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| Leaving St. Martin |
You are an insignificant mite scurrying across the surface of an immense wet ball. That ball is spinning at a great rate. It is also hurtling around another, vastly larger ball - this one of fire. The whole assemblage is rotating among other, still larger balls of fire. Those balls are so vastly distant that they no longer even heat the skin.
You know this because you were told by someone or learned it in school. It is quite a different sort of knowledge when sailing well away from land and lights. You can actually feel the rotation of the earth as the sun slips below the vast horizon and its rays illuminate higher and higher clouds. After sunset and before moon rise, the milky way is clearly visible. The progression of orion and the planets following along roughly the same plane continues the sense of spinning and the noise of the waves, winds and the boat provide a dramatic soundtrack. Amidst all this, you feel insignificant indeed.
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| Arriving in the BVI |
Or perhaps you are at the center of a very large wet platter covered by a bowl pierced by tiny little holes which admit the light of heaven. The later it gets, the more plausible this one seems.
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| Lance working on the boat |
We spent two weeks in the Simpson Bay Lagoon at St. Martin. It is a place of business with parts and services for yachts and megayachts. It is loud with sirens and jet takeoffs. It is not a place of poetry or philosophy. We installed some safety gear (propane shutoff and gas detector) and replaced all our power hungry halogen lights with LEDs. The new generation has a wonderful color and is reasonably priced. We did a great deal of boat work trying to solve leaks and amused ourselves by watching megayachts trying to squeeze through the Dutch Bridge into the lagoon. The bigger they make the bridge, the bigger the yachts get.
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| Megayachts in Simpson Bay Lagoon, St. Martin |
Two weeks of no swimming was all we could take. We went out through the morning opening of the bridge and hung out in the bay cleaning the prop, swimming and preparing the boat for a crossing. The winds were good and rising, the seas not too big and we headed west north west for the British Virgin Islands in the early afternoon. The winds and seas were from the east so we had them behind us off the starboard quarter the whole way across. Jeeves, our trusty autopilot, did a capable job of steering us to the correct angle of the wind. Our only task was to remember to look out for other traffic. The rest of the time we were free to walk about trimming sails, making snacks or even taking naps. No leaks detected but we were not bashing into big seas but rather surfing down their faces. We will know more about the leak status when we sail back. The trip was great fun but a little too fast. We ended up in the BVI before first light and had to spend an hour sailing in circles waiting for enough light to anchor by.
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| Queen Emma in Biras Creek, Virgin Gorda, BVI |
We are officially on vacation from boat work during this, my birthday week. The waters up here are clear and the snorkeling very good. The nights are quite cool: low 70's and our main entertainment is the VHF radio. The BVI is charter boat central and the islands are magnets for yachts of every description. They race from mooring to mooring and have a great time in the seas made flat by the protection of the surrounding islands. Quite a few of them are not shy of making themselves sound silly on the radio. They pay no attention to the weather and don't worry about the state of their boats. They sail and swim and eat and fish with carefree abandon and are an inspiration to us.
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| Chairs at the Bitter End Yacht Club, Virgin Gorda, BVI |
The VHF radio is used by the charters to communicate with their friends, with the restaurants and marinas and with the support staff of the charter companys. Our favorite occupation in these times of high winds is to listen in on the chatter. In more cruiser oriented areas we call it "reading the mail", here we call it "the VHF Follies." Some examples:
Exasperated Charterer:"follow me... follow me... Are you going to follow me or are you going to hit that reef?"
Moorings base: "Please switch to channel 12"
Exasperated Charterer: "But I can't hear you on any channel but 16"
"He seems to have trouble breathing and is going into shock" (delivered with great calm about a charter guest who had been stung by jelly fish)
Moorings base: "Oh, my bad, its Sunday and the engineer doesn't work today"
Resigned Charterer: "I guess we can make do without air conditioning for one night" (this on an evening we have dug out our travel long pants and long sleeve shirts)
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| Soft Coral at Norman Island, BVI |
It has also been a nostalgic tour. We have not been this far north in quite a while. We chartered here with our family in 2001 and spent our first few years on Eaux Vives in these waters. We went up to The Bitter End Yacht club on Virgin Gorda and anchored for a few days off Biras Creek. We snorkeled a reef in sight of Necker Island (owned by him of Virgin Airlines) and had a nice snorkel at the Dogs (islets off Virgin Gorda). We've sailed down to Norman Island and snorkeled the famous caves. While the waters are as beautiful as we remembered, much of the coral is not. The bleaching in the last few years of the coral in snorkeling range is very noticeable.
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| Blue Tang, Norman Island, BVI |
We are on Norman Island and here we sit while a cold front passes through. The charterers are undeterred by the rain and winds but we have the luxury of time to find better weather for our little romps among the islands. Instead we catch rain water and swim, eat, read, write and listen to the NPR station out of the USVI. Just the thing for a birthday boy. Yes. It's true: I've whirled around the fiery ball one more time. I'm beginning to think we are accelerating.
Next up: a tour of the USVI and then a trip with friends in the Spanish Virgins - Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra.
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| Parrot fish, Norman Island, BVI |
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| Susie snorkeling "The Caves", Norman Island, BVI |
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| Orange Coral at "The Caves", Norman Island, BVI |
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| Other end of "The Caves", Norman Island, BVI |
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| FanCoral at "The Caves", Norman Island, BVI |
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