Week 44: US and BVIs (37nm)

Laura’s parents were visiting for the weekend and joined us to explore St. Thomas (and its steep roads) and do a fun day sail over to St. John. We then made tracks to the BVI where we revisited some old haunts and found a new favourite anchorage, Benures Bay, for Alec’s birthday.

Captain’s Log

March 2^nd: Day out on Serenity with Mom & Dad before a fancy dinner in an unusual spot. See the Story of the Week!

March 3^rd: Planned a relaxed Sunday after such a packed Saturday. Had a leisurely brunch at Bernie’s in the marina (breakfast tacos were ace), and then Mom and I had a girly shopping outing while Alec took Dad back to Serenity to show off our electrical set up (#nerds). Spent a pleasant afternoon aboard just watching other boats coming and going around the marina. One boat leaving the fuel dock managed to get his dinghy caught around the dock and ripped the front off it, so that was certainly interesting! Mom and Dad headed off after a great visit, and we settled down for an evening working on the blog and catching up on TV shows.

March 4^th: True to our word, we were ready to get the heck out of dodge and make our way to the BVI. Had a tough un-park from the marina and kissed one of the piles, which broke a knob off the Hydrovane. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse, but we have definitely decided we don’t like piles! Headed over to the near side of St. John so we could check out at Cruz Bay, as instructed when I checked in. But, got laughed out of customs again – the agent that day said we could just go and didn’t need any paperwork. Sigh. It was too late by this point to make it to our next port, so we settled in for the evening. On the plus side, we got our new rear sun shade working, so we can now sit in the cockpit in the late afternoon without getting burnt!

March 5^th: Sailed off to Jost Van Dyke in the morning in the gusty breeze. Especially exciting was that Alec caught our first edible fish in two months – a medium-sized King Mackerel!! We anchored in Great Harbour amongst the many mooring balls and were flooded with memories from past holidays here. Despite the destruction of hurricane Irma in 2017, this spot was exactly as I remembered it. Only now with lots of motor catamarans – what happened to all the sailors? We spied our friends on Cerulean of Penryn in the anchorage but didn’t get a chance to say hi as they were off exploring all day, but hopefully we’ll catching them around the BVI somewhere else. Mega dinner of fish and baked christophine to top off a wonderful day!

March 6^th: A man came by the boat first thing and gave us a free beef patty, so the day started off right! Had a relaxed morning working through some admin and watching the goings on around the anchorage. A large catamaran with a Trump flag came in (boo), and we later saw some very impressive cruisers pick up a mooring ball by sail. After lunch, we hiked over the (very) steep hill to the next bay around, White Bay, which is home to one of our favourite bars of all time – the Soggy Dollar Bar. Sadly, White Bay has changed hugely since we were last here, and what we remember as a lovey ramshackle little beach bar has become a tourist behemoth and lost all its charm ☹. We took our soggy dollars to the other end of the beach, where the ruins of Ivan’s Stress Free Bar had been tacked back together following Irma and felt much more authentic. The painkillers were just as good as we remember! A kind local gave us a ride back to Great Bay; he didn’t tell us his name, but we suspect it might have been the famous Foxy.

March 7^th: It was a rainy morning and the best time for fishing was after 11am anyway, so we took our time getting going. Our next destination was Cane Garden Bay, where one might hear Quito Rhymer performing at his bar. The rainy weather stayed, which stifled the wind and made it a little tricky to sail, but we were happy to bob along with the fishing lines out the back. We had to motorsail the last couple of miles but were rewarded with another King Mackerel! We’ve now got a freezer full of fish, as well as a fridge full – happy days 😊. Found a good spot to anchor behind all the mooring balls, though had to do a bit of underwater work to unwrap the chain from around a rock before we were fully settled. Spent a happy afternoon pottering and later lounging on our inflatable couch on the bow. Mackerel for dinner was followed by movie night; we watched The Guard, an excellent action comedy based in Ireland, which was laugh out loud – highly recommended!

March 8^th: Had a lazy morning in Cane Garden Bay. Dinghied in to shore to grab a coffee and some wifi, and discovered Quito’s operations have expanded. He now has a restaurant, hotel and “gazebo” (taking the place of the original bar). It was so nice sitting in the shade by the beach, watching the pelicans and the tarpon, that we had a hard time dragging ourselves away. But, we wanted to move around to a new spot so we could stay put tomorrow for Alec’s birthday. Sailed around to Norman Island south of Tortola and got to practice a bit of upwind sailing (its been a while – we were getting rusty!). Eschewed the usual anchorage, The Bight, for the smaller Benures bay further east and boy were we delighted – what a find! Super well sheltered, insanely clear water, and just a handful of other boats. Met the neighbours, Sharon and Craig, when I happened to find a lost snubber on the sea floor and discovered it was theirs. They hail from St. John in Newfoundland, Canada and I suspect are probably much better with cold weather sailing than us!

