Catamaran Trip Report - Part 3 - BVI Bound!
Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 2:17 pm
BVI BOUND!
Tuesday 4/28 & Wednesday 4/29
So ok, I know I said that the middle of this report wouldn't be so detailed, but, what can I say? This is the longest installment yet!
Tuesday, 4/28 – Up early again… 6-ish. Breakfast was bagels & pecan coffee again, and I think Kellee or Keith fried up a couple of eggs. It was a beautiful morning in Maho Bay.
But shiver me timbers if we weren’t boarded a desperate pirate! Arrrrrghh!
She kept mumbling something about her booty. We surrendered the left-over Jello shots and she spared our lives!
Today was exciting not only because our boat was pillaged by the infamous pirate wench “Kellyanna of the Caribbean”, but because we were headed for the British Virgin Islands! We set sail for Tortola to check-in with customs & immigration at Soper’s Hole. What a neat place that is! I loved it there!
When we arrived in Soper’s Hole, Sydney & Keith moored the boat and Keith, our captain person, filled out all the necessary paperwork for customs & immigration, gathered all of our passports together, and took the tender in to get us all cleared thru British Customs while the rest of us waited on the boat.
When he got back, we all got in the tender and went over to the dock. We did a little shopping – there are some really cool shops there! I could spend some serious money! - picked up some extra groceries, got lunch-to-go from Pusser’s Landing, and went back to the boat to eat. I’m not a wings person, but Kellee, Rick, Sydney & Keith deem Pussers’ wings to be the best in the world! I had a chicken & pineapple quesadilla, which was equally as good! Kellee had the lobster BLT, but doesn’t recommend it.
After lunch we left Soper’s Hole and headed for The Caves at Norman Island. We didn’t stop at The Indians, but I got a nice picture! LOL!
The Caves
There was still plenty of algae in the water at The Caves, however it did seem more clear here than elsewhere. Also the water was emerald green instead of turquoise! It was an “ok” snorkel and I got a few pictures that didn’t turn out so bad after I Photoshopped them. Visibility came and went with the flow of the tide. There was a good variety of fish, but most of my underwater photos just didn’t turn out because of all the junk in the water.
When I first got in the water I noticed some stinging on my lower back. I just sort of wiped at it and kept swimming. I would get a little sting here and there, now and then, but it wasn’t bad enough to make me get out of the water. When I was done snorkeling and I was coming back to the boat, something stung me on my upper lip and it really hurt! I didn’t see any jellyfish or anything. Back on the boat, both Kellee & Sydney said they got stings too, but they didn’t see anything in the water either. The stings left a little red spot, but both the sting and the spot went away quickly. We’re still not sure what it was, but when we got to where Kellee could get a Wifi signal, we posted about it on the forum. nothintolose replied that it might be broken pieces of tentacles mixed in with the algae. I’m thinking this might be what “bit” Carolyn at Waterlemon, too.
Back onboard the boat we showered off with the sprayer hose on the back of the boat (swimdeck?). We washed our hair there, and our bodies as well (with our swimsuits on if others were around). You were supposed to be able to shower in the head, but I think that statement was just intended as a joke, once I saw the setup! To shower in the head, you pull out the water spigot, which is on a hose, much like your kitchen sink spigot may be, and use it as a hand shower. I didn’t try a full shower in there just for claustrophobic reasons. The size of the head didn’t bother me too much for “regular business,” but it was just too dinky for a full shower in my opinion. If you used the bathroom shower, you had to drain the water out of the floor by holding in a button on the front of the counter when you were done. Throughout the week we all had our opportunities to get clean, and no one got stinky – or maybe we just all smelled the same.
We left The Caves and headed to The Bight, where the WillyT is anchored. It was verrrrry quiet there, but of course this was Tuesday. I’m betting it’s busier on weekends. We had plenty of alcohol and food on our boat, so we didn’t go over. I mean really, think about it…. could the WillyT really be better than your own private yacht and cheap drinks? I don’t think so! A couple of other boats were moored near us and in the evening we saw a couple of dinghys full of people headed that way, but I never heard any music or partying or anything.
