TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Trip Report: 8/22/21 - 8/29/21

This was a “part business” and part vacation trip this time. Since 2014 we have owned Leopard 42, Island Fun which is in Captain’s Compass Charters. We just completed the sale of Island Fun AND the purchase of a 2017 Leopard 45 we have named Stargazer. With thorough surveys, both cats are in wonderful shape and both are in charter at Captain’s Compass. This trip report is about sailing on our basically new Leopard 45 and what we discovered sailing in late August.
All the paperwork ended up being much easier than I feared. We had no problem filing out the BVI portal and getting approved 2 days before departure. I only made one “minor” mistake. I was a tad stressed out between all the last minute paperwork on our new boat as well as getting approval to enter the BVI and arranging a 48 hour test to depart BVI back to St Thomas since we were taking the ferry. It didn’t dawn on me until we were 10 minutes from landing at St Thomas that we didn’t do the portal thing to enter St Thomas. The flight was full (which surprised me). As we got off the plane they asked everyone to pull up their portal forms. The army was handling the Covid paperwork. A very nice soldier told me “no problem” and directed us to an open door. Talk about stress,,,,,The regular line was long and slow. We walked into the room, a soldier gave us a paper version of the portal form that took us no more than 2 minutes to fill out. After looking at our forms and seeing our proof of Covid tests, we free to go.All this in less than 5 minutes. We ended up getting out of the airport before most of our plane. Sometimes, mistakes pay off, lol.
We took possession of Stargazer on August 22 so some of this trip was taken up with prepping our new boat. We got a rather late start on our first day of sailing so we decided to sail to Norman for the first night. It was very strange not seeing more than one to two other boats on the water. We had only one neighbor in Norman. Pirates Restaurant wasn’t open but The Willy T’s actually opened up for one boat. The Leopard 45 has a “front porch” that I totally love. On mooring, it’s always facing the breeze plus it’s shaded so it was a great place for late afternoon cocktails. We are usually good to just have the hatches open at night for breeze but just for fun and the check out the generator and air conditioning, we used the air thar night. Snorkeling was great and it was a treat having the Indians all to ourselves. The next day after breakfast, we took a leisurely sail to Marina Key. When we arrived, the only other boat was a mono with a couple on board. They were scuba diving and left around 3 pm leaving us as the only boat there for the night. We relaxed drinking cold beer using inner tubes tied to the back of the cat. What a great way to enjoy a beer (or 2, lol ). There was another cat moored I Trellis and I couldn’t believe a couple came over from Trellis to collect our mooring fee of $30. They were very friendly and joked, asking us to bring more boats with us next time. Next day we headed out for the Baths. It was so different not worrying about finding a mooring ball. We had the Baths all to ourselves. When we were swimming back to our boat a day-boat dropped of some people. Other than that, it was empty. From there we headed for North Sound. We went over to check out Saba Rock. It looks great and we’re hoping to eat there on our next trip in the end of October. We ate dinner at Leverick Bay. Between us and a couple other boats they served a dozen or more people that night. Three boats there that night. What I truly hated to see is Boatyball now controls EVERY mooring ball at Leverick. They have the red balls you can reserve and all the white one are still first come first serve but you have to get online with Boatyball to pay. It’s still $30. Means you have to have the internet now to pay.
Moving on,,,,,, Next day we headed over to the dogs to snorkel. That was great until we found dozens of pink jellyfish. Luckily we all got back on board without a sting. From there, we sailed over to Cane Garden Bay. Most places were closed but we did eat a late lunch at Myett’s. We watched the sun set on the back of out boat that night. What a great way to drink wine. This was our most crowded mooring field, 5 boats that night. Next morning we had our longtime cab, George pick us up and take us to get our Covid exit tests. Our appointment was for 9 AM and by noon we had the results and did the USVI portal forms. From Cane Garden Bay we headed over to Great Harbor and took our dingy over to Soggy Dollar. Our new dingy has a 15 horse power outboard which really moves. There are now only about 8 regular mooring balls in Great Harbor, the rest are all the reserved boatyballs. For lunch, I had my favorite from Hendo’s, their Mahi Mahi. What really made our visit to Soggy Dollar was while snorkeling, my wife found a dollar in the water, half buried in sand, thus she “found a soggy dollar at the Soggy Dollar. I’m having her frame it. Next day we headed back to Sea Cow Bay to tuck Stargazer away until we return in October to kick off the new charter season. If you want a great and extremely comfortable cat, you need to check out Stargazer and her sister boat at Captain’s Compass. One plus on these boats are they both have the captain’s bunk so if someone wants to charter 4 cabins but use a captain, these are your boats. Leopard 45s are a great boat.

You were Lucky on STT entry w/o portal-- [don't recommend it at all]

TY for report. Good Luck on new boat.

They were set up for people without portal. It was the United States and as long as you had the test results they were ok about. I joked it was faster getting into St Thomas w/o the portal but I'll have it ready in October when we return.

The airlines are supposed to check before you board for STT. Having said that only once out of 3 flights down last spring did they check.