Better the Second Time Around

In some of my first Whispering Jesse blog postings, the "Where's the Dinghy?" series, I detailed our ill-fated May 2004 sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands. We endured a lifetime's worth of sailing misfortunes in a single week, everything from dangerous weather to almost losing our dinghy.

I'm happy to report that things do indeed go better the second time around. What we learned from the first time's disasters prepared us well for the trip we took last month. It went so well that Nan said it was our best vacation ever. That's a far cry from last time, when in the middle of some particularly bad weather Nan said she hated sailing and would never do it again.

Here's what we did differently this time:

Instead of sailing with only the two of us, we recruited Nan's sister Monica and her friend Vicky to join us. Neither had ever sailed before but they were quick learners and excellent shipmates.

Instead of scheduling our flights with no room for error, we took the time to find flights that would give us options and get us from Denver to the British Virgin Islands in just one day, with time to spare in case of problems.

Instead of assuming our luggage would arrive when we did, we packed some toiletries and clothes in our carry-ons.

Instead of using a smaller, less expensive charter company, we went with the biggest and best, the Moorings, out of Road Town harbor on Tortola.

Instead of going with a smaller boat, we went with a forty-foot Beneteau, the 403 Club. It made for a smoother ride and much more cabin room, plus it included such niceties as an auto-pilot and an electric anchor windlass.

Instead of staying at an expensive hotel the night before our charter began, we stayed on the boat and got well-acquainted with its systems before heading out the next day.

Instead of sailing around Tortola clockwise, which is somewhat contrary to the prevailing easterly Trade Winds, especially on the north side of the island, we sailed counter-clockwise and enjoyed the benefits of never having to use the engine to make headway.

Instead of assuming the boat would have adequate water and fuel, and that every mooring area would have a water and fuel dock, we planned our itinerary to include strategic refueling stops at Marina Cay and Sopers Hole.

Instead of assuming that we would be able to get a day mooring at the Baths--no anchoring allowed!--we spent the previous night at the closest overnight spot, Manchioneel Bay on Cooper Island. We were underway by 6:15 the next morning and were the first boat to arrive at the Baths that day.

Instead of thinking I knew where I was going as we tried to enter North Gorda Sound and almost heading out to open sea by mistake, I checked and rechecked the chart, and entered the sound safely through the Mosquito Island channel.

Instead of using a long line to attach our dinghy to our Marina Cay mooring while we refueled, and then running over it and fouling our propeller on the return, we tied the dinghy up close to the buoy and motored up to it extra-cautiously.

Instead of thinking there would be plenty of moorings available at Jost Van Dyke, we sailed early from Tortola's Cane Garden Bay to White Bay and tied off our dinghy to an open mooring buoy, then made a side trip to Sandy Cay. When we returned all the other moorings were taken.

Instead of arriving late to the Sopers Hole and Norman Island mooring areas and ending up with windy, noisy moorings, we made a point of sailing early in the day and were rewarded with quiet, protected moorings, the one at Norman Island being the best of the trip, with excellent snorkeling right next to the boat.

Instead of suffering twenty-plus knot winds, four to six foot swells and frequent squalls, we were lucky to have fifteen to twenty knot winds, minimal swells and partly cloudy skies--perfect weather almost the entire week.

As good as it was, the trip was not without incident:

Monica took a bad fall going down the steps into the cabin, cracking two ribs and bruising a wrist. She had taken off her sandy shoes in the cockpit before descending, and her wet feet slipped out from under her at the bottom, causing her to fall back hard against the steps. She was a trouper, only complaining when we made her laugh.

We failed to notice an approaching boat as we were casting off the water dock at Sopers Hole and had to take evasive action, which resulted in us being pinned by the wind to the windward side of an adjacent dock. Fortunately, we didn't cause any damage to the boat, but I think I swore myself hoarse. We would have been forced to wait for the wind to die in order to make our escape, but a smart bystander directed a man in a dinghy to come under the dock from the leeward side and push our bow out into the wind while I gunned the engine and steered us out of there. It worked like a charm.

