Category: 2021

Today we slowed things down and spent the day on the mooring ball at Anegada.  We took a boat over to the conch islands, where the locals have been dumping the empty conch shells for centuries. After checking that out, we motored out to the barrier reef for some snorkeling. I came across a small 4-5 foot long reef shark, while Chris, Deana, and Lori found a turtle.

We finished the day off with an amazing sunset and a meal of Anegada Lobster.

All of the mooring balls were taken so we had to anchor at Necker Island.  Gumption showed us all of the fun stuff.  We played with 79 year old tortugas, fed a flamboyant of Flamingos,  and were let loose in a cage with a conspiracy of Lemurs.  The tortuga recently successfully reproduced, this is the first captive reproduction of these turtles outside of the Galapagos Islands. There were even several month old baby lemurs.  A storm came up during our experience, so Gumption took us into Richard Bransons old office to wait out the storm.

We waited out another storm on the hook, then weighed anchor to set sail for Anegada.  There’s something special about sailing off to the horizon that makes this sail so special to me.

An early start had us arriving at the Baths before the crowd, we were the second boat on site.  Lots of exploring the fascinating geological formations both on land and in the water.  By the time we were finished, there were a dozen boats on the mooring balls with far too many people for my liking.

We set sail north looking for the Kodiak Queen.  After grabbing the mooring ball, Deana and I donned our gear and set off for a dive.  It was quickly apparent that the current was too strong so we scrubbed the dive for another date.

Leverick Bay had a slip for us where we were able to top of the water tanks and set foot on terra firms again.  Sadly, the laundry and shower rooms were under construction so we weren’t able to clean up as planned.

We did some light provisioning in the morning, then set off for a fabulous sail across the Sir Francis Drake channel to visit the wreck of the RMS Rhone. The RMS Rhone was a UK Royal Mail ship that was lost in a hurricane on October 29, 1867 killing 123 people. Sitting on the bottom in ~75′ of water, she now makes for a spectacular SCUBA dive. There was a bit of a current so Deana and I weren’t able to spend as much time exploring as we would have liked to. Still it was a wonderful dive.

After the dive we grabbed a mooring ball at Cooper Island for the evening.

Wonderful morning dive at the Sandy Ledges, very shallow so it was good for the snorkelers also.  We found two octopus, three squid, banded coral shrimp, flamingos tongue snails, spotted porcupinefish, and all kinds of other life around the ledges.

As always, the caves were lots of fun, bright orange soft corals and a bunch of Nudibranch.

We made it to the Willy T in time for an afternoon drink.  I slapped a couple of SailRipple stickers up while we were drinking our painkillers.

We received our quarantine release from the BVI Ministry of Health and had to return to Tortola to return our tracking devices.

We ran into a wonderful couple in the Dragonfly that lived in Austin several years ago. The Dove/Dragonfly served us one of best meals that i have in years. Mike is now a personal chef for charters here in the BVI, he said us up with a tour of Anegada in few days.

After a nice sleep on board at the dock, we went through the boat checkout and debriefing. We left Tortola around noon for a wonderful sail across the Sir Francis Drake channel to the Indians. As usual, the Indians provided a wonderful snorkel and dive. We even rescued a ladder from the bottom for a nearby boat. On the way back to the boat, we came across a beautiful turtle that let us gaze in awe while she ate. We stayed there for ~15 minutes at depth, then made our way back to Bliss Point.

We grabbed a mooring ball in Privateer Bay on the SW end of Norman Island. There were tons of big fish swimming around our underwater light! That was fun for a while, when we doused the light at the end of the evening, there was a wonderful display of bioluminescence in the water.

We had to close the hatches overnight because of the storms rolling through the area.

Well that was a fun ferry ride today. About 1/3 of the way from St. Thomas, USVI to Tortola, BVI, one of the engines in the boat caught on fire! They were able to shut down the engine and douse the fire and we continued safely to Tortola on the remaining engine at about 1/2 of the speed as before. After our 45 minute ferry ride turned into a 2 hour slow motion ride, we finally made it safely to the dock.

We worked our way through the Covid and Customs procedures and boarded our vessel, Bliss Point – a 47′ monohull, tonight. All of the provisions have been stowed and we are shutting down for the evening, ready for our boat briefing in the morning, then sailing away in the early afternoon!

Will sail for PainKillers!!

Donate here:
Soggy Dollar Drink Board

I’m halfway there, the gate crew in Miami gave me a free seat upgrade on the flight to St. Thomas!

Flying out of Austin this morning had a great view of the new Tesla plant.

I can’t wait for a wonderful meal at the Pie Hole in Frenchtown, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas

The folks working the BVI covid gateway work extremely helpful checking our applications well after the close of business last night. They’re able to process all of us and approve all of our applications!

I received my green light from the US Virgin Islands travel portal. They approved my documents last night around 2:00 a.m this morning. That puts me almost there, now I need to get is the BVI approval.

Time to begin packing for my early morning flight tomorrow.

More good news, I was able to upgrade to business class on the return flights for $165!