It’s hard to believe a month has passed since we arrived to the British Virgin Islands. Yesterday P went into Road Town to extend us for another 60 days. I doubt we’ll stay that long, but you never know. ‘The best laid plans …’ and all that.
So I’ve been procrastinating getting to this blogging. I’ve let a good deal of time pass since I last wrote, leaving me with a wealth of information to share with you. My goal is to not bore you to tears, but forgive me if I do.
Let me begin with all the Salty Dawg activities we’ve been enjoying. Many, many happy hours at many, many bars (Saba Rock, Bitter End Crawl Pub and Merimark Bars, CCYS-Esmeraldas, Fat Virgin, and Hog Heaven). Hog Heaven involved a good deal of coordination by Matt and Karen on Gypsy that involved a ferry ride and taxis up to the top of Virgin Gorda.
Judy from Rum Runner did the coordination for daily yoga classes at Biras Creek. She also did the organizing for the CCYS happy hours where we were treated to free appetizers on our first visit. We also celebrated our arrival with a dinner at the Bitter End with majority of the Dawgs that made the trip to BVI. Believe it or not, we also skipped a few events such as pizza night. We enjoyed all these events while on free moorings provided by the Bitter End Yacht Club. There are so many perks to being a part of this group not to mention the many friends we’ve made.
For thanksgiving we celebrated on the Wednesday (we were allowed to use the beach chairs and tables belonging to the bar as long as there was no cruise ship in port – which is why we celebrated a day early) with what turned out to be an excellent pot luck on the beach at Prickly Pear. We brought Charlie along to play with the other dogs, but he is a fussy one and only plays with Zoe. Dezi, Spinnacker and Nigel got the usual growls from him as he hid beneath my legs.
On US Thanksgiving day, we buddy boated across to Anegada with Jackie and Dan from Chill. We all went to Neptune’s Treasure for a dinner of Lobster and Swordfish. Of course we had some jungle juice which we enjoyed last time we were there. The following day we hauled our bikes ashore and cycled the island. Spent a few hours lolling around on Loblolly beach, which included some snorkeling and a workout to fight the current to get back to the beach. In total we figured we cycled about 24km (~15 miles).
We finally tried out the new gennaker on our way back to Virgin Gorda and it gave us a nice push in low winds. The parasailor would have been faster, but the gennaker is much easier to handle.
Let’s talk about yoga – Max our instructor was great. He seemed to instinctively know how much to challenge us. Some days we’d have only 5 or 6 participants, while other days we’d have 10 or 12. Most days I’d pick up someone. One day Irene from Destiny told me about the tuna they caught while on passage and asked if I’d eat tuna. I said yes, although I’m mainly vegan, I do give it up for fresh caught fish now and again. When dropping her off after yoga one morning she handed me a chunk of tuna from her freezer. Paul and I had a good few meals from it and it was delicious.
A few times we invited people aboard Blue Sky for sundowners. Chill had us over for a movie night (Despicable Me) and Dawn (Dutch and Elaine) invited us over to learn how to play ‘Oh Hell’ – a really fun card game which Jackie from Chill renamed ‘Oh Crap’.
Between all the fun we managed to clean up the boat, do laundry, provision, swim, paddleboard, kayak, groom Charlie and star gaze. We also took advantage of the free 2 hour water sport rental and tried out a Hobie Cat. Charlie donned his life vest for this and seemed to enjoy the ride as much as we did.
The time arrived to depart Virgin Gorda and head over to Road Town to pick up the boat paint and get ourselves over to Soper’s Hole in time for the latest Salty Dawg dinner event put on by Bamboushay Pottery and Lounge in Road Town. Here the Old Dogs of the BVI meet with the Salty Dawgs and we enjoyed a rare bit of entertainment by Foxy. If you’ve been to Jost Van Dyke island, Foxy has a famous tavern where he entertained his guests for years. He doesn’t entertain much any more so we felt truly privileged to have him entertain us after dinner. The deputy governor also stopped in to greet us on her way home from the office and of course we all received our coffee mugs provided by Bamboushay Pottery made especially for our group. There were many goodbyes as many of the Dawg’s plan to depart the BVI and head down island to various ports after this last event.
On Dec 12th we got Blue Sky hauled out at Soper’s Hole Yacht Services. She’s getting cleaned up and new boat paint. So we’ll be on the hard for a few days. While here we will also be getting our anchor windlass repaired (it broke while bringing up the chain in Little Harbour on Peter Island). Lucky for us Anthony of BVI Yacht Charters has spare parts for it and has offered to sell us some and provide us someone to help us do the repair.
So for the next few days we’ll be getting a little dustier than we like and walking Charlie a lot more. Meanwhile I’ve put up the solar Christmas lights to help us get into the spirit of the season.