March 9^th: Happy Birthday Alec!! Woke up in paradise and started the day off with a bang with coffees and huevos rancheros. I then busied myself making oatmeal raisin cookies (Alec’s favourite and an ideal birthday treat!) while Alec began a long mission to work out how to get radio coverage of the England vs. Italy Six Nations game. Success on both sides meant a relaxed mid-day listening to England trounce the Italians and eating fish sandwiches (from our catch earlier in the week). Alec spent the rest of the afternoon fishing off the back of the boat. No scores, but there must be some big stuff in there because twice something grabbed a lure only to bite off the hook! I went for a long snorkel around the bay and walk along the coral beach. Sharon and Craig, our neighbours on Bonavista, came by after dinner for a lovely natter. It nearly ended in disaster as I hadn’t secured the swim ladder properly; Sharon grabbed it for support while leaving and nearly went into the sea… but by some magic managed to hurl herself into their dinghy and survived without getting wet!

Story of the Week: A Day with Mom & Dad

Despite a shortened timetable due to a day’s delay on flights, we packed a lot into my parent’s visit and especially Saturday! Alec and I were up promptly to prep the boat, and had an early win when we discovered that our neighbour on the pontoon had left us a little surprise. We were next to the super yacht ‘Cynderella’ and had gotten to know the chef, Raffie, over the last day. He’d mentioned he was about to launch a line of cooking spices, and very kindly left us a goodie bag of samples that morning! (Author’s note: we have since tried these and they are DELICIOUS – highly recommended! Look for under ‘Chef Raffie’). We also managed to squeeze in a FaceTime with Alec’s sister, Liv, and do a virtual bridesmaid dress fitting session. The world knows no boundaries when you have good internet!

My parents got to Red Hook around 9:30 and we started the day off right with breakfast bagels (things I miss about America!!) and delicious coffees at “Lattes in Paradise” overlooking the marina. The best latte I’ve had in months! To be fair, I usually make coffee on the boat with instant and UHT milk, so its probably not that hard to be the best latte I’ve had in months. But still.

After breakfast, we gave my parents the official tour of the boat, from the decks to the bilges, explaining our equipment and the ins and outs of life aboard as we went. It was actually a nice way to remind ourselves of all the work we’ve done to make Serenity a wonderful place to live and was a lot of fun to show off her details. Now that we’ve got everything nicely set up, its sometimes easy to forget how game changing some of those upgrades have been. Our Simarine monitoring system, for example, is incredible. It was such a pig to install, but it means we have real time data from around the boat (battery charge, solar and alternator input, electricity usage, tank levels, temperature/pressure, etc.) at our fingertips, which makes life so much easier! We of course finished our tour with the Serenity First Safety Briefing (one hand for you / one hand for the boat, etc.) and then it was time to set sail!

The plan was to do a short hop over to neighbouring St. John and grab a mooring ball in one of the myriad lovely bays for lunch. Which of course meant we had to manoeuvre Serenity out of her spot between two piles and alongside a finger pontoon. This was easier said than done. Honestly – piles suck. But, Alec came up with a solid plan. We rigged a line from the upwind pile via the midship cleat (effectively via a pulley halfway along the boat) to our primary winch in the cockpit. Then, as Alec reversed, I winched the line in so we stayed close to the pile and didn’t drift downwind onto the boat next to us. Success! We were on our way 😊.

We decided to motor the upwind leg over to Hawksnest Bay on the northern side of St. John. There was some concern that my dad, Rick, might explore the Jeans Nausea Scale, but, unlike the scale’s namesake, took precautions (Dramamine) and felt fine the whole trip. Just sayin’ Jeansy!

As we neared Hawksnest, going through a little channel, we spotted three turtles off the port side – magic! Of course, we’d pre-organised this because we’re that good 😉. It was lovely that Mom & Dad could see some of our favourite wildlife while we were out! The approach to the bay itself is clear with no obstructions, and we tucked up in the head of it on a mooring buoy. As soon as the engine went off, it became serenely peaceful. There were just the sounds of the lapping water and the breeze in the trees, which was heaven and special to be able to share with my folks!

