Treasure Island

We spent a day and a half at Norman Island, the first island along the southern edge of the Sir Francis Drake Channel. It is often referred to as “Treasure Island” and is believed to be the inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson’s book of the same name. The main anchorage is in The Bight. From above the harbour looks like something took a big bight out of the north-west corner of the island. Guarding the entrance to the Bight are a number of islands called The Indians and a bigger one called Pelican Island.










Today the island is privately owned although we could not find any mention of the owner’s name.
The only business on the island is a bar/restaurant called the Pirate’s Bight, on the beach. We had a meal of fish and chips and jerked chicken.




The other attraction on the island is a set of caves on the western corner. We chose to dinghy over and tie up on a mooring line to go snorkeling. We saw a variety of coral and fish. The coral included brain, very common, fan and feather. There were a lot of black and neon blue fishes, particularly around the bottom of the dinghy when we first arrived, and some yellow and black striped fishes. Unfortunately we have not been able to find any underwater cameras to buy, therefore, no pictures of the plant and animal life underwater.



Sunday morning we set sail for Virgin Gorda. Again we were travelling against the wind and had to do a lot of tacking. We were able to make good speed at times – up to 5.3 knots at one point.


The highlight of the trip was having our picture taken by Yachtshots, BVI. It is a company based in Nanny Cay (in fact they were berthed next to us when we were there) that goes out and takes pictures of yachts sailing and then makes them available to purchase. If you would like to see them go to http://www.yachtshotsbvi.com/ and we would be listed under Mystic Journey for March 2, 2008.

More Sailing - More Fun

I am writing this on Friday, 29 February but you may not see it for a bit – well, actually I guess you are seeing it now but it won’t be Friday the 29th!!! More prattle but here we are anyway.
We left St Thomas on Thursday and motor-sailed to Soper’s Hole, Tortola, BVI. The reason for the motor part was the unfavourable wind. We could have sailed by lots and lots of tacking since we were heading East and the wind here was a strong and pretty steady 15 to 25 knot wind directly from the East (It sometimes feels like we have never left Fort Macleod), but we had to be in Soper’s Hole to check into Customs and Immigration before it closed at 4:30 and we didn’t get away from St Thomas until around 11:00. The seas were also a “bit” high although not up to the 10’ that we talked about sailing in before, but the pictures here will give you a bit of an idea. These seas were around 6’ to 8’.

We got to Soper’s Hole in good time and spent a quiet evening moored in the harbour. A fair number of boats but it was quiet and we both caught up on some sleep. It is kind of a quaint place – the main attraction being Pusser’s Landing, named after Pusser’s Rum I guess which in turn spawned the Painkiller, something I will never try of course but Cheryl sampled one the last time we were in BVI ( I probably will never try it again. Way too much rum and not enough tropical fruit juice - Cheryl speaking).
So, Friday morning we left for Norman’s Island, where we are now. We made it a point to sail since we had the time and consequently got lots of practice tacking since of course we were still going East and the wind is still from the East, between 15 and 27 knots today. We discovered that if we do things right, Mystic Journey will behave wonderfully BUT, if we make a mistake, she has a mind of her own. It was actually lots of fun today avoiding boats that were coming to the same destination but on the opposite tack than we were. To help imagine this, draw a fairly regular zig-zag line across a page. Then draw another zig-zag line with the same dimensions but not in sync. Then draw a couple of more. Where all the lines cross is where all the boats were meeting but not necessarily zigging and zagging at the same time. Make sense?? Of course when this happens you have to take into account who has the windward tack and who is on the starboard and is it an overtaking and does anyone have their motor running as well as sails up. This is all in order to figure out who is supposed to give way and who has the “right of way”, but of course what others are supposed to do and what they sometimes really do maybe two entirely different things.
So we are here and tomorrow we are going snorkeling at the Caves, which are supposed to be awesome. There is also a reef that has lots of fish and stuff. In the Scott “Sailing the Virgin Islands” guide it suggests you don’t feed the fish as they get aggressive. Right – okay – we won’t.