Peter Island Sojourne

Returning to the BVI and after a night at Leverick Bay in North Sound, we have now moved down to great Harbour on Peter Island with the intent to stop for a couple of days and work on some boat projects. What more could we have to do, you might ask!

Well, remember that we bought a new dinghy in St. Martin? We have been hauling two dinghies around with us since then but with an agreement to sell our old dinghy to Da Life our two-dinghy life is (happily) about to come to an end. We lifted the new dinghy onto our bow for the crossing from St. Martin and after three weeks of sitting in Marigot harbour it will be good to give its bottom a scrub before we drop it back in the water. We'll reinstall the engine and then clean up the old Carib before handing it over to Rick tomorrow. Very pleasantly we have made arrangements to meet up at The Bight on Norman Island since Rick is down on vacation on Da Life, which he and his wife co-own with Jay and Debbie.

Farewell to our old Caribe. But I bet things will be jus' fine on De Life!

Now that we are back in the beautiful clear waters of the Virgins, Henry got busy and has given Mowzer's bottom a real good scrubbing. Even though she was pressure washed in Nanny Cay back in November, Caribbean water, especially harbour water, is very fertile and we were starting a bit of a farm down there.

All squeaky clean again, well almost... And water so clear you can see the keel and rudder.

The last couple of months have been like a break-in period for us where we have learned what we did right and not-so-right with the projects we completed back on the dock in St. Thomas. One item we need to change is the layout of our solar panels. We've found that the curve of the bimini on the port side is too great and angles our two mid-size panels away from the sun just a little too much when we are at anchor. Given that the winds here are predominanlty from the east or some variation thereof, our panels need to be on the starboard side of the boat as much as possible. We had tried to avoid the boom shadow with our original placement but now realize that it will be much better to pull the boom far over to port and move these two panels as far over to starboard as possible, still leaving room to walk on the bimini to access the sailbag. This involves removing the whole bimini and sewing on new attachment plackets, although we are going to leave the old plackets so that if/when we travel somewhere where the winds are from the west, we can move the panels back to a more optimal position.

Panels in their old position, but too angled for our usual position at anchor.

New plackets on top, ready to catch more rays, once we swing the boom to the side.

Finally, and only if there is time, we purchased new life-lines to install on both sides and at the transom. Rather than going with wire strand and swaged fittings we have decided to try Dyneema line which we can splice ourselves and easily adjust or repair as needed. We have all the line and the fittings and I've done a practice splice, so this just needs us to remove the old lines and install the new. However, I think getting some of the old fittings off may be a bit of a challenge.

Dyneema and my practice splice, now just 11 more to go.

On top of all that, this Peter Island anchorage is a wonderful place to sit. We are tucked up in the eastern corner, completely protected from any swell with just the winds whistling over the hill to keep us cool. The water is deep, we're anchored very close to shore but still in 40' of water, and we can see the bottom so no problem making water here. And finally, the views looking north west over Tortola are stunning, especially as the sun sets and the distant lights start to twinkle. Again, after a month with the noise and lights of a busy harbour, it is almost mind-numbing to sit in a dark, silent anchorage with the full panorama of the stars overhead.

Lazy Day

Great Harbour, Peter Island

The weather may be about to change a little, but man these nights of calm conditions with no middle of the night treck to check the anchor set can never be taken for granted. We awoke once again to calm conditions and despite best intentions, just stayed put for most of the day. A little cooking, a little planning and a little socializing saw us through to dinner.

We've come up with a rough plan for the next two weeks that we'll spend in the BVI before heading back to the USVI. We're going to head up to Virgin Gorda for the next few days and then if the sailing is good, take the leap up to Anegada; if nothing more than for the good sail that it usually affords. Then we'll head back to Jost Van Dyke before checking back into the USVI for a few more days on St. John. Oh, and we might take a little excursion on Tortola since we realized that it is one island we have never really explored.

Nothing very eventful happened today. We watched the comings and goings in the anchorage and this evening finds us looking like the small-fry among the very big toys!

No inferiority complex here!

They deployed this both days we've been here but funnily enough we haven't seen anyone use it.

A quick shower brought out a rainbow at the end of the harbour.

We walked over to the Peter Island Resort for a happy-hour drink and met a very nice couple from Ohio that we chatted with in the bar. While the beer was nice and cold and not a bad price, we couldn't get over the price of the rooms on the resort (not including meals and drinks) the cheapest room in the place is during hurricane season at $400/night and right now a beach-front room would run a cool $1280 - yikes!

Blue, blue, blue...

This is actually a working harbour for the fishermen.

Our backdoor neighbour tonight.

Cap'n Blowhard

Privateer Bay, Norman Island

Another morning dawns after a calm night of good sleep - it feels so natural to awake at 6:30 with the sunrise and not the alarm clock. We've had light winds the last few days so the nights have been stress-free and comfortable.

We decided that it has been a couple of years since we've snorkelled at The Caves on Norman Island so this morning, given that we were right next door we picked up a vacant day-mooring to take in the fishy wildlife. The Caves are carved into a cliff-wall on the western end of Norman Island and legend tells that pirate gold was buried in the most southerly cave within a treasure chest made most famous by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. We may no longer find a golden treasure, but the snorkeling is pretty darned good with a great variety of aquatic life. We found them to be the most bold little fishies we have encountered and later discovered that it is most likely due to the tour operators who feed them to bring them close for the paying customers. We were quite happy to have had our snorkel and were ready to pull out as the hordes arrived. Note for later - pick up a mooring in Privateer's Bay the night before and enjoy an early morning snorkel at The Caves as a great way to start the day.

Curious fishies.

It looks dark in there.

You betcha - it's dark!

Atmosphere in abundance - imagine this as a Pirate Treasure Cove.

Mowzer in the Middle

We next headed over to Road Town to top up our Digicel data plan - hence the continuance of our blog posts. Once that last errand was completed we headed back across the Drake Channel to Peter Island and found our anchorage in Great Harbour.

Road Town - one cruise ship in today.

The sailing doesn't get much better than this!

Great Harbour is a deep harbour - averaging about 50-60'. We tried a number of times but either felt the anchor was dragging or weren't happy with our position among other boats or the rocky shoreline. The prudent mariner doesn't rest until the anchor is well set and the danger of dragging onto another boat or lee shore is eliminated. This is where the story picks up that incited the title of this post ... we finally settled on our anchor position with the anchor well set in sand and loads of chain laid out across the sandy bottom. With the winds slated to pick up a bit tonight we were happy that we are in a safe position and not at risk of blowing back onto anyone else. Despite our prudence, "George & Myrtle" of s/v "Pretencious" (my apologies to all the Georges and Myrtles out there) felt it was their duty to come over and instruct us on the minimum scope required to anchor in the Caribbean - namely a 7:1 scope. I can't tell you how irritating I found this man who initiated the conversation by spouting his 25 years of experience in all things nautical and while he may well have had a good message it would have been so much nicer if he'd taken a moment to understand why we were unhappy with our first attemps to settle the anchor and find a good position for the night. Needless to say, I doubt that Cap'n Blowhard will be reading my blog, but for anyone else reading out there who might be tempted to instruct another in the anchorage - DON'T (unless asked first).

Ok, now that I have that out of my system, back to regular programming - here was our sunset view looking out over Tortola this evening.

... and to top it all off we had the most beautiful (almost) full moon rise.