Trip Report – Mar 3-10,2012
Since I got a lot of help from the regulars here when I was planning my trip, I think the least I can do is contribute a trip report.

First off, the introduction: this is trip #9 for me, starting in the mid 80’s and my first in about 10 years.
There are a few things I noticed:

General Tourism – It has exploded all over the islands. Cruise ships of one kind or other in Tortola and North Sound most days, and the bareboat fleet is much bigger, too. Nowhere to anchor anymore, and moorings proliferate. This isn’t necessarily bad for the tourist business, but I lived aboard for a while back in the 90’s and it definitely would make that less interesting since you can’t really get near any of the good anchorages unless you’re mooring.

Services – The service economy is much more mature. Everywhere we went we were served quickly and professionally. Clearly a lot of effort has been made by businesses to increase service standards. I was really surprised that no-one seems to operate on “island-time” anymore, at least compared to the way I remember it being. The food’s better too, and not just in the fancy places. The fancy places are also much better. Heck, even Pusser’s is much better.

The Customers – Used to be, this was a bit of a niche market catering mainly to the serious sailor contingent as well as wealthy yacht club types. That’s changed, and for the better I think. There’s way more boats now and with different choices, prices and configurations, and a corresponding increase in sailors (and power boaters) of many and varied backgrounds. I met at least 5 people from my small Eastern Canadian town just wandering around bars and restaurants, that’s never happened before. Lots of youngish people too, but that could just be me getting older and noticing how young everyone seems. Skill wise, not much has changed. Credit Card Captains were pretty common years ago too, and they are still out there today.

The Bareboat companies – Service is better and the whole business seems to be much more process oriented, professional, and maybe even corporate. Check out, check in, and trouble resolution is managed much more efficiently than I remember. On the down side, we had more serious boat problems than I’ve seen in the past but they were resolved very quickly and efficiently. The whole business of Bareboating seems to be growing up and the gap between top-tier and mid-tier service providers seems to be shrinking too. That’s really good for the business in general, not so good for the top tier vendors who are likely feeling the squeeze.

Now, on to the trip report! We took out a Lavezzi 40 “Caribbean Spirit” from TMM. Slightly older boat, but very well maintained and plenty of room for 4 adults and 2 teens. I was the only one with any real experience, but this was no problem as you could handle the boat quite easily by yourself. TMM obviously takes great care of their fleet.

Day 1 – Arrival at BVI. Thanks to this board I signed up for VIP status, which was way cool. They met us at the plane ramp like foreign dignitaries and took us to the lounge. We were there with a bunch of rappers who were playing at an island festival the next night. No liquor in the lounge (beers would have been nice!) but the musicians asked for and got champagne, so we loafed in on the leftovers of their bottle of Moet. Nice. I'm loving being a VIP.

Got our luggage and headed for TMM. Dinner at the Pub, it was jammed but the food was good. They were a little understaffed, but working real hard, so it gave us a chance to have a few unhurried drinks before dinner.

Day 2 – Checkout. Shopping at Riteway, and Caribbean Cellars delivered our massive load of booze ordered in advance. Apparently my VIP status got us some kind of deal (or maybe everyone gets the same deal, but we still feel like playa’s anyway). Awesome. Alex does our chart briefing and Joe does the boat checkout. It was crisp, professional and well documented. Joe goes through the boat with me and tells me that new customers to TMM need to do a checkout sail before they let them go out. I’m momentarily disappointed, mainly because I'm lazy and I had hoped to make my crew do most of the heavy lifting right from the start. Since we are being watched for a bit I’ll have to do most of it myself to avoid confusion. Upon further reflection, I decide it is actually a good sign that they do this, since I’d like every charter company to make sure that their customers are competent. So, no big deal. Anyhow, they get busy later in the day, and after a brief conversation Alex just tells me to take off.

Easy jibsail to Norman for the evening, with a quick stop at the Indians for a little snorkeling. 25knots of wind and a decent swell make snorkeling tough, but not impossible. Then into the bight for a mooring and another quick snorkel on the reef in there. I thought this reef was my own secret discovery, until a bunch of other ppl show up and scare off the fish with a bunch of hooting and hollering. Next time I’ll do it at dusk so no-one can see us in there… Drinks at Pirate’s, dinner is on the bbq, since WillieT is dead. Good fun lighting the bbq with the 25+knot winds funneling through the hills, but my intrepid 1st mate figured it out and dinner was a success.

