Day 8

We were up and out early as this was our last full day on the boat and we had an ambitious itinerary. We were headed up to White Bay on Jost for lunch and then needed to be back to Road Town by 4:00. We motored out through the channel towards Guana and Great Camanoe. The winds were still blowing fiercely as we tried to raise the sails in the area between Tortola, Guana and Great Camanoe. DH reaches his wits end with raising the main through the lazy jacks in these conditions, throws the lines down in disgust, and says "you do it". Up to now, I would drive the boat while DH raised the sails. All of the action above the bimini had been hidden from my view. I had heard a lot of salty language whenever the sails were raised, but I hadn't seen what it was all about. DH took the helm and I took the lines. I finally saw what the deal was and was able to get the sails up. I think if you don't have the expectation to start that you will ever just be able to push the button on the power winch and raise the sails all in one go, you won't get so frustrated with the process when it doesn't turn out that way.

So now we had the sails up in strong winds and we needed to pass through the channel between Tortola and Guana. This is a fairly narrow channel as far as tacking through it though so it was my turn to declare, officially, that this was NOT FUN. We motor sailed through the channel to get out into open waters. Once we passed the channel, we we found ourselves in a dead spot with Guana blocking the wind. Go figure.

We had another fairly long down wind sail towards Jost. We tacked into the channel and sailed past Sandy Spit and Sandy Cay. From there is was an uneventful sail up the coast to White Bay. This day was another gray and overcast day. As we were sailing along Jost, we could see rain storms on Tortola. We dropped the sails, motored into White Bay, and grabbed a mooring off shore from Ivan's. We dinghied over to the beach and left the dinghy near Hendo's hide out.

Walking along the beach towards One Love, I realized that I had not planned enough beach time in this vacation. The sand in between my toes felt heavenly. We had lunch at One Love and then stopped off at Soggy Dollar for a painkiller. I went for a swim and tried to enjoy the last few minutes we had on the beach. We were on a schedule though so we dinghied back to the boat. We jumped off the boat into the water a few times and had a last swim. DS14 actually joined us for this part.

We then motored all the way back to Road Town. We were motoring against some big swells and big winds with intermittent rain. Lovely weather. We pulled into Road Town harbor by 4:00, in time to call the base and have them bring us into the dock before they closed at 5:00.

We went through the check out process, did some packing and final cleaning of the boat, and got as much done as we could since we had an early departure the next morning. We went to Sharky's for dinner, which was good, but I was so exhausted from the day I almost fell asleep during dinner. I don't even remember if we had a night cap that final night on the boat.

So ended our last full day of vacation.