Chartered a Sunsail 4800 cat for a week out of Tortola. We had originally booked our bareboat through Moorings, but since our boat was still damaged from Irma and awaiting repairs, Moorings nicely moved us over to Sunsail and comp’ed us an upgrade from Club to a boat that arrived after the storm and was thus pretty flawless.

In general, the islands are doing much better than we had expected. There are a quite a few sailboats bobbing around on moorings with no rigging; there are large ships hard aground in a few places; the trees / shrubbery are still very sparse; many roofs are still missing. However, the attitude is clearly that of “BVI Strong”, and it shows everywhere.

There are plenty of bars and restaurants open; never a problem finding a place to eat lunch or dinner. Provisioning, however, remains challenging outside of Roadtown. Bobby’s in Cane Garden Bay, for example, is closed with a sign “open in 1 month”. Nothing at Soper’s Hole; minimal (extremely minimal) food/beverage at Jost or Anegada, as you would expect. The only well-stocked store we found outside of Roadtown was at Leverick Bay. So my advice is to try to provision for the duration of your trip while at Roadtown until more locations come back online. Ice, at least, is available in enough locations to keep your drinks cold.

Locations we visited:
Cooper Island – restaurant is in full swing and both the food and service were great.
Marina Cay – plenty of balls; didn’t actually step foot on Marina Cay, but rather went over to Scrub Island for dinner. Didn’t dock there as they are charging $3 / foot + electricity + resort fee for a minimally functioning resort.
The Baths – found all possible beaches blocked by balls, so the only option is to swim in after tying your dinghy up to the provided line.
Leverick Bay – in full swing and looking great. Still a few repairs happening but this is a great spot to overnight. Beach BBQ on Friday night. Full provisioning, as I mentioned above. A MUST is to taxi up to Hog Heaven!!! The view is amazing.
Anegada – another blast was to taxi to Cow Wreck beach. The owners of the bar have sunk everything they had into rebuilding and it’s beautiful! No snorkeling, but plenty of fun going on. It’s a close second to Soggy Dollar Bar for us in terms of a fun spot to spend an afternoon.
Cane Garden Bay – about halfway back. A few restaurants open and the beach is beautiful.
Sandy Cay – pretty devastated. About 2/3rds of the trail is open; the rest still needs to be cleared with a chainsaw. The center of the island is all dead. And Sandy Spit is now just a bare patch of sand.
Jost Van Dyke – Soggy Dollar Bar is back and perhaps better than ever! A must visit. Foxy’s Tamarind Bar is open but was very quiet the night we were there. Foxy was out, however, looking great!
Soper’s Hole – we pulled in here for lunch. Still a few balls to tie to, or I imagine that you could tie up to one of the remaining (but wide open) docks. Pusser’s is open but you have to weave around the missing deck boards just to get to it, plus find the rear stairs. There’s a coffee shop open there as well, but that’s it. Extreme caution must be used when walking around / over the former docks, where are essentially all destroyed.
Motored over to Norman Island through an unforecasted squall that was gusting over 40 knots true. Big adventure! Pulled into The Bight in a downpour and picked up a ball. Dinner at Pirates which has their newer building open and doing great. The older building is walled off with plywood. The carcass of the Willy T still lies on the beach. (Apparently they attempted to pull it off using a tug and the tow line snapped, so there she lies.)
Peter Island / Great Harbour is of course the new home for Willy T 2.0. She is beautiful!!! They can now sleep up to 18 staffers down below, and she’s top-notch. They have yet to build a floating dinghy dock around her so for now you just need to nose up to the ladder, offload your crew, and then shift your dinghy over and out of the way, tying your painter to one of the many provided iron tie-offs.

That’s it. A great week; a bit different from before, but no less fun.