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bvi

Is This The Most Beautiful Island In The Caribbean?

I think we’ve found the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean!

Our friend Shiner arrived into the BVI with the intention that we’d spend a week or so cruising the islands before heading north to Grand Turk. His mother originally hails from there which was the main reason Shiner wanted to do this particular passage with us in the first place. Because we can only stay in Turks and Caicos for 6 days before needing to buy a rather expensive cruising license, we couldn’t leave the BVI’s straight away- even though there was a weather window.

Looking at the long term forecast, it looked as though there would be some big swells coming from the north, but once they passed through we’d have just- just– enough time to get to Grand Turk, spend a couple of days exploring before putting Shiner on the plane.

However, the weather Gods had other ideas. As the planned departure date got closer and closer, the forecast continued to deteriorate. A low pressure system was pushing its way further south which meant westerly winds- very unusual for these parts- were now featuring in the forecast for a couple of days. This wasn’t good. It would mean a beat into the wind for at least two days, which… no.

Despite Shiner’s disappointment, he’s an experienced enough sailor to understand that sometimes the weather has other plans, and you just have to abide by them. He was loving pottering around the BVI’s and he made the very sensible decision to change his flights to leave from Tortola instead, and we’d go up to Anegada for a few days and a consolation prize.

And what a consolation prize that turned out to be!

Best sail of the season!

We had spent a couple of nights in Norman Island, home to the infamous Willy T bar and had a great time with friends on Freebird and Salah. That gave us about a 20 mile passage north to Anegada and the sailing conditions were utterly perfect. 15 knots on the quarter, bright sunshine, calm seas- this is what sailing is about! Shiner got a chance to fiddle with the sails to his hearts content (he is such a fantastic sailor and so happy to share his impressive wealth of knowledge- we learned a lot over the two weeks he was here, and we thought we were pretty good at sailing our boat!).

Today’s lesson: splicing!

Anegada is a very flat island- I’ve heard it be compared to the Bahamas in that sense. You can’t see it until you’re only 5 or so miles away, and even then all you can spot is a line of trees. This is very different to the rest of the BVI’s which are mountainous. We motored up the channel, a little dismayed at all the boats we’d be sharing the island with, and tucked ourselves into a very shallow spot behind the catamarans. I wonder what they thought when they saw us- a monohull- motor behind them in such shallow water! We couldn’t help but feel very smug about our lifting keel. We anchored in just 1.2 metres of water (under the hull) and went ashore.

Even the catamarans are in deeper water than us!

Our purple Hello Kitty hire car

We loved this car, really.

Everyone said we should go to the north shore beaches and, since there wasn’t much else to do nearby (I mean that in a good way- it was wonderfully low-key) we decided to fork out the $60 for a hire car. It was a discounted price and we saw why. The car was metallic purple with one white panel. We piled in, Nick turned the engine on, and put it into gear. Nothing happened. Tried again. The car didn’t move. A passer by stopped to help, but could shed no light on the situation. Just as Nick was about to go back into the office, he tried putting it into D2 instead of D3. There we go! We were off!

We rattled our way out of the small town and onto the main road. The list of problems with the car continued to become evident. The electric windows didn’t work (or rather, they worked sometimes but not others. It was pure luck as to whether the window would actually respond to a push of the button, or if it would just stay stubbornly where it was), there was no muffler, the suspension was wrecked, the doors wouldn’t open except from the inside…. There was a purple plastic diamond for a gear shift, a big Hello Kitty motif on the glove box and the interior and exterior was all a bright purple. We loved it.

The incredible north shore beaches

We found the north shore beaches with no trouble- the roads were very well signed and the island is only small. Loblolly bay and Loblolly beach are next to each other, although I can’t remember which was which- and I was pretty confused at the time as well. However, they were equally stunning. White powder sand, an offshore reef breaking up all the surf, and a lagoon of crystal clear turquoise water inside the reef. Apart from one other group, we had the place to ourselves. We went swimming (the coral was unfortunately in pretty bad shape, like many other places in the Caribbean, and the current was strong- but the water was beautiful), took some photos, did a YouTube Live stream from the beach, and then piled back in the car to head to Cow Wreck beach for lunch.

