The first 2 parts of the report are here:
Trip report part 1Trip report part 2 So far we’ve braved the VIP lounge, 25-30 knot winds in the Drake channel, and visits to Norman (windy), Cooper (full) and Marina Cay (boxed in with one bad engine). Then Trellis Bay to fix an engine (twice), Leverick to fix it again (great dinner), touring VG and Baths, Saba rock, and sailing to Sandy Cay (lost prop) and thence to Soper’s.
Day 6 - Soper's Hole. We are finally tied up at the Fuel dock at voyage charters after making a single engine landing. We need to be off by 9am, so I tell Johnny at TMM that they’d better get cracking with a new prop to replace the one that spun off somewhere around Sandy Cay. The guy who would replace the prop is out at Peter Island on the chase boat, so he can’t get here until tomorrow AM. No problem, we are safe here, and he’ll come right out first thing in the AM. We all take showers at Voyage, and get fuel and make everything shipshape.
A little shopping ensues, since we haven’t really had much of a chance to collect souvenirs yet, and then a few cocktails are drunk. Off to Pussers for dinner and drinks and that is pretty good. So far we haven’t had any bad experiences with service or food, it has been uniformly good. Off to bed early after a busy day, since we need to be up early to meet TMM.
Day 7 – Little JVD, JVD, Roadtown. Alex from TMM shows up at 7:15am, just as advertised. He’s got a new prop as well as diving gear and a tank to install the prop. He’s pretty quiet at this time of the morning, and he just jumps in and gets right to it. Sadly, his diving tank is empty so he just replaces the prop using only his snorkel. I’m impressed.
After he’s finished, we are chatting and I ask him about having to head off to Peter island yesterday in the chase boat. He tells me that he had to fix a broken jib halyard on a boat there. It transpires that the charterer called in the problem and anchored in Deadman’s bay and waited for help. With the wind and sea the way it has been lately, Deadman’s would have been pretty uncomfortable anchorage. Alex had to go aloft in all that and fix the problem, he must have been getting banged around all over the place at the top of the rig but he got the job done. I know the customer’s always right, but they could have made things a lot easier for him if they took a quick trip to a more protected anchorage before calling in the cavalry. Not for the first time this trip am I impressed with the commitment of the TMM staff.
After a quick breakfast we head out to Sandy spit to try out our new prop. It is a quick sail over, but the swell is really running and taking the dinghy ashore to explore is out of the question so we tuck in around the east end of little JVD out of the swell and do some snorkeling there. The Mrs gets in some good bodysurfing on the large waves breaking between Green Cay and Little JVD. We leave around noon to go explore Great Harbour.
Not much is happening in the noonday sun around Great Harbor. Foxy’s has metastasized since I was last here 10 yrs ago, its much larger now. No sign of the man himself, but the food’s pretty good for lunch. I’d like to spend a little more time here, in particular I’d like to have dinner at Corsair’s, but we are running out of time and have to get back. We buy a couple of souvenirs at Foxy’s impressive store and set sail for Road Town.
We get in to Road Town around 5 and radio in to TMM to get our dock assignment. There’s no-one around when we arrive at the marina but as I’m backing in to the slip, Alex comes out to help handle our lines. Again, I’m impressed. It is 5:45 on Friday night, and Alex was at my boat at 7 am this morning and he’s still working. My plan of quitting my job and working for a Tortola bareboat company just got shattered. These guys work way too hard for me to keep up.
Then we run into Joyce, the woman who cleans the boats. She’s still at it around 6pm, but she’s still smiling and happy. We have a great chat with her, and her good mood is infectious, now we are all happy. My first mate bought a cheap guitar for a hundred bucks when we arrived so he’d have something to play and he can’t take it home with him, so he gives it to Joyce. She’s loving that. As we head into town, she’s sitting at the dock trying it out.
Everyone goes into town for some last minute shopping except for me and the Mrs. We go to Village Cay Marina for happy hour, it’s good to see that some traditions are still observed from the last time I was in town. The bar is packed, but that’s hardly surprising since the drinks are so cheap that I can’t even remember what they cost. I do remember that I got change back from a $10 after being there for over an hour.
We go over to Spaghetti Junction for dinner since it is a little quieter. Last time I was here, I got roped into a chugging contest upstairs in the BatCave against the owner John. I won, and was briefly the beer chugging champion of the Virgin Islands, according to John. Since then the BatCave burnt and relocated to Baughers Bay but Spaghetti junction continues under new ownership.
The rebuilt Spaghetti Junction is really nice with an open dining room on the water. Again, the service is terrific. Notably terrific, in fact. They are out of a few menu items, and I get a feeling that business is a little slow, but everything we had was fine. I’d go back again, and the waitress/owner is so nice that I’m hoping that lots of other people go there too.
Day 8 – Checkout. I’m a little worried about checkout, since we had a bunch of problems, and you are never really sure if you are going to get blamed for all of the stuff that went wrong or not. I’m sure that we’ve got plenty of evidence that we didn’t cause any of the issues that ultimately ended up afflicting us, but you never know.
I’m not sleeping very well, so I get up to go the Marina bathroom at around 5:30 am. On the way back I run into Joyce. She’s her smiling happy self, even though she’s at work at 5:30 on a Saturday morning and she didn’t leave work until after 6pm the previous evening. You can’t help but feel better about things after meeting Joyce, she’s so nice, so I’m now feeling a lot better.
We clean up the boat, and box up a bunch of stuff we didn’t finish to give to the staff, and then I go in to go through the checklist. In addition to the engine and prop problems we had, we also managed to break a hatch cover when a jib sheet snagged it while tacking, so I bring that Johnny’s attention. I talk about all of the engine trouble we had, but realize that it really isn’t their fault and they all worked hard to fix everything. Part of me wants to ream the management at TMM but my heart isn’t really in it. They run a pretty tight ship, and I will definitely use them again. Johnny’s a good guy, Alex is a friendly, committed and competent professional, and Joyce may be the nicest person I’ve ever met. After the briefing, they just tell me not to worry about the broken hatch and we are good to go.
One last beer at the airport, and one last pernicious hidden tax grab in the form of the $20 departure fee and we are on the road home. I’ll remember this trip for a long time, for a number of reasons, and I’ll be trying to get back as soon as I can.
Cheers,
Rod
