As I finish writing this, the temperature is well below zero Fahrenheit with a dangerous windchill. Last week I was in the Caribbean again, and it was tough coming back to the cold, snow and unrest here in the Twin Cities. Read on for the trip report.
Monday, Jan 12: I had a morning flight to Puerto Rico, where I met John McSherry (Mick) and his son, John William (JW). We connected at the San Juan Airport gate for our 30-minute hop on InterCaribbean Airlines to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, where we landed in the early evening. The Moorings charter base had a van waiting for us, and we soon boarded the McSherry’s new boat, AIRSHOW, a Moorings/Leopard 4200 sailing catamaran, built in South Africa. The main purpose of the trip was to do a shakedown cruise on the vessel and hopefully have some fun too. After stowing our gear, we ate pizza and wings at the marina’s pool bar, watched a little NFL playoff football (the Texans beat the Steelers), then slept aboard AIRSHOW.
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| Hoist the colors high! |
Tuesday, Jan 13: At our 8:00 AM charter checkout, we learned that not all of the new boat’s systems were finished being installed. The primary concern was that the watermaker was not connected, which meant that we would have to conserve our onboard supply or buy water in the islands if we ran low. With just three aboard, it did not prove to be a problem, but would have been with a larger crew. Next on the list was the propane grill, which had not arrived, so the charter company had substituted a charcoal grill, which we opted not to use. Besides needing to buy charcoal and lighter fluid, cleaning boat grills can be a messy pain, and the thought of soiling AIRSHOW’s pretty white decks with ash was unthinkable on her maiden voyage. The two flat-screen televisions slated for the saloon and owner’s cabin were missing, but we rarely watch TV on sailing trips anyway, so that wasn’t a hardship. There were other nuisance items, the most annoying being the presence of a machine oil and/or grease on all of the topside lifelines, stanchions, turnbuckles and other stainless steel fittings, which left black marks on our clothes and towels until the source was identified. Overall, the boat was in great shape and despite the deficiencies, it was perfectly seaworthy and ready to sail. We finished provisioning at the liquor and grocery stores in Road Town, then cast off around Noon and hoisted the sails in light to moderate southeast winds. Mick set our first daily speed record of 6.0 knots before we had to turn on the engines and get to our first anchorage, 22 miles away. Around 4:00 PM, we tied up to a mooring at Leverick Bay on Virgin Gorda, then went ashore for the Michael Beans Happy Arrr, a one-man, pirate-and-rum-themed show with music, singing, a conch shell blowing contest and corny puns and jokes (“what’s the first letter of the pirate alphabet?”…”Arrr!”). Michigan-born Michael Beans has been a BVI fixture for more than 25 years, entertaining tourists, living aboard his sailboat and raising money for charity; his current beneficiary is the Good Samaritan Foundation of Haiti https://www.goodsamaritanofhaiti.com/. His previous island bands include the Beans Traveling Minstrels, The Hornswagglers, and the Seafarin’ Turd Whirlers. After the show and a photo with Mr. Beans, we had dinner at the waterfront casual dining restaurant at the Leverick Bay Resort, then enjoyed old fashioneds on AIRSHOW’s upper (lido) deck. Map link: Leverick Bay, Virgin Gorda, BVI
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| Zut alors! I have missed one! |
Wednesday, Jan 14: I awoke at 5:30 AM, but with no rush to get started, I fell back asleep until 8:30 AM. We identified another boat issue, which we isolated to a noisy electric cooling water pump on the generator. Mick called The Moorings, and a mechanic was onboard within 30 minutes, an impressive service response. He confirmed our diagnosis, went ashore for a replacement pump, returned and quickly installed and tested it. We had more excitement and another delay when JW went for a swim and his sunglasses went for a deep dive, down 30 feet to the bottom of the bay. It was too deep to free-dive, but the local dive shop, BVI SNUBA, had someone available to search for them, and the glasses were valuable enough to make the effort. We had to pick up the diver ashore, but after about 45 minutes, Elaine, a former commercial banker from Scotland, surfaced with the glasses, something she does regularly for boaters.