Hey, if everything went perfectly, it wouldn't be an adventure now, would it?

Here was our itinerary for the week:

Day 1, Saturday, May 5: Moorings Charter Base in Road Town, Tortola to Manchioneel Bay at Cooper Island.

Day 2, Sunday, May 6: Cooper Island to the Bitter End Yacht Club at North Gorda Sound, Virgin Gorda, with a four-hour stop at the Baths.

Day 3, Monday, May 7: Virgin Gorda to Marina Cay.

Day 4, Tuesday, May 8: Marina Cay to Cane Garden Bay on the north coast of Tortola.

Day 5, Wednesday, May 9: Tortola to White Bay at Jost Van Dyke, with a side trip to Sandy Cay.

Day 6, Thursday, May 10: Jost Van Dyke to Sopers Hole at Tortola's west end.

Day 7, Friday, May 11: Tortola to the Bight at Norman Island, with an unsuccessful snorkeling stop at the Indians. This time, all the day moorings were already taken.

Day 8, Saturday, May 12: Norman Island to Moorings Charter Base.

Monica and Vicky flew home the next day, but Nan and I spent an extra week at a villa on Cane Garden Bay owned and operated by our friends, Allan and Joycelyn Rhymer. They invited us to a festive Mothers' Day luncheon and made the second half of our vacation a joy with their boundless hospitality.

Next time, north to Anegada!

Where's the Dinghy? Day 5

or, How We Learned Most of Cruising's Lessons in Just One Week

Day 5 (Wednesday, May 5, 2004)

The next morning, around 8:00, one of our neighboring boats motored past us while blaring a Sousa march at top volume. They made two loops around the slumbering party catamarans then headed out of the bay. We couldn't resist big smiles and thumbs-ups on their return pass. Payback’s a bitch.

Leaving sheltered Cane Garden Bay for Marina Cay, we discovered that conditions were pretty much the same as the day before: brisk wind and swells directly out of the east, our direction of travel. If we ever get a chance to sail around Tortola again, I think we'll go counter-clockwise just to avoid this situation. Like the day before, I opted not to beat into the wind and motored serenely along instead. Unfortunately, most of the beaches along the north shore of Tortola are fairly exposed and do not feature safe anchorages, otherwise they would be little bits of paradise. Across from Lambert Bay, a secluded paradise all its own, we passed Monkey Point, which looks to be a great day anchorage, with its interesting rock formations and giant cacti. But we wanted to get a mooring at Marina Cay and we had heard that they filled up quickly. As we rounded out of the passage between Little Camanoe and Great Camanoe, we were struck by the beauty of the perfect little island sitting in the sapphire blue water. Small wonder that a young married couple, Robb and Rodie White, had made it their own private utopia back in the 1930s.

We moored successfully about fifty yards from the fuel dock, then dinghied over to the island to explore. We walked from one end to the other in about fifteen minutes, stopping to admire the gardens, the view across to Virgin Gorda, and the little house the couple had built at the highest point on the island, which has since been converted to a visitors' library and bar. We had soft drinks at the separate Pusser's bar and restaurant down by the beach, then went to talk to the fuel dock guys to see what the procedure was. Just bring it on over, “mon,” was about all they had to say. We went back to the boat and tied the dinghy up to the mooring ball to reserve our place, then put out the fenders and dock lines so we'd be ready. A big trawler took almost a half-hour to fuel up, but then it was our turn. We motored over to the fuel dock and swung in sweet as can be. While the boat was being fueled, I took the hose to fill the water tank. Thirty-odd gallons later, it was topped off. I guess we did manage to go through all that water somehow. Surprisingly, with all the motoring we had been doing, we had only used up about eight gallons of fuel, when I had worried we might not reach Marina Cay with what we had. I guess putting along at low knots really does help conserve.