Cow wreck beach, taken from the restaurant. Nice view, right!

Cow Wreck was just as stunning, if not more so than Loblolly. There was a cute little beach bar and restaurant which we’d been told was good, and so we dutifully ordered some food (which took an hour to come out despite only a couple of tables and our order being quite simple… but never mind) and took in the incredible view.

Goodbye Shiner!

Shiner left us a few days later from Soper’s Hole in Tortola. We put him on the 6am ferry to St Thomas and said our goodbyes. Nick and I agreed that he really had been the perfect guest and we made tentative plans (all sailing related plans are tentative!) for him to come back out for one of our longer passages next year. Once he had left, Nick and I headed back to St John to clear into the USA again and ended up having probably the best weekend we’ve ever had sailing- but I’ll leave that for next week.

April 15, 2017 0 comment

British Virgin Islands

What’s it REALLY like to live on a boat?

This week Nick and I decided to do something a bit different for our weekly YouTube video. We thought it might be interesting (emphasis on might) to do a ‘Day in the life’ type of thing to give a good idea of what it’s really like to live on a boat.

Of course, every day is different so we picked what we thought was a pretty typical day. The plan was to do a short sail- well, motor-sail- from our lovely anchorage in Jost Van Dyke across the channel to Cane Garden Bay on Tortola, pick up a buoy, go ashore for a spot of exploring before settling down for the evening.

However, the day ended up pretty action-packed- by our lazy standards, anyway!

We raised anchor nice and early to give us time to get ourselves sorted. As we pottered around, packing things up and getting ready to leave, our friend Paulo dinghied over and gently reminded us that we’d promised him our old SUP. Remember when ours kind of exploded in Antigua? Then we got a replacement in St Martin from the lovely people at Red Paddle Co? Well, we still had the old one which Nick had sort of patched up, but having no room for it on our boat we decided to give it to a loving home. Paulo was happy to provide.

Anyway, this deal had been done the previous evening over a beer at the B-Line bar and we had totally forgotten about it. Good thing Paulo reminded us, and he was even good enough to bake us some Colombian hotcake things as a thankyou.

En route to Cane Garden Bay

We had been warned not to enter Cane Garden Bay if there was any swell breaking on the reef. Well, there was a little swell, but it looked minimal and the bay itself looked calm so we went for it. Seeing nowhere to anchor amongst all the mooring balls, we surrendered to the inevitable and picked on up for the night, resigning ourselves to the $30.

From the boat the beach looked absolutely rammed. With some trepidation, we jumped in the dinghy and went ashore with the idea that we’d have a relaxing walk along the beach followed by lunch. However, after fighting our way past the throngs of holidaymakers as we strolled along the sand, we decided to forgo that plan and just eat onboard. Actually, we decided to leave the bay altogether, because we really didn’t want to waste $30 on a buoy in a location we were less that enthusiastic about.

Packed.

However, we were running a little low on diesel and, given there was a fuel station in the bay, we decided on a quick pit stop to fill up. Lines and fenders were put out and we manoeuvred alongside the pontoon. We tied up with the help of the gentleman who works there and stepped onto the dock.

Suddenly, to our horror, the boat started swaying back and forth, snatching at the lines and causing some extremely disconcerting noises. The mooring lines screeched as the boat rolled from side to side like a pendulum. The fenders were completely flattened between the hull and the pontoon and the toerail crunched against the dock with every motion. We grabbed hold of the stanchions- or anything else we could easily reach- and tried to push the boat away from the dock, with very limited success. Nick yelled a reminder at me not to put my feet or legs anywhere near the boat: a relatively common practice while trying to fend off as it’s often easier to push away with a foot rather than a hand. In this case, a limb would have been totally crushed if it slipped between the hull and the pontoon. It was intense.

