Admirals Log:
British Virgin Islands
We picked up our niece Rachael in Marigot Bay, St Martin - did some shopping and then headed to Virgin Gorda to meet up with friends of ours that we met in the Bahamas.
The Virgin islands were named by Christopher Columbus, and according to the guide books Virgin Gorda was so named, as from a distance, it looks like a fat virgin lying on her back!! Where the virgin bit comes in I don't know, but I guess if you are a guy who has been at sea as long as they must have been, to sail to the Caribbean from Spain, you can probably think anything looks like a naked women!! It certainly takes a bit of imagination to see a woman in the island shape!!!
Unfortunately our catch up with Eric and Debbie was very short as they had a weather window and needed to leave the same afternoon that we arrived. We did manage a nice walk though! Rachael on the other hand stayed with us for 3 1/2 wonderful weeks and she put up with my empty nest mothering very well !! I have so missed having Liam and Laura around and although Rach is older than them it still felt wonderful to have a young person on the boat.
She was having a break between jobs as a cook/stewardess on yachts and had just completed a cooking course in England, so was keen to practice some of her recipes on us which went down very very well! Especially her eggs benedict!
Rachael and I hit the shops, I almost put that in inverted commas as we managed to find 2 that had some of the things we had wanted to buy for Xmas Day!!
We did manage to find a Christmas pudding and candy canes!! Both David and I had been feeling a bit flat, our first Christmas without Liam and Laura, and then Rach arrived armed with a Christmas tree complete with decorations!!! AND she loves listening to Christmas carols while decorating the tree like I do. We didn't have Liam - who hates carols - on the boat banning them like he used to do at home!!
Not quite a thing of stunning beauty but we loved having it and we had lots of laughs!!!
We stopped at Peters Island for a few days and Rach and I did some Christmas baking - to the sound of Christmas carols!! When we moved onto Benures Bay, Normans Island where we were planning to have Christmas day, we saw another Kiwi flag in the bay!!! Of course we had to go over and say hi!!!
It was a couple and their 9yr old son from Mt Maunganui!! They had been ripped off something terrible in the states - to the tune of almost $125,000 in the end! So they were very happy to come and join us and share some of the amazing feast Rach and I had managed to put together with limited ingredients! We had prawns on the BBQ, roast chicken, medly of roast veges, Christmas pud, pavlova, Christmas mince pies, apricot balls, chocolate cake (brought by Kerianne) and much more!
It was lovely having Rach there to exchange gifts with, as David and I never bother any more and it would have been a very different Christmas on our own!!
Note David was very dressed up for the occasion!!
I made use of Rach's hostessing skills and got her to decorate the table - amazing what you can do with some Christmas wrapping paper and candy canes!!
Going clockwise : David, Kim, Keri-Anne, Keiley and Rachael
Normans Island is in the southern BVI's, and has a very popular anchorage called the Bight at the south end of the island. An old schooner anchored in the bay has been converted into a bar called Willie T"s and is notorious for its patrons jumping from the bar to the water naked! We didn't!! Rachael did spend her Christmas evening there but assures us she didn't partake either!
The BVIs is chocca with charter boats, many of them catamarans so the favoured anchorages are very busy, but we have managed to find a few more isolated spots. One bay was covered with lots of white and green butterflies and I spent ages trying to get a good photo but gave up in the end.
We have been kept very entertained by the charter yachties attempts at anchoring though, so we shouldn't complain about their presence! When we were anchored off Coopers Island, David noted on the chart that the right side of the bay was all coral so sensibly we anchored on the left hand side. Well while we were there, 3 charter boats came in and headed for the area with the coral.They obviously don't look at the charts very well!! Some of the coral heads are 4 - 6 feet tall!! Get your anchor chain wrapped around that a few times while moving aroung in the wind and it wouldn't be fun to try and untangle!! It was in about 30 feet of water! We warned the first two - with David having to go in the dinghy to help show one where and how to anchor!! The last one came in while we were inside and we didn't notice until too late, but as we were leaving early in the morning to head to the Baths before the crowds it wasn't going to be our problem!!
The Baths are lovely pools of sea water created by huge rocks with a cave system leading into them on one side.
Inside the caves
One of the pools
The beach at the other end of the pools was lovely, and protected from any boat traffic by a row of buoys making it like another huge pool.
We left there as soon as we had spent time in the baths as it got very crowded later in the day and headed to Long Bay.