TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands BVI Trip Report May 17-30, 2021 Part 1

Monday May 17
We flew Delta ECP to ATL to STT. 6am flight. Kim received her BVI travel authorization at midnight before we flew out. My approval arrived when we got to ATL. We took a regular van taxi to the ferry terminal. Smith’s Ferry was on time for departure at 4 pm with the 50 person limit abroad. Upon arrival to Road Town we were the 4th party to deboard. The arrival procedure took approximately 30 minutes. (We had already paid the $175/person fee on the 14th, which was an overpayment. I requested a refund when we got back home and I did in fact get a $70/person refund.) The taxi took just the 2 of us to the Moorings/Sunsail marina. We were on our boat by 6pm, not bad. We did arrive to a completely unprovisioned boat, but our paddleboards from Island Sand and Sail were aboard. Within an hour, Riteway brought our provisions that we had ordered from them. The order was surprisingly accurate. Sunsail provisioning was another story. Somewhat painful, but after several calls, they did manage to satisfy us by midmorning the next day.

Tuesday May 18
We managed to leave the dock by around 2 pm. I was frustrated by the delays, but was ok when I was finally able to hoist the mainsail. We originally booked a Sunsail 38 mono, but were upgraded to a Sunsail 41.0, which we ended up loving! It was my first time having an electric winch. Nice! We sailed over to Benure’s Bay, Norman Island. Super excited to finally be back on the water in the BVI. 3 boats in the bay. We did some paddleboarding and then grilled steaks. What an evening! After dinner, we checked the email and bam!, we received our quarantine release! More drinks to celebrate!

Wednesday May 19
After breakfast and more paddleboarding, we sailed back over to Road Town to turn in our tracking phones. Took a taxi to the police station (process took about 10 min.), then stopped by Riteway for last minute items and returned t the boat. We sailed over to Great Harbour, Peter Island for the night. We moored right off of Oceans 7, which was closed that night. The sunset view was not as good as I had hoped as it was obscured by the hill.

Thursday May 20
I decided we were going to Cooper for drinks this afternoon. We stopped by Salt Island and spent a few hours there. A very nice Moorings captain gave us a cut up milk jug to get some salt from the pond. Later, we sailed on over to Cooper. We paddle boarded some more (Kim really likes paddleboarding, lol), then got cleaned up and went in for drinks (no dinner service). There were only about 6 people there. The staff were super friendly and very happy we were there.

Friday May 21
The plan was to sail to Long Bay, VG for an overnight. We had a nice sail up, arriving around noon. Took one of the 2 NPS day moorings and decided to have lunch. I had a cheap lesson at this point. Since this was just tying up for lunch and another paddle board, I used one dock line. After some discussion, we decided to eat lunch first. While having lunch, I looked out and there was the mooring about 100 feet away. I jumped up to discover the dock line had somehow slipped off the cleat. Thank God we hadn’t decided to paddle board first! I hate to even think what would have happened to the boat! Lesson: Double check the lines. Tie the dead end off to the rail. If leaving the boat, use 2 dock lines. After this happened, we moved in closer over the sand and anchored for a while. I then decided to head to North Sound for the evening.

To be continued...

Thanks for the report Xrayman...