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| Success! |
The two incidents delayed our departure until after 1:00 PM, but we saved a little time by raising the mainsail inside the large and well-protected North Sound, which was Sir Francis Drake’s fleet staging area for his raids on the Spanish in the late 16th century. We motor-sailed out of the channel, set the jib and flew on a broad reach in 15 knots of wind. I set a new speed record of 6.8 knots, before we doused the sails and pulled in behind Marina Cay, only 12 miles from our starting point. We had planned to go further, but it was getting late, and we grabbed the first available mooring ball and called it a day. Mick cooked dinner onboard, with hamburgers and fried potatoes on the menu, followed by beer, margaritas and a stunningly beautiful evening. Map link: Marina Cay, BVI
Bonus Question 1: What is the English translation of margarita? (Answer at end of post)
Thursday, Jan 15: I awoke at 7:00 AM, with temperatures already above 80F and an east wind of 10-15 knots. After breakfast, we got underway at 9:45 AM and motored between Scrub and Great Camanoe Islands, then raised the sails. North of the islands, we were exposed to the longer fetch of the North Atlantic and its bigger seas, which promptly dumped our liquor supply from the countertop to the floor of the galley, shattering the tequila bottle (good thing we had margaritas the night before). While JW and I cleaned up the booze and broken glass, Mick set a new speed record of 9.0 knots. We stopped for snorkeling and lunch at Monkey Point on Guana Island, picking up a National Park day mooring close to the rocks in swirly winds and currents. Map link: Monkey Point, Guana Island, BVI
After lunch we sailed downwind another 11 miles to Little Harbour (Garner’s Bay) on Jost van Dyke, getting the very last reservable BoatyBall mooring. We had several hours before dinner ashore and Mick use the time to clean the black oil/grease off of our deck hardware. In the evening, we dinghied in to Harris’ Place, a restaurant that I’d been to many times before when I taught sailing here between 2009 and 2017. We brought our students to Harris’ without fail for the amazing lobster dinners, personalized hospitality of proprietor Cynthia Jones and the sturdy concrete pier that she allowed us to use for docking practice. Like most BVI small businesses, Harris’ Place was flattened in 2017 by Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, until it was surpassed two years later by Hurricane Dorian. The restaurant had to be rebuilt completely, and this was my first visit since the reconstruction.
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| The last-known photo of my hat and sunglasses |
Little Harbour and Harris’ Place was also the center of a true crime intrigue years ago. Cynthia’s father, Harris Jones, opened the restaurant in 1982 after serving in the U.S. Army. An instant success, his business siphoned customers away from next door Sidney’s Peace and Love, established in 1974 by Sidney Hendricks. Bad blood between the two families simmered for years, leading to a 1995 altercation between Harris and Sidney’s son, Bassano, who shot and killed Harris with a spear gun. Bassano received a life sentence for the murder, but his claim of self defense prevailed on appeal and he served only three years in prison. Harris’ Place sat vacant for two years until Cynthia moved back to the BVI from New York and reopened the restaurant. Today, Harris’ is known for its delicious home cooking, island charm and Cynthia’s upbeat, entertaining service. Sidneys’ Peace and Love remains next door, run by Sidney’s daughter, Strawberry, and is also a popular stop among cruisers, the vast majority of whom are unaware of the drama that once consumed this small community.
At dinner, Mick and I had two of the largest lobsters I’ve ever seen, while JW ate ribs as his entree for the four-course meal. When Mick asked Cynthia what gave the delicious chicken soup starter its kick, she brought out a red pepper, which we identified as a variety of habanero, and we sampled and shared it with the adjacent table. The vibe at Harris’ is so friendly that it’s quite common to strike up a conversation with neighboring patrons. Against my better judgement, I tasted a larger piece of habanero than I should have and paid for it—fortunately there was a basket of bread on the table to help put out the fire. Map link: Little Harbour, Jost van Dyke, BVI
Bonus Question 2: What does the Scoville Scale measure? (Hint in the previous paragraph; answer at end of post. ).
