Our first full day in Roadtown, Tortola brought forth much activity despite the exhaustion we were feeling from the many nights of interrupted sleep. I can’t properly describe what it was like on our first night at the marina to actually lay down in a berth that was staying exactly level, that there was no noise of sails or winches or engines, and where I knew I could rest peacefully until the morning light arrived! I had not slept much during the 12-6am period since we had left Hampton.
On Sunday morning, November 19th, my first order of business was to clear through customs. Miles, in his thoughtful, medical manner, came over to welcome us, check out my customs paperwork to make sure I had filled out everything correctly, and recommended I put on a collared shirt as a sign of respect to the officials. He walked me along the half mile stretch of busy roadside to the customs and immigration office and left me there. I felt like I was in a fog, but I tried to appear as together as possible and answer their questions. First, I needed to speak to the immigration officer. While he was processing my paperwork, I went upstairs to the customs office. They stamped a few forms and after relieving me of $10, told me I could go back downstairs. I spent time sitting in front of the desk of the immigration officer. He had a very stern look to him, but I’m guessing that on Saturday nights after the third rum drink is in him, he would let loose at least a half-baked smile! For now, I had to deal with his officialdom. He surprised me with his questioning about the kids and whether they were in a school program or not. I told him that we are homeschooling them. This raised some concerns and I couldn’t figure what exactly he was saying at first. I didn’t want to anger him by asking him to repeat himself over and over. Partly it was my tired state, and partly I needed to get used to the way English is spoken down here in the islands. Finally, I understood from him that if we were visiting with children at a time when local children are in school, we needed permission from the Immigration and Education departments. We needed to submit details of the homeschool program in advance of our visit and get approval before bringing our kids. Yikes! Apparently, they didn’t want foreign children running around outside of school distracting the local school children. I told him I had done a lot of reading about visiting the BVI’s and had not seen anything about needing this approval. He told me he would let it go this time, but if we were to come back for another visit other then at a school vacation period, we would need to get the necessary approvals. When I got back to the marina, I compared notes with Heaven Won’t Wait. They have a 10 year old boy, Devan, and didn’t get any questions about their homeschool program. Next time we clear through the BVI’s, I think I might choose a different port of entry!
Back at the marina, we got to work on cleaning the boat down and making repairs. First on my list was to get Rick from Sophisticated Lady, a refrigeration expert, to come look at our system. The temperature in the freezer was fine, at about 20 degrees, but the refrigerator won’t get below about 55-60 degrees. The Village Cay marina is tucked into a protected harbor and with the lack of wind, the sun beats down on the boat and heats up the cabin even more. I can’t imagine the refrigerator was going to like this environment very much.
We filled up with diesel and with fresh water. Everything’s a noticeable amount more expensive down here, and I heard several boats grumbling that diesel costs $4.10. Since our tankage is not as large as most of the other boats, the price was not as much of a concern. They also charge for water, at $0.14 gallon. So when we fill up with 100 gallons of water, it costs us $14 — not a big deal but something we have never had to do before. At least we felt some sense of comfort that if we had to pay for water, hopefully it would be clean and healthy. At $0.14/gallon, some boats chose not to wash down their decks, but we had no choice. After 12 days at sea, the salt had really accumulated and everywhere you stroked your hand on deck hardware, lifelines, winches, etc, you got a deposit of white salt on your fingers. It felt good to soap down the deck and get all of that salt off. However, it was now the middle of the afternoon and we were all feeling the fatigue of the heat. Our blood needed to really thin out before we became accustomed to this climate!
While cleaning the boat, I learned that there were two distinct groups of sailors in the rally – those that gathered soap, brush, and with a little elbow grease washed down their boats themselves, and those that paid one of the local boat maintenance guys to do their boat up nice while the crew sipped a frosty beverage over at the bar. We were especially surprised to see the boat guys polishing down all of the stainless and chrome on some of the larger boats. For us, we were just happy to have arrived, and any cleaning and polishing we did would be done by ourselves and would be gravy on top of the more necessary mechanical work needed.
