Week 2 - Heaven on Earth, with a Sprinkle of HadesApril 24 - Up early and sponge down hubby with white vinegar as heat rash still very bad when not being treated internally with rum. Vinegar seems to help somewhat, but he smells like a plate of fish and chips! Take a final look around Marina Cay and once again I'm amazed at the effort and ingenuity that must
have gone into building all the houses and villas perched on the hilltops! I'm looking forward to arriving at Jost Van Dyke later today simply because I need some space and a non-shifting environment in which to shave my legs. It's just too much of a contortionist feat on board and who knew hair could grow so fast in the tropics? The rest of today is almost pure unmitigated hell. The sail to JVD has 2 options with a following sea and breeze - sit aft and get the breeze but broil in the sun or sit forward and get some shade and no breeze at all. The heat rash is getting way worse with huge ugly blisters and I'm now thinking perhaps medical attention is required. What to do? Arrive at White Bay on JVD just before noon.
Our first glimpse of White Bay leaves me with mixed feelings. This is a spectacular beach, heartbreakingly beautiful, so much so that it quite takes your breath away. But it's crowded!!! This is Saturday and the bay is simply full of sailboats, power launches, day sail cats etc. Everywhere! But especially in front of Sandcastle and the Soggy Dollar. We dink ashore and say our sad goodbyes to Ann and Bryan, locate Alison the manager who informs us that our room is not ready yet. So we wait and wait in the sun and swill some rum punches down in self-defence. Finally we get into our unit (no lobby or official check in here) and Bob collapses in front of the fan. Alison gives us the intro and tells us that the
kitchen is closed for tonight and everyone is going into town to eat. Bob is too miserable to want to go out, so we grab a burger from the SD bar just before they close at 3:00 PM - that will do for tonight. Late in the afternoon, we are given a special treat to make the day just perfect. A huge cigarette boat pulls in, manoeuvers around all the boats in front of Soggy Dollar and tries to back onto the
beach to offload the PYTs who don't want to get their dollars soggy. Can't get in close enough (small wonder - this sucker is about the size of the QE2!). Try again, and again, and yet again. Meantime all the SD patrons and the folk on the beach are treated to about « hour of roaring of about 800HP of inboard engines and the accompanying exhaust. You can't talk at the bar or on the beach during this! Breathing is very difficult. Not sure if the driver finally shuts down the motor or if it actually quits in disgust and embarrassment. Anyhow, all SD patrons and most of the people on a « mile stretch of beach spontaneously stand up and applaud in response to the sudden quiet and cessation of exhaust fumes! Big mistake! Your average ABS does not appreciate sarcasm or irony. ABS driver is pissed off! Start the engines again and let's try to prove that we can do this! 15 minutes later, this is still not working so the driver finally leaves in a last display of petulance that involves revving the motor at max power for about 10 minutes and then roaring off at warp speed. His departure leaves the bay still crowded, but blessedly quiet. As the afternoon winds down and the remaining crowds depart, I take a walk along the beach and am charmed by the sting rays coming in to feed in the shallows. (This gets repeated each afternoon while we are there). After the sun sets, sit on the beach (now blissfully quiet) and stare at the stars and the lights from STT ("lights of St Thomas, 20 miles west - I see General Electric's still doin' their best")! Oh
yeah - this is fine!
Bug Buffet:
For those of you who are allergic to no-see-um bites, don't do like I did and forget the "After-Bite" at home. In spite of repeated applications of "Deep Woods Sportsman Off" with enough DEET to poison a small country, I still got bitten many times and still brought home badly infected bites which I could have avoided (not the bites, but the scratching and infection) if I'd brought along the After-Bite stick!