We moored there for the night, and like the previous couple of days, we had a lot of wind. However that night it got pretty intense and that’s also the night I had to close the hatch in our cabin because we were getting rained on! It wasn’t scary, but I did wake up a few times because some rope kept clanging against the mast (I forgot what Keith told me it was), or we’d whack up against the mooring ball for a while. Keith was up several times during the night tending to things like that.
Wednesday 4/29 – Another early morning, we were up around 7 am. Gosh, we slept-in! It must be because of the rough night – LOL! We’ve grown accustomed with seeing one-another first thing in the morning before we’ve had our coffee. That could have been kinda’ scary, ya’ know! We all fended for ourselves for breakfast, rather than an organized meal. Bagels, eggs, English muffins, cereal, etc. That was fine with everyone!
After breakfast, we set out for Cooper Island. It was neat seeing Road Town on Tortola on the left, and Peter Island and Salt Island on the right as we sailed past. “Sailed” might be a misnomer here, as we didn’t have the sails up and were using the engines. The wind wasn’t “going our way,” so unless we wanted to tack back and forth across the Sir Francis Drake Channel and take all day to get anywhere, engines it was! It was a beautiful clear day with some incredible clouds in the sky!
OMG! I LOVE Cooper Island! It’s small and there’s not much there, other than a dive shop, a gift shop, a restaurant & bar, and the Cooper Island Beach Club, “six duplex cottages that are tucked into the hillside and surrounded by coconut palms.” It’s quiet and unspoiled and oh so lovely! I could definitely go back there and spend some time. Definitely.
THE SARAH SUE (the one straight out)
Keith at Cooper Island
Rick at Cooper Island
We moored the boat in Manchioneel Bay and took the tender in to the dock. We walked along the beachfront and checked out the gift shop where I got an awesome cover-up, and we checked out the dive shop which appeared to offer complete dive services. Then we walked back down to the bar, had couple of drinks and just limed in the shade for a while. It was everything you always think of when you picture yourself on a tropical beach on the best day ever! I want to go back.
We left Cooper Island after an hour or so and sailed up past Ginger Island toward Virgin Gorda.
I know a lot of you have already seen this video before...
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ghO_aT-PnyM&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ghO_aT-PnyM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
We moored in Spring Bay, right in front of The Baths, but were too lazy to swim in and check it all out.
Actually, Keith could have dinghy’d us in to a certain point and we could have jumped into the water and swam from there, but then we would have to swim all the way back to the catamaran afterward because you can’t take a dinghy all the way in to the beach, and who can climb into a dinghy from the water? Not me! We opted to stay on the boat and watch everything going on around us.
While we were there, the Tall Ship Picton Castle, from Halifax NS, came in. We’ve seen it twice now, once 2 yrs. ago in Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke, and then again today. It’s a cool-looking ship! The last time we saw it, it was painted black and I swore it was The Black Pearl! It was used in that reality show, shot on a pirate ships a few years ago. If I was a young person I’d definitely be checking out how to study on it!
Our lunch consisted of smoked salmon, that Sydney brought from Canada (and I can’t begin to tell you how yummy it was!) crackers, cream cheese, a couple of other different cheeses (from Canada, again), and some home-made pepper jelly direct from New Orleans. All of this was accompanied by various frosty beverages, including Virgin Islands Tropical Mango beer and some left-over Jello shots that we didn’t have to surrender to “Kellyanna of the Caribbean”!!!
Leaving Virgin Gorda, we headed to Marina Cay. I have to say that Marina Cay is a fun, fun, fun place!
As we sailed into the marina, we passed some construction on Scrub Island. I’m not very well informed on it, but as I understand it, it’s an unfinished resort that has had many money problems, so it’s not being completed very quickly. That’s too bad, as it’s not very pretty the way it is.
At Marina Cay we fueled up the boat and got some water & ice. While the boat was taking on fuel, water & ice Kellee and I stood in front of the “Red Box” (a British phone booth on the dock) and got our pictures taken by the webcam. Hers turned out pretty good, but I was too busy moving around for it to get a good shot of me.
Then we scouted out the cay.
This photo has not been enhanced in Photoshop - it really looks like this!