Karen became equally ambitious and did several loads of laundry. At 2pm, the rally arranged for local weather guru, Chris Parker, to give a brief talk about tropical weather patterns. It was given poolside, and our family was one of several that decided to take in the talk while immersed in the cool, refreshing water. At 4:30pm, the rally had it’s second Mt. Gay Rum party — we had missed the first one on Saturday night. The Mt. Gay Rum team poured continuous glasses of rum and ginger ale, in some cases mostly rum with a splash of ginger ale! After two of those glasses, I can understand where the other popular rum drink down here, the Painkiller, got it’s name!
In the evening, we got together with Richard, Marni, and Devan Dube from Heaven Won’t Wait, and their crew Mike and Linda, for dinner at Pusser’s, the local rum dealer. Yes, I know, it seems like rum is everything down here! The restaurant served lots of western dishes plus a few Caribbean specialties.
On Monday, after another marvelous night’s sleep, we continued to have problems getting the refrigeration working again, in fact it was getting worse! Rick kept stopping over and making little adjustments, and we remained hopeful that each tweak would get us to a working system soon. In the meantime, we got a lot of advice from fellow cruisers and I was shown several working systems from other boats. One thing that is great about a rally like this is that everyone speaks the same ‘language’. That is, everyone seems to be familiar with refrigeration, engines, outboards, marine electronics and the like. So, right away, you have a whole support structure of sorts that can help out. And, you can be comforted by the fact that other boats are or have struggled with similar boat issues.
On Monday night, the rally was putting on a special dinner and awards ceremony. All but a couple boats had made it in and we enjoyed a great buffet meal of American and Caribbean dishes, including grilled Mahi Mahi. Salads are hard to provision for and assemble on the boat, but they were serving up some delicious fruit and vegetable salad combinations that were calling our names as we passed by! They honored each participating boat with a nice silver plated platter.
By Tuesday morning, everyone was talking about where they were headed next. Some of the boats were being left at marinas or hauled out while owners went back to the states for the holidays; others were like us with somewhat open plans to cruise the eastern Caribbean. On Wednesday evening, there was an informal event planned for Carib1500 boats over at Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda, about a 2-3 hour sail away. They were offering free overnight dockage, so it didn’t take much convincing for most of the fleet still at Village Cay to head over. We were still having problems with the refrigeration and I was trying my best to fight off my anger about the situation. We were in paradise yet we were hamstrung by a failing system that was ultra critical in the heat of the tropics. I couldn’t imagine having to lug ice from markets near or far away and shop for groceries every other day for the next 9 months until our return. Our route home from the Caribbean would take us up the East Coast during the middle of summer, so we were not going to get any relief from hot temperatures until the boat was back home.
In addition to refrigeration problems, we needed to get our sail fixed. We got good references about the local Doyle sail loft and so we had them pick up our genoa to repair the leech tear. We were also having some problems with the rudder. It started to develop a slight wobble on the way down, and I had several local boat experts in the rally look at it. They felt the bearings were starting to wear and it was borderline whether it should be fixed now or at the next haulout. I planned to contact Jeanneau America to at least order the parts so that we’ll have them available. Finally, the autopilot was getting temperamental during the last few days of the trip down, especially in light winds. The drive would abruptly stop with an error message. It might run fine all day, or it might error out several times in one morning. It’s a Raymarine linear drive unit, a very common model, and Miles gave me several good ideas to investigate, all of which would require pulling the unit out and disassembling it. We wanted to get on our way to Virgin Gorda and frankly I was growing tired of all of the fix it work. We needed a bit of a break, and a visit to Virgin Gorda would be perfect. We had a vigorous upwind sail to Spanish Town on Wednesday, arriving by mid-afternoon. In the earlier years of the Carib1500, it used to finish here at the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour. It’s a nice facility, and they have a haulout/repair yard as well, but apart from a bar/restaurant and a smallish grocery store, there’s nothing around. We had thought, after reading the cruising guide, that there would be a shopping area or at least some streets to walk around, but neither were the case. We began to learn that the cruising guide’s impression of the size and breadth of a town versus what we discovered were quite different! The guide was copyrighted in 2004, but I can’t believe that many businesses would have shut down in 2 years. It must have been more due to the style of the writer – making an area seem more developed then it really was. We had a nice visit to Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbour, but it would have been nicer if we had not walked in with an inflated expectation.
In the evening, the marina put on a complementary rum punch and appetizer reception, followed by a great Caribbean buffet dinner. The rum punch was not using the mixing guides of the fine fellows from Mt. Gay, as it tasted like the fruit punch you might have at a kids birthday party. It was just as well, as neither Karen or I had been rum drinkers before this rally, so it was best we stepped into the experience gradually!