After a minute or so, the boat steadied slightly. We looked at each other. The attendant was wide eyed, waiting for instruction. We- perhaps foolishly- decided to go ahead with the fuelling. We assumed that the swell that had caused this incident had passed; after all, the anchorage had been perfectly flat, and so perhaps this one set was just an unlucky anomaly.

It wasn’t. Several times over the 5 minutes it took to refuel swell worked its way around the reef and right into the fuel dock. We didn’t bother with a full tank, or with refuelling the jerry cans. We just got the bare minimum and then bailed.

Or at least we tried to. I had cleated the mid-line off in my usual fashion: 3 turns followed by a final locking turn. It never occurred to me to do anything different on this day, but what happened was that the locking turn, well, locked. The line was pulled so tightly from the motion of the boat that, despite several turns ‘under’ the locking turn, the line was almost impossible to undo. I desperately scrapped at it with my nails as the boat bucked and rolled behind me, the screeching from the lines filling the air. Finally, just as I was considering taking a knife to the line, it came loose. We wasted no time in getting the hell outta there.

Laundry day!

That evening was spent, paradoxically, in one of the calmest, most secluded and peaceful bays in the BVI’s. Brewers Bay is only a couple of miles from Cane Garden Bay but a world away in every other sense. With an unmarked reef dividing the bay in two, and several underwater cables running across the seabed, this bay is off limits for many charter boats and, with nothing in the way of facilities, isn’t frequented by liveaboards either. We had two other boats for company that night, but there was ample room for everyone. After a dip in the crystal clear water Nick and I settled down to our first evening together just the two of us for some time. Needless to say, after the stress of that day, it involved a couple of rum and tings (with the ‘fish rum’- we had run out of the nice stuff but we were desperate) followed by dinner and The Walking Dead.

And that, my friends is a (kinda, sorta, not really) normal day in the life of Ruby Rose!

April 7, 2017 2 comments

British Virgin Islands Favourites

The Perfect Hidden Anchorage

I think we found paradise…

After Peter Island, we headed for Norman Island, home of the infamous Willy T bar located in the Bight. Unfortunately the Bight was chockas with mooring buoys- definitely a trend here in the BVI- so we moseyed on over to Bernures Bay a mile or so to the east. And we found paradise.

Very nice indeed!

The bay was kind of deep once again, so we dropped anchor what we thought was a reasonable distance from a 30 foot Dutch boat, admired our gorgeous surroundings, oohed and aahhed at the clear water, and then jumped into our dinghy to go for a snorkel and check out Willy T’s.

We headed for Treasure Point, which is host to a series of caves which has pretty decent snorkeling. Like elsewhere in the Caribbean, there wasn’t a huge amount of fish and the coral wasn’t looking too healthy, but the caves were cool and a little spooky. We then zipped around to Willy T’s expecting all sorts of crazyness, but maybe it was the wrong time of day or something (early afternoon) because not a lot was going on. We met an English/American couple who were on charter, tried to talk them into buying a boat and giving up their corporate lifestyle in London, then headed back to the boat.

As soon as we arrived into the bay, we immediately saw that our boat was looking very close indeed to the Dutch boat next door. The two owners, a couple in their 60s maybe, swam over to us and asked us to re-anchor. We weren’t feeling too keen on this a) because Nick had had a few drinks and b) there wasn’t a lot of room in the shallower parts of the bay and with early evening approaching we really didn’t want to be stuck going around in circles trying to anchor. The husband seemed cool with this, but the wife was NOT happy, so we decided to attempt to tie a line ashore.

We had never done this manoeuvre before and we had only limited success. We tied several of our mooring lines together, attached them to the stern anchor rode and Nick dinghied ashore and tied the line to a strong-looking tree. We then winched ourselves closer to shore until we were a comfortable distance from the Dutch boat. Success.