We shopped in Pusser’s Co. Store and I found a pair of sunglasses to replace mine that broke. Newbie note: Take at least 2 pairs of sunglasses…. maybe even 3! Kellee and I found a nice restaurant on the beach, and we each got a Painkiller in a Pusser’s tin mug, and then we sat on the dock to wait for Rick and Sydney & Keith to come back from wherever they had moored the boat for the night.
When they showed up, it was off to the Happy Arrr Bar and the Michael Beans show.
Michael Beans puts on a very fun, “pirate-oriented” show. There were free shots of rum for the best “Pirate toast”… it didn’t have to be about pirates, but it had to “sound” like a pirate toast. Here’s mine: “Here’s to our husbands and lovarrrrrrs, may they nevarrrrr meet!”
I got a shot of rum!
Then the show progressed with lots of songs and merriment and crowd involvement. There was a conch shell blowing contest. I made it to a pitiful count of 9.
I took a shot of rum!
But it wasn’t my turn yet, because I hadn’t actually lost the contest yet. Oops, my bad! Then someone bested me with a count of 32 (?) and now I had officially lost.
I got shot of rum!
I got pretty drunk that night, but it was the only time I got that way during entire week, and I didn’t even have a hangover the next day! Sydney & Keith went back to the boat early (they had seen it all before) and Rick & Kellee & I hung out till the show was over. Kellee and I both bought Michael Beans CDs and t-shirts (which he signed). Listening to the CD now, I realize that some shows are just better live. And drunk. Just sayin. If you ever get to Marina Cay, be sure to see Michael Beans, we sincerely had a blast!
When we went back to the boat, it was my turn to make dinner. I had made and frozen a dozen chicken enchiladas before the trip and I took them down in a ziplock bag in a 6-pak cooler with some techni-ice packed in our checked luggage. They got there just fine. We had thawed them out in the refrigerator since that morning, so when we got back to the boat, I put the 12 enchiladas into a 13” x 9” pan, mixed up the sauce, poured it over them, covered everything with grated cheese and popped them in the oven for about 25 min. YUM! They always taste good, but somehow sitting in Marina Cay they tasted better than ever!! I keep saying that, don’t I? Sorry, I just can’t help myself. It’s all true.
Tuesday 4/28 & Wednesday 4/29
So ok, I know I said that the middle of this report wouldn't be so detailed, but, what can I say? This is the longest installment yet!
Tuesday, 4/28 – Up early again… 6-ish. Breakfast was bagels & pecan coffee again, and I think Kellee or Keith fried up a couple of eggs. It was a beautiful morning in Maho Bay.
But shiver me timbers if we weren’t boarded a desperate pirate! Arrrrrghh!
She kept mumbling something about her booty. We surrendered the left-over Jello shots and she spared our lives!
Today was exciting not only because our boat was pillaged by the infamous pirate wench “Kellyanna of the Caribbean”, but because we were headed for the British Virgin Islands! We set sail for Tortola to check-in with customs & immigration at Soper’s Hole. What a neat place that is! I loved it there!
When we arrived in Soper’s Hole, Sydney & Keith moored the boat and Keith, our captain person, filled out all the necessary paperwork for customs & immigration, gathered all of our passports together, and took the tender in to get us all cleared thru British Customs while the rest of us waited on the boat.
When he got back, we all got in the tender and went over to the dock. We did a little shopping – there are some really cool shops there! I could spend some serious money! - picked up some extra groceries, got lunch-to-go from Pusser’s Landing, and went back to the boat to eat. I’m not a wings person, but Kellee, Rick, Sydney & Keith deem Pussers’ wings to be the best in the world! I had a chicken & pineapple quesadilla, which was equally as good! Kellee had the lobster BLT, but doesn’t recommend it.
After lunch we left Soper’s Hole and headed for The Caves at Norman Island. We didn’t stop at The Indians, but I got a nice picture! LOL!
The Caves
There was still plenty of algae in the water at The Caves, however it did seem more clear here than elsewhere. Also the water was emerald green instead of turquoise! It was an “ok” snorkel and I got a few pictures that didn’t turn out so bad after I Photoshopped them. Visibility came and went with the flow of the tide. There was a good variety of fish, but most of my underwater photos just didn’t turn out because of all the junk in the water.
