Fruitcake in BVI By: Ashley Dilmore p6
Over the summer, my family went down to the British Virgin Islands to sail a 50-foot sailboat for ten days. We rented the boat, and got assigned to a boat named Fruitcake. Immediately we all went “Oh My God!” This is a ridiculous name! Who would name a boat Fruitcake!? Anyway, once we got all our luggage and groceries on board and unpacked, we went to sleep, because the next day we were setting out to sea. The first night was the hottest night, because we had arrived late night, there was now chance we could get out to another island or cove to connect to a mooring ball. So we all were sweltering hot the first night. The breeze just does not flow as well as it does when you are on a mooring ball or anchored. The dock blocks the flow of air.
The next morning, my parents went to get briefed on the boat and where and where we could not go on our trip. Then they showed us how all the gadgets worked. I was not paying attention but I already had an idea of what everything did because I this was our fifth time sailing down there so we were very familiar to the area. So as we pulled out of the dock, many of the employees were making sure we knew what we were doing, which in fact we did! Once we cleared the reef, we were set to raise the sails. The reef area was also a sandbar, so if we had not cleared it, we would have had some problems! Luckily we did, and we were off, no more docks until we returned or had to refill on gas and water. The first night we sailed to Cooper Island. This island is especially known for the sunsets. On the beach there is a palm tree hanging over the water, and when you put a sun behind it, setting over the water, it is a once in a lifetime view that unless you come back the next night or in a year, you will never find again anywhere else in the world. But when we got to the island and got our mooring ball, we went to try and go ashore, and so we got in our dingy, pulled the string to get the motor started and the spring action thing the was supposed to pull the string back into the motor to start it did not retract! We called the base for our boat, it took them an hour to respond, because the channel they told us to try was not
being manned on the other side so they could not hear us. Eventually we got a hold of the jerks at base and they said that they would bring us a new dingy with in the hour. While waiting for them to show up, we met some kids from a sailing school, and they just fell in love with the name of our boat. They started talking to us, and later became an interesting group of new friends. About six hours of communicating to the base they finally got someone out to give us a new dinghy. It worked as smooth as the first one should have, considering it was brand new, and this one was older. Later that night after my dad calmed down from all the craziness, we went ashore for dinner. Sadly we did not make it in time to see the sunset, but we were still going to be able to catch some newer and exciting sunsets at new places. The next night we traveled to a little island known as Marina Cay. While we were there, we once again ran into the sailing school people, they were all crazy wild. The two people were so amused by our boat name that once they past our boat and shouted at the top of their lungs, “FRUITCAKE!” and my dad and brother responded with “FRUITCAKE”, That night we ate on board, as my dad calls it, Boat Chicken. We do not know what makes it taste so good, but it does. We think it’s the Caribbean Spice, which is a mixture of salt, pepper, time, garlic, and many other spices. The combination or rice, chicken and this spice is so astonishing to taste, so we tried to make the same thing at home, with the spice, and it was not the same addicting, very popular dish as it is on the boat! So then we thought, well maybe it’s the air from the sea, it was not! Anyway, So the next morning, we got up very early to visit The Baths. A national park made up of volcanic rock formations. So we went ashore and climbed the rocks, and went through the tour and ate lunch at the Top of the Baths restaurant, climbed down and took a swim. The water at this place was so soothing, clear, as a pool on a hot summer day. Around two in the afternoon we sailed up the island, known as Virgin Gorda, to Leverick Bay. Here we swam in their pools and checked our email. We also were invited to a barbeque of a lifetime! They had people walking and dancing and performing incredibly tricky steps on stilts. As the night went on the sunset and the moon rose over the tiki party. The next day we headed up for Anegeda. The farthest island from the British Virgin

