Spanish Virgins March

Well we have stayed in the Spanish Virgins pretty well the whole month of March. We did a quick hop over to St Thomas the first couple of days in March to pick up Yoli and Chris Wheeler who spent a long weekend with us in Culebra and the rest of the time we kept ourselves very occupied by sailing over to Vieques for a little more than a week. Vieques is the southernmost island and all of the islands belong to Puerto Rico. Viesques was used as a bombing range by the US Navy for more than 40 years and only recently has been opened up to the public. There are parts of the island that are still out of bounds because of unexploded ordinance that you do not want to drop an anchor on.

We spent some time in Esperanza and we drove up to the town of Isabel Segunda one day to see what the north coast was like. The town was really special and we enjoyed our day walking around and a lunch we had in an “ex-pat” restaurant, real food that wasn’t deeply fried. We spent about 3-4 days in Chiva Bay which the military personnel referred to as Red and Blue Beaches.

Then back to Culebra just before the town of Dewey was inundated by Puerto Ricans arriving to watch the Heineken sail boat races. All types of classes were being raced including some might big yachts. Unfortunately the day of the around the island race, there was a complete calm and the race did not happen.

We have met a number of great people including Peg and Neil Brand on Peggy Sue from southern California. We spent more than a couple of weeks in their company. During that time we also took the ferry over to Fajardo in PR to do some shopping and just to look around. These ferries are subsidized and it cost us all of $9 for return tickets for the both of us.

On March 24 we were supposed to head off to St John however we feel that we cannot get any better anchorages than the ones we have found in Culebra so were still in Culebra. We have started to think about what needs to be done when we put the boat back on the hard on April 14 and therefore we’ll probably have to head out shortly in order to give us enough time to get things organized in the BVI where the boat gets pulled. The pictures explain why we do not want to leave.

Cruising the Virgins

Well it’s been a while since we added to our blog. What have been up to? Well we spent a week at the Cooper Island Beach Club (CIBC) where we were fed three meals a day and more or less rested and recovered from our last couple of months on the boat. It took us at least three days before we stopped rocking every time we looked at the tiled floors. The CIBC was a quaint little place where we had a small cottage without 110 V electricity; just 12 V like on the boat. Water was heated by solar energy and we were rationed to a fixed amount in the cistern located up the hill in the back of the cottage. We had a good time and met some interesting people who had been coming there for years.

When we left CIBC we started to look for little anchorages where the charter boats do not go. We found several and have spent the last three weeks in these little quiet bays learning how to cruise and slow down without making long passages every day. Off Peter Island we stayed at Key Cay and watched the sea turtles swim by almost every day and collected conch and had them for supper. At Virgin Gorda we stayed in two small anchorages and watched the mega yachts float by. Oh yes we did laundry as well at the Leverck Bay Resort. Necker Island, owned by Sir Richard Branson, was nearby and we dinghied over to say that we had been there, we couldn’t afford the $30,000+ a night to rent the island.

Norman Island was our next destination where we found a little bay on the northeast side that was sheltered from the wind. We met Elaine and Derek from Chester NS who had the same boat as us and we had a number of nice evenings with them. We will most likely hook up with them again in Culebra which will be our next destination.

We just checked out of the BVI and checked into the USVI in record time, less than 5 minutes and only a single question from the US customs agent. We write this in St.Thomas Harbour as we wait for our friends Yoli and Chris from Lauderdale to join us for a long weekend in Culebra. More later.