So far, so good

Midnight brainstorming session

Or so we thought. 12am I was woken by a thud. I stared around the dark cabin wondering if I’d imagined it. Nick snoozed away peacefully. I had just convinced myself that it was simply my imagination when it happened again: we had gone aground. Nick still didn’t wake, and so I went into the cockpit to see what I could see. The solar fairy lights around the back of the bimini were all I could see and it took me several fumbling minutes to work out how to switch the damn things off. That done, I could see the gentle lapping of the water against the shore. It looked awfully close. I stared at it for a few more minutes until my brain finally started to kick into gear and I got a torch. Yep. Awfully, awfully close. Like, a couple of metres away.

I woke up Nick and we tried to hatch a plan. Not easy considering we were both floating in sleepy oblivion a few minutes prior. The wind had shifted and we were now being pushed towards the other side of the bay- only problem was the beach was in the way. Our dilemma was this: we could either let the line go and hope to swing back around, away from the beach. Or we had to come up with a solution that would get us into slightly deeper water. In the end, after considerable head scratching, we moved the line from the stern to the bow and let the stern swing around into deeper water. Nick stayed up for another hour, then we went back to bed.

Life at anchor

The next morning a boat on the other side of the bay left so we took their spot. We took the dinghy to another snorkelling spot, the Indians and the Pelican but it was super choppy and the visibility wasn’t great. So we simply went back to our little corner of paradise.

Life on the anchor

The next few days we did a lot of bumming around, admiring the surroundings and congratulating ourselves for finding such a beautiful and undiscovered anchorage. There was a great hike over to the Bight and Bernurs bay offered some great swimming and snorkelling. The bay was like a millpond, utterly calm. The wind outside however was knocking 25 knots. We couldn’t believe the protection this bay offered from the weather.

After a week living happily at anchor in the most beautiful anchorage we had ever stayed in, we finally ran out of food and the list of jobs started to pile up. Namely, laundry, internet jobs, and boat maintenance, all of which would be much easier to do at the dock- preferably with decent Wifi. So we decided to treat ourselves to a couple of nights in Nanny Cay marina before once again returning to a peaceful, quiet anchorage somewhere.

That’s not quite how things turned out.

But I’ll leave that til next week!

March 17, 2017 6 comments

British Virgin Islands Favourites

Poisonous Fish, Wild Goats and The Baths

This blog is only a week late. That’s not too bad, right!?

Our first week in the BVI’s was spent in Gorda Sound, mainly because that seemed like the easiest option for clearing in after a night sail. It was indeed a breeze, and, that done, we settled into our new anchorage nicely.

We chose to anchor off Prickly Pear island because it seemed well protected and had no mooring buoys, unlike further around the corner near the Bitter End yacht club. First thing we did was to go to the Bitter End in order to get a SIM card (sold to us by a friend of a friend of the lady working in the souvenir shop), find some Wifi and suss out the provisioning situation.

We found internet at one of the bars at the Bitter End, but were unpleasantly surprised at the price: $6 for a Carib, and no happy hour prices. Ouch. Quite a shock after $1 beers at Lagoonies (only $2 full price). The little market was also very limited and verrrry expensive ($7 for a packet of Doritos and $56 for a slab of Carib). So we were grateful for our full fridge and cupboards from St Martin.

Surrounded by Americans

The second night we were there we headed over to Saba Rock, a resort on a tiny island between Prickly Pear Island and the Bitter End. They had happy hour, which was a good enough reason to go, and it turned out their Wifi speed wasn’t too bad at all (in case anyone was wondering). Heather and Tony from Kwanza met us there, and we then bumped into Kia Ora, one of the Aussie boats we had briefly met in St Martin.

As we sat in the pleasant outdoor bar area on comfortable lounges overlooking the mooring field, we witnessed a rather bizarre event. The bar was, apart from our group, entirely populated by American charterers or holidaymakers. One group of guys who had clearly had a bit to drink, suddenly- for no particular reason that I could discern- started whooping. You know. “Whoo! Whoo! Whoo hoo!” I looked at Nick. He looked at me. We rolled our eyes and got back to our Caribs.