On Thursday, several of our friends, including Heaven Won’t Wait and Asseance (also Canadians, from Toronto) planned to go to Gorda Sound, on the northeast tip of Virgin Gorda, near the famed Bitter End Yacht Club.
We decided to join them and since it was American Thanksgiving, we offered to have them over to our boat for dinner that evening. It was another perfect Caribbean afternoon sail. The winds here are definitely more reliable and breezy. If you ever get to a harbor that is too hot and humid, you just need to get the boat out into the Sir Francis Drake Channel here, between all of the islands, and you inevitably are greeted with a refreshing 15-20 knots of wind. That was the case for our 2 hour trip to Gorda Sound. Upon arriving, we spotted Arctic Tern, an Island Packet that had been in the rally too. Hunter and Devi, from Arctic Tern, were from Alaska and we needed more Americans for our Thanksgiving dinner, so they joined us, bringing with them some grilled Mahi Mahi that they had caught on the way down from Hampton. If we couldn’t have Thanksgiving with family, this was as good of a substitute as we could hope for. Karen did an excellent job of cooking up a ham (no turkey for us this year!), plus fresh biscuits and her delicious sweet and white potato blend. Our friends brought appetizers, salads, and a pretty impressive variety of pies. This was a fine feast in the making!
Our refrigeration was still not working right. Rick from Sophisticated Lady had tried making more adjustments back in Spanish Town, but the best we could do was settle for a freezer that was at refrigerator temperatures, and a refrigerator that kept items just below outside temperatures. We could have stayed in Roadtown to have more work done on it, but we really wanted to get out and see the area, and in the process determine how bad it really was. As it was, we got a break from the repair scene and some special Thanksgiving memories.
On Friday, the other boats were making plans to head to nearby Anegada, famed for it’s coral reef and therefore snorkeling. We wanted a slower pace, so we settled into our anchorage in Gorda Sound for a few days. The anchorage was in a nice breezy spot and we were putting Karen’s big awing to use, plus her wind scoop on the forward hatch. It we couldn’t enjoy a cold beer from the fridge, we could at least feel the refreshing breeze of the islands!
We spent a total of three nights in Gorda Sound, with school work taking up our mornings, combined with some engine maintenance. In the afternoon, our reward for the work was a refreshing dip in the water. The kids got a chance to try out their mask, snorkel and fins too. The water was our savior from the heat. A 15-30 minute swim could leave you refreshed for the rest of the afternoon. We also made sure to fit in a quick swim before dinner. I spent time trying to figure out what was going on with the outboard engine. I had pulled the carburetor apart at least 10 times before, trying to find a fuel leak, and the reason behind the engine’s stubborn habit of stalling and refusing to restart. Although we spent most of the day on school work and boat work, we did manage to get ashore by kayak to the Bitter End Yacht Club. This resort has built quite a name for itself in the area. I wanted to see it also because my parents, who bareboat chartered many times down here after I left for college, would frequently mention the fun that had at the Bitter End. After walking the grounds in the afternoon, we were very impressed with the facility. Judging from the large array of charter and private boats in the anchorage, we weren’t alone in our impressions. One boat was a sleek 400 ft ship, large enough to be a small cruise ship, but was privately owned with a crew of 50. It definitely makes you wonder who would own one of these ships as their private yacht — some rock star or Enron type executive probably!
On Sunday morning, we decided to weigh anchor in the morning and head back down the island of Virgin Gorda to a place called The Baths. This is another spot that is world renowned, in this case for the excellent snorkeling. The national park system maintains a bunch of moorings off of the beaches and you can bring your dinghy in partway and tie it to a rope about 50 feet from the beach. A mooring right off of the beach opening up as soon as we motored in, so we opted to just swim in from the boat. Our first mission was to find our boat hook that had slipped out of Karen’s hands when we were jostling for the mooring line. It’s a wooden boat hook and I had thought it would float, but apparently the weight of the bronze hook was enough to take it to the bottom. In these waters, you could see the bottom 20 feet down. It was sticking straight up off the bottom, and a kind snorkeler dove down for us and retrieved it. Then, we were off to the beach area to explore the shallows. This was our first real experience snorkeling on the trip where we could see tropic fish and coral. What a treat! There were so many colors to the fish, particularly a school of vibrantly blue angle fish shaped ones, with the outline of them in a super bright neon blue. You can find great snorkeling throughout the Caribbean, but what makes The Baths so attractive is the large boulders and natural caves that extend out in the water.