Sandcastle Review:
This place is fabulous for the right kind of person. We stayed in the 2 room beachfront rondel cottage. The accommodations are very very basic. No air, radio, phone, TV, fridge. The shower is outside (forget about charming stone enclosures - this is plywood around a concrete pad) and is just super! Air is not necessary in the beachfront units as the windows let in a constant breeze and there are ceiling
fans and an upright pedestal fan in the room. (The only improvement would be an extension cord as there is only one electrical outlet in the bedroom, which means that the fan gets positioned right between the bed and the bathroom, which led to some rum-induced cursing over stubbed toes in the middle of the night.) I read somewhere that staying at Sandcastle is more like staying at your favourite uncle's cottage than a hotel, and that statement pretty much captures what it is like (provided that your uncle bends over backwards to ensure that you are happy and that he is a 5 star cook!). Bruce and Debbie have tried to ensure that this is a very low-key resort where bathing suits and bare feet are the norm, where everyone feels like family after a day, where you just help yourself to whatever you need but where the dining is absolutely sublime! Most guests are repeat or "word of mouth" clients. With a maximum guest list of 12 at any time, you get to really meet the other guests and by the end of the week you've made friends with guests and staff. When the time comes to leave, it's really tears and hugs all round. For the right kind of people, this is super.
The real icing on the cake to all of this is the cooking of Oliver who is the chef at Sandcastle. We ate very well during our BVI trip, but I have to say that the dinners at Sandcastle were absolutely leagues above all our other restaurant dining experiences (not just in the BVI - I can't think of comparable meals anywhere, anytime!). Every supper was a trial to decide what to have. You must place your
order by 4 PM and there are only 3 choices of entree (a poultry, a red meat and a seafood). But the ingredients are so good! What Oliver can do with a rib steak or a filet is not to be believed! When you look at the kitchen of the Soggy Dollar bar and realize that he prepares all the meals there in that tiny space, it's incredible. This is dining at its absolute finest!
When planning this trip, I seriously considered Peter Island. I so glad we went with JVD and Sandcastle instead!
White Bay:
Here's where I get somewhat schizophrenic. This is a place that suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder. Early mornings you can stroll along the beach, your footprints being the only new thing in the sand. This is a bay so beautiful in setting that it takes your breath away. Swimming is great, the sand is powder soft, the scenery magnificent. Before our trip, I was concerned about the presence of cruise
ship passengers as well as the ATVs and watersports concession on the beach. Forget about them - they are hardly used. The beach west of Sandcastle has filled up with a few establishments. There is Gertrude's Bar, Jewel's Snack Shack, the One Love Bar, the White Bay Superette and the Watersports concession. For the life of me, I can't figure out how any of these places (with the exception of the Superette) make enough money to stay in business as there is seldom more that 1 or 2 people at any of them. Most traffic concentrates at the Soggy Dollar. The White Bay Superette is a gem!. It's a clean and tidy little place that blends in with the beach, is painted in vivid Caribbean colors and stacked ceiling to floor with just about anything you might have forgotten to buy, including a decent selection of beer and liquor.
Most cruise ship visitors to White Bay come by cab from the ferry and leave fairly early in the day - not a real problem. There are about 13 mooring balls in front of Ivan's which were taken every nicht we were there and never less that 3 or 4 sailboats anchored overnight in front of Sandcastle. Folks swim ashore or dink in for a couple of hours and are gone back to their boats. Likewise, day sail cats
over from Tortola - in for an hour or 2 and gone. Where the major aggravation stems from is the private boats from St. Thomas (mostly motor, mostly huge) filled to capacity with drunken 20-somethings who come in mid-morning and stay till dark. They anchor within feet of the beach rather than dinking in, so by early afternoon it's impossible to swim safely in front of the resort. They ignore the hotel signs, climb the ropes, steal your lounges, leave trash everywhere.
The antics of these folks provides some rather entertaining people-watching (for a while). However, it starts to get to get tedious when you have paid to stay here and can't swim, can't find a beach lounge, can't get a drink from KC in less than 25 minutes. Add to this the mega-power cigarette boats driven by a pair of ABSs (Able Bodied Studs) and littered with the requisite PYTs (Pretty Young Things)
backed into the beach to offload and anchor. And who MUST rev the boats for about 15 minutes at maximum power, spewing exhaust fumes every where before leaving and you take heaven on earth to hell on earth on a daily basis.
What a shame - I would stay at Sandcastle again in a heartbeat (but off-season), but right now it's coming perilously close to destroying the whole reason why a lot of folk go there to start with!