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| Large (3-4’) tarpon at the dinghy dock |
Friday, Jan 16: I slept through it, but before dawn our boat swung around on its mooring and touched hulls with the crewed charter catamaran on our port side. This is rare but not unheard of, as commercial moorings try to maximize the number of boats in an anchorage while minimizing interactions. Reliable winds and waves help a lot to keep everyone pointed in the same direction, but ever-larger boats and the occasional becalming make incidents possible, as we proved. No damage was done to either vessel, so all was well. Mick and I ran ashore to drop off our garbage and pick up ice and fresh, homemade empanadas from nearby Great Harbour, which we ordered ahead of time and were delivered to the dinghy dock by car. After getting underway, we practiced motoring drills, then deployed AIRSHOW’s anchor for the first time, although it would not set in the rocky bottom near Green Cay (no relation). We raised a reefed main in the 15-knot breeze, and Mick set a new speed record of 9.2 knots, proving once again that reefing is almost always the right thing to do and still plenty fast when the wind pipes up.
Sailing through the Thatch Island Cut, a wind gust blew my hat and sunglasses overboard, then we were almost run over from behind by a sail cat under power, with the professional skipper astonishingly yelling at us that he had the right of way as the overtaking vessel and we should keep clear. When Mick shouted back “you’re wrong,” the other captain quoted “Rule 3” of the Coast Guard Navigation Rules and plowed forward, narrowly missing us. Rule 3 of the COLREGS, as they are officially known, is basically a glossary of definitions, and has nothing to do with overtaking vessels. Rule 13, on the other hand, clearly states that “any vessel overtaking another must keep out of the way of the vessel being overtaken.” Furthermore, Rule 18 says that “power-driven vessels must keep out of the way of sailing vessels,” and we were under sail and he was motoring. It’s pretty scary to think that a professional captain is that ignorant of the collision rules, or was in such a hurry that he felt okay putting both vessels at risk and then throwing out some BS to save face with his paying passengers and maybe getting us to back down. Either way he’s an ass-hat and an idiot.
Once in the Drake Channel, we turned directly into the 15-knot wind and 2-4 foot seas, which slammed under our bridgedeck and soaked the foredeck. Mick and JW made slow but steady progress to windward, eventually shaking out the reefs in the mainsail as we approached the channel islands of Norman and Peter. At 1:30 PM, JW easily put AIRSHOW on a mooring ball in Great Harbour of Peter Island, on his first-ever attempt. We had a low-key, last evening aboard, with sausages and potatoes for dinner and the last of the Oreo cookies for dessert. Peter Island, named after Pieter Adriensen, a 17th-century Dutch privateer and slave trader and partner of Joost van Dyk, namesake of two other BVI islands. Adriensen’s brother, Abraham, was the Patron of Tortola, the title for the head of development and operations for the Dutch West India Company, a position previously held by Joost van Dyk. Today, Peter Island is the largest private island in the BVI, and was purchased by the Amway Corporation in 1978. Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway and father-in-law of current U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, had sailed past the island on vacation and later bought it with co-founder Jay Van Andel, using it as an Amway corporate retreat. In 2001, the Van Andel family became sole owners of the island, and it remains an exclusive, luxury property that is open to paying guests but not the general public.
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| The 112’ superyacht Epiphany anchors nearby… |
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| …but I’d rather be on AIRSHOW |
Saturday, Jan 17: I awoke to an intense rain squall at 5:30 AM, then another passed through at 7:00 AM that delayed our intended departure, but we were rewarded with a nice rainbow afterwards. We motored the four miles across the Drake Channel to The Moorings base in Road Town. The marina was very busy, with charter boats coming in and out, passengers boarding and disembarking and Moorings staff everywhere coordinating. The docks were so full that we had to double-park on a finger pier that already had another catamaran on it (way to go Mick!). After packing up, The Moorings’ airport shuttle drove us to the Beef Island Airport. We flew to San Juan, then the McSherry’s and I hung out for a bit before saying goodbye and heading to separate terminals for our connections. I landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and was underdressed for the single-digit temperatures. Little did I know that it was only going to get colder in the coming days!
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| The Queen Elizabeth at the cruise ship dock |
Bonus Question 1 Answer: Margarita is the Spanish word for the daisy flower. It is also a proper name, which comes from the Greek word for pearl.
Bonus Question 2 Answer: The Scoville Scale measures the spiciness of hot peppers. Developed in 1912 by American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, the range goes from zero (bell peppers) to more than 2 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU) for the Carolina Reaper, with capsaicin being the predominant compound measured. The habanero pepper we sampled at Harris’ Place was estimated to be around 300,000 SHU.
