Boats and Bros

For the past week I have been cruising around the BVIs on a 50 foot yacht with 8 of my buddies having the time of my life. The adventure started in St. Croix, USVI, where I was coaching my Opti team at the St. Croix Yacht Club Hospice Regatta. My team did extremely well and we took the top 3 spots! I had a nice hotel set up for the boys when they arrived and we had quit the reunion, and explored the night life of Christiansted. It was an interesting place, and St. Croix had some beautiful scenery, but I'm still not a fan of the USVI. Maybe I'm a little biased seeing as I living on Tortola and it happens to be the nicest of all the Caribbean islands I've visited.

Sunday brought some adventure and a little bit of stress, as the ride back to Tortola that I had arranged fell through as some of the boats were leaving on Monday morning instead of Sunday, and we had to get the opti team back that night. After a lot of hustling around the yacht club to pull some strings, I had arranged rides back to Tortola for all my buddies and I bolted out of there in my coach boat, in what was described as a James Bond-like fashion (sprinting down the dock, leaping into the boat, full throttle out of the harbour). My ride back to Tortola, had already left and I had to catch up to them before the yacht sailed into open water, which would make putting the coach boat onto the davits next to impossible. My sail back was one of the worst sails of my life, as the winds picked up, began to blow off the nose of the boat, and the weather turned foul. In addition, there were 7 kids on the boat, 2 of which proceeded to get seasick. Catamaran yachts are luxurious, but do not handle very well in rough water and heavy upwind sailing. What was supposed to be a 5 hour sail to Tortola became an 8 hour sail to St. John,  in order to enter the Sir Francis Drake Channel where the water is much more protected, then to continue onwards to Road Harbour. We arrived late and I was pretty relieved to head back to my boat for a good night sleep.

The next day my crew arrived around mid-day and by the time everyone was checked in with customs, our boat was sorted out and we were briefed and had done our provisioning, it was too late to head out of the dock due to insurance reasons (the charter company had no faith in my captaining skills). We spent the night on the dock in Road Harbour and discussed plans for the cruise. We left as early as possible the next day and sailed to Norman Island and the crew got acquainted with the boat along the way. We picked up a mooring ball (extremely successfully!) in The Bight, and proceeded to swim, invent water sports, and get some rum in us before dinner and a late night dinghy ride over the the Willy T.

The next day we sailed over to Apple bay on the North shore of Tortola in order to catch some waves. After a successful anchoring, a few of us tried to catch some inconsistent and mediocre waves, right up until First Mate Warner had a sea urchin attack his foot (he actually stepped on it when we was going into shore). That put an end to our surf session, and Dan, the boat chef/surgeon, began to perform some gnarly pirate surgery on Warner's foot to remove the spines. Seeing as we were on a boat, the only anesthetic available to help Warner with the pain was a bottle of rum and his cigarettes! He was tough as nails as Dan dug into his foot with a needle and tweezers. After the operation, we sailed over to Cane Garden Bay for medical supplies, provisions, more rum, and mooring for the night. We had a pretty fun beach session which resulted in the most unchill lady yelling at us to get off a water trampoline, and then we caught happy hour painkillers at Quitos. After that, Dan and Warner cooked up some tasty island chicken, rice and beans, and I whipped up some fried plaintains. Later that evening, we thought it would be fun to hit up Bomba's surf shack, and had the most intense walk of our life through was seemed to be the deserted North side of the island. We managed to convince an off duty taxi to drive us there after we had climb two mountains, only to find out Bomba's was not  looking too busy, and cut out losses and took the cab back to Cane Garden. The boys were pretty entertained by the rollercoaster of a taxi ride back.

The next morning we set sail for Virgin Gorda, with a quick stop in Josiah's bay to check the surf. We had a great sail, while Dan and Shane whipped up an incredible brunch. We arrived at the Baths in VG mid-afternoon and had a great time snorkeling the reef, exploring the caves, and climbing the rocks. We set sail from the Baths and hauled ass up to the North Sound to get a mooring ball at the Bitter End Yacht Club before the sunset. This was Ben's last night with the crew so we had to send him off with a big bash. We partied to the wee hours of the morning and ended the night with "freestyle" diving off the bow of the boat. I bet our fellow yachters just loved us!

Ben left us early that morning, and after breakfast we set sail past Necker Island, and headed back to Road Town to get stock up on water and provisions. We hustled our way out of Road Town and caught some excellent breeze through the west end which got our boat moving at 10 knots upwind, really helped us get to Jost Van Dyke before the sun set. We pulled into Great Harbor just as the sun fell behind the horizon and we managed to pirate what was apparently a private mooring belonging to some fisherman. We partied at Foxy's that night, and managed to leave the next morning without having to pay any mooring fee, and with little hassle from the fisherman.

Since we were close by, and I had heard it was a beautiful spot, we sailed to Sandy Cay that morning, dropped anchor and had breakfast. The wind was picking up and our anchor began to drag, so we had to relocate and had a hell of a time setting our anchor again in the broken coral bottom. Sandy Cay was gorgeous though, and we had a great day explore the island, eating prickly pears, climbing trees, creating coconut sports, and related coconut accessories. We had to leave the island to get back to Road Harbour for the night as half the crew had an early ferry to catch, and the boat had to be returned.

Shane, Ayrton, Dave, Charles and I had a quick breakfast before I took them to get some gifts and souvenirs to take back home with them. It was a pretty sad sight to see the last of the crew disappear on the ferry as they waved good bye to me like I was an egg shell deep-sixed off the back of our boat. It was an epic adventure and I know everyone had a great time. Until the next...