Bye-bye V.I.

The clipper ship Stad Amsterdam at night anchored a few hundred yards from us in North Sound, Virgin Gorda. She’s a steel hull Dutch clipper launched in 1998. The ship has 14 guest cabins and regularly sails the Caribbean. https://www.stadamsterdam.com/en/ship/clipper-stad-amsterdam/

Here’s the Stad Amsterdam as she sails past Georgia in front of Road Town, Tortola. Way in the background is the 1,132 foot Queen Mary 2. The last time we saw the QM2 it was when we were leaving New York harbor.

We’ve spent 2 month in the US and British Virgin Islands. A lot longer than I figured we would – but we needed to stay till Chris got her fill. Its been fun – meeting up with old and new cruising friends and checking out the different anchorages. Our favorite anchorage in the British Virgins is Little Harbour, Peter Island. Completely blocked from the re-enforced trade winds that blow relentlessly at times. Good snorkeling and reasonable crowds. For the US Virgins, I think we just like St. Johns a whole lot. The south shore is pretty empty. The north shore has good snorkeling and is less crowded than the BVIs. The main town of Cruz Bay has decent shopping.

We cleared out of BVI customs at Gun Creek this morning. Cost a grand total of US$0.75 to clear. The trade winds have lightened up a bit and should be lighter tomorrow. This makes sailing east a lot easier, because we’ll be sailing into the winds. We are heading toward St Martin, but due to the trades not being directly out of the east right now, more a little bit south of east, it will be easier to head further down the island chain and then sail back north to St Martin. We will most likely go to St. Kitts first– the country being St. Kitts and Nevis. Spend a few days there and then sail to St Martin. All depends on what the winds do when we head out. Its about a 24 hour run across the Anegada passage and on to St Kitts. We’ll leave early in the morning.

Paul

Torbin Turns the Corner

Torbin and Judy (off Tivoli) kicking butt in the Hobie races, AKA The Torbin Cup. Torbin needed a good place to celebrate his turning the corner into early, early,  middle-age. Saba Rock in Virgin Gorda was the choice. Family, friends and straggling cruisers from as far away as Denmark and California showed up to celebrate – and get some warm weather.
While Torbin did really well driving the race course, it was aided by the fact that he made the course up as he went. You can do that when its your birthday.
Here’s Ed (Skylark) and me going fast and wondering what to do with the bow that is diving for the bottom.

No birthday cake, but a great B-Day dinner at Saba Rock

Paul

Peter Island

We spent a week over in Little Harbour, Peter Island with an anchor off the bow and the stern tied to the rocks ashore. This was a great place to duck out of the wind. In this bay the winds just swirl around at 0 to 12 kts while it is blowing easterly at 25 – 30 kts out in the channel. Not a lot to do here, other than boat projects and our daily snorkel.
There was a single coral head that was located by itself among some mushy green slime. It was small, but had a lot of sea life. Above is the local lobster peering out of her home there.

Next to the coral head was a flat rock that was home to this green eel.

Here’s the eel deciding if this squirrel fish could actually make a good dinner.

Deep in the coral holes lived this orange eyed octopus.

His mother loves him (porcupine fish)

You don’t see a lot of big fishes on the shallow reefs, but this guy came in for a look from the deep. Note the 6 inch fish tracking his tail.

This flounder variety was peacefully laying on the bottom carefully colored to blend in.  When I came close and took his picture, he got scared and decided to put on his defenses. That’s the blue rings all around. Apparently big fish don’t like to eat blue-spotted fish – proof that fish don’t like blueberries.

Check the little fish in front of Chris’ right mask lenses. We sat on the swim step of the boat and put on our swim fins. This fish came up to Chris and just started to hang with her. The fish swam along at least 150 yards to the point and then all the way back to the boat. When Chris dove deep, the fish went with. I think he wanted a girlfriend.

On a different day this yellow and black angle fish insisted on playing with my yellow and black fins.

