, over the saddle and then back down to Gunn Creek. It was an hour walk. We checked in, one of  the easiest and nicest official offices we have dealt with and would have been even easier if we had remembered ESEAclear.com, then had to walk back in the mid-day sun. We should have taken the dinghy! However, the pool and cold beer at Leverick Bay was a welcomed reward! Back on the boat we crashed until happy hour when we were back at the bar and meeting old friends.

Moored quietly at Laverick Bay

Leverick Bay Resort Great Place!

We stayed another day at Leverick Bay and filled our fuel tanks and  since water is complementary with the mooring, the water tanks also.  We also did a walk to the top of Virgin Gorda, a 2 hour hike up, and had a picnic while enjoying the view of the BVIs.

At the bar before the collision, Leslie at right

After a refreshing swim we were talking with other sailors at Leverick Bay bar as we awaited the beginning of happy hour when a 46’ Catamaran came in to the dead end channel between the dock and the bar. They realized there was nowhere to go and started to back out. Leslie cried, “They are going to hit our boat”. I replied, “No they have plenty of room.”, but they kept backing up. All of a sudden they swung hard to port.

Frolic takes the hit!

Frolic has the 46' broadside

 They had caught our mooring line with their prop! Leslie and I got in the dinghy and roared out to the boat! Their boat was lying across our bow with our port bow hitting their side and the wind blowing them harder on our boat. We tried to push them off with our dinghy and gave them engine instructions to back off to no avail. They kept saying the engine wouldn’t work. Well of course not! Our mooring line was wrapped in their prop! Finally we got aboard our boat and started her up, slipped the mooring lines, threw the lines to the other cat and motored away. The catamaran was now free and drifting down on the mono hull moored behind us. They also slipped their mooring and shot away! The people on the big catamaran pulled up on the line in their prop and it came free. With the line off the prop the engine gears engaged and they maneuvered to a mooring at the back of the field while we and the mono hull came back to claim our moorings.  They had severed one of our lines and sawed thru half of the other.  We were now short two lines.  Putting on two new lines we were reset.  Carl dove on the ground tackle to make sure it was secure and I went in to call the charter company and let them know we had been hit by one of their charter boats.  As I am watching from shore one of the sailors from the big catamaran came over in a dingy to take pictures of our bow and runs over and catches one of the mooring lines in the dingy prop.  Now we have a frayed third line!  I finally get in touch with the charter co. and the the person told me the charter boat had just called them and said they had engine trouble, they never mentioned they had hit someone nor did they mention the damage done to either boat!  We were told to go to Saba Rock as they had a rep there to look at the boat. 

Leslie with new lines

We were sent 3 new lines via Ferry by noon the next day and we were to report to their repair dock when we got to Road Town.  Funny, when we arrived we were docked across from the boat that had hit us and we asked how her damage was and they had not even seen it….. a broken window and a hole in the fiberglass hull next to the window.   The charter guests had already flown home.  We had minimal damage comparable. 

Frolic at dock awaiting repairs

The person doing fiberglass came on board and did a fabulous job with the scrapes and gouges.  We were very impressed with the care and concern we received from the charter company and were glad it was SunSail.  With repairs completed and the anticipation of friends flying in, time to continue the adventure.