Sailing the BVIs

First Mate, Sailor, and Dinghy Captain of the fine ship Pelican Pat
The cool thing about a sailing vacation is that your hotel doubles as your entertainment, your view changes everyday, and instead of splashing water on your face to wake up, you dive into the warm, blue Caribbean (or whatever sea you happen to be plying). However, there are some drawbacks to this sort of trip: cramped quarters, nautical heads, seasickness ... landlubber concerns, trivial really. So it was with some trepidation back in January that I booked eight nights aboard a Sunsail sailboat in the British Virgin Islands. No captain, no cook, just the four of us and the sea. "It's for your 50th," said Ava, "let's go! I'll figure out something for the seasickness." What a trooper. I only hoped that the ultimate solution for the seasickness that has plagued her since birthing our children wasn't spending her nights ashore. "Have a nice night on board that stuffy, bobbing, vomit pit," I imagined her saying as we left her on the steps of some 5 star resort. "Don't come back too early - I have an early massage booked. Too bad the scopolamine didn't work!"

I needn't have worried. The scopolamine worked, the crew put up with occasional mishaps, the winds were fair and the water warm. The BVIs delivered a perfect vacation.

We started a week ago Friday with a red-eye SFO to MIA. Here's a counter-intuitive fact: it takes longer to get to Tortola from San Francisco than it does to get to most any major city in Europe. Three flights will do that to you. But when you step off of a plane and down the steps to an island tarmac, the tropical breeze can't help but invigorate you. We found the Sunsail marina and swam the afternoon away at the pool while waiting for our boat, which you don't take possession of until 6pm. Since the required chart briefing is the following morning, this means the first night must be taken in the marina, where the winds are still and the boat can't swing around to catch them. In other words, it's beastly hot aboard. Isn't this fun, kids? It's like swimming while you sleep! In sweat ...

[Note to future self: some cruising yachts are air conditioned. Get one of those.]

Heart shaped rocks of the Caribbean
Rapidly acclimating (and losing precious fluids), we gratefully sailed out of the Roadtown harbor and settled into a broad reach, bound for a perfect bay called The Bight, on Norman Island. We picked up a mooring effortlessly and dove into the water. (The perfect mooring grab was not always going to be the case. Sometimes those things wrap around a keel, and sometimes when they disappear under the boat you should cut the engine or at least go to neutral right away lest they wrap themselves around the prop. Then the skipper has to get wet. Not that those things happened to us. That's just what we heard.) The kids and I took the dinghy over to some caves across the bay and snorkeled around, while Ava picked up heart-shaped rocks and pieces of coral on the little beach just off our bow. We had dinner on board, but the night was still young. The Willie T beckoned.
Sarongs are cool

Rumors of this floating restaurant and bar had reached even the pastoral land of Palo Alto. "Take the kids there," our friends Pam and Dennis had told us. "No one at the Willie T will care that they're under age." Well that sounded like a great idea! Traveling is all about adventure and new experiences. What better place to experience your very first bar than the Virgin Islands? Our dinghy captain (Will) brought the boat around and we set off to scar our children.

A souvenir and so much more
And scar them we did. The Willie T bar has a TV screen behind it, like many bars, but instead of showing whatever sports event happens to be going on it runs a slide show of photos taken by patrons. This must be where the Girls Gone Wild guy got his start, because many of the pictures featured topless women. Don't look kids, don't ... oh never mind. Let the damage begin. At least it was a Sunday night -- one of the old salts at the bar told us that the night before had been really wild. I got a painkiller and tried to ignore the look of horror and fascination on Will's face.  Then the bartender offered Ava a decal as a souvenir.  His first placement suggestion would have landed her in the highlight reel, so she demurred and suggested her shoulder instead.  He licked her and slapped on the decal.

"When exactly did your life descend into despair, William?"

"It was that night at the Willie T, Doctor.  When the bartender licked my Mom's shoulder."

Our night of revelry was effectively done, so we boarded our fair dinghy and navigated through the swaying galaxy of anchor lights back to our floating home.  

I'm ladder surfing!
The next morning we waited out a lively squall in the Bight, headed out to the Indians for some snorkeling, then sailed up the Sir Francis Drake Channel to Manchioneel Bay on the northwest shore of Cooper Island.  Along the way Will got bored and invented a new sport: ladder surfing.  This delayed our arrival, 6 foot tall 13 years olds being such a drag, but we still arrived in time for "the best happy hour on the island", which also happened to be the only happy hour on the island.
Dinner in paradise

One of the advantages of sailing around the BVIs in the off-season is that it's easy to pick up a mooring, but on that particular day we were lucky enough to get the very last one.  Very lucky, because the Cooper Island Beach Club turned out to be our favorite spot in the BVIs, the quintessential beach club, with great drinks, fantastic food, a gorgeous beach, and a fabulous view.  Paradise.  We moored off of Cooper for two nights and enjoyed every minute.  I dived the wreck of the Rhone (thanks to some heroic efforts by Dad, who went and got my dilapidated dive card and then spent a few hours on the phone with NAUI so that we could prove to the dive guys that I was in fact certified) while Ava and the kids read books and swam.
 