Day 3 - Norman, Caves, Cooper, Engine Failure, Marina Cay. I’m getting old. Up at 7:30 and I’m not even hung-over. Quick motor to the caves to grab a good ball, and then breakfast and snorkeling. As usual the snorkeling at the caves was magnificent and the crew was blown away. We put in a couple of hours there until hordes of other people show up, and then we bail. We don’t mind snorkeling with a crowd, but I don’t get what all the yelling is about. Don’t these people understand that you’ve got to sneak up on the interesting fish? Screaming at them from close range doesn’t attract fish, or people either for that matter. Next we set sail off in the direction of Cooper Island. I’ve never managed to get to Cooper yet in all my BVI trips, since I could never get up early enough in the morning the get there in time to snag a mooring, but hopefully I’ve got it beat this time now that I’m old and tired and go to sleep and get up earlier.

Pulling up the main in 20-25 knots of wind is presents our first problem. Nice new sail, so naturally the battens foul repeatedly in the lazy jacks no matter how much I loosen the main sheet. Finally fix that, and the halyard seems to be sticky – it’s wrapped around some masthead fitting on the front of the mast near the spare jib halyard. That takes 20 minutes of messing around in 6 ft seas to clear. It keeps happening all week too, so I’m wondering if this is a known issue on the Lavezzi 40. Anyhow, hoist the jib and main and a couple of reefs later we are tacking through about 120 degrees in the Drake channel and going nowhere fast. Forgot about the difference in windward performance with cats vs a monohull. Motorsail our way into Cooper around 3, and there’s no room at the inn. Again. I’m destined to never set foot there, it seems. Hastily change course to Marina Cay.

1½ hours later we pull in to Marina Cay and there are no moorings there either. Great. I’m slowly driving north through the Camanoe/Scrub/Marina Cay channel trying to decide if its worth driving over to Trellis for a ball (with my luck today, I think not) or anchoring right here. Suddenly, out of the blue, the port engine quits. With the sails stowed. And a green crew. And 3 feet of swell funneling into the channel/anchorage. And 50ft between me and a lee shore. And 25 knots of onshore wind. And now I can only turn to port, where the lee shore is. Now, a lesser man would have panicked. Or he would have bought the insurance waiver at the chart briefing, so he’d be less worried about the immediate financial ramifications of his next decision. My course of action was different; a mixture of confusion and bewilderment, semi-rapid assessment of the danger, then depression followed by cursing. Then panic.

So now we are embayed, and there is no way to sail this tank off the lee shore, and not enough time to do it anyhow. The engine wouldn’t restart, even though I cursed it repeatedly and lustily. Fortunately my first mate actually paid attention during the TMM briefing and knew how to deploy the anchor. Next step was to turn off the wind and hope we could turn through 270degrees quickly and maybe gain some ground upwind to drop the anchor.

I probably should have practiced maneuvering with one engine so I could master it before now, since I normally sail monohulls (big cats being more of a charter thing for me). I reckon close quarters boathandling with different cat styles differs a quite a bit from boat to boat. Certainly running on one engine highlights these differences! I think I may have learned a lesson today.

Anyhow, it turns out that the heavy headwind and swell helps to keep us straight for a bit once we get it on the port beam so after a few quick circles we had enough room to drop the anchor. It must have looked pretty ridiculous to any observers, with us going in counterclockwise circles in a crowded anchorage only to drop the hook pretty much in the middle of the channel. Finally got it done, set the anchor properly so we wouldn’t drag (first time, fortunately), and headed to the bar where I drank many beers and called TMM to report the engine trouble. They told me to meet them at Trellis tomorrow AM. Great, another windy anchorage with an unfriendly looking lee shore. Although, at least this lee shoe has a bar on it called the Last Resort, which should help take the sting out of being shipwrecked there.

Marina Cay has some good live music upstairs and the painkiller happy hour took the edge off. Dinner at Marina Cay was actually pretty good, and the service was very friendly. A nice end to a fairly hectic day. Sleep was in short supply in the windy, rolly anchorage, but the anchor held fine.

There's much more, I'll post at least 2 more parts soon, in anyone's interested....

Rod