Day Five - on to Anegada
Armed with a favorable weather forecast, good instructions from The Moorings guy at BEYC (is it just me or does he remind anyone else of Burgess Meredith in Rocky), my trusty new Garmin loaded with Walker's Waypoints, I headed off on our first trip to Anegada.
I'm not sure I'd make the trip with seas in the 6'-9' range, but with 15 knots of wind and 4 foot seas, it was a great sail. The instructions from The Moorings person were all that I needed but basically I followed the GPS and used the instructions to verify the course.
This was the first time we had gone to Anegada despite having been on 12 charters, and as anyone who's ever been up there will no doubt say, I can't believe it took us that long! What a wonderful place. I could sit at the bar of the Anegada Reef Hotel drinking smoothies all day and be perfectly content. Lawrence, who was described perfectly by my sister-in-law as a "gracious host", completed the experience. I had some doubts about eating barbecued lobster since I thought it would be dry (it wasn't), but I couldn't pass on dinner at ARH. Food was incredible, and delivered very efficiently. A couple of nights later, ARH served dinner to 100 guests with the same level of competence. That night I doubt there were 10 people from boats at all of the other restaurants combined. What a wonderful place!
Days Six and Seven - who needs to sail let's stay here another day or two or three...
Our plan was for 2 nights at Anegada, spending the 2nd day snorkeling at Loblolly. We were all set to leave the boat at 10:30, when a tropical wave came by and all hell broke loose. The heavy rains and winds subsided after an hour, but the day never cleared, so we made the decision to spend another day there (what a tough place to be stuck!). This extra day would necessitate a long sail the following day from Anegada back to The Moorings where we were due in to drop my sister-in-law off for her flight. But a 4-6 hour sail was a small price to pay for being able to get a day at Loblolly.
I 'accused' Lawrence of bringing on the bad weather to force us to stay the extra day. The next day, when the weather cleared, he made a point of telling me how I owed him because he had spent all night praying for a good day of weather.
Went to Loblolly, saw Lavenda Breeze, and began to plot how we'd add a 4th week to our vacation the next time so we could spend a week there. Snorkeling was good. Coral reefs were great, fish were fine but probably not as numerous as we had seen earlier at Secret Harbour. Had a good lunch at Big Bamboo.
We had earlier asked the taxi driver if he would be able to stop at the iguana sanctuary on our way out. He said his was the only taxi, but ask him again at 4:30 and he would take us back. Later that day, even though he was still the only taxi and there were plenty of people to be picked up, he made the time to take my wife and older son to the iguanas, and give them a tour. Another fine person going out of his way to make our stay enjoyable. While they were seeing iggy and friends, the rest of us sat at the bar wondering what type of nutmeg they used in the smoothies that gave such a buzz. Maybe it wasn't the nutmeg but the half a glass of Bacardi Gold that Lawrence kept putting in before the smoothie stuff.
