We took our niece and nephew (and his girlfriend) sailing as a college graduation present to both of them. Of all the things we told them about the biobay on Vieques sparked the most interest but we wanted to show them some of the BVI so we started there.

The boat - We chartered a Lagoon 420 from BVIYC. We wanted the space and stability of a cat for the "never been on a boat girlfriend". The boat, Kiaora 2, is a 2009 model and there were some good points and some less good due to age. It doesn't have AC but we never even needed the fans. It had two fridges and one freezer! All worked well, I figured we'd be running the engines a lot to keep them all going but the recommended 2 hours in the am, 2 hours in the pm was more than enough. Some of the lines were well worn and the cams on the primary winch were too. In a stiff breeze the cam cleat and the winch couldn't keep the main up but we improvised. The lower batten came out of it's holders and tended to work it's way out the back - we almost lost it one time.

Confession time - Last trip was a tale of me dropping things off the back of the boat - a pot here a piece to the grill there; this trip had me just doing stupid stuff. First night I fell off the back of the boat, in the dock and lost my glasses. For $75 we got a diver to retrieve them. The first night out I went to connect the snubber and the anchor wouldn't go down. I was so fixed on trouble shooting the problem I just never remembered that the simple fix was the engines had to be running. I knew better but it never clicked and I managed to break the connection on the anchor winch remote. Called Anthony at BVIYC, took him less than a minute to diagnose the problem, me, and he said it was safe to jumper the connection for the rest of the trip. I made a jumper from the spring in a clothes pin and it worked like a charm for the rest of the trip!

The weather - We had unusually strong winds for this time of the year; 15-25 knots from the S/SW in the beginning which slowly diminished throughout the trip. That was mostly good because the boat needed 18 or so knots to really get moving. The downside was the waves were up, 4-6 with occasional 8' and we had three sailors using the bucket the first couple of days out. Once they adjusted their Dramamine doses all was good except two mostly zonked out and slept on longer passages - I'm usually solo sailing when it's my wife and I alone so I was used to that.

The crew - The girlfriend was the wild-card since she had no boating experience. The niece has raced small boat since she was young and the nephew has joined her on some larger boat races. I think the cat worked well for her. At first she was judging every anchorage based on how rocky it was but by the end she was having fun and had forgotten about that.

Here is our day-to-day report. Usually my wife and I don't push it much but since we wanted to show them so many of our favorites we did do more racing around to get to the next spot.

The kids flew into EIS from London and took a cab to the base. My wife and I arrived STT earlier than usual to avoid any ferry issues. We managed to catch the next ferry out and only waited 15-20 minutes to leave. The marina at Joma was a little rocky for the sleep aboard but it wasn't hot.
Day 2, Sunday: We never seem to get off the dock early. Went to Great Harbor, Peter Island for that first swim at the anchorage.

Day stop at the Baths then picked up a mooring in Trellis.

Sailed to Anegada, got a ride to Loblolly from AYC and had 5 lobsters at the Wonky Dog thanks to the recommendations of the board.

Day stop at Sandy Spit and took a ball at Grreat Harbor JVD.

Day stop in Soppers for supplies and to clear out of the BVI and Cruz Bay to check in to the USVI.

Found a free ball at Water Island.

Sailed to Culebra, PR. About 3 hours downwind. Anchored in the harbor, went to the dingy dock and walked to customs at the airport. The nice guy at customs explained that having "foreign" crew members was not a problem because they had checked into the US at Cruz Bay. The reason we had to "appear" was that the boat was French registered. If it had been a US boat and we already had the use sticker we could have done it all over the phone. Anyway, the fee was $37 exact and he said he could make change (someone here had a problem of getting exact change). I think this was the same guy I talk to on the phone last time on the phone. When I got to the registration number on my sticker I said the sticker date was 2006, which it was. He repeated you mean 2007? It took me two tries to catch on but I think he gave me a break that day. Took the big boat out to Dakity and anchored. It surprised me that there were still mooring balls there and other boats were using them. Others had mentioned that funding was dropped for maintenance and most were gone.

Sail to Sun Bay, Vieques, PR. Had planned to beach the dingy, drag it to a palm tree and lock it and meet our biobay tour in the parking lot. My nephew managed to catapult his girlfriend out of the dingy in the waves and get himself run over by an runaway dingy (I warned him to watch out for this). So, girlfriend really wasn't big on my plan after that. We called Abes, the tour operator and told them we'd meet them is Esperanza.

Spent some time in Esperanza and did the Biobay tour. This is one of our favorites and well worth the trip to the SVI.

Sailed back to Culebrita on a nice reach. There were only "day use" balls so we anchored in sand. The kids hiked to the old lighthouse. By nightfall we were the only boat there; I'd forgotten how beautiful this anchorage is.

The downside of the SVI is getting back east to the USVI/BVI and we had 20-25 know winds from the SE and waves 3-5 with occasional 8'. The boat had a sticker of 2000 rpm max and the port engine had started overheating even at that speed. We were making little progress with the engines at 1800 so we made several long tacks straight into the wind and seas, that was an 8-1/2 day.

Made it to St. Francis Bay, St. John - one of my favorites.

Day stop at Leinster Bay. I was against it but this time the snorkeling was very good. Saw several fans, parrot fish and two squid among the other usual suspects. Cleared back into the BVI at Sopers.

Moored in the Byte at Norman and snorkeled the caves. My 60 year old body is having a tough time getting back into the dingy from deep water but my nephew reminded me I had a cold beer waiting and I was like a gazelle and popped right into the dingy.

