While I am a newbie to BVI chartering I am not a newbie to sailing. I think I started this with my post last night.

I can not understate how much I appreciated and enjoyed reading the foregoing posts. Sandsailsun, you have been around boats!

I loved "bring less clothes and more money!"

Mooring ball pick-up, just hilarious.

Somewhere around my tenth year, only a year or two into my sailing life, I was involved in sailing instruction that taught us how to pick up a mooring ball. I was in a Penguin - some of you may know this boat .... about 13 feet, a single main, no jib. The mast is stepped forward about a foot or two from the pointy bow. We were instructed to put the boat into the wind to approach the mooring ball, leaving the tiller (lashed amidships on a bungie) to proceed forward as the boat slowed, drop the main, and grab the line attached to the mooring ball as it passed to port or starboard. In my excitement to get that ball, I forgot to drop the main, the boat accelerated as it predictably fell off and my skinny self, not wanting to lose that line, got pulled right into the water as I watched my Penguin sail off into other moored boats! Fortunately, or not, it capsized nicely before doing any damage to the moored fleet. Fun times.

More fun times ...... "nothing goes into a head except what comes out of your body." The wisdom of this statement is beyond mere importance. There is nothing worse than a clogged head to ruin a voyage. Nothing.

It does no good to tell your crew to follow their father's advice, fold only 2 or three panels of toilet tissue, never wad it up, wipe once. They will inevitably wad it up - several times - and the net amount of tissue will equal a third of a roll each time!


Thanks everyone. There is a lot of good stuff here for someone like me, planning my first charter trip in the BVI.