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I wanted to call this post Anegada da Vida after one of my all time favorite songs from my high school and rock band era, Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” but I will spare you from that. At the time it was the longest song at something like 12 minutes. Followed by the Door’s “The End” — only then followed by the length of this post!
Up at 6:30 am, on the “road” before 7:00 am and heading North at 7.8 knots within 15 minutes. Not a bad start as we need to travel approx. 16 miles from the central part of Virgin Gorda to Anegada Island, the northern-most outpost in the BVI’s. We continued to make good time as we passed the “Dogs”, our unreached destination from the first day.
After about half an hour we ran into a big squall with hard driving rain that felt like hail on our skin followed by a huge, full rainbow over Tortola (nice!). With Geoff as captain there is no turning back in our “NoName” boat # 921 so we charged ahead under full sails doing nearly 8 knots soaking wet. The squall continued as the low lying island palms and pine trees emerged from the misty view. There is no point on the island higher than 20 feet and 98% is probably only 4 feet high. We jibed a couple times to kill some time until the storm passed and then carefully followed the marker buoys in and found a mooring ball that was in a good location reasonably near shore. There are reefs everywhere and one area just East has over 300 wrecks!
The water was beautifully clear with various shades of blue. Almost as soon as we had tied up a black guy with long dread locks, whose name turned out to be Barry, pulled up in a small motorboat to collect the mooring fee. He also gave us a menu for his restaurant on the beach, told us that we would need to tell him our order before 4 pm and that dinner was at 7:00. He was very friendly, engaging and sold us on the dinner. We put in our order right then and there and said it would be grouper, mahi mahi and lobster. We are still wondering why it isn’t grouper grouper and lobster lobster as well.
We had a choice of taking a cab, a shuttle from one of the hotels or renting a car. It seemed that the car was the best deal and most flexible so we did that. It was a small car but quite new with manual transmission that was very European in that I could have driven it all day without going past 2nd gear. They told us at the rental company to drive only on the main road (there happens to be only one paved road on the whole island) except for a couple dirt roads that are “approved” to drive on. Turns out that the dirt roads are really sand/ground up coral roads that had a huge amount of water on them from the recent rains. It also turns out that even the paved road are only paved about 60% of the way around the island.
We did the best we could driving about and had a lot of fun in the process. Of course, it was me driving and the kids spurring me on to go faster throught the huge puddles and pot holes to keep from getting stuck. Getting stuck costs $300 to get a tow and I’m not sure if it was that motivation or just plain having fun that motivated their enthusiasm for this craziness!
We followed the “road signs” to Loblolly Beach at the end of the “dirt” road. The place was deserted except for a black lady at the second beachfront restaurant/bar. The wind was blowing like crazy and it was threatening rain again. She said that we should snorkel anyway if we are strong swimmers but go up the beach a bit as the current will carry us down the beach. We did just that and it worked out great. Funny things was, the absolutely best place was right in front of her restaurant. The current was strong at first and the water shallow over the coral heads but further down the beach there were open areas about 10-12 feet deep surrounded by coral with small caves and lots of colorful fish. Geoff also managed to find a 3-4 foot barracuda in a small cave-like area down about 10 feet and he slowly swam by us. Another time a squid buzzed us, stopped for a bit but then, as I tried to get a picture of him, he squirted away at amazing speed!
In terms of driving on the island it is hard to believe that even with only one road that the signs are pretty much non-existent. We attempted to take the connecting authorized dirt road several times but ended up at either dead ends or non-passable swampy roads every time. So, we doubled back to the road we knew and went around the long way past the main town called “The Settlement”.
At the far West end of the island there was an indication on the map of “Ruins”. Driving down that dirt road we came to what appeard to be a former collection of 6 bungallows that were built too close to the water and two of them had completely fallen into the ocean. The whole area had been abandoned and it looked like it would make a good movie set for the Lost TV show.
We drove back to the traffic circle, took the 3 o’clock spoke and drove back to the Anegada Reef Hotel to drop the kids off with the skin diving gear and then down the street half a block to the car rental company. They were closed but the guy who runs the gift shop kitty corner from them told me to just leave the keys in the car. “It’s an island after all. No one is going to steal the car!”. I forgot to tell you that they drive on the left side of the road here (it is the British Virgin Islands after all) and we only saw two other cars all day! Pretty amazing.
We had Pina Colada’s at the hotel which was open air (of course!) and walked back to the dock. There were three local kids with a big pile of lobsters on a table cutting off their arms and legs with a big knife and cutting them in half. Looks like our dinner has arrived! Jumping in the dinghy Jenny pulled the starter cord and took us safely back to #921 (our poor boat still didn’t have a name on the side). It was a beautiful night so we couldn’t resist just jumping off the back of the cat for a quick swim in the warm turquoise water followed by showers on the swim step. A warm breeze was gusting from time to time and the sunset was nice enough for Geoff and me to take a few pictures.
After we all got ready Jenny drove us (she’s in Wes’s dinghy driving school) to the Whispering Pines restaurant. This was definitely an outdoorsy, rustic restaurant with a very open air bar, tables of all shapes and sizes (and stability ratings and degrees of levelness) set up on the sand. The bbq’s were made of cut steel barrels, the food was all prepared outside “picnic style” and the whole atmosphere was island outdoor party. The kids were very excited about this.
We started with drinks (Geoff with his virgin drinks) and walked around a bit. Geoff and I made sure we had our laptops and camera battery chargers plugged in. We were seated at our “beachfront” table (doesn’t really do it justice…the pictures might) and waited for our dinner which came in about a half hour in “courses”. The entrée was mahi mahi, grouper and a big lobster, then we had a nice salad followed by steamed vegetables and a baked potato. The kids loved it! Couldn’t beat the location as we were almost sitting in the water which was about 2 feet below us.
Barry (from the morning visit) came over and talked to us several times, sharing his insights into life, stories about Anegada, his former life as a keyboardist in the reggae band “Third World”. I guess that was a good band because the kids had heard of it but I’ll have to check it out when I get home. Throughout the night he gave Wes some key learnings including the judicious use of recreational drugs and going slow when having sex. He apologized to “dad” (that’s me) but felt it important for Wes to know the important things in life. We ended the night with another long conversation with Barry. He’s a motivated and successful guy who has big plans for the Whispering Pines.
One interesting bit about Anegada is that only locals can own property. And not just any locals. They have to have relatives who have owned land here for generations. Barry’s grandparents owned the property and he just became partners with his uncle in the business. So, Geoff’s idea of buying a place on the water in Anegada isn’t going to happen (just kidding, sort of).
About 9:00 pm we headed back to the ship with our fully charged camera and laptop batteries, got ready for bed and played gin rummy until we crashed. Wes won and Geoff, who was our coach in the game, lost. It was a good time. Jenny heard a squeaking noise and told Geoff about it. Checking into it he found that our right rudder was just about to lose a nut off the retaining bolt and would have fallen off! Good catch Jenn! Geoff tightened it and it should be good for the rest of the trip. One of the things that happens with a new boat on a shakedown cruise. Good times!
Marlene Shirley - I can hardly stand reading about your trip as I am soooooooo ENVIOUS! And lobster is my absolute favorite. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Eat some for me next time. What a fun trip!!!