BVI Trip - Getting Started

Resting after the long travel day

Brenda's sister Karen and her husband Peter arrived Friday evening for a late dinner and then settled into our charter boat. "Ada" is a Beneteau 43-3 sloop with three berths and three heads. We used the third berth for all of Karen and Peter's dive gear. Ada has amazing storage and Mike particularly liked the impressive headroom she provides.

Jim and Cecelia, owners of Pro Valor Charters, were fun, friendly and informative while they completed the paperwork and boat check out the next morning. We provisioned at a Rite-Way grocery store conveniently located a couple hundred yards away. Once everything was properly stored we powered out of the marina to begin our adventure.

We motored across the Sir Fancis Drake Channel to Machioneel Bay, Cooper Island. It is only 5 nm from Fat Hog's Bay, so it made a nice short shake down cruise to get the feel of our boat. We picked up our first mooring ball on the very first try. Yippee! We then promptly dropped the boat hook over the side of the boat. Not so yippee. Fortunately the boat hook is a floating version and we were able to rescue it using the dinghy. We'd like to say we learned our lesson, but that poor boat hook swam a couple more times over the next twenty days.

 

We quickly donned our snorkeling gear as we all kept commenting on the beauty of the islands and the clear blue water. After a great snorkeling session we fired up the outdoor grill and had a wonderful meal aboard. We toasted the evening and our fortune in the cockpit with various sundowners. We were on a sailboat in the Caribbean with nothing to worry about except where to sail to the next day. Or as Brenda often said, "Take me somewhere beautiful!".

 

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BVI Charter Booked!

 

While spending the Christmas holiday with Brenda's sister Karen and her husband Peter, they told us they really wanted to charter a sailboat this year in the British Virgin Islands. They have crewed on previous charters and are now enrolled in a series of ASA classes to become certified for bareboat chartering. Doesn't that sound like a fun vacation? Lucky them!

As we discussed their trip the conversation quickly evolved into, "Hey, why don't the four of us do this charter together?" One month later and the Beneteau 43/3 is reserved for 20 (yes 20) days and all four of us have booked our flights for late spring/early summer. Yippee! The charter company we are working with starts their off-season rates just before our charter begins and is also running a 10 days for the price of 7 days special. So we can book for two weeks and enjoy the wonderful sailing, snorkeling, beaches and food for 20 days.

This will be a great way for Brenda and I to gauge our future boat size requirements. We may find that our current target boat length of 31 to 37 feet is fine for us or way too small. The same is true of the RIB that will be supplied with the sailboat. After using this dinghy for twenty days we should have a pretty good idea of what size and horsepower we would want later.

Foxy's, Soggy Dollar Bar, Tortola Full Moon Festival, local music, fresh fish, sailing, snorkeling, The Baths, Painkillers,................. We're in!

 

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