The fish use this rocky area as a natural habitat and the shafts of light shining down into the water adds an interesting dimension to the experience. On land, you can follow a trail that leads one on a walking, wading, squatting, climbing and crawling adventure between and under the shoreside boulders. The national park has done a superb job making this trail and the snorkeling accessible to the public.
None of the moorings permit overnight usage, and by about 4pm, were only one of two boats left in the anchorage. We dropped the mooring and motored back across to Roadtown to anchor in the outer harbor. This was Sunday night and we had several boat repair items that we needed to discuss with several mechanics on Monday morning. The refrigeration continued to not work right and we had determined we needed true professional help. With the excessive load now on the batteries, I was noticing that the engine charging system was not operating at it’s peak, so I wanted someone to look at that. We had an outboard that was stubborn to start, leaked fuel, and stalled regularly. My patience for it and my ideas on how to fix it had run dry, so it was time to call in a mechanic. Lastly, we wanted to get the parts ordered for our rudder and if a haul out was needed in the near future, we could replace the bearings and therefore tighten up the steering considerably.
So, on Monday morning, I visited Compton Marine, an outfit that had come highly recommended. They didn’t have time to work on our issues until Tuesday, but we took a slip back at Village Cay Marina so that we would be ready when they were. They had recommended a separate shop for the outboard problems – Tradewind Yacht Services. They were also booked up until Tuesday or Wednesday. But, they seemed like a reputable group of people and I didn’t mind waiting to have the outboard fixed by experts.
On Tuesday afternoon, Compton showed up and started fiddling with the refrigeration. Frank was the repair guy, and seemed to believe it would be a straightforward fix. That night, we took in a pizza dinner with Heaven Won’t Wait, which made for a relaxing evening, apart from a quick visit I made out to the boat where I discovered that our dinghy, tied up to the finger pier next to Thalia, had mysteriously disappeared. Did the outboard guy come by and take it to their shop? This would seem unlikely since I was on the boat all afternoon. Richard from Heaven Won’t Wait drove me all around the marina, the Moorings complex nearby and the anchorage but we found no sign of our little dinghy. It didn’t make sense that someone would steal it as there were plenty of other dinghies much nicer then ourselves at the marina. In fact, I was quite relieved to find so many expensive dinghies in these waters when we arrived as it would make me less concerned about theft of ours. In the morning, Richard took me on a more extended dinghy ride throughout the harbor and to the outboard shop, but we found nothing. Village Cay was especially surprised that someone would steal a dinghy with a puny 5hp engine on it. They leant me their dinghy to drive around in the afternoon, thinking that someone must have accidentally taken off from restaurant in it, and it would surely reappear. I left descriptions of the dinghy at several marinas, and then filed a report at the local marine police office. At first, everyone I talked to was surprised about the apparent theft and said that the BVI’s are generally pretty safe. But as I discussed our predicament with more boaters, I found out that dinghy theft was no stranger to these parts. Just because other nicer dinghies were not locked up didn’t mean that we could relax our standards. I had locked the dinghy pretty regularly in the states, and should have continued the habit down here, but that was all water under the bridge at this point.
Well, at least we didn’t have a dinghy engine to worry about getting fixed! I had moved on from the anger and denial stage on the dinghy to the coping stage. We are now hunting for a used dinghy and motor. We have our kayaks to use for a wet trip ashore, but parts of the Roadtown harbor can reek of sewage odor, so you won’t find us coming anywhere near a kayak in those conditions!
Back onboard Thalia, the refrigeration repair started to stretch out into a 3 day project. Frank just left today with the belief that the freezer would freeze over night, but time will tell.
In addition to the never ending repairs to the boat, we have repairs needed for Zachary. He developed a condition that needed surgery, and he will be going next week to a very nice doctor here in Roadtown for an overnight stay.
I certainly hope that my next update to all of you will have great news on how the boat and ourselves are all fixed up and ready to enjoy these islands in paradise!