Day 1: Arrival
Island time is no joke. Everything moves at a much s l o w e r pace in the Caribbean and the Virgin Islands are no exception. On vacation, this unhurried mindset can be a welcomed change from the rapid tempo of the Northeast. In January, I had the pleasure of sailing in the pristine blue waters of the British Virgin Islands with a group of friends on a 46-foot catamaran.
My eyes crept open in the Ted Williams tunnel on the 4am Uber ride to Logan Airport. The journey began with a short flight from Boston to JFK. That layover was quicker than a New York minute. Good thing I didn’t check a bag. A troupe of Moko Jumbies—Caribbean stilt dancers—flailing to loud music greeted us at the arrival gate at the St Thomas airport in the US Virgin Islands. What alternative universe had I drifted into?
I met some of the other members of my group at the airport and we found a Taxi van to take us to the ferry terminal for the Road Town Fast Ferry. Keep in mind that is very much a misnomer and that there is nothing fast about island time.
At ferry terminal, I began the mandatory $20 bag check. The gentleman handling the bags approached me and I tried to confirm that my bag was headed for Tortola (which is in the British Virgin Islands), to which I got the response, “No, man, BVI.” I said again, “Tortola?”. He said, “No, BVI”. I gave up when I noticed my friends’ bags were being thrown on the same pile.
The arrival in Road Town, Tortola, BVI, was equally a theater of organized chaos. We waited on the boat for nearly an hour, while the attendants unloaded the bags onto the dock. When we finally disembarked, we waited in the customs queue for at least 20 minutes. We had a brief struggle with the customs officer lady when we told her the marina name instead of the boat charter company we were using. The final queue was for the environmental tax, which you pay in cash to the last jackass by the exit door. (A similar fee is also assessed when leaving the BVIs, so bring plenty of cash). Fortunately they use US currency.
You may sense my frustration at this point. Truthfully, I’m trying to restrain myself as I type this from writing a scathing review of the organizational skills in the Caribbean because the rest of the trip I’m about to describe was quite lovely.
My friend, who would be our skipper for the week and who had arrived a day earlier, picked us up in a rental car. Interestingly, the cars in the Virgin Islands are nearly all standard American left-hand-drive vehicles, despite driving on the left side of the road. The road to Nanny Cay Marina hugged the mountainous coastline and within 15 island minutes we arrived at the boat. The vacation finally begun. I could breathe now.
Day 2: Indian Head & Norman Island
We set sail in the morning and the first stop was Indian Head, a large rock surround by a reef, where we went snorkeling for the first of many times. In the afternoon, we made our way to Norman Island, which had a grotto that we also snorkeled thru. There were countless varieties of fish—even an octopus—that we could see in the crystal clear Caribbean blue water.
Each large boat, including our own, had a small dingy attached to the back. Nearly all of the dingies were small inflatable zodiacs with a little outboard engine, which were useful for going ashore when the catamaran was anchored or moored offshore. And I strongly qualified that previous statement with “nearly” since some of the mega-yachts we encountered later in the trip had dingies that practically looked the length of our large catamaran.
When my friend first had me drive the dingy that day I asked how far I had to be away from people and boats before I could go fast, to which he replied, “There is no rule, just try not to run over the people snorkeling.” In New Hampshire, where I grew up, there is a strictly-enforced law that you must be 150 feet from any swimmer, boat, or shoreline before going faster than headway speed.
The other fact that caught my attention was the licensing. I asked my friend what kind of credentials he needed to charter and captain the catamaran, to which he said, “In the BVIs, all you need is your 10-digit license.” And I asked, “What’s that?”. He smirked, “Your credit card”. As long as you can reach the counter and hand the charter company a credit card, they’ll give you keys to large boat for the week. Unlike anywhere else in the US or Europe, no license or sailing résumé needed. This general sense of lawlessness in the Virigin Islands strongly appealed to my live-free-or-die ethos.
In the evening, we moored in the bay in the middle of Norman Island near a floating bar called Willy T’s. I gazed up at the stars from the opened hatch above my sleeping berth. I had an unperturbed planetarium right above my bed. One thing I quickly noticed is that, in the Caribbean, the bright side of the moon is on the bottom of the moon, rather than the side, forming more of a smily-face shape. Apparently this is an effect near the equator. The phase of the moon is always the same no matter where on Earth you are, but the angle of the bright part changes based on latitude.
Day 3: Cooper Island and Virgin Gorda
Around lunchtime, we made a brief stopover at Cooper Island, which was a sleepy castaway island resort, with a couple outdoor bars surrounded by palm trees and white sand.