But then the whooping started to spread throughout the ENTIRE BAR. The next table joined in, then the next, and before we knew it I was started to feel that I was sitting in a football stand amongst some very avid supporters. THEN somebody- probably the drunk guys- started chanting “USA! USA! USA!” and once again, this cheer was taken up by every single person in the bar, from the overweight, sunburnt middle aged ladies to my left, to the shirtless young guys with baseball caps on to my right. Our group was an island of bemused- and somewhat horrified- silence amongst a bar full of cheering Americans.

“Are we really going to America this year?!” I asked Nick. He was speechless.

Interestingly, I recently read a blog on Totem’s website titled American Cruisers Through Foreign Eyes in which she brings up the point that many people around the world aren’t massive fans of Americans. I think if I’d had the presence of mind to whip out my camera and start filming, then upload the video to the comments section of that post, I could have provided her with a partial answer to why this might be. It was excruciatingly obnoxious. However, you only need to travel to Kuta or Phuket to see plenty of Australians behaving badly, and same goes for Brits in many European beach resorts. Some people just give their nation a bad reputation. After a month in the BVI’s I cannot wait to get up to the USA and that’s mainly thanks to the truly amazing people from the States that I’ve met here. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Crazy Weather

After some pretty rainy days, the wind briefly swung around to the west- almost unheard of in this part of the world. I read on Facebook several instances of boats dragging and causing damage and I can’t say I’m surprised. Most (well known) anchorages in the Caribbean are exposed to the west and the gusts were strong. We didn’t drag, nor thankfully did any boats around us (although a friend nearby had a charter cat drag into their boat), but the anchorage was choppy and uncomfortable so we moved to Drakes Anchorage on the other side of the Sound. Much better, plus we had an unobstructed view of Necker Island and Mosquito Island- Branson’s other private island. Because apparently one isn’t enough?! Plus, they’re, like, half a mile away from each other. What’s the point of that?

Craaazy weather!

Anyway, that is where we caught our poisonous fish. Anyone heard of ciguatera? Yeah, well, it’s nasty. It’s a toxin that exists only in reef fish. The real interesting part is that it only exists in certain fish, in certain areas. In other words, the big-eyed Jack (the fish we caught with nought but a little bit of ham on a hook- he must have been hungry) probably had ciguatera. However, travel to, I don’t know, St Thomas or Peurto Rico and that same species is totally safe to eat. Hypothetically. I don’t actually know what fish has ciguatera where, so please understand I only used that as an example. Point being, unless you have local knowledge, you don’t know which reef fish are safe to eat. Thankfully Google came through for us on this one, and saved us from some major unpleasantness.

Our first fish of the season- and we couldn’t eat it

Nick finally gets a bath

Finally we got impatient to move on. We decided to check out the Baths, a series of boulders on Virgin Gorda’s south-western shore that form a maze of caves and pools. We arrived at the mooring field about 11am, which was a tactical error on our part because it was completely rammed. After circling a few times, we determined that there weren’t any free buoys and, anchoring being forbidden, started to slink away. Happily, a charter boat chose that moment to leave, so we pounced on their buoy and picked it up with less-than-perfect technique. I’m not quite sure where we went wrong, but I ended up almost falling overboard and bruised my stomach on the pulpit. Oops. (After a month in the BVI’s, we’re a LOT better at picking up mooring balls now!)

However, the Baths were totally worth it. We didn’t exactly have it all to ourselves- go reaaaally early for that- but the caverns and little baths were very cool and we spent an enjoyable hour running around pretending to be intrepid explorers when, actually, we were simply following a well defined trail. But it was fun.

Cool, huh?

