Sorry about the delay in this report. My parents (who stayed with the little ones for the last day and a half of the trip) wanted to hang around for a few days.
Well, this trip was the best yet! Kim and I were meeting our friend Chris who had recently taken a promotion with his company in jolly ‘ol England.
Dateline, June 2nd. Our flight left the DFW airport at 8:00am. The entire trip went way to well. No waits, got on an earlier flight to Tortola. Next thing we know POOF we are at the Moorings base, checked in and an instant boat briefing! Not to mention the boat had A/C!
My wife commented that things had been going to well. Something bad was going to happen. I’m happy to say that nothing did (at least to us). Chris ended up getting there late after a four hour delay on his connecting flight.
BTW, Bobby’s kicks butt. We were very happy with them.
We got started at about 10:00 on Friday with White Bay on Jost as our destination. As we were coming up to the bay, we looked and noticed that there were no mooring balls. We are total weenies when it comes to anchoring, so a mooring ball was detrimental to our goal of hanging with no worries. To our surprise we got the last ball in the entire bay! Another small piece of luck.
White Bay was great as usual, but we had to also make the pilgrimage to Foxy’s to pay homage to the hat. Being the ever so wise and sea worthy sailors, we decided to drive our little dinghy around the point to the famous bar. Not the best idea, but it worked. Foxy’s was packed and not really what we remembered from our last trip, so we made our way down to Corsair’s. That was a totally cool bar. Chris even passed out, oops I mean fell asleep, at the bar. The dinghy ride back to the boat with no moon was a little hair raising. I would recommend getting a taxi. I kept thinking to myself “I sure hope our luck holds out for another few minutes.”
Saturday came with the anticipation of the TTOL party at Malcom’s villa. We made our way over to Sandy Cay. We tried our hand at anchoring and felt pretty good about it until we got back to the boat to discover that the boat had broken free and drifted back about 30 yards. Crap.
The party was supposed to start at 2:00. We got to Cane Garden Bay around 1:30, so we headed over to Bobby’s for some more provisions. At around 2:00 or so, we started making our way over to Apple Bay and the TTOL party. After trying to find a cab driver that hadn’t had to many Carib’s at the bar, we were off! Thanks to Bill Hartzman’s excellent directions, we got lost (just kidding Bill). It took us just a few minutes to find it. When we were kind of turned around, I just decided to walk between two houses and met two very nice people that were rather shocked to see someone on their beach. I kind of felt like Ferris Bueller at the end of the movie when he was running home. Anyway, we found Malcom’s house and lo and behold no one was there! We walked into the living room and instantly recognized the room from the pictures. I began to panic: did I miss the day? Did I get the time wrong? No, everyone was down stairs. What a great time! It was so funny, everyone we met was like “Jack, nice to meet you.” “Oh, I forgot, my user name is Monkey Feet” “MONKEY FEET! It is great to meet you!” So funny. My parents would be so proud that their son gave up his Christian name! We met so many great TTOLers. Such a great group of people!. Malcom was a gracious host, and his villa is totally cool. Our luck just kept getting better. That night Debra had asked Quito to make an exception to his no weekend singing to come and sing at his bar for the TTOLers. Kim, Chris and I arrived at Quito’s still full from lunch, so we decided to stay down stairs and drink. I had a great conversation with some TTOLers from W. Virginia (I can’t remember you all’s names, but send me a PM with your e-mail I need to send over my book). Next thing I know, the place is packed and Quito is jammin’ What a total blast. We danced and drank and drank and danced. “Where is Chris?” I asked my wife. “Asleep on the beach”
The next day, I woke up with a wee bit of a massive freaking hang over! It would not have been that big of a deal, but we were on our way to North Sound the wrong way around the island (which I would not recommend) we had the wind right at our nose for six hours of sailing and motoring. Nothing too exciting to report about the BEYC and Saba Rock. I did flip off the web cam, so if you saw a drunk, 6’2”, dude with a Mount Gay Rum had on jumping up and down, it was me!
The next morning, we woke up and made our way over to Saba for water. There were some folks on a cat making breakfast. As we motored by, I asked when breakfast would be ready. They said “fifteen minutes or so” I thought I recognized one of the ladies on the back of the boat, but Naaaaaa I’m in the BVI. What are the chances of running into the ex-wife of a friend of mine at my yacht club.
With full tanks, we started off to Anegada with Walker’s instructions in hand. Since our GPS was not working. We told Walker that the pressure was on him. If I ran the boat aground, I would hold him responsible. We got there exactly as he described. The directions were great! A special thanks to Walker!
When we got to Anegada, we decided to check out the Cow Wreck. After making reservations at Potter’s for Dinner, we got a “cab” to the bar. When we got there, there was no one there! I found a very nice lady that told me to just write down what we drank. How great is the BVI! I got a bottle of water and just looked out over the beach. How beautiful. After about 2 minutes, I was bored. I met Alex who was working on a one of his rental scooters. The Cow Wreck is truly a special place. We ended up sitting at the bar with a newly wed couple from Boston and Alex just shooting the breeze. What a great time!
It was now around 3:00 and I didn’t want to just sit on the boat, so I decided to go for a run. As I came back cursing myself for running after a couple of beers, I saw that lady again. Lo and behold it was her. I look at her, “Marilyn?” She looked back at me, “who” I took off my sunglasses, “JACK!” She was with a couple of other ladies that used to be involved in our club! What a small world!
Dinner at Potter’s was awesome. I felt bad because my wife got sick as she started eating her dream dinner.
Tuesday, we were going to make our way back to White Bay, but the weather was calling for storms, so we figured it would be better to head to Leverick Bay. Nothing to exciting happened there. We ran into a couple TTOLers from Canada at De Loose Mongoose. Oh, we also made a snorkeling stop at George Dog. It was pretty cool!
Wednesday, we made a bee line to the wreck of the Rhone. Totally cool as usual. Tried to anchor again at Salt Bay on Salt Island. No success. We ended up making our way to Cooper Island. We decided to have a drink after checking out the area, and here comes a family with some A&M and UT hats on. As the conversation ensued we asked where they were from. “Arlington” Well, Arlington is MY home town. We just laughed, we travel all this distance and keep running into folks from our home town!
Thursday was Black Thursday (June 9th). We had to turn in the boat and go home. I was looking forward to seeing our kids, but really didn’t want to leave. We had had such a great time. Sooooo, we turned in the boat and said bye to Chris and we flew back to reality.
I hope I didn’t bore you to much with this trip report, but it is hard not to get a little long winded when talking about the greatest place on Earth!