Day stop at Monkey Pt. There was a lot of blume in the water and we didn't see too much. After reports of jellyfish on the board we didn't see any but a few of us felt a stinging sensation for a few minutes but it subsided quick. I think it was "sea lice" but not sure. Motored back to Trellis Bay, tried Cam and Lee Bay but one was smelly and the other was full.

Day stop at Salt Island. The salt pond was low so we got to explore the shore, climbed to the top and see the view. My nephew seems to have a thing for climbing palm trees and getting his picture taken. My wife finally had to yell at them to come back to the boat so we could get to our last anchorage before the anchor spots were taken. Motored back to Peter Island, Great Harbor. No one was on the East side where we like to anchor so we had that part of the harbor to ourselves.

Back to BVIYC. We had to wait for someone else fueling for a while but then brought back to the fuel truck and we able to leave it tied there which made it easy to off-load everything and catch our taxis to the airport/ferry dock. After I admitted my bad move with the anchor winch remote Anthony compted the replacement which I thought was very nice. As far as I know "the kids" made it back to London. We thought that the RTFF at noon would get us to CA in plenty of time but it didn't run today. We made the taxi ride to WE, caught the 12:15 to RH and the airport in plenty of time to get to the airport. Our flight was late but luckily we had left about 2 hours layover in Charlotte, NC so we had plenty of time to make our next flight home; exhausted but a very good trip!

Nice trip report. I am happy that you had a great dinner at the wonkey dog. We had dinner there the first week it opened and probably made the first recommendation.


In critiquing your itinerary, I wonder if you could have skipped the St. John stop? It would have saved a night in usvi. On the way east, instead of banging your way into the wind for 8 hours, sail to st croix and overnight there. That might be 1 tack. Next day sail straight north to sopers hole. I read that recommendation in cruising world in the last year.

Culebra and culebrita are pretty. I love both places. We too found the customs officer really friendly in svi.

How did you manage getting out of the dingy in Esperanza? It's quite a climb out of the dinghy up onto the dock.

I have never looked for the hiking trail on salt island. Where do you pick it up?
Warren

What an ambitious trip I must say. But you certainly hit the spots! thanks for sharing, <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Thumbsup.gif" alt="" />

It sounds like perhaps you did not enjoy the sailing experience on the cat. Don't give up on them. The 420 is a very poor sailing cat. The 2000 rpm issue on the engines was also a bit strange. The standard yanmars in most cats should be in the 2500rpm range for cruise and propped to hit 2800 to 3200 at full throttle. It may well be the cooling systems need a major overhaul and they placarded them to avoid fixing the issue. Give a different model cat a try next time. You should notice a big improvement.
G

Thanks for the report!

We seriously thought about that and it is a good idea. I think we could have made ST. Croix in one tack (winds were E/SE so I never closely checked). I hadn't asked BVIYC if St. Croix was ok, I kind of wanted to do Francis Bay, one of my favorites and I was trying to minimize long segments for the girlfriend but I think I failed on that idea.



We went to the long dock, the most easterly. On the west side there is a part in the middle that is lower with steps up to the top. The step up wasn't too bad. I was more worried to find a bunch of kids playing in it but every time I looked no one was near it.



I think with the drought the pond was very low but plenty of beach. We anchored by the dock and walked counter clockwise around. The trail looks like a goat trail, it's on the north east edge of the pond. It was only 100 yards or so to the top and gave a good view of the pond and the area between Salt and Ginger Islands.

I haven't given up on cats! After I asked, here, if we should go with a big mono or a cat most everyone was for the cat. Then after I booked it there was a thread about how bad the lagoons tend to sail. Oh well, I knew what to expect. Actually, it did sail to wind better than I expected and it moved pretty well on a reach, it just need 18+ knots to get moving! The wind direction indicator showed us doing 30 degrees into the wind on port tack, yeah right and 60 degrees on a starboard tack. I figured we were getting about 45-50 on each tack with a brisk wind. The biggie was the cams on the winches were worn so someone had to keep tension on them to get them to work. On the main even the cam cleat wouldn't hold but I think they replaced the line with a slightly small size and that caused the problem. On the engines I thought the same thing; never had a boat that had a max below 2500 rpm. I think the port engine needed a new impeller but it wouldn't overheat below 1800. Last November we were on a 3 year old Sunsail circling at idle to get fuel at the Delta dock and the alarm went off. Luckily we were close to the base because after it cooled down it had just enough left in it to get us to the dock at 1400 rpms. When they started it to check no water was pumping.

Thanks. We are usually the take it easy types but somehow we always seemed to get late starts, "what is she doing down there?" and had ambitious goals so this was a go-go cruise most of the time. We got to spend two nights in Sun Bay and you know the crew seemed to have more fun exploring and generally just taking it easy. We knew better but somehow the admiral had us moving a lot. I was just the boat driver on this trip!

I remember the thread months ago when you were planning this trip --- glad it all worked out!!

Warren,

Here is a picture of the eastern most dock in Esperanza. It looks sort of high even on the lower dock but I think I either used a tire to step up or I stuck my foot between the top of the dock and the board going horizontally. From the front tube on the dingy even my tired bones didn't have any problem.

I don't recall a lower dock. I remember helping someone climb about 5 feet from dinghy to dock. Maybe there is another dock a little west?

This was the long dock, the most western so when approaching the harbor it would be the one to the right.

Here is a shot from the top of salt pond. The camera is pointing E/SE, the path is just to the right. Hope this gives some perspective. [img][image]http://i1328.photobucket.com/albums/w529/Rick_merrill/IMG_0683_zpsunzglac9.jpg[/img][/image]