I am a long-time reader and infrequent poster on this board. Just got back from 10 incredible days on my 9th trip to the BVI, and I can't wait to get back again soon. A little too overwhelmed to write a full trip report, but here are a few random observations...

For this trip we chartered a Moorings 473. Really enjoyed some of the features on this boat in comparison to what we've had in the past. In particular, the front-loading fridge, and the shore power A/C was a nice luxury that we haven't had in the past (although we only used it for our evening start in Road Town and one other night at Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor).
Despite the otherwise excellent condition of the boat, we did run into a problem towards the end of our charter when the alternator died on us. Turns out a leaky fitting in the engine compartment had allowed saltwater to enter the alternator, coroding it over time. The leak was observable only when the engine was running, so I didn't notice it despite my daily checks of the engine compartment. In the future I think I will be certain to open the compartment from all sides a few times with the engine running just to be certain there are no leaks or other obvious problems, something that I have not felt obligated to do on chartered boats in the past.
The alternator failure caused us to change around our plans for one day, but Moorings customer service was quick to respond to the problem and brought a new alternator out to our boat early the next morning, getting us back on our way.

Other than the alternator issue, we had an awesome and pretty much flawless trip. We visited The Bight, Savannah Bay, Bitter End, Anegada, Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, Cane Garden Bay, Little Harbor on Jost (had planned on going to Great Harbor, but this is where the alternator died and nobody felt like trying to manually operate the anchor windlass), and Key Bay on Peter Island (maybe my favorite anchorage in the BVI except for Anegada). We usually arrived late (5 or 6 pm) after a late start and a full day of sailing and diving, and we never had a problem getting a mooring ball or finding a spot to anchor. I really enjoy sailing this time of year. Nothing is too crowded, but most places also haven't closed down for the season just yet. Yes it is hot, but by no means unbearable when you're on the water, and the water itself was incredibly warm (between 86 and 88 degrees everywhere!). Best of all, you can get some great deals this time of year. For us, 6 people in our early and mid 20s, we would have been hard pressed to afford this trip at most other times of the year.

With the 6 of us all being scuba divers, this is the first year we decided to ditch the rendezvous diving and rent our own tanks instead. This worked perfectly, and we will definitly be doing it again in the future. UBS delivered our tanks and gear to the Moorings, helped us set up the tank racks, and gave us a very handy list of GPS coordinates for dive site mooring balls. With our own tanks on board we were able to dive almost every day, and we saved a ton of money considering the fact that tank fills only cost between $3 and $8 at most places. Diving highlights were the Rhone (never gets old), the Marie L and Pat, and a surprisingly interesting night dive right under the boat in Savannah Bay. We didn't make it out to the Chikuzen (my favorite dive in the BVI) on this trip because of weather concerns on that day, but we dove the Visibles instead (off one of the Dogs, can't remember which) and found this to be an interesting dive as well (although there was a LOT of current near the surface). Diving off a monohull is a bit of a challenge to begin with, particularly with so many people all trying to gear up at once in the cockpit, but it wasn't so bad once we got used to it, and the freedom definitly made it worth it. Check out this video of our swimthrough of the Rhone bow shot by my buddy Jeff.

A few other notable items. Purchased the Garmin Bluecharts before our trip and enjoyed playing around with these on my handheld GPS, although we found that in places (particularly the Anegada entrance channel) the Bluecharts were entirely inaccurate and would have landed us in some trouble if we'd followed them directly. They are a nice tool, but always cross reference paper charts and your own observations if you are trying to do serious navigation. On the up side, we were able to use my GPS to locate Walker's geocache along the north shore of Anegada (a short walk from Loblolly). This was my first experience with geocaching and it was actually a lot of fun. Will have to try it again next time down.

Also, the condition of NPT as well as overnight mooring balls seems to have improved overall since our last trip. I don't know if we just got lucky this time around or an effort has actually been made to address this problem. Some are still in very sorry shape.

We did not provision in advance and instead walked in to Road Town on our first night to purchase provisions from Bobby's. This worked well, and by asking around in the store we were able to get a discount as well as a free ride back to the Moorings base.

That's about all I've got for now. I'll try and post again with some more thoughts soon. Already planning our next adventure...we can't wait to get back!

Sean