It was great that we took a mooring ball for 2 nights at Soper’s Hole. It gave us a day to explore the little port at the west end of Tortola. We went ashore in the morning and visited the grocery store which was small but well stocked. The wine, beer and spirits section was about 1/2 of the first floor (good thing there was a second floor with all the dried goods!!) and the rest of that floor was fresh produce and some fridge items. We managed to spend a bit of money in there (it’s a bit pricey here).
After stowing all our goodies, we decided to have lunch at the main restaurant. Again the place was small but the food was very yummy. We both had smoothies and they were delicious! We met a young man from Texas (Bubba) who was having lunch with his Father-in-law from Maine. Turned out that Bubba and his wife run a sailboat charter business so he had all kinds of local knowledge of the area. Mark exchanged phone numbers and we’ve already received some good info from Bubba!
As we were headed back to the boat after lunch I noticed there was another Canadian flagged sailboat very close to us. We went over to say hi! Turned out the couple live aboard their boat and travel up and down the Caribbean. They had just crossed from Curacuo (a 450nm trip) and were trying to get their dinghy running to go and clear into the BVIs. We ended up giving the man, Dave, a tow to the Immigration dock and then Mark went back over to help fix Dave’s dinghy’s motor. Our good deed for the day!
Today (Tuesday, Nov. 18) we decided to leave Soper’s Hole and head to Peter Island (about 10nm south east). The wind wasn’t the best direction for part of our trip but we did get a little sail in as we travelled south. We’re now starting to discover some of the negatives of the BVIs. Most of the good anchorages have been filled with mooring balls making it difficult to just anchor. We thought Peter Island would be good because it’s a private island and does have anchoring room but we’re still anchoring in 25 ft of water. We’re also seeing some strange wind patterns. The islands are very hilly and this seems to distort the wind direction. Right now we should be facing the island (wind direction) but current and funky wind patterns have us facing out (stern to the island). It a bit unnerving!! We’re hoping it’ll be a quiet night but so far we’ve had some crazy gusts and we’re bouncing around a lot. Might be a long night!!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 