Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands
Before anyone gets the idea that the PC police should be sent in hot pursuit of a couple of wayward sailors, the Sleeping Indian is a rocky islet just off the entrance to Jolly Harbour in Antigua. We spent the better part of 6 weeks with her sleeping off Kailani’s port side, and finally had her off to starboard last Tuesday noon when we up anchored for our sail WNW to the BVIs.
And what a fabulous sail it was! A classic trade wind passage with 15 knots of wind just aft of the starboard beam, a full moon for most of the night, and only the occasional light rain squall. If you check out our track it is pretty much ruler straight – 185 nm in just under 22 hours, Kailani averaging 8.4 kts. We made landfall by early morning and had a leisurely sail around the top of Necker Island in the BVIs (owned by Richard Branson who did not come out to welcome us), and around the Dogs, two small rocky outcrops with fantastically clear diving here in the BVIs.
And so we transited to the land of the Fat Virgin, dropping the hook in St. Thomas Bay off of Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda, second largest island in the British Virgin Island archipelago. After lunch we walked over to check in with Customs and Immigration, waited almost an hour for the cashier to return from lunch so we could pay our dues, then walked a mile to the grocery store, where we were truly underwhelmed by the lack of goods. Representative of the trials and tribulations of the cruising life (cue the tissues), we have been trying to get cucumbers for over 2 weeks now. We found out that Jolly Harbour got them the day we left, and the shop here informed us that the container had just arrived here at Spanish Town, so we would have to come back the next day for them (not happening!). Meanwhile, we found a very strange new vegetable, sort of looks like a zucchini / broccoli / asparagus cross (?). But most tragic of all, NO CHOCOLATE. We loaded up our bags with what we could, then walked back to the dinghy dock carrying a week’s provisions and a local SIM card, all the while trying to keep from getting sideswiped by traffic since sidewalks are apparently considered an unnecessary luxury.
Leaving Antigua was bittersweet as we did enjoy our time there although we had hoped to be able to experience more than just an endless stream of vendors and work projects. In the category of it’s a small world we caught up with Jamie and Lucy off of Bamboozle II who we last saw in Fiji at the 2013 Musket Cove Regatta when they were aboard their first Bamboozle (see the 2014 annual letter in the blog Archives). They have been cruising the Caribbean seasonally for the past few years but still manage to get their skiing fix in each year, and in fact the morning after our dinner they were off to test the snow in British Columbia. We also discovered that one of our crew from the infamous 2014 New Zealand-Tonga passage was in Antigua. Lyssandra now owns and operates the Second Star Sailing school out of Jolly Harbour in the winter and out of Pisa, Italy in the summer months. As you can imagine she is incredibly busy keeping all the balls in the air, but she and her crew took the time to steer us right in finding capable vendors for our projects. We made several new friends as well, cruisers and landlubbers alike, starting with Anne our plain speaking Irish hostess and ending with Mollie, a displaced North Carolinian expat who has boldy decided to make Antigua her new home.
On the subject of getting stuff done, Antigua and Panama are the last chance ports for getting critical work completed before pushing off into the vast and empty Pacific six weeks from now. We have a new North Sails main sail (wow, it is really, really bright white), a new (to us) control head for the autopilot, and the entire 130 feet of cap rail has been sanded, sealed and caulked by Sunny and his crew. While the cosmetic curb appeal of the finished cap rail job is a bonus, the real purpose was to stop a couple of drip leaks in the cabin which, so far anyway, seems to have worked. We also had a local welding shop modify Jen’s folding exercise bike to better fit her height and still fit in a locker. The shop had a lot of big jobs ahead of our project and it took almost a month to get to the front of the queue but the result was worth the wait. Finally, Kailani’s bottom and running gear were so fouled from sitting idle for three months in the nutrient rich (read “polluted”) water of Jolly Harbour that we could barely make two knots motoring the mile out to the anchorage when we left the pink dock. Sloan and his crew came out to the clear water of the anchorage the next day and did yeoman’s duty scraping off the barnacles and wiping off the slime. He reported that our prop had “clams growing atop of clams” – yikes!
So now we are in the BVIs, in many respects our old Caribbean stomping ground. We chartered here too many times to remember over the years and on our first circumnavigation hung out in these islands for almost a month. Things have not changed that much in the last 20 years. Hurricane Irma had her way with the islands back in 2017 including the complete destruction of the famous Bitter End Yacht Club just around the corner from where we are anchored tonight but even it is coming back.
The islands are still dominated by charter boats although about half the catamarans no longer sport a mast and sails. Charter cats are dogs under sail and most charterers don’t have the patience or the skills to sail them anyway so why not just make motor cats? Most of our cruising friends don’t understand why we like it here but we have cruised most of the Windwards and Leewards and find the locals in the BVIs delightful, the water crystal clear, the anchorages plentiful and the sailing hard to beat. We manage to stay out of the mooring fields for the most part dropping the hook where few other boats venture. Sophia and a friend will be joining us for a week later this month and the BVIs offers a plethora of activities from snorkeling the Indians (not the Sleeping one of Antigua, but the ones here in the BVIs!), swimming amongst the boulders of the Baths, exploring the caves in Privateer Bay and dancing to live music at Foxys. And you can’t fall down without landing in a beach bar serving the ubiquitous Pain Killer and passable cheeseburgers. Disneyland for sailors.
So we’ll be here until Sophia returns to school and Jen heads back to the States to a wedding and to see family. Harl has signed up a crew for the six day run to Panama where Jen will rejoin Kailani and we’ll head through the Canal and then WSW across 4,000 nautical miles to our first South Pacific landfall. Stay tuned.
18 30 N. 061 24 W
At anchor between Eustatia & Prickly Pear Islands
just north of Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands
