We’re finally recovering from two weeks in the BVI and are getting ready to carve out a schedule for next year. (DIF is not the word for it!) This trip was certainly the strangest mixture of spectacular scenery and comedy of errors we’ve ever experienced (and we’ve had a few). The first half of the trip involved a flotilla sail (with Moorings) and the second half a stay at Rhymer’s at CGB (our home away from home on Tortola on many previous visits). This was our first sailing experience in the BVI and, despite a load of great experiences, probably our last. (But I digress.)

Because of my artificial knees, which set off every X-ray machine in the continental US, I was subjected to everything but a cavity search by the Transportation Slowdown Authority (in both directions), while my child bride, who zipped through effortlessly, twiddled her thumbs. The flight down from Buffalo to Charlotte, NC was uneventful (no squalling babies, over- exuberant ball teams, toxic passengers, etc.). There were, however, three toxic female passengers (on the way from CLT to STT) of the ‘You Go Girl!’ persuasion who we had the ‘privilege’ of sitting next to. ‘Nuff said.

The trip by ‘fast ferry’ to Tortola from downtown Charlotte Amalie was the usual scenic trip - it briefly through Soper’s Hole - with no AC, but what to hay - it’s the islands! We were able to avoid the usual mess involving taxis at the airport and huckster(s) at the ferry dock - and avoided the baggage and connection complications so frequently referred to in San Juan. (We used up another chunk of our frequent flier miles on USAir.) We hopped a cab from the ferry dock on Tortola to the Mooring’s Mariner’s Inn and got a very satisfactory room (NOT a Club Med room, just a room in the islands at a decent price). Our next door neighbor was, however, not pleased; in his first room, the phone didn’t work correctly (no dial tone) and he discovered that there was no toilet paper when he needed it most, while in the second (present room) he had trouble with the door lock. I tried to take pictures of the Moorings docks from the balcony, only to find that my trusty Canon Rebel (analog) had low battery power. A cabby took me to Bolo’s to get new batteries for my camera - something I should have done at home! We walked down the drive to Tico’s to get a bottle of rum, I read a little of Kathy Braun’s third detective novel about the B. V. I., and we crashed.

We had a great breakfast and met the hostess on the ‘Mother Ship’ (Wendy), checked out and went to the chart briefing (meeting Dunbar, el Capitan, and Winston, the fix-it-up guy). Then we were briefed on the boat (Johnny-J, a Beneteau 332 Club) by Lucy. The briefing was VERY perfunctory! Moorings certainly skimped on that score. At this point, we have to say that the three people on the ‘Mother Ship’ mentioned above were absolutely exceptional.

Our apologies to George Dog and his fabulous list of people in the BVI during the period in question. The route we traveled bore little resemblance to the one described on the Moorings web site, and we didn’t see any signs of TTOL people along the way. The route traveled was (1) from Road Town to Spanish Town, (2) thence to Leverick Bay, (3) to Anegada, (4-5) to Cane Garden Bay where, because of rain, we didn’t go to Jost van Dyke (sigh!), and (6) to the Bight of Norman. Sadly, there was very little real sailing done because of the winds - the luck of the draw!

We motored out of Road Town about 3 NM and cranked over to the suggested course (100°M) to VG. The chain of islands (because of their orientation) look like one continuous island end-on, a first timer’s optical illusion. At one point, my other half was sure that we had reached VG and so we pulled into the harbor to ask ‘We’re the Fugawi! ‘. The first yacht we queried didn’t know either (another lost duckling), but the second one told us we’re at Cooper. So we DID get a chance to see Machioneel Bay! We hauled a** toward VG, not wanting to be last in and were, in fact, the third to arrive in VG Yacht Harbor. The slip we had was identical in almost every detail to our slip at home on Lake Ontario! We went to the Rock Café and had a very satisfactory meal (but the wife only had an appetizer). The young piano player was exceptional (but we could have used a little less drum machine). When I asked him to play one of our favorite tunes (‘Let’s Spend the Night Together by the Rolling Stones), he told me I wasn’t his type. Good musician, bad attitude! This is a great place to dance the night away! A pair of 5 AM showers that night caused us to close all the hatches (still almost got drowned because the Beneteau’s cabin hatches are a pain to latch in a hurry.) It was very stuffy inside the boat but the fans were incredibly noisy - turned them off after Chris had dozed off.

The course to Leverick Bay was dead downwind and we just flew a Genoa as there was no real line to use as a preventer (a good idea with just the two of us going wing-on-wing!). We pulled into Leverick and snagged the mooring ball on the first try. Bingo! I went ashore in the dink to get mixer at the store and ice from the dock-master, and returned to find that someone had requisitioned our dinghy (with our old boat bag - empty - on board)! A cruising sailor from Houston took me back to the boat - thank’s Houston Control. The wife was too depressed to go to the barbecue but I did (not eating much, tho, because of the heat - although the food was excellent). The mocko jumbies were absolutely fabulous, picking up kids, forming a conga line and dancing on one stilt, dancing over a conga line of women and kids (and me!), etc. One mocko jumbie (a rather spectacular young lady) was in obvious discomfort (probably one of her straps was too tight). I hitched a ride with a fellow flotilla-member (from Colorado). He returned to the party later, which went on and on!

Dunbar found our dinghy the next morning - tied to the dock at Leverick (but on the opposite side and sans boat bag). Dunbar showed me how to rig the collapsible wind-scoops (which we were never told about during the boat briefing - I thought they were some kind of weird umbrella). One of them was broken, and the remaining one wasn’t much help in the fore berth. We got ice and water from the dockmaster. The trip to Anegada was directly into the wind and necessitated motoring. Courtesy of the ‘Mother Ship’ and Walker’s descriptions (didn’t have time to put the GPS data in our Magellan, which we brought along, just in case), we made an easy passage and went down the channel between the buoys (what there were of them!). The anchorage/ buoyage was very rolly - we missed the ball on our first two attempts, and on the third, caught the mooring but the boat hook came apart and the free part floated away! Thanks to a father and son duo from our flotilla in their dinghy, who rescued the parts-is-parts of the boat hook and the mooring line as well, we finally were able to take our dinghy to the dock in front of the Anegada Reef Hotel. Loved those pens they store the lobsters in!. We went by taxi to Loblolly Bay and I snorkeled while the wife got her suit wet, and then strolled up to the bar for the requisite pain killers before catching a ride back. (Some locals were playing a smashing game of dominoes at the next table.) I should have gone to the patch reef to our right because there were virtually no fishy buddies to be seen until you swam all the way to the reef! We heard that there were flamingos in the salt pond immediately outside the settlement, but there was too little time available to go to see them. There were some spectacular century plants along the road though! The lobster at the Anegada Reef Hotel was spectacular (lots of leftovers for later). At this point, it’s worth mentioning that the folks in the flotilla were an absolutely fabulous group of people (largely from the UK, with a smattering of Canadians and folks from the States).

Again, the wind was directly in our face on the trip to CGB - those who chose to sail (and tack) to get there ended up going over 50 NMs and coming in VERY late. The catamarans we saw (from the Catamaran Co.) on the way were having a great deal of trouble tacking - one was more successful at wearing, in the manner of the old China clippers. The strangest thing (to us) was how SMALL Cane Garden Bay seems from a boat (compared to how HUGE it seems on shore). Ditto for Brewers Bay, where the campground was scarcely visible. We took the dinghy to the dock in front of Quito’s and paid for our ball at Rhymer’s (telling them that we’d be seeing them soon on land). This turned out to be an easily rectified mistake, as the ball we were on didn’t belong to Rhymer’s. No problem. We didn’t go ashore, but ate on the boat. Winston brought us a new boat hook! There was plenty of rain overnight and into the next day, which precluded our going to JVD. No Foxy this year (and no challenge involving anchoring in Great Harbor, either)! This was our first view of the addition Quito has made to the Gazebo - very impressive!