Feeling pretty confident after the easy docking, I motored back to our mooring ball. Maybe because the dinghy's painter was black and hard to see or maybe because I was going a little too fast, Nan missed the mooring pick-up and we went right over the painter. The engine stalled almost immediately. Not good. I didn't want to believe that we had just tangled up our propeller, so I tried to restart the engine. No go. I felt sick to my stomach as I looked over the side at our dinghy nosed tightly against the side of the boat while we slowly turned to face downwind, tethered to the mooring ball by our propeller. "Now what?" Nan asked. I have to go into the water to fix a big problem for the second time in three days, I thought. I was about to change into my swim trunks and grab my snorkel gear when a local gentleman in a dinghy came by and asked if we needed some help. Jimmy, as he later introduced himself, was a captain on a chartered boat nearby and had witnessed our predicament. I nodded and pointed at the bent boat hook floating near his dinghy. Smiling, he fished it out of the water, straightened it out and handed it back to Nan, then asked me for a dock line. We tightly secured the stern of the boat to the mooring ball to take the stress off the painter, then I changed and went under the boat with my snorkel gear and a steak knife. It was worse than I imagined. In addition to the painter, the mooring line and its milk jug float and line were all wrapped tightly around the propeller's driveshaft. I cut the float's line and untangled it from the rest. Doing this involved diving under the boat and holding my breath while bouncing off the sharp barnacles attached to the boat's underside. When I handed the jug, line and knife to Nan, she said, "You're bleeding!" I grimaced and went back under. It took several more trips under the boat to loosen and untangle the painter and mooring line during which I managed to cut a finger pretty badly on a barnacle. When they were free, I let the mooring line dangle since we were still attached to the mooring ball by the dock line, and swam around to the stern to hand Nan the dinghy's painter. I told her to tie it to the boat, then climbed aboard and headed to the bow. Jimmy and I worked a new dock line from the bow to the mooring ball so we could release the stern line. The boat swung back around to face the wind, and things were back to normal. I thanked Jimmy profusely and promised to buy him a drink at the bar later. He smiled, waved and headed back to his own boat. I returned to the stern and was stowing the extra dock line when Nan uttered the most memorable line of the trip, "Where's the dinghy?" Sure enough, it wasn't attached to the boat. In fact, it was already about a hundred yards away, floating free. I uttered something unprintable and shook my head in disbelief. I was already exhausted, and there was no way I was going to be able to dive in and swim fast enough to catch up to the dinghy as it drifted away on the wind. Another nearby neighbor noticed what was happening, got in their dinghy and chased ours down. When they returned it, to our immense gratitude, they mentioned that one of their crew was having trouble with seasickness. As a thank-you, Nan gave them some Anavert, an anti-vertigo drug that she apparently had been taking since we stepped onto the boat. "It really works!" she said. I gave her a quizzical look.

When we finally returned to the island, it was starting to get dark. We wandered up the path to the library/bar, following the sound of amplified guitar music and singing. There was a huge crowd enjoying the onstage musical antics of Captain Mike Bean, including a conch shell horn-blowing contest. We found Captain Jimmy, thanked him profusely again, and bought him his drink of choice, a cranberry and soda. As a hired boat captain, he was still working, after all. Then we spotted some friends from back home whom we had also run into at the Bomba Shack. With Nan's nodding agreement, I mentioned how difficult it had been sailing the boat essentially singlehandedly on the days we had actually had the sails up. Shannon piped up that since we were all sailing to the Baths at Virgin Gorda the next morning, she would be happy to join us and help with the sailing. Good deal!