On shore in the harbor are the remains of the 1950’s Chub estate. That’s Chub, like in Chub Insurance. The story is that back in the old days he used to come to the waters edge to take pot-shots at anyone who anchored in ‘his’ bay.

We dropped our genoa headsail off at Philips Sail and Canvas in Road Town, Tortola. The sacrificial cover was shot. This is the fabric that protects the sail from the sun when it is rolled up. We dropped the sail on the deck and Chris started resewing it. The more it got resewn, the more the material disintegrated. It needed replacement. Something much better done with a large room to lay it out. Hopefully it will be ready on Friday.

We left Little Harbour and sailed over to Sopers Hole so we could check of the British Virgin Islands with customs and immigration. On the way in we passed Venus. Venus is the super yacht built for Steve Jobs – but he never got to enjoy it. The bridge is at the top level. It has floor to ceiling glass all the way around. Great for the Silicon Valley look – not so smart at sea.

We headed over to St John and Cruz Bay to check back into the US of A. We needed to pick up mail that we had sent down – credit cards for the new year. On the way back out the outboard slowed way down. We weren’t sure we’d make the 1 mile run back to the boat. Turns out the propeller had hit the rocks onetime too many. In the old days props had shear pins that would snap when the prop hit something. This was to protect the gears in the outboard. Now the props have a rubber core that does the same thing.

The rubber ring on the prop (left) was trashed, letting it slip whenever you rev’d the engine. Fortunately I’d bought a spare carburetor and prop from a cruiser in Panama for a $100. So I stuck on this high-thrust (I know it sounds sexy, but it isn’t) prop and and off we were. More fixing your boat in exotic ports.

Our mail isn’t here yet – but it will be soon – for sure. Then we’ll head back to the BVIs to pick up our sail.

Paul

XMAS in Cane Garden Bay

Please don't say manaña if you don't mean it
I have heard those words for so very long
Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it
Don't ever forget that you just may wind up being wrong.
….
I hear it gets better, that's what they say
As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay.
…..
But I know that I'll get 'em, I know that they'll come
Through the people and places and Caldwood's Rum
Manaña, Jimmy Buffet

We spent XMAS in Cane Garden Bay on Tortola with friends from Skylark and Tivoli. Cane Garden was made famous in Jimmy Buffet’s song Manaña . Down here you’re more likely to hear on the local radio the The Best of Jimmy Buffet on Steel Drums. Chris and I got in our traditional Christmas day snorkel on the outside reef in the bay.
The bay sits on the edge of heavily jungled steep hills with a wrap around beach. Its a quite town on most days. When the cruise ships are in at Road Town, on the other side of the island, the beach chairs and sun umbrellas cover the beach early and the crowd arrives by the bus load.
The Callwood distillery, producer of Arundel cane sugar rum for over 200 years, is located in the bay. It is the oldest, continuously operating rum factory in the islands. Its small and does not pretend to be the Disneyland of breweries.

It does have clear signage like Disneyland. “Employees Only, Keep Your Ass Out”

Some of the rum actually appears to be aged beyond a week or two.

Rum tasting

That leads to the purchase of a small bottle of rum.

We’re in Little Harbour, Peter Island, British Virgin Islands now, with an anchor off the bow and a line from the stern tied to the rock cliff behind us. The airs about 82*F and the water is 85*F. We’ve gone from St Augustine, Florida to the Bahamas and back up north as far as Maine over the last year. About 7,000 miles total. The next year should put a few more miles under Georgia’s keel.
Happy New Year, and we hope it’s a good one for our reader.
Paul and Chris

The High Life in the British Virgin Islands

Torbin and Judy (Tivoli) invited us over to Great Camanoe Island to share lunch. They have some friends from the Bay area that have a winter house on the hill within Indigo Plantation. Aptly named as it used to be a plantation that grew indigo.  Indigo was prized for making blue dye. The island’s use apparently goes back to the 1600’s and the Dutch West India Company. Above is the view from the deck over looking Lee Bay.
It is an island style house to die for, with high ceilings, slow ceiling fans and windows and doors that open to all the breezes. No A/C or heater needed here.

