Warning...sort of adult themed <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Cool.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Devil.gif" alt="" />


Wow! What an amazing 12 ½ days spent in the BVI…swimming, liming, lots of alcohol, near death experience (surprisingly un-alcohol related), nudity (alcohol related), sailing, etc… My wife might also appreciate me mentioning that we got married.

A little background. The first five days were spent in a villa/mansion that I thought only existed in movies…Sol Y Sombra on Little Trunk on Virgin Gorda …click here for an arial view of Sol Y Sombra. I can break out the thesaurus and flood this review with adjectives but as most of you know by trying to explain your BVI experiences to others – you just had to be there. Anyway, our parents and my brother shared this compound and it was just an amazing setting for a ceremony…which we had on a deserted Little Trunk Beach amongst the boulders.

The next 7 days was our honeymoon that spent aboard a beautiful 48 ft. catamaran named Lionheart. We were joined by 7 (all in our early to middle 30’s 6 girls 4 guys) of our closest friends and my brother as well as someone who would become a lifelong friend, Captain Robin “Mobbsie” Mobbs. He was incredible and immediately became the 11th member of our close-knit group. Here goes nothing:


Day 1. - May 5th (I’m beginning with the Cat portion first)

Woke up to mixed emotions. It was the morning of the sailing adventure that we had been planning, anticipating, and daydreaming about for over a year and yet I wasn’t that excited due to the fact that we were about to leave our 7 month old for a whole week. It was immensely difficult and I promise that’s the last depressing moment of the review.

Took the 8:00 a.m. ferry from Spanish town and met up with 6 members of our crew who flew in the night before and stayed at the Village Cay Marina hotel. We provisioned all our alcohol and diner items (burgers, dogs, and pasta…we’re easy to please) through Bobby’s and Caribbean Cellars and did our breakfast, lunch, and snack shopping in person. I think this worked out best, as you tend to buy less when you see it physically in your cart.

Made the short walk back to the marina just in time to find Mobbsie chatting with our delivery guys. I knew from the initial handshake that we made a great decision with our charter selection. We threw our bags onboard and Mobbsie collected our flip-flops…”won’t be needing these until we get back” he said…barefoot and drunk is an amazing way to spend a week. He wasn’t too pleased when he saw that almost half of our initial 15 cases of beer were bottles but we assured him that although in our 30’s, we were seasoned drunks. Loaded another 15 or so bottles of the hard stuff and went through the “rules” for the week…let me just say that our water bill at home is going to be a lot lower and the life expectancy of our toilet paper rolls have grown after a week on a cat. Since we needed to pick up our last member in VG the following day we decided to make a run to Cooper. After planning like mad over the last year an anticlimactic feeling began to creep in as we shoved of…a few Carib’s made quick work of that emotion.

Grabbed a ball at Blue Chromis reef (Cistern Point I believe) around 2:00 and got the first “OK guys, pool’s open” announcement of the week. Mobbsie was sad to learn that my wife, Jamie, was the only certified diver on the boat and offered to take her to 3 different wrecks while we snorkeled. He had all the gear onboard and said all she had to do was refill the tanks during the week…a whopping $8! Snorkeling was decent and Jamie said the dive was excellent. Moved back down the coast and grabbed a ball in Manchioneel Bay. As we zig zagged past boats of people playing guitar, drinking, and partying I felt like a member of a secret vacation fraternity…if I could bottle that emotion, well, you know. To think people spend comparable amounts to stay in some hotel on the beaches of my hometown!

That night Jeff (my brother) grilled the best tasting cheeseburger I’ve ever had…what food isn’t amazing while your sitting on the back of a cat watching the sun sink into the ocean while downing ice cold beers with close friends busting each others balls…it was going to be a good week. As the sky went dark Mobbsie threw on the back deck lights and within minutes we started our own mini food chain…it didn’t take long for the Tarpons to show up. Four of the girls (including my wife) got the week off to a good start. One second they were standing on the back, the next they were completely naked, and the next they were giggling, naked in the water. The rest of us including Mobbsie reluctantly joined their silly hedonistic club. Someone in our group uttered a profound statement while we were bobbing up and down nude in the moonlit ocean with a beer in our hands with bioluminescence organisms firing all around us…”this is F’ing awesome!” We all concurred <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Cool.gif" alt="" />.

(At the end of each day I’ll post some lines from that day):

“Those rules are more for the Puerto Ricans” – Capt. Mobbsie

“I don’t know if you guys have noticed; I’m a little different” – Doug