- I'm up with the sun for a walk on the beach. Lovely, lovely, lovely! Bob is so-so. I've decided that if things are not better by Monday morning I will take him into the hospital at Roadtown. Don't figure that there's much point in doing so on the weekend. I'm delighted to find that Sandcastle offers a choice
of my favourite teas (especially Earl Grey and Darjeeling) which makes my ornings sing. There's nothing like sitting at the Soggy Dollar (now your family breakfast room), sipping your favourite tea and watching the pelicans and gulls fish off the beach. The peace and quiet is so wonderful (MPD, I tell you). We meet some of the other guests and have a lazy day repeat of Saturday, collect on Dug's 2 PKs left for us at the bar (more STT day trippers, but more family types today). Kitchen is closed again tonight, so we opt to go for lobster with Bruce and Debbie, some of Debbie's family and some other Sandcastle guests to Abe's. Hubby has lobster (OK) and I have shrimp (great flavour but over-cooked). Early to bed again and the night is disrupted by HD's total misery - he wants to go home - can't take the heat anymore. I'm devastated.
April 26 - Up for breakfast.
Meet Tony and Barb from Chicago who were not out to supper at Abe's last night. These are great folks and Tony keeps us in stitches with his stories. My cheeks and sides ache from laughing so much! (This is one of the reasons why we never travel with friends. When we are alone, we always meet such great people who enhance our trip experience immeasurably!) Mention to a very nice couple (Ian and Hilary) from Toronto that I'm going to take Bob to the hospital today. Ian says he has some prescription cream for heat rash and brings it to Bob. After breakfast, Bob applies it - and, wonder of wonders! - 15 minutes later, he's stopped scratching and he's sound asleep sitting up on the couch. I leave him be and sit and read in front of the cottage. Finally, I decide that I should go and get some ice and drinking water from the kitchen. As I walk to the cottage, I hear a very loud voice yell out "Linda - is that you???". I turn, and see a guy (with the requisite hat, beard and sunglasses) coming towards me from the SD. All right?! Who knows I'm here? Several people from TTOL, but they don't know what I look like. On the other hand, they could have asked anyone from KC to Alison to point me out. Next thing I know, I'm enveloped in a bear hug and this guy is telling me how absolutely great it is to see me again after all these years! Enough already! I hug him, pat him on the back reflexively, but finally stop and ask "Who the hell are you anyway?". Man - this guy is really good! He's devastated that I can't remember him from high school! Finally, as my mind starts to disintegrate, Ann and Bryan pop up from behind some bushes! This is their new charter and this whole thing is his idea! Lucky Ann and Bryan - back to back crazies for their final 2 charters of the season!
Lots of boats in and out of White Bay, but none of the craziness of the weekend! Dinner (our first) at Sandcastle is Filet Mignon au Poivre in a Brandy sauce. It is simply to die for! Just enough pepper and brandy to complement an out of this world filet. This is food at its very best! We are seated at a table in the sand with Tony and Barb and a couple they know from STT (Dan and Rebecca). They are absolutely hilarious. Dan tells us a story of how (when managing a bar in DC) he got into the Absinthe (apparently wormwood has psychedelic qualities) and ended up sitting at the end of his own bar and looking around and thinking he had been transplanted into the set for "DC Follies"! Kept looking up for the mannequin manipulators in the rafters of the bar. After supper, they're all off to Corsairs and we're off to bed. (OMG - we're boring!)
April 27 - Up early for a walk on the beach. Bob joins me today - Ian's cream is really working! We are now getting back into total vacation mode! Sit at the cabin for a while watching mongoose scurry around and goats roam the western point of White Bay. The wind picks up as the sun comes up (as it often did during our trip - I believe that winds were stronger than would normally be the case at this time of year). Snorkelling will not be good today. But a terrific day for just noodling about in the waves. Shrimp Provencale for supper (totally amazing) and lots of good conversation with Tony and Barb. We exchange some marriage and household horror stories. Tony recounts his exploits of the previous evening and his
reward for a kind favour to strangers. Lent his car to folks at Foxy's who couldn't get a cab that late and needed to get a group of people back to a rental house high up on the hill over the harbour - "no problem, mon - back in 20 minutes!". An hour later - no return, no car. So Tony ends up walking up the hill in the dark in bare feet (it's hard to keep track of your sandals when drinking rum apparently) hopping, and cursing with every step. Turns out they got back to their house OK but then settled in to do some more serious drinking and forgot about Tony completely. So it's true - "no good deed goes unpunished". Our own farm stories earn us the reputation of folks you never want minding your pets (not if you want to
see them alive again!). We laugh till we ache, then laugh some more. Then, off to bed to avoid disturbing the other guests.
