Soper’s Hole, Tortola Isl, BVIs
We have now been in the BVIs for only 12 days with a steady balance of work hard play hard going on here on Kailani. We have anchored at four different islands, kayaking, swimming and snorkeling each place to size it up for our pending guests. Up by Prickly Pear Island we enjoyed watching the expert and novice kite boarders criss-cross in front and behind Kailani, with the occasional turtle surfacing or ray breaching along their paths. The anchorages that followed off of Mosquito Island, Savanna Bay and finally Privateer Bay on Norman Island offered great swimming and kayaking too, but we are still searching for fantastic snorkeling. Between the warmer ocean water and the lasting effect of hurricane Irma which scored a direct hit on these islands back in 2017 the reefs are in poor shape. None the less every anchorage has had turtles, rays, and barracuda, the latter seemingly getting bigger by the number of days we stay put.
While anchored behind Colquhoun Reef off Mosquito Island (where, thankfully, there were no mozzies), we decided the timing was right to break out the big dink in preparation for Sophia and a friend joining us for their spring break. We had unrolled her during our time at the big pink in Antigua, and actually paid a local shop 700 bucks to patch the leaks we couldn’t get to. So now we dropped on the big outboard and took off across the half mile to Leverick Bay, a test voyage which promised a fresh food market as reward. Unfortunately the shop was even less well stocked than the one in Spanish Town, so once again no cucumbers! Leaving the store with our US$75 in groceries (one small grocery sack) we headed back to Kailani to drop food and then venture the 2 nm upwind to check out the Bitter End Yacht Club which is still being rebuilt after being destroyed in Irma.
At trip not meant to be … thankfully, we guess. A delay back at Kailani caused us to postpone until the next day, which is when we found the dinghy full of water. The starboard floor seams had completely come unglued, such that there was essentially a 6 foot hole along the bottom of the dinghy. Ever-optimistic, we were thankful that one: we had not been crossing the big lagoon when this happened and two: that it was not the pontoons that were holed. This, instead, was fixable (we hoped!).
But now time was ticking and the weather was turning even more south, making the two nm of fetch in the lagoon pretty uncomfortable for Kailani. We took the dink completely apart, flipped her upside down, and used most of a tube of Loctite PL Marine sealant (left over from our cap rail caulking project) to seal up one side. We let the dink sit up forward on deck while we picked up the anchor and sailed south to Savanna Bay on Virgin Gorda. Here we applied the next round of caulk to the inside seams, had it cure for 30+ hours, and voila – by the time we re-launched her in Privateer Bay on Norman Island, no leaking! The real bonus came when we decided that in order to not stress the repair or the parts that hadn’t yet failed we should just run with the little 2.5 hp outboard. And lo and behold with one person on board this 11 foot roll up dink gets up on a plane within only a few seconds. Who knew?
We don’t know the age of the big dink but we suspect Kailani has been carrying it around for 35 years. Add to that the fact that she sat rolled up in the forward hold for the last 7 years since she was last deployed in the Indian Ocean and during that during this layup she endured freezing winters and tropical heat, and you get one seasoned water craft, with old seams of glue. We have had it patched at several ports around the world, some vendors likening her to an “old pair of jeans with more patches and wear holes than original hypalon”. We always liked our old pairs of jeans, and for obvious reasons have nothing but respect for old geezers, including dinghies. So for now, we stand by ready to caulk, should the remaining 75% of the floor seams go.
And so here we are anchored in Soper’s Hole, Tortola, on the eve of Sophia and Samantha arriving for their spring break. We just returned from our provisioning run, having ordered groceries from Road Town (the largest city in the BVIs) to be delivered here. Imagine our shock, when everything we ordered was all there, except – you guessed it: cucumbers. It seems this elusive vegetable is no where to be found in this part of the Caribbean!
18 23 N 064 42 W
Sopers Hole, Tortola, BVIs
