Farewell Chris Watters!

My buddy Chris Watters, the sole reason I am living this life right now, has left island and is currently back in his hometown of Halifax. The boat has become awfully quiet, but much tidier!!! Despite his messy ways, I do miss hanging out with 'Mudd' and he is definitely missed, not just upon the boat Agwe, but all over the BVI. Hopefully we may cross paths this June at OPTINAM, and there will definitely be a reunion come July when he returns for a short on-island stay before he leaves for the Central American and Caribbean Games with BVI top sailor Alec Anderson. With the partner in crime gone, I'll be rolling solo for a bit...

But not that long, as Miss Mallory will be gracing the islands with her wonderful presence in just a matter of days. Come April 29th she'll be touching down in St. Thomas, where I will be meeting her at the airport and taking her back to Tortola. I'm very stoked to have her down here over my birthday, and it has been way too long since she was here last. I have lots of activities for us planned, and there will definitely be a ton of new photos. This time when she's here, the yacht club RIB will not be in the hands of thieves and we will have it to hop around from island to island. I know she's as excited as I am!

BVI Spring Regatta

I've been trying to get this post up for the past couple weeks but keep putting it off and putting it off. Anyway, here it is, basically recapping BVI Spring Regatta, and anything else major that has happened since then.
The past couple weeks have been insanely busy for me as BVI Spring Regatta just finished up, and following right after that was Easter Sailing Camps. Spring Regatta was pretty hectic, yet a lot of fun. There was a ton of great parties at the regatta village over the weekend, and the food there was awesome. Unfortunately, I did not get to sail. About a month prior to Spring Regatta I had the option of either running a mark boat, or driving an IC24 with 'sailing press' on it. Clearly I chose the option to sail, but then after Rolex Regatta, I had the offer to sail on the Melges 32, Jurakan, with a professional coach/sailor on board. The owner of the boat called my bosses to present them with this opportunity he had for me, which at the time one of them was very keen on having me sail, the other being rather hesitant.

The day before spring regatta I was put on a boat to take these "sailing press" out training and realized I had a bunch of complete non-sailors, with the exception of the German man who could windsurf. Needless to say, I wasn't about to teach a learn-to-sail lesson on a one design race course and quite stubbornly refused to drive the boat as I felt it was an unsafe environment to be teaching sailing, nor did I want to be taking up the rear at the back of the fleet. So, to show that I wasn't trying to be a pain-in-the-ass, and that I was a team player, I put my own personal sailing interests aside, and ran a mark boat instead of sailing with the Jurakan crew.

Running the mark boat was not that bad of a job, and we got to see some very impressive starts with some incredible boats. I'll try to find some pics to throw up here as I was too hungover most mornings to remember my camera. Oops.

International Rolex Regatta

I returned on Monday from St. Thomas where I was racing in the International Rolex Regatta hosted by STYC. The event was fantastic and the caliber of racing was excellent. I was racing on a Melges 32 called Jurakan and we sailed the boat faster and harder than it ever has been sailed before, with the help of Scott Nixon from Quantum Sails on board. It was a tough regatta and we ended up finishing in 2nd in our fleet, just a couple points behind 1st place, and we missed out on the Rolex. It was pretty disappointing not to win the regatta after sailing so well, but everyone was happy with the crew's performance and we will be racing in our home water this weekend during BVI Spring Regatta. That being said, I hope I will be racing on Jurakan as the yacht club is trying to sucker me into driving an IC-24 with some members of the sailing press racing on it. I'd much rather be haulin' ass downwind at 18 knots with a kite that could envelope most suburban houses.

I was much too busy hiking my ass off to even think about getting some sort of photos, but thankfully this event is highly publicized and therefore there were a ton of press boats snapping pics. These are all the photos I could find with Jurakan in it. Much credit to all the photographers who took these shots.

Pulling away from Budget Marine

Sailing out of the fleet

"If you don't have bruises from hiking today, I'll punch you in the stomach so you do!" - Chris Watters

Downwind start with the blue chute.

Planing downwind.

Flying with the red chute up.

Rounding the mark with Kialoa IV.

BVI OPTINAM Qualifiers Regatta

On March 20th and 21st, the BVI Sailing Team competed against each other in the final regatta of a 3 event qualifying series to determine which 5 sailors would be going to OPTINAM (Optimist North Americans) in Kingston, Ontario at the end of June. The regatta took place in Road Harbour and fortunately the winds decided to come back and we had a great 2 days of racing. I was running the regatta and managed to get 10 races off, and I also snapped a few great shots of the start line! I'm really looking forward to taking my team to Kingston for OPTINAM, as I have spent a lot of time racing, as well as coaching there over my sailing career. Also, I've been developing a bit of "island fever", so being back on the mainland for a bit will be appreciated. The regatta is 8 days, with a day off right in the middle, and coincidentally it happens to be July 1st, so I'll definitely be making a trip up to Ottawa to see the girl, and Canada Day party with all my buddies!!

Sunshine!!

So the other day I was complaining via my Facebook status about the heat, as it was ridiculously hot, sunny, and the wind was non-existent. As a result of my unappreciative attitude, mother nature seemingly called in a gigantic rain cloud to come hang out over the BVI for a week. It was the coldest, dreariest, week I've experienced since I lived in Ottawa! Thankfully, today the cloud seems to have moved on, and mother nature has proved her point. The sun is shining once again, and it's 29 degrees with a comfortable breeze to cool things down. Great day to go sailing!

Russian Around The Race Course

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to go match racing on custom made 44 foot carbon fiber sport boat against its identical sister boat. The boats are owned by a very rich Russian man who bought them as he was interested in learning to sail. What better way to learn how to sail and race than on your own custom yacht with all your buddies and a professional coach, against a team of professional sailors? And to think, I learned in a Opti....

The boats were absolutely incredible sailing machines. From the moment we hoisted the square roach main, you could feel the power that this boat possessed. Every little detail was thought of when this boat was designed, from the teak inlays on top of the carbon deck, to the lines running internally from the bottom of the mast to the pit, and the perfectly positioned winches. The small details made racing on this yacht a lot of fun.

Though it was raining most of the day and I had the chance to finally take advantage of my foul weather gear which has been collecting dust on my boat. Despite the miserable weather, the wind was still blowing and we raced 3 match races and our boat won 2 of them. It was a great experience to sail on such a powerful and fast boat, and hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so again before the yachts are packed up and shipped to Europe for the spring and summer.

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...