Where's the Dinghy? Day 4

or, How We Learned Most of Cruising's Lessons in Just One Week

Day 4 (Tuesday, May 4, 2004)

Sunset over Cane Garden Bay

The next morning, the faucets started to gurgle a little. We can't be out of water already, I thought. Maybe the Conch people hadn't filled our little thirty-gallon water tank all the way. We were on our way to Cane Garden Bay that day and wanted to get there early to get a good mooring, so we thought we'd wait and get more water, if indeed we needed it, when we got there. The weather was somewhat better this Tuesday, but I still held my breath as we motored around Steele Point. The swells were not as bad as the day before but they were still sizable, and they were coming from the direction we needed to go, directly east and straight into the wind. The idea of tacking back and forth for hours trying to make headway was not appealing, especially given yesterday's adventure, so we left the sails down and motored into the wind and swells at a very modest two knots.

When we arrived at Cane Garden Bay, we had our pick of moorings and found a nice sheltered one not too close to shore. We ran the dinghy over to the dinghy dock and tied up, then I diligently tossed out the stern anchor, as Emma at Conch Charters had advised, to keep the dinghy's bow from getting beaten up or punctured by the high wooden dock. We had some shopping to do, but first we were eager for an early lunch at Rhymer's, the two-story beach bar, grocery store, hotel and beauty salon. Our waitress Mary remembered us from our previous visits and it was all smiles until we asked her about water and fuel. "Oh, no. There's no fuel and water dock here. You have to either go to Sopers Hole or Marina Cay." Great, we thought. Guess we should have noticed that small detail earlier and planned accordingly. Well, at least we could buy gallon jugs of drinking water at the grocery store. But it remained to be seen if we had enough fuel to get to Marina Cay the next day. Rather than worry about it, we ate our grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, drank our piña coladas and enjoyed the view out over the bay.

We bought only what we needed at Rhymer's grocery store because everything was so expensive. The man behind the counter wanted to charge us $18 for a six-pack of Red Stripe! We lugged our ice and water back to the dinghy and motored back to the boat. Of course I forgot about the stern anchor and dragged it all the way there. I wondered why Squishy, as we had christened our dinghy due to its tendency to lose turgidity in the evenings, was straining even more than usual.

Later that afternoon, we were lounging on the boat when two catamarans full of twenty-somethings pulled in and moored about thirty yards away. We thought they might be trouble because they were flying an anatomically correct blow-up doll from one of their masts like some kind of party flag. The party started as soon as they tied up. I don't mind loud music if it's good, but I can't stomach white-boy rap, especially when drunken people in skimpy swimming suits are trying to dance to it. We took the disruption as a sign that we should get ready for our big evening: the full moon party at the Bomba Shack.

We dinghied back to Rhymer's to purchase fresh-water showers since our stern shower was dry, then ditched our stuff back at the boat, locked the dinghy to the dock and went to look for a taxi to take us over to Apple Bay. The first two taxis we saw wanted to charge us $30 for the fifteen-minute ride, so we started walking. A taxi with two people already in it stopped and picked us up to split the fare. They were headed to Bomba's, too, but like us, they planned on dinner first. Wilbert the taxi driver dropped us off at Sebastian's on the Beach, where we reacquainted ourselves with Cynthia, who had been our waitress during our previous two visits. One thing we have learned is that restaurants in the BVI appreciate reservations, so we always call ahead. It guarantees you a table and, we usually find, better service. Cynthia seated us at the window where we could watch the sun set and served us some fabulous shrimp dishes. On our way out, Nan asked her if she was going to the full moon party after work. "Oh, no! That would be trouble," said Cynthia with a big smile.

We walked down the road a couple of hundred yards to the plywood monstrosity that is the Bomba Shack. It sits on pilings above the beach and has collected an eclectic assortment of junk from its thousands of visitors. Dead boomboxes, hubcaps and driftwood are tastefully arranged around dozens of pairs of cast-off panties and bras, like a perverse reverse souvenir shop. Everyone leaves something behind to show the world they were there. Needless to say, the place was rocking. Bomba, the big man himself, was sitting in his throne room holding court with the ladies. One of the big attractions of the full moon party is the "tea" that is served free to anyone who wants it. It's made from mushrooms and is hallucinogenic. Since we had to make the complicated journey back to our boat later that night, we passed on the tea. We still managed to have a very good time.