The next day, there was a ‘race” around Sandy Cay and through the cut between Thatch and Tortola, ending at Little Thatch. What a bummer, as there was virtually no wind, and a light air race for two people is no race at all. We ended up next to last (with no way to really to avoid the adverse current through the passage - so much for local knowledge)! But we didn’t get the trophy for DFL!

We sailed along the oh so familiar coast of St. John past Haulover Bay and between Flanagan Island and Pelican into the Bight of Norman. The Willy T was readily visible due to its black hull, and we parked as close as possible to the Mother Ship. We tooled over to the Willy T for supper. (This was two days before SailorFitz’s unfortunate experience in the same locale.) Suffice it to say that I found the sex industry-type simulations mildly annoying - although my wife found them offensive. The two ladies involved (who said that they were involved in making a porn movie) did some simulated crotch-grabbing and pseudo-oral sex moves before moving on to more suitable targets, and a later ‘69' simulation was far enough away not to hinder our enjoyment of a EXCELLENT meal (couldn’t finish the ribs!). No sign of any nudies vying for t-shirts, but a lot of people were diving off the poop deck. There were several mega-yachts in the bight that night, brightly lit to make sure you noticed them.

The next day we cranked around Pelican Island and motored again (into headwinds) toward Road Town harbor (using David Street’s course on the Imray-Asolare map) and, at the end used the fuel tanks to find the entrance marker. After an interminable wait and many radio problems while trying to get directions from the dockmaster on Channel 12 (although other boats in the flotilla could hear us), we finally docked with the help of a pair of guys from a charter crew (and none from Moorings). The dockmaster had no paper work on our arrival due to a mix-up. It seems Ed Hamilton had not noted that we wanted a flotilla sail and signed us up as a 7 day charter. When I noticed that they had not charged us for a flotilla fee and they finally realized that’s what we had requested, they added the fee to the bill and charged us for it, but failed to change the length of the charter to that of the flotilla. We were just too pooped to go back out and spend another day on our own and just surrendered the boat, called Rhymer’s for an emergency extra day and arranged for an extra day with a Suzuki from Denzil Clyne. The de-briefing was more thorough than the briefing. The only problem serious enough to mention at length was a leaky MSD (the moisture on the floor initially blamed on the usual suspect), and the resultant unpleasant wet footprints on someone else’s cabin floor and elsewhere.

We got an earful from the cabbie on the way to Denzil’s (who was short on help and couldn’t pick us up at Moorings) about Prospect Reef, as well as the recent “assault” on a prison guard and the torrent of conflicting evidence at the trial . Again, nothing like local knowledge. We got a Suzuki Jimmy (instead of the usual Samurai) and drove over Zion Hill, along the north shore (almost no surf) and over Windy Hill to CGB. We got the usual welcome for “William” at Rhymer’s and took a temporary room (#35) at the end of the upper hall. It will do as a place to crash after the 4 PM happy hour next door, where another Ugly American was hitting on anything recognizeably female - including the bartender. (What gorgeous eyes she has! She dealt with him like an Olympic fencer.) Chris had calamari and I had grilled shrimp and pineapple. The stage is already completely set up for the BVI Music Festival in front of Rhymer’s and they’re tuning up the amps. Ah, but we have a room next to the street - nothing like forethought!

The rest of the trip was spent just limin’ - no better place to do it than at CGB. The kids from the alternative school in Ithaca that we have met here twice before were just packing up to go home. I will send them my favorite sunset picture from CGB that I use as an anti-DIF background on my computer, since they have yet to photograph a really lurid sunset (the weather was just never really favorable for them). We picked up a hitchhiker (originally from Tasmania) on the road to Windy Hill who was going back to his boat on the East End. We dropped him off at the One Mart - a great store! - just past the Rite Way and also on the left side of the road past Moorings. We went to the boating store at the Prospect Reef Plaza and replaced our lost boat bag. We sat on the balcony at Rhymer’s and dug the boats and the stars. On Friday we went to the police station to get a ‘resident permit’ so that we wouldn’t have to pay to get back into CGB during the music festival. The roads into CGB (e.g. the one down Soldier Hill) are to be made one way with one lane reserved for emergency vehicles and people are being bussed from Road Town with admission being charged ($18, as I recall, for a R/T on the busses). Most of one side of the street in CGB is taped off for paid parking (but Rhymer’s has signed its lot as a ‘Road Closed’). We have switched over to Room #40 (same one as at last year’s festival). Our two attempts to eat at the North Shore Shell Museum both failed as it was closed. (The first attempt was on a Saturday - thought maybe it might be because Egberth and his family are Seventh Day Adventists. The second attempt was on Sunday. Go figure! We didn’t have any better luck in Road town - Captin’s Table is closed for lunch and we couldn’t find the Fishtrap. We ended up at Nanny Cay and ate a lunch at the Peg Leg Landing Restaurant. What an enormous plate of nachos!