When I first got in the water I noticed some stinging on my lower back. I just sort of wiped at it and kept swimming. I would get a little sting here and there, now and then, but it wasn’t bad enough to make me get out of the water. When I was done snorkeling and I was coming back to the boat, something stung me on my upper lip and it really hurt! I didn’t see any jellyfish or anything. Back on the boat, both Kellee & Sydney said they got stings too, but they didn’t see anything in the water either. The stings left a little red spot, but both the sting and the spot went away quickly. We’re still not sure what it was, but when we got to where Kellee could get a Wifi signal, we posted about it on the forum. nothintolose replied that it might be broken pieces of tentacles mixed in with the algae. I’m thinking this might be what “bit” Carolyn at Waterlemon, too.
Back onboard the boat we showered off with the sprayer hose on the back of the boat (swimdeck?). We washed our hair there, and our bodies as well (with our swimsuits on if others were around). You were supposed to be able to shower in the head, but I think that statement was just intended as a joke, once I saw the setup! To shower in the head, you pull out the water spigot, which is on a hose, much like your kitchen sink spigot may be, and use it as a hand shower. I didn’t try a full shower in there just for claustrophobic reasons. The size of the head didn’t bother me too much for “regular business,” but it was just too dinky for a full shower in my opinion. If you used the bathroom shower, you had to drain the water out of the floor by holding in a button on the front of the counter when you were done. Throughout the week we all had our opportunities to get clean, and no one got stinky – or maybe we just all smelled the same.
We left The Caves and headed to The Bight, where the WillyT is anchored. It was verrrrry quiet there, but of course this was Tuesday. I’m betting it’s busier on weekends. We had plenty of alcohol and food on our boat, so we didn’t go over. I mean really, think about it…. could the WillyT really be better than your own private yacht and cheap drinks? I don’t think so! A couple of other boats were moored near us and in the evening we saw a couple of dinghys full of people headed that way, but I never heard any music or partying or anything.
We moored there for the night, and like the previous couple of days, we had a lot of wind. However that night it got pretty intense and that’s also the night I had to close the hatch in our cabin because we were getting rained on! It wasn’t scary, but I did wake up a few times because some rope kept clanging against the mast (I forgot what Keith told me it was), or we’d whack up against the mooring ball for a while. Keith was up several times during the night tending to things like that.
Wednesday 4/29 – Another early morning, we were up around 7 am. Gosh, we slept-in! It must be because of the rough night – LOL! We’ve grown accustomed with seeing one-another first thing in the morning before we’ve had our coffee. That could have been kinda’ scary, ya’ know!
We all fended for ourselves for breakfast, rather than an organized meal. Bagels, eggs, English muffins, cereal, etc. That was fine with everyone! After breakfast, we set out for Cooper Island. It was neat seeing Road Town on Tortola on the left, and Peter Island and Salt Island on the right as we sailed past. “Sailed” might be a misnomer here, as we didn’t have the sails up and were using the engines. The wind wasn’t “going our way,” so unless we wanted to tack back and forth across the Sir Francis Drake Channel and take all day to get anywhere, engines it was! It was a beautiful clear day with some incredible clouds in the sky!
OMG! I LOVE Cooper Island! It’s small and there’s not much there, other than a dive shop, a gift shop, a restaurant & bar, and the Cooper Island Beach Club, “six duplex cottages that are tucked into the hillside and surrounded by coconut palms.” It’s quiet and unspoiled and oh so lovely! I could definitely go back there and spend some time. Definitely.
THE SARAH SUE (the one straight out)
Keith at Cooper Island
Rick at Cooper Island
We moored the boat in Manchioneel Bay and took the tender in to the dock. We walked along the beachfront and checked out the gift shop where I got an awesome cover-up, and we checked out the dive shop which appeared to offer complete dive services. Then we walked back down to the bar, had couple of drinks and just limed in the shade for a while. It was everything you always think of when you picture yourself on a tropical beach on the best day ever! I want to go back.
We left Cooper Island after an hour or so and sailed up past Ginger Island toward Virgin Gorda.
I know a lot of you have already seen this video before...