The sliding barn doors open to the kitchen where Ricky is busily working on the lunch BBQ prep.

Georgia safely anchored behind the Marina Cay reef while we play on the island.

There’s that cute couple again

Ricky (honorable son), Judy and Torben. It was fun to meet Ricky, as he has just gotten off an intense work period. Ricky graduated  with a degree in mechanical engineering and through some fortuitous planning and luck, he landed a job working on the Oracle team America’s cup entry. Lots of of interesting technical stories. Ricky is now intimately familiar with titanium and saving grams of weight. He’s, hopefully, headed to grad school and wants to be ready for the next Cup.

Island flowers

These flowers just didn’t look like they had real colors. Turns out they mark someone's driveway and are plastic. Not everyone has island class.

We headed off to Monkey Point for some morning snorkeling.

These two girls decided to dress entirely different for ball.

There were a lot of pelicans roosting near by. These fry are what they were snacking on.

Another fancy dresser. The trunk fish are not very skittish. They almost pose.

This lobster was trying to decide if my camera would make a good meal or if it was a mortal threat.

A blue tang town meeting, think Dorrie in ‘Finding Nemo’. “Keep on swimming, keep on swimming, swim, swim,swim, swim…”

Paul

Abandoned Boat Recovered Off Anegada

SV Scat with Tortola in the background

Breaking up the boredom while hanging out in Anegada, we heard some VHF radio traffic this morning between the fishing vessel Pelagic and the US Coast Guard, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This is Pelagic towing in the abandoned sailboat Scat (reportedly a Southern Cross 32). The boat has been floating around for the last month(since Nov 3rd) after being abandoned 400 miles north of Puerto Rico for a medical emergency.
The Winnipeg, Canada, based owner was apparently severely dehydrated and was picked up by a cargo vessel after contacting the CG. When the vessel got about 200 miles off Puerto Rico, the owner was airlifted from the ship to a San Juan hospital. The CG was going to notify him this morning that his boat is now anchored in Settlement Harbor on Anegada – and probably has a decent sized salvage bill awaiting. Other than a broken boom, the boat looks in remarkably good shape. The solar panels have kept the batteries up, as the bilge pump was still pumping.
These ghost ships  are not something you want to run into at 3am.
Paul

Anegada Island

For those enjoying slush in the Pacific Northwest

We spent a few days over on Anegada Island. Its the only coral island in the BVIs, as opposed to the volcanic islands of the rest of the British Virgin Islands. The trade winds had finally calmed down a bit, giving us a great beam reach sail over – we did the 15 miles in a couple of hours. The anchorage is a little rolly, with some strange swell getting in.  But I guess we need something to complain about.

We rented car with the crew of Terrapin and Skylark (sans dogs) to circumnavigate the island by road.  Here’s the path to the beach at Loblolly Bay on the NE shore of the island. The reefs are far better on this side, than on the leeward side where we are anchored.

A photogenic box fish.

The restaurant at Loblolly with some long-hair walking past.

Monica, the owner of the restaurant. She’s an import from Trinidad and has adjusted to the small island living on Anegada, as compared to the big island, big city living of Port of Spain, Trinidad. She goes back each year Aug, Sept, Oct, during the slow season here. Good food, good hospitality, not cheap. Actually nothing in the BVIs is cheap.

Flamingo Spotting

The pink guys way off in the distant mangrove swamps along the salt pond.

We stopped at the bakery on the way back. This is the first time we’ve seen Lion fish on the menu. These are non-native, very aggressive fish that are overtaking the reefs in many places around the Caribbean. Even they aren’t cheap.

Unidentified purdy flower

Sunrise over Anegada Island

Paul