Islands. Surrounded by shallow waters and live coral reefs. Standing at it’s highest point of twenty seven feet, you don’t see this island until you are right in front of it. To make this an even more adventurous experience, two of the buoy markers to get into the bay where you can moor, are missing! Known for their lobster, we decided to stay two nights to experience it twice. They have two main beaches, Cow Wreck Bay, which got its name from when a ship wrecked with a load of cows, and the cows swam ashore. The other beach, one of the longest in the world, Loblolly Bay. Both of these beaches offering great food, and unbelievable snorkeling experiences. We had a fantastic time here; it’s just a paradise in all aspects.
The next day, we traveled back to the main groups of islands. We stopped at a little island called Green Cay, literally a mile in diameter! Small little thing, but since we had a really dull anchor and you could not moor there, we could not stay for a while. So we traveled over to the main island, Tortola, which by sail power was about an hour away. So we usually sail all the way up to the point of the bay that we planned to spend the night in. Always throwing huge parties, blasting reggae music all night long. This place was known as Cane Garden Bay, this bay was so popular that it was hard to have even a foot of space to swim ashore! The only reason we went there was because of the nice beach it had and the restaurants were amazing. There is one that we like called Myats, a tropical themed grill and party place!
The next day, we traveled to Jost Van Dyke, this place is also known as the Soggy Dollar. The beach and snorkeling are amazing just as at Anegada because it too, lays over a coral reef. This is also an interesting place to get into, because there is a sandbar all around the bay. There are only two very small entrances that you can use to get in. Also, considering the shallowness of some parts sailboats are limited to the back mooring balls only. We stayed here two nights, it was July third and we were right across from St. Martin, and July fourth was my parent’s anniversary, and they wanted to see the fireworks. So during the day we set out to sail leaving our dingy behind to save our spot. That night we made dinner reservations and it turned out that we were the only ones at the restaurant, so we just had a ball. The cook was amazing, she

created the only vegetables my brother and I would eat! The fireworks were so small almost like quarters, sometimes even smaller. Once they were over, we shined out deck light into the water to see if we could get the attention of some interesting fish! We did, and since we had brought our fishing pole, we decided to try and catch some. We needed bait, so we took some duck tape and cellophane and made it look like a Mino. I learned something that night, tarpon look smart, but they are truly dumber than apiece of cheese! We almost caught three, but since the fish were so big we lost them. Just a little side note this island is where Kenny Chesney hangs out on his time off, and make most of his music videos as I found out. The next morning we went into town to shop and finish some errands that were important to our boat, like emptying the trash and restocking on food. As we left we hit some monstrous waves, nine feet in height some times. As were motored up wind our dinghy’s rope snapped in half! I was doing word searches and listening to music, and looked up just to see how far we had gone, when I saw a dingy, it did not register in my mind that it was ours until I looked down to see ours, and did not see ours! I screamed, “ Our dingy, its gone!” every one turned around to see where it had floated of to! We had to act quickly because we were moving closer and closer to shore and so was the dingy, and if it went ashore, it would be dangerous for anyone to get in the water to get it. Our priority list was our boat then the dingy. So as my dad turned the boat around, we grabbed our boat hook, the thing we used to get out mooring balls, and as we approached it, reached out to hook it on the rope, but since the waves were too strong, we lost the boat hook! So now we had to worry about our boat three hundred yards from shore, a dingy floating away and now a boat hook! Everyone was assigned a job, mine was to watch the boat hook and keep our boat from drifting ashore, my brother’s job was to watch the shoreline, and my parents were trying not to get killed while getting the dingy. When we got to the dingy, we discovered that the rope was split down the middle. So we just pulled it up more, closer to the bow of the boat. We thought we had it! So we headed for the hook. Not two minutes later did the dingy split again. Now we were still in the high waves and now had no rope, so we had to create one. We joined two ropes together and tied

the two ends on either side of the boat and put the rope through the hole in which the last rope was. We decided that we needed to get somewhere protected, quickly. We went out to get the hook, which was actually a lot easier than the boat, even though it was just a pole despite the high waves. We headed for our last night at Norman Island. Its theme, pirates, everything was pirate style there. Here we ran into our buddies from the sailing school and said our good byes.
Our last night on the boat was nice, at this point any time that we would go to shore; it was like we were rocking in the waves. You would not feel sea sick, but more so, land sick! I would much rather live on water than on land, its so striking to me, especially in the Caribbean, with the clear waters. So clear you can see a starfish from sixty feet under. I cannot wait to go back next year to see what fun the Caribbean has in store for my family and me again.

Awesome.

Fun! Sounds like she had a good time and some drama to report which I'm sure she'll remember forever. We enjoy adult trips but we enjoy even more taking kids. We require them to keep a journal which has been a lot of fun for them to look back on over the years. We started when the youngest two were 7 and 9. Now they're 15 and 17 and unfortunately not nearly so keen on joining us on the boat.

Very nice!

Great trip report

we found to the yacht was called "fruitcakes" after the Jimmy Buffet song. the prior week there was a band of merry men who removed the "S". Yes, we always have our children/young adults chronicle their adventures. Our sons essay about our month in Japan got him into UMD with a sub-4gpa, he wrote about people, not places.