By early evening we docked the boat at a marina in Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda. We all took turns using the larger showers onshore in the marina. We learned quickly to take advantage of the amenities at the marinas, since the showers and bathrooms on the boat were quite tight even tho our boat had four showers and four bathrooms for twelve people.
We ate dinner at Little Dix Resort, which had beautifully manicured gardens and pools perched on the side of a steep mountain overlooking the clear blue ocean water. The food was quite good, but the scenery was even better.
We came back to the marina after dark only to realize that we had been locked out of the boat. The door had jammed when we locked it before dinner. Two hours later, some Germans staying on the boat next us helped us break into one of the cabin windows to finally unlock the door. Phew! Everyone was worried that we’d be sleeping outside that night.
Day 4: The Baths and Bitter End Yacht Club
The Baths are a series rock formations on the southern neck of Virgin Gorda. There is a loop that takes visitors thru a series of sandy and narrow grottos finally ending at a beautiful sandy beach surrounded by more rock formations. Only mistake we made was going the wrong way around the loop. We were going against traffic and the oncoming flow of Disney cruise tourists was relentless.
We sailed past the home of Richard Branson, the creator of Virgin Records, on Mosquito Island on the way to The Bitter End Yacht Club, which was our mooring site for the night. Bitter End looked like a nice resort. We walked around in the afternoon and then took the dingy to Saba Rock, adjacent to Bitter End, for drinks and dinner. We met a French family that we encountered a couple days prior. Many people sail the Virgin Islands in the same direction, so it is common to see familiar faces throughout the journey.
Day 5: Anegada Part I
Nearly all of the Virgin Islands are mountainous and have volcanic rock formations—all but one. Anegada was formed on top of a coral reef, which makes it flat. Its geography also makes it more prone to having large sandy beaches.
The sail to Anegada was one of the longer legs of the trip. It took several hours to travel from Bitter End to Anegada. This leg of the journey was the only one that we could not see the destination in the distance. Anegada does not have much prominence above the horizon. Only about 30 min away could we start to make out some palm trees floating just above the horizon.
After our arrival, we got off the boat and rented a pickup truck to get to the other side of the island. The bed of the pickup was outfitted with bench seats, so the entire boat crew was able to squeeze in.
In the distance on the other side of a swamp next to the road, we saw flamingos. For lunch we stopped at a restaurant at Loblolly Beach. This was one of the few times during the trip we encountered some rain showers. The rain hardly interrupted any plans and there also were some occasional downpours at night during the trip. We ended the day at Cow Wreck Beach, which had a nice bar with swings and a giant Jenga game.
Day 6: Anegada Part II
This was our official beach day on Anegada. There is an undeveloped beach on the south west shoreline, which is one of the most pristine beaches I’ve ever been on. We took kayaks from the boat and went ashore. Lots of photo taking ensued because if there weren’t pictures, did it really happen?
For dinner, we had Caribbean lobster at a local restaurant next to the water. Unlike New England lobster, the Caribbean variety do not have claws, but still were tasty. I survived picking apart my half-lobster dinner. I’ve never been a huge fan of dissecting my meal on my plate, even tho I realize this is a rite of passage with lobster.
Day 7: Scrub Island
Scrub Island was the nicest resort and marina that we stayed at during the voyage. Little Dix on Virgin Gorda was arguably fancier, but we only were there for dinner. Scrub Island had a number of nice pools, hot tubs, and bars where we could lounge and look at the beautiful island views across the channel. There was even a water slide that went into one of the lower pools. At night the pool and palm trees were beautifully illuminated with colorful lights.
Day 8: Jost van Dyke
Last but not least was Jost van Dyke. We technically stopped at Little Jost van Dyke first to hike to the Bubble Pool, which was a coral tidal pool that the ocean waves crashed into.
We then continued sailing another 30 minutes to the famous Soggy Dollar Bar, the original home of the painkiller cocktail. The primary ingredients in this drink were rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, and cream of cocoanut.
There was a webcam mounted on top of the bar and my parents were able to find me spot me while at home in snowy New Hampshire.
Day 9: Departure
We returned to the marina in Tortola and reversed the route we had made on arrival. The our taxi from the marina to the ferry terminal in Road Town arrived and the driver introduced himself. “Yeah man, my name is Shampoo,” he said. One of my friends from the boat quickly observed and quipped in French that Shampoo also had no hair. That gave me a good laugh.
At least on departure we were fully acclimated to island time, since getting out of the Virgin Islands was equally a circus as was the arrival. Of course there were all sorts of exit stamps and cash-only taxes, but this was the bittersweet end to a great vacation. 10/10 would highly recommend.