Annual excursion, sailing in the British Virgin Islands underway, with friends Keith (skipper) and Ann (skipper-ess), Peter and Ro, Pat and Diane.

The now traditional first-night dinner of Island Roti’s, washed down with equally traditional but substantially more potent Pain-Killers (made of rum, fruit juice, rum, fruit juice, rum etc) was a great start to the eight day trip for us all.

We’d made ourselves at home on the good ship Hakuna Makata (Swahili; No Worries), a Beneteau Oceanis 523, and slipped our berth at Nanny Cay the following afternoon, and motored to The Bight at Norman Island for our first overnight mooring of the trip.

After cooking aboard we spent a windy night and woke to a tropical rain shower, not an unusal combination for this area.

Still blowing the next morning we opted nonetheless to raise the sails for a challenging sail down Drakes Channel to Spanish Town at Virgin Gorda. The sailing was fabulous, with a heeling boat and variable wings at around 20 knots. We passed the Queen Mary enroute, an elegant and understated ship, unlike other cruise ships that reminded us of klingon vessels.

Spanish Town was a stop on the way to our most favourite place and one of the best places on earth – Bitter End, at Virgin Gorda. Unable to get a slip at Bitter End for the first night we moored offshore and dinghy-ed ashore for dinner. Eight of us in the inflatable was a squeeze and the hilarious antics of getting in/out and staying dry as best you can was the highlight on the night.

A three night stay at wonderful Bitter end was enjoyed by all, relaxing, dinghy-ing about and – just fun.

Sailing to Jost Van Dyke was planned but winds required us to a more sheltered mooring at the beautiful Cane Garden Bay at Tortola, with dinner ashore at Quitos. The next morning we dashed back across to Small JVD, to visit the Bubbling Pool – which wasn’t, due to low tide. Duh! Oh well, off to the Caves at Norman Island for some snorkeling.

We were back in Nanny Cay that afternoon, reluctantly ready for the flights home the next morning – another memorable trip!

Lynne at the helm, and our Crew of Eight

Bitter End, our boat in the slip, blue cover

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Family & Friends, Sailing, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.