Bitter End Yacht Club!
Yeah Salty Dawg Rally for setting this up! The Bitter End Yacht Club graciously offered to host our rally arrival when we all got to the BVI’s. Extended courtesies included use of their beautiful facilities, beaches, moorings, and pool, a trial of their water sports, hosting our final rally party, and of course gracious help with getting acquainted with the area and finding things. They’ve got a nice little store with fresh baked goods, a pub, a restaurant, dinghy docks and in general is a great place to stay.Big Top Pee-Wee
 |
| Looks like hell, but man is it cooler when it’s up! |
Oh yeah, we pitched a tent. As we were emptying our shed before we left for good we came across these large pieces of canvas. I’d vaguely recalled seeing them when we bought the boat and took them off, and supposed they were some kind of cover for the boat. But we were years away from leaving then and I just stuck them in the shed and forgot about them. When we found them again we laid them out and measured them and realized that it was in fact a full length sun cover for the boat. It had no poles or external lines, but we dumped it off at our sail maker and asked him to “sort it out” for us. They made up some poles and got it back to us.
 |
| BVI Flowers seem to compete for gaudiest beauty! |
Putting it up the first (so far only) time was an adventure, as we had no clue what we were doing, nor did we have any instructions or a picture of the final product. We did have some trim and neat boat covers on neighboring boats to admire. Suffice it to say, our end product was neither trim or neat, but it made a HUGE difference in the comfort of the boat. All of a sudden it was completely shady and all that warm sun was no longer heating up the boat. Cool breezes could do their job, and we had a few minutes more warning to close the windows when a rain shower came through. For now it’s an eyesore to be sure, but we will get better at how to make it up right! The only downside is that it is such a nuisance to set up we only want to install it when we’ve come someplace to stay for a while.
North Sound
The North Sound of Virgin Gorda is a vacation spot paradise. You’ve got a wide open bay with decent breeze for dinghy sailing. There are easily accessible reefs with excellent snorkeling. Within a short dinghy ride you have a handful of night spots with good happy hours. Our favorite was Saba Rock, with $3.00 painkillers and a nightly fish feeding for the kids (and adults to watch). They’ve got handful of 6′ long tarpon that will catch a piece of fish out of the air. There is the Sand Box, a beach abr where we spent Thanksgiving with a cruiser’s thanksgiving pot luck.
The water is clear, clean and warm and the scenery is stunning. It’s a place you could easily lose weeks spent in idyllic relaxation just taking in the casual routine of sun, snorkeling, happy hours and watching the stars come out.
We ended up staying a week, and left not so much because we were “done” with the North Sound, but because there is so much else to see in the Caribbean. We have 30 days on our visa here in the BVI’s before we have to decide if we want to pay a couple of hundred dollars to ‘Import’ the boat for the season and we want to have a look around and see it all. And we’re only planning one winter in the Caribbean and there is a lot to see ‘down island’ in the Windward and Leeward Islands.
So we had to leave. But we didn’t go far, after a week we took an easy sail to Spanish Town where we planned to do some provisioning, and visit The Baths, one of the highlights of the BVI’s.
