April 4th Manchioneel Bay Cooper Island to Leverick Bay Virgin Gorda

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The morning started with a conundrum. A couple of days ago, while swimming to the snorkel at cistern point, I had noticed that both lines to the mooring were tied to the buoy, rather than one line to the pennant and one to the buoy as recommended. I had mentioned it to Arturo, and asked why he made the choice, and the response was that it was easier to equalize the tension the way he did it. Well, after 2 nights on the buoy, we discovered that the lines had tangled around themselves, which made it pretty much impossible to untangle the lines from the boat. "Now I see why you cant do it this way," said Arturo. "The difference between sailboat lines and climbing lines is that sailboats move and climbers dont." He jumped into the water, untangled the lines, and then we were ready to go.

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The sun came up as we motord towards Virgin Gorda, making for a beautiful sight. Arturo and I experimented with paper plotting and the result was very satisfying: we made it to the Baths (named after Batholiths) on Virgin Gorda at around 7:15am or so, and were about the third or fourth boat on the scene.

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I had made it to the Baths years ago at sunset, from a boat tied to a slip at the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, but doing it the nautical way was much more satisfying. We would tie up the boat to a mooring buoy, drop down the dinghy, load everyone up to it, and then motor to the dinghy moorings after dropping XiaoQin and Cindy off so they wouldnt have as long a swim to shore. The rest of us would then swim from the mooring buoys.

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John begged off from doing the Devils Bay trail because of his hurt hand. I remember the hike from before, and I did not think that his hand was so injured as to make it worth passing up, but it was his decision to make. The trail leads through tunnels, climbs up several rocks (though always with a rope to aid), goes up and down stairs, and in general, gives you a feeling of exploration of adventure while not actually putting you in any real danger or even chance of real discomfort. In other words, one could think that its almost designed by the Imagineers at Walt Disney. Nevertheless, the area so beautiful and unique that I cannot help but recommend it to everyone who visits the area. After a while, we emerged on op of some rocks and found to our surprise that the only sailboat visible from the spot was the Escape. We could not pass up getting a photo of everyone together with the Escape.

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By and by, we got to Devils Bay, with clear water and beautiful snorkeling. We donned our mask and fins and immediately got to snorkeling amongst the boulders.

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The variety of things to see in the area is amazing. You get to swim between boulders, under them, through swim-throughs, next to waves crashing about you. The water was a little cooler than the day before, but it was still a lot of fun. While Steve, Amy, Shauna, Arturo and I were more than capable of swimming back to the start of the trail, Cindy seemed intimidated by the water, not daring to stray very far from the beach. Arturo and I agreed to let the others swim back while he, XiaoQin and I would hike back with Cindy.

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The return hike illustrated why you are often told to show up at the Baths early. While our hike to Devils Bay from the entry point led us to having the Baths all to ourselves, but on the return, the middle sized crowd (from more sailboats arriving) led us to having to line up at choke points for one side to pass and then cross over to the other side, ruining the experience. My guess was that when a real cruise ship crowd arrives, there would be a line all the way along the beach and up the stairs from the road.

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Once we returned to the entrance, we did a little bit more snorkeling. Arturo said he saw a Manta Ray but I didnt find it. John, because of his hand problem, would swim all the way to the Escape while the rest of us would swim to the dinghy. After having taken the dinghy back to the Escape, we discovered that there was already several sailboats waiting to take our mooring buoy as soon as we left! I toyed with the idea of perversely having breakfast on our mooring buoy instead, but decided to do the friendly thing and start sailing for Leverick Bay. We were running low on water, and would need to replenish our water. While Amy had wanted to see the Bitter End Yacht Club, I had called ahead several days ago and they were completely full from some event, and I did not relish the idea of more crowds. Leverick Bay offered a free 100 gallons of water to folks who moord overnight at their mooring line, and so it was towards Leverick Bay that we sailed, heading north on the Sir Francis Drake Channel.

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Since it was an easy sail, Arturo and I took the opportunity to teach folks how to sail the Escape. We toyd with detouring to visit Richard Bransons Necker Island, but the memories of racing for a mooring buoy from 2 days before was still haunting me, so we aimed straight for Leverick Bay, sailing through the channel instead of motoring, and turning on the engines only at the last minute to moor at one of the many mooring buoys in Leverick Bay.

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Once Moord, we put together laundry and a shopping list, and prepared to go ashore to do things that crew ashore needed to do: provisioning, laundry, land showers (which were free!) and hanging out at the bar. At the bar, a conch was passed around, and I took a try at blowing one. Its trickier than it looks: you cant just blow into it, you need to purse your lips and blow.

Amy & Shauna went for the full spa treatment, and the rest of us hung out at the bar. When Amy came back, she discovered that there was a conch blowing contest. "Im from Hawaii, Im going to win." So she entered the contest and indeed won a bottle of rum!

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We were going to let Amy, Steve and Shauna stick around for shore showers after the event, but by the time Id gotten the rest of the crew to the Escape I had realized that the seas had gone rough and swells were in! While it was possible that the North sound, being very sheltered had gotten as rough as it was going to get, I still had memories in Canouan of watching a skipper turn-turtle a dinghy, ejecting me several feet and trapping several others underneath it, and decided I would rather be a wuss than risk a night time dinghy docking when the seas were swelling with a small craft advisory, so I recalled everyone and hoped that the swells were already as bad as they would get.

