Bloggin' On In BVI

So here we were in Virgin Gorda thinking it is time to move. We wanted to see our friend Clive and talk about the boat while we were in BVI so after talking to him on the phone, he suggested sailing over to Fat Hog Bay on Tortola and meeting him there. So we did - sail over that is. As in the other anchorages, there were a lot of mooring balls taking up space and since our charts said the bay was quite shallow, we decided to take a mooring ball until we could explore the bay a little better.

The sail over we no big whoop - lots of charter boats to miss on the way but we had a bit of wind so it didn't take long. The bay itself is quiet although quite close to the perimeter road on Tortola. There are three small marinas there and Clive suggested we touch base with Walter at Penns Landing as he is very accommodating. We did that and he is a really nice guy - there are showers and nice washrooms. We went walking a couple of times, once towards Roadtown, the capital of Tortola and once towards the airport and Trellis Bay. Trellis Bay is where they have the full moon parties which apparently are quite exciting - burning fireballs on the beach, special music, Mocko Jumbie stilt dancers and lots of arts and crafts to see. We had talked about anchoring there but heard on the Coconut Telegraph that it is really really crowded with charter boats. It also sits right at the end of the runway for the airport on Beef Island. We considered going to the full moon party on December 2 from Fat Hog Bay but it is quite a distance to walk at night and no sidewalks.

We talked to Clive by phone and found he couldn't make it to the boat until after the weekend so we decided to go to Marina Cay, a trip of about six nm around the corner of Beef Island. Marina Cay is a small piece of land kind of surrounded by Grand Camanoe, Scrub Island and Tortola. There is a dock there and of course mooring balls. Again, they take up all of the good anchoring area unless we wanted to anchor in 30 feet or more of water, which we don't like to do, so we took a mooring ball.

The Cay has a Pussers store and a small resort hotel as well as a fuel dock. Pussers are world renowned for their rum (I think they originated with the British Navy)and they have stores in a number of different places. Something interesting if you want to see our picture latest and up-to-datest. There is a red phone booth on the dock that takes pictures every 15 seconds and sends the pictures to their website so if you want to see us, go to www.pussers.com/redbox/archive. There is a spot where you can put in a date and time and it will show the pictures from that time - well actually is shows a couple of minutes before and after. You can go to Nov 29 at 3:15:46 or Nov 30 at 2:41:16. Kind of neat.

Marina Cay was the scene of a book called "Our Virgin Island" written by Robb White in 1953 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robb_White) and you can still see the house where he and his wife lived up to WWII. It is now a bar.

We also saw another instance of the "danger" of charterers. We had watched a boat come in towards the middle of the afternoon the day before. There was a guy standing on the front giving directions to the helmsman while someone else stood by with the boat hook. The guy standing at the front was one of these guys - you know the type - posed like Washington crossing the Delaware - giving instructions like "hold your course", "cut the engine" etc etc. When they hooked up they tied the mooring line directly to their boat instead of using their own mooring lines (the proper way) although the helmsman did run up with a line which they used somehow on the cleat.

Anyway, that was just an indication because when they left they started out across a reef clearly marked with a red buoy. They got in far enough that they must have hit bottom but luckily for them they were able to back out - but "charterers!!!!!

Stay tuned.