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The morning broke with copious clouds, some white and puffy, some dark and threatening rain and a shifty breeze blowing anywhere from 10-20 knots. I walked to the Sunsail office to use their facilities and post yesterday’s blog where I ran into Alan the supervisor who gave us our orientation session yesterday. He said the chart briefing would take place at half past eight (in his wonderful British accent) and jokingly reminded me that he would be expecting the tip I discussed yesterday for successfully moving it up an hour. I said, “No problem, sir!”. Jenny and Wes went shopping at the French bakery for some bread, cheese and other assorted goodies.
Geoff was anxious to get moving and, after our dinghy was brought by we started the engines, eyed an exit strategy, released our docklines and slowly worked our way around the monohull on our starboard side. Geoff expertly controlled the two Yanmar 29hp diesels and had us heading into the main channel in a couple minutes. The wind was now breaking 20 knots (1.2 X = 24 mph) so I drove while Goeff raised the main with one reef, deployed the roller furled jib and then killed the engines. The rest of the day we were breaking 7 knots with an occasional 8 as the wind cycled from 22 to 28 knots.
Our original plan was to head to the group of islands just West of Virgin Gorda called “The Dogs”. There isn’t anything on the islands but they have great skin diving and are pretty much where you need to sail to even if you are heading to The Baths on VG. Tacking back and forth to the Dogs Geoff saw two larger cats that were sailing ahead of us and decided that the “race was on”. After a couple long tacks we passed ahead of them and “won the big race!”. But, all that tacking had eaten up the time that we had hoped to spend in the Dogs.
We decided to tack towards the Baths which is a beautiful area consisting of very large and colorful boulders, crystal clear water and interesting paths connecting the main area with Devil’s Bay. When we got to the Baths there were no mooring balls to tie up to and anchoring can damage the coral at this national park. So we headed North to the marina area where there was supposed to be good anchorage, instead found a decent mooring and tied up.
We then got in the dinghy and went into the harbor to pay as it says in the cruising guide. Nothing doing…they said they will collect at the ball. Took the dinghy about 15 minutes down to the Baths, tied up and jumped in for some skin diving. The water was wonderfully clear and warm with a number of smallish colorful fish. This is a national park and the area is spectacularly clean. After swimming around taking pictures with the underwater Canon D10 Jenn and I went to shore to explore while Geoff and Wes were already climbing around on top of the massive boulders, probably looking for a place to jump off a cliff into the water. Since we had been here on our last trip it was easy for Jenn and me to find the route through the huge boulders, caves with a foot of perfectly clear water and ladders up and down to go over to beautiful Devil’s Bay.
After showers Geoff started the charcoal on the BBQ off the back of the boat and managed to singe his sideburns and hair in the process. But, after all he did needed a haircut and actually looked better after the process!
One of the things I failed to mention is that at Sunsail and Moorings over 90% of their boats were still at the docks. Easter was a big week for them and just after is one of the slowest of the year. So, we are lucky going about this week as the traffic on the water is way down. Normally, their would be hundreds of people at the Baths. Today there were only about six besides us.
At night, after we played a fun game of gin rummy we all got ready for bed. While Wes was brushing his teeth, spitting his toothpaste in the water off the aft port side of the boat he discovered a large fish circling next to the boat. We all went out to look and sure enough it turned out to be a 4+ foot”fish” that we later determined was a nurse shark. It was about the size of the one we had seen diving on Sunday off Little Jost. We had made and proven that nurse sharks love the taste of toothpaste so Jenny named our new shark friend “Colgate”. We had a good laugh about this and probably used about 1/4th tube of Wes’ precious toothpaste on our experiment. Good clean (teeth anyway) fun.
As I lay in my bed (bunk?) the wind is cycling wildly, turning the boat around constantly and gusting probably to 30 knots at times. Having a catamaran is nice, however, because despite this the boat is very calm and it just lulls you to sleep. And, with that I’ll have to say “Good night”.
Marlene Shirley - As I read the title of this post it immediately sparked my interest wondering how it was all going to tie in together. What a funny experience. By the way, what is a nurse shark? I wondered that when you talked about one a couple of days ago. If you ever go on this kind of a trip again, I want to be a stowaway! You were lulling me asleep just reading your post.