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April 6th Deadmans Bay Peter Island to Kellys Cove Norman Island

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We started the morning bright and early and went to look for the mooring buoys at Coral Garden. Steve was pushing for the dive on the other side of dead chest, since he and Shauna had done Coral Garden twice as part of their certification dives. However, the south swells were still going strong as we neared Deadchest, so Arturo nixd the idea in favor of Coral Gardens. To our dismay, the mooring buoy in the protected area was taken, and clearly taken by someone who had used it as an overnight stay illegally. The only other buoy was a yellow commercial dive boat operation buoy, but we snagged it anyway since it was early in the day and we would likely be gone before any commercial dive boats showed up.

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Coral Garden was a beautiful, if shallow dive. As the name described, it truly encompassed coral upon coral. The shallowness of the dive actually helped, as it meant we could stay down for almost a full hour on one tank of air.

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After the dive was over, we went over to Sprat Bay on Peter Island in order to refill our dive tanks. We reasoned that it was unlikely that we would do more than one more dive in the trip, so we filled up just 6 tanks. Peter Island is way more expensive than every other tank refill place, charging us $10/tank. Cooper Island was $6/tank. The dive instructor tried to talk us into Angelfish Reef as our second dive, but we noted that there was no snorkeling there, so that wouldnt be fair to the non-divers in the group. Arturo noted that there was a BVI Dive Guide that had detailed descriptions of all the dive sites in the area, including dives that were in neither of the books we had brought with us. "Something to remember for next time."

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We settled on Rainbow Canyons as our second dive. We had abandoned it just a few days ago because of the race for mooring buoys on Cooper Island, but because it had both snorkeling and diving and was relatively close to the Bight, we made a beeline for it. We got to the other side of Pelican Island and found that all the buoys were taken. However, one of them was not taken by a sailboat, but rather, a motorboat with a swimming ladder. Swimmers were in the water with noodles, a swimming aid that indicated that the folks would probably not stay that long. So I used the opportunity to back and fill the catamaran. The waited lasted about 20 minutes and we were on the buoy. Right after we were moord, we received a hail over the VHF which sounded like someone calling the Escape, but when I returned the hail I did not receive any reply, so we proceeded with the dive. It being our last dive, there was a lot of fooling around and taking pictures.

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After the dive, I had my heart set on getting a moor or an anchor position at Kellys Cove. I remembered the cove from my previous trip, but as we steamed into viewing distance of the cove I saw to my dismay that all the buoys were taken, and there wasnt very much space at all in which to anchor without the boat swinging into another one thats already on a moor. The mooring buoys were not there when I last saw Kellys Cove, so no doubt it was a new addition.

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We had no choice but to enter the Bight and search for a mooring ball as far away from the Willy Ts as we could get. There were plenty available, so we picked one and settled down for lunch. Arturo and I still wanted to snorkel Kellys Cove, but nobody else did, so the two of us jumped into the dinghy with our equipment and then motord over to Kellys Cove. When we got there, our jaws dropped: one of the buoys was available! Arturo quickly detailed a plan: he would drop me off back at the Escape, and immediately motor over to the moor to reserve it. "Give me 10 minutes, and if Im not back, it means its ours!"

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I was dropped off in a hurry, and when 10 minutes were up, we dropped the mooring buoy we were on and picked up an idyllic spot at Kellys Cove. It was as beautiful as we had hoped, granting us clear views of the channel, but far away from the crowds. I could not believe our luck in happening on the buoy at just the right time with no one else competing for it. Arturo, Steve, and Amy wanted to do a night dive, but by the time they had taken tanks to the air refill it was closed. The tanks were checked and there was about 4 tanks that were usable with air ranging from 850psi to 1500psi, so Arturo, John, Amy, and Steve went for it. We snorkeled around the cove int he afternoon, and I found a notch where it looked like Escape was the only boat in the cove, and Arturo and I snapped pictures there.

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Our choice of location was further affirmed when the buoy collectors showed up: a Chinese couple from Hong Kong. They were thrilled to meet Mandarin and Cantonese speakers as they told us in their year of working here, they had not many anyone who spoke those languages. Even the Asian people were mostly born in America and didnt speak either languages. They gave us some basic statistics about the area: it had 70+ mooring balls, and nearly fills up every night during the high season. The ROI on those mooring balls must be amazing. They also told us (with a hint of secrecy), that we were on their favorite mooring ball location.

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Sure enough, the sunset was glorious that night. So much so that the garbage collecting vessel "Deliverance" parked right in front of us, also watching the sunset. One of the perks of this job is probably a large collection of sunsets every night. We watched the twilight turn pink, yellow, orange and finally a deep midnight blue. It was almost a chore getting food, as everyone was so fascinated by the deepening sky.

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The moon rose as the sun went down, but was hidden behind the cliffs near us until at 8:00pm, it popped out from behind the island and lit up our little cozy cove. We played music, but no one wanted to visit the Willy T, perhaps after being informed that it would be partying until 1:00am tonight.

Arturo, John, Steve, and Amy decided to go for a night dive. At 15 feet maximum depth in Kellys Cove, it was more like a long safety stop than a dive, so despite the low tanks, folks came back after 30 minutes of diving with air in the tanks.

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