That night we headed to Peter Island, intending to anchor again. However, the bay was so deep right up to the shore that we couldn’t find a suitable spot. After two failed attempts (in the pouring rain no less) where we dropped anchor and then nearly swung into the rocky beach, we gave up and picked up a buoy.

The skies cleared, the sun came out and the water beneath the boat was crystal clear. An evening dip as the sun went down was the perfect end to the day.

No, we don’t have Wifi….

Peter Island, sunset. Nice, right?

March 17, 2017 1 comment

British Virgin Islands

Night Sailing to the BVI’s

After three weeks of living in the Simpson’s Bay lagoon, it was time to head west to the BVI’s. This marked the end of our time in the Leeward islands of the Caribbean and was to be the beginning of a more north-westerly route towards the USA. A distance of about 80 miles and a reluctance to risk arriving in the dark (after Bequia’s experience we vowed never again if it can be helped!) meant only one thing: a night sail. (Or getting up at crazy o’clock, which… no.)

Nick still dreams of surfing at Uluwatu!

The prospect of sailing at night can be daunting, and it obviously means you’re not going to get your full 8 hours of beauty sleep. It usually takes about three days to get your body into a routine where it sleeps for a few hours, then is up for a few hours, then sleeps again. I also think it takes a day or two to feel relaxed enough to allow yourself to sleep on a night passage- you know, to get used to the roll and movement of the boat on the water. So we didn’t expect to get a lot of shut-eye, but the weather gods were in our favour for once, the winds were very light (too light actually- we had to motor sail most of the way) and the swell was minimal. Being down below was just as comfortable as being at anchor- and considerably more comfortable than Gustavia’s anchorage.

Our original plan was to anchor outside the bridge (the last lift was at 4pm), have dinner, get a couple of hours sleep, then up for a midnight departure. However, as we passed underneath the bridge and entered the anchorage, we (okay, I) decided to just get going. Our main reservation was the prospect of arriving before it got light, but we needn’t have concerned ourselves: our arrival time was 9am in the end because of those light winds.

Sunset at sea.

We didn’t get much sleep despite the comfortable motion of the boat, but our night watches were wonderfully uneventful. The sky was clear, the stars were bright and despite quite a few boats being on the move between St Martin and the BVI’s, navigation was a doddle.

The problem with night sailing is that it can be very difficult to discern distances when you see other vessels around you. We have AIS which means we transmit our position, our heading and our speed to anyone who has an AIS receiver, and, having a receiver ourselves, we can see the same information for any boats nearby who also have an AIS transmitter. This makes life very easy for obvious reasons. However, most boats who cruise the Caribbean don’t have AIS in my experience (totally understandable- sailing around here is generally a matter of short day sails) so we have to rely on their navigation lights.

In theory, you’re supposed to have a red light on your port side, a green light on your starboard, and a white light pointing astern. Therefore, if you can see just a red light, it means their port side is facing towards you. Same goes for the green. If you can see a white light, they’re heading away from you. The time to be paying close attention is when you see both green and red- that means the vessel is facing towards you, which can clearly be bad news if things get too close. And as I said, distances are incredibly hard to judge until something gets very close indeed. So, it can be a little stressful. Our rule onboard is if you’re unsure about anything- anything at all- get the other person up. However, this particular night was uneventful. Just the way we like it.

Arriving into the BVI’s was fun. We sailed past Necker Island, waved to Richard Branson, and found a beautiful spot to anchor in the lee of Prickly Pear island. Having read the cruising guide and looked at the charts, it looked as though finding a spot with no mooring buoys where we could anchor was going to be a challenge. However, there was loads of room unless you wanted to be close to one of the resorts (which we didn’t). After the constant background noise of the lagoon, this anchorage was utterly silent. Even putting our chain out seemed to spoil the serenity. Once we were settled, we kicked back in our cockpit, found an open wifi network with our booster (a rare but very happy occurrence) and marvelled that we were once again somewhere new and exotic.

See you next week (internet permitting)!

March 6, 2017 2 comments