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ghO_aT-PnyM&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ghO_aT-PnyM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
We moored in Spring Bay, right in front of The Baths, but were too lazy to swim in and check it all out.
Actually, Keith could have dinghy’d us in to a certain point and we could have jumped into the water and swam from there, but then we would have to swim all the way back to the catamaran afterward because you can’t take a dinghy all the way in to the beach, and who can climb into a dinghy from the water? Not me! We opted to stay on the boat and watch everything going on around us.
While we were there, the Tall Ship Picton Castle, from Halifax NS, came in. We’ve seen it twice now, once 2 yrs. ago in Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke, and then again today. It’s a cool-looking ship! The last time we saw it, it was painted black and I swore it was The Black Pearl! It was used in that reality show, shot on a pirate ships a few years ago. If I was a young person I’d definitely be checking out how to study on it!
Our lunch consisted of smoked salmon, that Sydney brought from Canada (and I can’t begin to tell you how yummy it was!) crackers, cream cheese, a couple of other different cheeses (from Canada, again), and some home-made pepper jelly direct from New Orleans. All of this was accompanied by various frosty beverages, including Virgin Islands Tropical Mango beer and some left-over Jello shots that we didn’t have to surrender to “Kellyanna of the Caribbean”!!!
Leaving Virgin Gorda, we headed to Marina Cay. I have to say that Marina Cay is a fun, fun, fun place!
As we sailed into the marina, we passed some construction on Scrub Island. I’m not very well informed on it, but as I understand it, it’s an unfinished resort that has had many money problems, so it’s not being completed very quickly. That’s too bad, as it’s not very pretty the way it is.
At Marina Cay we fueled up the boat and got some water & ice. While the boat was taking on fuel, water & ice Kellee and I stood in front of the “Red Box” (a British phone booth on the dock) and got our pictures taken by the webcam. Hers turned out pretty good, but I was too busy moving around for it to get a good shot of me.
Then we scouted out the cay.
This photo has not been enhanced in Photoshop - it really looks like this!
We shopped in Pusser’s Co. Store and I found a pair of sunglasses to replace mine that broke. Newbie note: Take at least 2 pairs of sunglasses…. maybe even 3! Kellee and I found a nice restaurant on the beach, and we each got a Painkiller in a Pusser’s tin mug, and then we sat on the dock to wait for Rick and Sydney & Keith to come back from wherever they had moored the boat for the night.
When they showed up, it was off to the Happy Arrr Bar and the Michael Beans show.
Michael Beans puts on a very fun, “pirate-oriented” show. There were free shots of rum for the best “Pirate toast”… it didn’t have to be about pirates, but it had to “sound” like a pirate toast. Here’s mine: “Here’s to our husbands and lovarrrrrrs, may they nevarrrrr meet!”
I got a shot of rum!
Then the show progressed with lots of songs and merriment and crowd involvement. There was a conch shell blowing contest. I made it to a pitiful count of 9.
I took a shot of rum!
But it wasn’t my turn yet, because I hadn’t actually lost the contest yet. Oops, my bad! Then someone bested me with a count of 32 (?) and now I had officially lost.
I got shot of rum!
I got pretty drunk that night, but it was the only time I got that way during entire week, and I didn’t even have a hangover the next day! Sydney & Keith went back to the boat early (they had seen it all before) and Rick & Kellee & I hung out till the show was over. Kellee and I both bought Michael Beans CDs and t-shirts (which he signed). Listening to the CD now, I realize that some shows are just better live. And drunk. Just sayin. If you ever get to Marina Cay, be sure to see Michael Beans, we sincerely had a blast!
When we went back to the boat, it was my turn to make dinner. I had made and frozen a dozen chicken enchiladas before the trip and I took them down in a ziplock bag in a 6-pak cooler with some techni-ice packed in our checked luggage. They got there just fine. We had thawed them out in the refrigerator since that morning, so when we got back to the boat, I put the 12 enchiladas into a 13” x 9” pan, mixed up the sauce, poured it over them, covered everything with grated cheese and popped them in the oven for about 25 min. YUM! They always taste good, but somehow sitting in Marina Cay they tasted better than ever!! I keep saying that, don’t I? Sorry, I just can’t help myself. It’s all true.