The second day’s show was fabulous - especially Sanchez and Gregory Isaac, who sang some fabulous Reggae oldies but goodies, with everybody in the mosh pit singing along. Ah, all the songs my mother never taught me. The third day’s show was less interesting, but the fill-in DJ playing tapes and singing impromptu was fabulous. Everyone was waiting for Melvin and the Blue Notes, who finally arrived and did some classic R & B numbers (especially notable was “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”) to close the show. It was very good Philly music, although I really prefer Motor City and Memphis R & B. Supposedly, the attendance was even better than at last year’s festival, despite the admission charges and the incredible traffic mess.

There was quite a cruise ship crowd on Monday - they were asking $5 for a beach chair and parasol, so we got some chairs from Rhymer’s and sat in the shade under the palms next to their restaurant. Several of the cruise ship couples took my hint and had their first painkillers - gave them something to remember about the islands. I took my traditional swim around the periphery of the swimming area, trying to get as close as possible to the terns sitting on the buoys. I almost touched one last year, but had no such luck this year, although I did jiggle one buoy until the tern finally flew off in annoyance. We got the packing done early and spent the evening watching the boats, the stars, and the satellites.

The return trip home was a mini-disaster. We returned the Suzuki and Denzil drove us to the dock at Soper’s Hole with plenty of time to make the 10 AM fast ferry. But the ferry went straight from Road Town to Charlotte Amalie without stopping to pick us up with our round trip tickets. (We had plenty of company, all of us held hostage by our baggage, until the next ferry left at 12:25!) There were the usual double customs/immigration checks - once at the dock and later at the airport - and the usual TSA shakedown. Our troubles were compounded by the HUGE lines at the USAir counters, where we waited while out scheduled flight took off to CLT without us. We finally got separate seats on a flight to PHL, where the USAir representative called ahead asking the flight to BUF to wait for four of us to make it to the other end of the terminal. We actually got home earlier than we would have via CLT, and the temperature at home was higher than in was in STT!

I’m probably going to be flamed to death for saying so, but this will be our last sailing experience in the BVI. There were some slippages, both by Moorings and Ed Hamilton, and the daily wear and tear on my 93 pound wife as she tied the bucking bronco of a dinghy to the boat really wore her down. But the big problem was the lack of a holding tank. (A friend of ours, who charters much larger monohulls from North-South and TMM with friends before high season, said that these boats didn’t have one either.) There were only two people on our Beneteau 322, but the MSD was a sight to behold in the morning - would have been even worse is it hadn’t leaked. You can say what you will about the regulations requiring discharge offshore, but you can be sure that a sizeable number of boats discharge in the harbors. The difficulty of supplying pump-outs in shallow harbors doesn’t cut it as an argument, because putting in a holding tank that can be pumped out offshore (the system we have on our Hunter) would solve the problem. If the charterer doesn’t pump out before returning the boat, the charter company can add on a charge to do it for him/her when the boat is returned. Having $25/30 mooring balls to save the reefs but no holding tanks is the ultimate hypocrisy. End of rant.

Absolutely nothing can change our love of the islands. Next year, however, we’ll go to Rhymer’s first - before the music festival! - and then go back to Cinnamon Bay and a cottage on the beach to listen to the tree frogs and leave water in a coconut shell for the bananaquits. (Both places have flush toilets.)