Catching Up

It is easy to get behind - at least for me - so it is time for a catch-up blog.

We last blogged from St Maarten just prior to leaving for BVI. It was a Sunday and we were able to catch the 5:30 evening bridge opening and were off for an overnight. Again the winds had been forecast to give us a broad reach - from the side and back. This is normally a good wind for us although Mystic Journey likes the wind from the side/front. Again - as usual - the winds were more a following wind than from the side.

For those uninitiated, although it seems to make sense that wind from the back will push the boat better, in fact (unless you sail wing on wing or with a spinnaker - more about that in a moment) it doesn't. For one thing, if you put the main sail out to catch the full wind, you very effectively block the foresail - the speed sail - and the staysail, which also adds umph to the speed. Sailing wing on wing or with a spinnaker at night in waters where you might unexpectedly get wind shifts is not my cup of tea. Taking down either set of sails at night with seas of 8-9 feet from the side is not a pleasant job and even if the winds cooperate and you are able to leave the wing on wing up, with the seas that high from the side and heavy poles stuck out opposite sides of the boat (the whisker pole for the foresail and the boom for the main sail), the boat rolls to the extreme.

Enough of that stuff - bottom line is that the seas were as I said and we had a following wind most of the way so again we spent a lot of time looking for a "sailing wind". Overall, though, it was a good night with the moon about 1/3 towards full so we had some light when the storm clouds didn't block it. Oh, didn't I mention that we sailed through a couple of storms?? Not to worry though, they didn't have squall winds along with them, just lots of moisture.

We got to Virgin Gorda about 7:30 AM and temporarily hooked up to a mooring ball outside the marina at Spanish Town, the capital of Virgin Gorda. We went in and cleared customs and when we got back out we moved and dropped the hook (the anchor).

We had forgotten how many charter boats there are here in BVI and as a result of the chartering business, the majority of the anchoring spots have been invaded by Moor Secure, a company that puts mooring balls down in all these places and then charges $25 US a night to use them. If you are careful you can still sneak in and use the anchor so that is what we did.

As I said, the last time we were here there were a lot of chartered boats out and about. Well, this time it seems to be about 3 times worse. One morning, before coffee break, Cheryl counted over 30 boats sailing between us and Tortola and out of the 12 mooring balls at the anchorage we were at, I would estimate that on the average, 10 had charter boats on them. We saw the result of that one afternoon. I had just gone below for something and heard a loud bang. Went on deck and saw a guy who appeared to have started his motor, probably to charge the batteries and he had just run full tilt into the (non-charter) boat that was on the mooring ball in front of him. There was no one aboard the other boat but he waited around and eventually the people came back and ended up going in to the marina, probably to get the damage assessed.

Something else that was of interest - fuel is fairly expensive on most of the islands, probably because of the shipping costs, among other things. Well, for Virgin Gorda they have another problem - access for the tankers.

One morning we noticed that some friends we had met who were from Whitby, ON had moved their boat from where they were, out towards the channel, to up beside us. The reason soon became evident. A fuel tanker came up beside the anchorage and anchored parallel to the channel that the ferry uses to get into Spanish Town. It then proceeded to put a fuel line overboard where it was picked up by one of their tenders. The tender then took the fuel line, which they fed out from the tanker, into the fuel depot which was beside the ferry dock. The fuel line, as it was fed off the ship, had orange float balls attached about every 100 ft so the whole thing floated on top of the water. In spite of the brightly coloured floats, it was surprising (or not) how many people in boats or dinghies tried to pass over the fuel line to go into the marina. There was a guy on the tanker who manned the air horn and every time someone started that way he would blow and the crew would yell until whoever it was got the idea and went around back.

We did some walking on Virgin Gorda and some snorkelling and some grocery shopping and some laundry and that kept us occupied until we left for Fat Hog Bay.

Here are a few snorkelling pictures. Our 'waterproof' camera quit working again after we took these pictures. We had found an old shipwreck about 100 feet off our port bow. There were a lot of fish and coral making their homes there.

Stay tuned - same bat time, same bat channel.