Just returned last week from a 9-day trip to the BVI. First time back on a boat in the BVI since 2008, after doing St. Martin and Antigua in between. We used owner time through the Moorings, our first time to sail with the Moorings.

The Boat
This time we chartered a Leopard 46 catamaran. We’ve chartered monohulls a lot and several Lagoon catamarans, including the 440, and I can safely say the Leopard 46 exceeded them all hands down. It has a big, comfortable layout and it sails very well for a cat. For example, coming back from Anegada, we left the channel about 300 yards behind a Leopard 44 on the same heading and passed him easily within 10 minutes, and with 1 reef in the main. The separate shower stalls are great. I hate showering with a pull-out sink faucet while sitting on the head. Speaking of heads, they’re all electric in the main cabins, with macerators, which virtually eliminate the risk of clogging. We loved the raised helm station, which can comfortably seat four adults. Ours had the steps up from the cockpit, earlier versions of this boat do not. You definitely want the access from the cockpit. The radio had an MP3 auxiliary jack, which the kids loved. We slept in breezes with the hatches open most of the time but the breeze abandoned us in Trellis Bay and Cooper Island, so we cranked up the generator and turned on the AC, which worked great. The generator is not too loud either. Amazingly, nothing went wrong with the boat and we had no chase calls.

Weather
Excellent weather overall, no rain touched us although we saw several passing showers in the distance. The humidity was up and it seemed hazy a lot of the time. The last couple of days had lower winds, less than 10 knots.

Provisioning
Our overnight stay prior to this trip was at Village Cay Hotel. It’s a reasonably good place to stay for one night before or after a charter and has a good restaurant. Since I knew it was two blocks from Bobby’s, we decided to shop there after our arrival and dinner, then let them deliver the provisions to the boat the next morning. That was quite an experience. Bobby’s has gone downhill a lot. Don’t trust the pictures you see on their website. We saw no other “tourists” there and the other customers were pretty sketchy looking. Later, I heard that there have been armed holdups in there. Don’t know if that’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all. However, we boxed up everything after checking out and it all made it to the boat the next morning, on time and complete. Next time, though, I think we’ll visit Riteway.

Anchorages
Our favorite anchorages were Savannah Bay, Deadman’s Bay on Peter Island, and Sandy Spit where we anchored overnight. In Savannah Bay, we had the anchorage virtually to ourselves except for 2 cruisers who were far away. Sandy Spit also had no other boats overnighting. Basically, if you go where there are no mooring balls, you get more solitude. Just make sure your anchor is set and you have sufficient scope on the anchor chain. Savannah Bay is easy to get in/out, but pay close attention to the depth gauge, water colors and your chartplotter. We used it as our overnight before motoring to the Baths at 6:30 AM to get a good spot.

Restaurants
We had excellent dinners at both The Last Resort in Trellis Bay and at Cooper Island Beach Club. I would strongly recommend both. They have upped their game to near-gourmet. Our whole table agreed that the best dish at Last Resort was the ribs with the Hoisin BBQ sauce. The show by Al the Singing Chef was very funny and entertaining. He’s an incredible talent and gets the crowd very involved, including shots of tequila for contestants. If you stay on a Last Resort mooring ball, you get a free bottle of wine at the restaurant with your mooring receipt.
Whistling Pines on Anegada was ok, but not as good as we remembered it from the last time. Lobster is $50/meal now. I wonder how many years it will take to reach $75/plate. We took the TTOL slip deal at Leverick Bay, which worked great. $30 for the slip plus $20 electric to run the AC, 1 bag of ice plus up to 100 gallons of water. Very nice to step off the boat for the pool, showers and dining. But we were hugely disappointed that the Restaurant at Leverick Bay had closed for the season!!!! They closed mid-May and will not reopen until mid-November. That sucked, because we’ve dined there in June and July before and loved it. Jumbies was the next option and it’s ok.

Snorkeling
Probably our most favorite spot was Monkey Point, where we saw about a dozen huge tarpon swimming amongst the billions of tiny bait fish. The tarpon would swim within about 7 feet of us and it seemed like they were eyeing us to make sure we weren’t there for their food supply. I could almost hear them saying to each other, “here come those lumbering surface fish again”. Second favorite spot has to be Flash of Beauty on Anegada, which we like better than Loblolly for the excellent snorkeling. We really like the coral canyons, but didn’t see a nurse shark sleeping on the bottom this time. Sandy Spit and Cistern Point both have a huge collection of healthy soft corals, and the Indians and the Baths are always fun. Saw a huge spotted eagle ray below us near the Rhone and a lot of turtles feeding on the grass beds in Deadman’s Bay of Peter Island. Speaking of eagle rays, we were about 1 hour out of Leverick on our way to Anegada when a huge eagle ray lept out of the water about 30 yards in front of our boat. He must have traveled 8-10 feet before landing in the water again. What an awesome sight that was.

Pro Valor Charters
We stopped in at East End Bay to visit Pro Valor Charters and check out their base for future chartering potential. Their marina is undergoing improvements and should be done soon. Best thing about PVC is they have a large Riteway literally next door to their office. Self-provisioning is high on our list of priorities. While we were there, we stopped in for more supplies and agreed that it would be easy to do our main provisioning there before a trip. Jim and Cecilia are wonderful people, very friendly. We plan to try them next time, especially since they have a Leopard 46 coming into their fleet in November.

Cheers!
Rob