April 28 - Up again early. Just another crappy day in paradise! Forgot to write in my journal for today, so all is a blur, except the wonderful rib steaks for supper!
April 29 - Again this morning about 20 sailboats in White Bay. The mooring balls in front of Ivan's are almost always full and there are usually another 3-4 sailboats anchored in front of the Soggy Dollar. We've assumed a routine of a beach walk and then having coffee and tea at the bar and watching the pelicans until breakfast is ready at 8. This morning as we contemplate the serene vista in front of us, a Moorings monohull motors in, throws down an anchor and promptly runs aground on one of the reefs in front of Sandcastle. This provides about 2 hours of pre-breakfast entertainment for the Sandcastle staff and guests as we watch multiple attempts by a convoy of dinghies to pull the boat off the reef. As the sun gets higher and the winds pick up, the boat is starting to list noticeably with each swell. Finally, another Moorings charter boat (a huge cat) picks up a line from the monohull's mast and successfully yanks her off the reef. Without divers down to check the hull, I can't believe that this was accomplished without hull damage! For the rest of the day the western point of White Bay is murky with silt and the beach area is strewn with broken coral.
High Credit Limit is Your Best Sailing Credential?
During the whole of our trip, I saw and heard nothing to disabuse me of the notion that there are many, many bareboat charterers in the BVI who are not qualified to sit in a boat, let alone captain one!
Tonight we pass up supper at Sandcastle to dine at Corsairs with Barb and Tony. We have brought a Harley-Davidson T-shirt from Ottawa as a gift for Vinnie. (Unfortunately, it was a "medium" and Vinnie is not a "medium" kind of guy - He will have to hang it on his wall!). After we are seated, we are joined by Ian and Hilary who are dining there as well. Much as we love the food that Oliver prepares at Sandcastle, we are ready for a "pub food" night. I have the Caesar Salad (which is the best I have eaten anywhere, anytime!) and chicken wings and Bob has the "Nachos with Everything" (Next time, "Mr. Mild" will ask exactly what "everything" means - the jalapenos just about killed him!). Food was terrific! Then, on to Foxy's for dancing where we run into Dana and Ashley who are also staying at Sandcastle. Back home (Sandcastle is now "home") about midnight.
JVD Assessments:
Abe's - good food, not great the night we were there (but then again, we were so spoiled by Sandcastle!)
Corsairs - excellent food and a Caesar Salad that is so rich and garlicky it's awesome!
Foxy's - OK, we've been and can say we've done it. Crowded, touristy, hot and nothing really special.
- Ugh! Where is that truck that ran over me last night? Probably shouldn't have had that tequila shooter! I seem to remember Barb taking a rest flat on her back on the dock when we were walking back to the car. Off to the bar for much-needed caffeine. Tony does not have the good grace to exhibit any hangover signs and keeps us in stitches (we're laughing, but it hurts!) all through morning coffee and breakfast. We vegetate on the beach all day (except Tony who snorkels for about 2 hours and spots a nurse shark). There have been another 18 sailboats overnight at White Bay and that number at least doubles during the course of the day. Add to this 6 day sail catamarans, 8 day sail power boats, 1 Windjammer Cruise Ship and numerous day tripper boats from STT and I estimate that about 600 people were dumped on the beach at White Bay that day! The area in front of Soggy Dollar was a total zoo! Many of the day sail cats run right up onto the beach to let their pax off. Today, one of these has gotten so hemmed in by other boat traffic that she cannot reverse safely and ends up backing over one of the 4 owner mooring balls (for small launches and runabouts owned by the property owners at White Bay) in front of Gertrude's. Collides with the small aluminum skiff moored there, almost drags the skiff under, gets the prop tangled in the mooring line and simply cuts the line and re-ties it and sails away! We are less than impressed at the whole scene. Finally, the mob mostly leaves. Another wonderful
supper by Oliver (filet again) and early to bed.
