I’m going to age myself here.

My first charter was an Irwin 37 out of Fleet Indigo in Soper’s Hole in 1975. We were 3 young twenty something girls and they didn’t believe I qualified so they put on a local skipper. Thank God they did because within hours the steering broke and we were drifting into the rocks off somewhere, can’t remember exactly where. Had to get out the emergency tiller which required someone below and someone in cockpit to operate. We limped into the Moorings base.

But the rest of the charter was unbelievable. The local skipper knew all the late nite dance spots in the back streets of Road Town. We ended up squished into a live concert of Sparrow from Trinidad doing calypso at the old Fishers Cove on VG. We were the only visitors there. We ran out of food, had no money. No problem! He dove over and brought up conch and lobster (right in the Marina Cay anchorage) We learned how to pick sea snails out of the rocks. At the end we wanted to stay longer. Found pay phones and called our bosses and parents and claimed flights cancelled and we had to stay another week. Then the local guy and his friend ‘borrowed’ a Moorings boat and we sailed over to St Thomas because the friend was going for his captain’s test.

One sad thing during that trip was we pulled into Peter Island, the only fancy place in those days (before we ran out of money). Girls dressed up and we went into the fancy brunch. They refused entrance to our local skipper (black), even though he was a charter captain. We turned around and left, but not before using the only hot showers we found the whole time.

Other favorite memories:
Honeymoon charter 1987 for 3 weeks out of Bimini Yachts on St Thomas. The boat had ‘Bimini’ on the side. We were anchored in Hawksnest Bay St John and a thunder boat came speeding straight at us, crew dressed like Miami Vice. They pulled up and jumped on with guns, and shoved my new husband down below. Scared out of our minds. They were DEA agents in disguise that thought we were running drugs from Bimini. What a bunch of idiots!! Later we saw them in Cruz Bay at Carnival and blew their ‘cover’

Anchoring alone in Devil’s Bay for 2 nights.

5th anniversary dinner at Drake’s Anchorage. A real splurge for us in those days

Playing live music and dancing hula at Corsairs for the ‘luau’ on one of Saildoggie’s traveltalkonline group trips.

Tire swing at Stanley’s

And more….