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true Serenity First experience without a bit of maintenance work. The bimini was currently missing a zipper head, and unfortunately the replacements hadn’t arrived in time for Mom & Dad to bring them out. We were getting pretty hot without it, so began brainstorming how we might jury rig something for shade. While pondering, I happened to cast my eye over the dodger and noticed that it had exactly the same zippers as the bimini – jackpot! We very rarely remove the dodger, so it could happily lose a zipper head and just be permanently attached to its rail. The scissors swiftly came out and we got to work swapping over the pull and sewing the dodger’s zipper shut permanently. About 15 minutes later, voila! Restored bimini and glorious shade! We were all feeling very pleased with ourselves and definitely earned Alec’s famous guac (made with the last of our St. Martin avocados, which took two weeks to ripen!) and chips before lunch 😊.

All too soon, it was time to head back to Red Hook so we could get Serenity parked up at the marina while the light was still good. Once out into open water, we got out the sails so Mom & Dad could experience real sailing – the true beauty of travelling by boat is when you have the engine off! It also gave us the opportunity to put the Hydrovane on to steer and show off how it worked. We covered a lot of bases in just one day! With mild winds behind us, we had a very relaxed sail back towards St. Thomas. It was a little bit of a hairy park (piles are hard!!) but before too long we had Serenity settled in her spot and all was well. We were pleased to be back in time for a bit of relaxation before our planned dinner for the evening, so everyone dispersed for naps and showers.

Alec and I had been waiting for my parent’s visit so we could finally give them their Christmas present – a nice dinner out! Okay, okay it was a little bit underhanded, because we got to go to. But shared presents are the best sort? I’d picked out a restaurant by reading TripAdvisor and Open Table reviews, and was very pleased with my selection, but had not actually looked at its location. It turned out our destination, Thirteen, had to be earned – it was not only on the other side of the island, but also quite literally on top of it. Our poor rental car was none too pleased as we encouraged it up ever steeper, ever windier roads. I had plotted our route on Google Maps, but soon realised we didn’t need it – if there is ever a turn, just go the way that keeps heading up. Right about when we were starting to doubt that anyone could have actually put a restaurant up here, there it was!

Thirteen had an unusual façade and entrance. Underneath the sign denoting the name of the restaurant was another announcing they also did takeaway pizza. This was especially confusing as pizza isn’t even on the menu. The door wasn’t immediately obvious; getting in felt like going through someone’s back porch. There was a tiny bar and then you effectively walked through the kitchen before the main dining area was revealed. It was certainly different! But what it lacked in first impressions it made up for in spades with the fare. Delicious cocktails followed by inventive dishes that ranged from lobster linguine to duck gnocchi. The amuse bouche was an Asian take on a Brussels sprout, which I would normally pooh-pooh, but was in fact very tasty! Unusually for a nice restaurant, the portions were enormous (or maybe that’s because we were back in America?) so we only barely made it through our mains before we were completely stuffed. It was a lot of fun and I’d definitely recommend it!

Getting back down the mountain was significantly less harrowing than going up, and although it was only about 9pm everyone headed straight for bed – we’d had a big day!

Parting Thoughts – Memory Distortion

Alec and I were both actually a little bit nervous about coming back to the BVI. We have so many special memories from this place and were worried about whether it could live up to them. Plus, coming as cruisers (and just the two of us) is very different to coming on holiday. Would the shift in perspective make it lose its sparkle?

The first couple of days, in some ways, added fuel to these worries. The anchorage at Great Harbour on Jost Van Dyke had more motor yachts than sailing yachts and felt even busier than I remember it. White Bay had sold out and the tacky décor and sea of beach chairs reminded us more of Mallorca.

But, I think the lesson here is perhaps in not returning to holiday hotspots when we’re generally looking for untouched locales where only cruisers normally go. And also recognising that not being on holiday with friends and family will totally shift our viewpoint. It was almost inevitable that Great Harbour would let us down because it’s a famous spot and sure to be busy with people letting loose. And that’s okay! We still have our wonderful memories from those places, which were perfect for us when we were on holiday in the past.

In fact, the great thing about having gotten to experience the BVI several times before with our friends and family is that it means there is no pressure to go to the more touristy spots here, because we’ve already seen them. Rather, we are free to check out the more out of the way anchorages that you never have the time, or inclination really, to explore when you’ve got one week’s holiday to see the whole of the BVI. When we started thinking about it more that way was when our time here really started to pay off. Benures Bay on Norman Island would never have made it onto our radar as charterers, but it was an exceptional spot. I could easily have spent a week there! I suspect we will probably now not go back to any of the other places in the BVI we’ve been before, but that is actually great, because it means we’re going to see more of the hidden gems you miss when you’re here on holiday. Which is very exciting indeed!

I’ll leave you with a couple of throwbacks here, from my two other visits to the BVI: