Our last grocery shopping was done in Soper’s Hole on Nov. 17th so it was time to head to Road Town – the only true city in the BVIs – to replenish our fresh fruits and veggies! We were definitely ready to leave Norman Island – the weekend was crazy busy – but we took our time Monday (Nov. 24th) and had a nice breakfast. We had quite a few things to put away and take down before we could pull up the anchor – not the normal routine stuff. Anchor was up and we were on the move around 9:30am. We didn’t have far to go (about 6 nm) so we didn’t bother putting a sail up – the wind wasn’t in a great direction anyhow.
Grocery shopping was actually second on the list of things to do in for Road Town. Number 1 was to visit a machine shop to get some metal machining done on the new serpentine pulley system. It’s too long and complicated for me to explain the problem but boiled down it needed fixing with tools we didn’t have onboard!
The Road Town harbour was super busy – 3 cruise ships, a cargo ship and many, many charter boats. We anchored near 3 other sailboats near the inner harbour in the most rolly spot imaginable!!! We were hoping to not have to stay long. We got the dinghy down and Mark left to chat with the machine shop person. He didn’t get far before the dinghy motor crapped out! He got it going but we had trouble with it the rest of the day (it still needs some tlc or maybe a big hammer 😁). Mark returned rather quickly – turned out that Monday was a local BVI holiday and the shop was closed. Okay we decided to try our luck at grocery shopping and buying propane (to cook with). We loaded up the dinghy and with fingers crossed tried to start the motor. After many pulls it finally woke up and ran okay for our trip. On the way back to the boat, we stopped at BVIs Charters which had a lot of empty dock space. Mark went to the office to see if we could tie up at their dock for the night and they said yes. So we took CK into this marina/dock and tied up to one of the finger docks.
Tuesday morning (Nov. 25th) we walked out to do a little bit more shopping and while we were out, Mark found a different machine shop who said they could work on the pulley thing. So back to the boat we went and Mark removed the piece that needed machining. They were able to work on the piece that afternoon so we stayed a second night at the world’s most uncomfortable dock (we rolled and bounced continuously). By 5 pm Mark had the repaired part back onboard.
There were a few positive things about being at the dock. We ran the air conditioning again which was lovely and we were able to get rid of all our garbage!! We got a walk in which was really nice and we visited a store called French Deli. They had some really nice sandwiches and quiches.
Today Nov. 26th Mark reinstalled the pulley system and we were off the dock a little after 9 am. It was a great day for sailing and we went with jib and jigger (mizzen sail). We had a nice sail west and then north to Jost Van Dyke Island. As we were getting close to the island, we had a little race with this show off sailboat named Inukshuk. We could see this sailboat from a distance, going back and forth between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola. This boat was 32m long and had a huge mast!! It wasn’t much of a race – they sucked all our wind with their massive sails 😁. Oh well we had a good sail!! We entered the main harbour just before noon only to find the place full so we went a little farther east to Little Harbour and picked up a mooring ball (with only 1 other boat). We’ll stay here for a bit now.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 