Early Wednesday morning we dropped off our anchor and motored to the Baths.
Dinghy captain lets little sister drive
I think the North Sound is this way, Skipper.
Not such a bitter end.
That was perhaps our finest day.  We were the first boat to arrive at the most popular spot in the BVIs, so for a while we practically had the place to ourselves.  The path between the two beaches was not yet filled with tourists, and the Devil's Bay beach was just perfect.  We played in the sand, followed a stingray, and snorkeled a lot .  Then we dropped our mooring as the place filled up and had a beautiful sail (18 - 20 knots, light chop, close hauled but not uncomfortable) to Virgin Gorda's North Sound. We expertly maneuvered our way into the Sound ("Dad, do you see that red buoy on the right?  Red right returning!!  Do you see it?"  "Yes, Will, I see it.") and pulled up to a mooring at the Bitter End resort.  As the sun set, we watched a kitesurfer dart among the boats as the kids tossed a coconut back and forth in our newest game, Wandiecocoball.  You won't be seeing it in the Olympics.

S is for SCUBA
Many of the great things in life start with an S: skiing, sailing, scuba diving, and on Thursday it was time to initiate the kids in the latter.  We zipped across the sound to the Leverick Bay resort, tanked up on fuel and water, then headed into the dive shop.  Minutes later the kids were in the pool, sucking their first underwater breaths.  They both did great, but Andie kept standing up so that she could get that last little bit of water out of her mask.  This makes sense, right?  If you can't quite clear your mask, and you're in the shallow end, you just stand up and eliminate those last few pesky drops.  But the instructor didn't quite see it that way.  When you're diving, he said, you can't just stand up like that.  Well duh, Andie's eyeroll said, but she was quite happy to not have to go on the afternoon dive.  Will, on the other hand,
I'll show them fancy!!
took to it naturally, so after lunch the kids got on a dive boat and left -- they left! -- for four hours.  They dove and snorkeled the Dog Islands, and Ava and I spent four hours just the two of us. Gosh, we sure missed those kids!  ;)   They returned triumphant, Will giddy over his first dive (sharks!  a queen angel fish!), Andie happy to have bobbed on the surface and practice clearing her snorkel.

Meat on the rail
The next morning we sailed over to Great Dog Island and proceeded to wrap the mooring around the keel.  Your skipper handled this, and all the subsequent swimming around, gasping for breath, wrestling ropes, and head bumping on the hull, with nothing but quiet dignity.  Or maybe that was  frustrated thrashing.  It didn't help when the wind and surge conspired to swing us stern-first toward the adjoining boat, whose skipper was not entirely pleased to see us.   We fired up the engine to get us away from our neighbor, which had the positive effect of pulling the mooring off of the keel.  Yay.  And wrapped it around the prop.  Hey, that's a problem I know how to solve!  

Now we call her "9 toe"

With the drama done, we enjoyed some fine snorkeling and sailed away to Marina Cay.  This is where we made our only itinerary mistake.  Marina Cay was nice, but we should have taken the longer sail to Jost Van Dyke instead.   Oh well.  We enjoyed a quiet afternoon watching squalls and swimming, and had a fun dinner where I entertained all with my dancing on the beach.  The next morning the rain pounded down on us, and when it finally stopped we zipped in the dinghy over to the new resort on Scrub Island, that caters primarily to big yachts.  Will was concerned that it was too
Happy hour
fancy for us, and sure enough as we pulled our dinghy up to the dock a representative came out to tell us that the service entrance was around the back.  Not really, but we got the picture and soon left.  Who needs those big stinkpots anyway.  We raised our canvas and high-tailed it back across the strait to

Not bad for 50
Cooper Island for an afternoon snorkeling, feeding a giant barracuda, and enjoying the best happy hour on the island.  

Then I turned 50, and the world didn't end.  In fact the morning dawned sunny but quickly turned interesting, as we sat in the cockpit and watched the cloudbursts race over the hill and across Manchioneel Bay and our boat. We enjoyed the show for a while and then, when it looked like it was clearing, dropped the mooring and raised the sails for a nice final sail back to Road Town.

Honey, I think there's a squall a brewin' out yonder.
Soon the squalls were back, and it turns out that the winds out on the strait are a little stronger than in the lee of Cooper.  They knocked our boat completely flat, sent the crew flying through the cabin (thank God they went below deck to get out of the rain), and, when the port rail finally came up for air, rounded us completely up.  Oops.  Let's crank the motor, go back to the bay, and start over.  Sails lowered and sufficiently humbled by the elements, we motored across the channel and delivered our trusty boat back to Sunsail.
In the moment

So when we go again: remember the iPod charger, try to get better provisioning, air conditioned boat, practice mooring, salt water shampoo, bring kayak life jackets like we did this time, man sarong, great wine store right outside the marina, Jost van Dyke, skip Marina Cay, iPlay for the iPod, respect squalls, remember dive card (and book dives ahead of time).  And, as always, live so completely in the moment that it lasts and lasts.

BVI album












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