Stormy's Corner

Wear your shoes on a boat or else!

Or this is what happens to your toe! 

(Note that I didn't wear shoes at all from Monday to Friday - not even to restaurants.  Lucky it's not my toe!)

Frank loves his new Keen H2.  A lot of people on the sailing forums swear by them!  Too bad he wasn't wearing them!

10 things you need to know about sailing with kids

We recently got back from a trip to the BVI with our six year old.  Here are 10 things you need to know about sailing with kids.

1. Find a life jacket they love and make sure they wear it whenever the boat is moving.  Jacob liked his a bit too much - we had to convince him to take it off when swimming!
2. Find fun things to do when anchored like jumping off the side of the boat or tie a swim float to the back of the boat and let them try to lie on it.  They can also snorkel to check the anchor.
3. Find fun things to do when sailing.  They can help steer, coil ropes or just play checkers and Uno.  This one was the most challenging to us.
4. Lots of snacks.  We couldn't believe how hungry our kiddo was but when we stopped to think about it - he never stopped moving!
5. Explain ahead of time that there may be times when you can't talk to them and you need them to sit still and stay out of the way - like when you are trying to navigate a tricky passage or when a big rainstorm with a huge gust of wind suddenly hits you.
6. Tell them where you are going and what they will find there.  Have them practice saying names like "Anegada" and "Jost Van Dyke."  Explain the things you are seeing.  Practice spotting mooring balls and other types of boats.



7. Realize that when they are very tired, injuries are much more likely to happen.  One day after a long day at the beach, Jacob managed to fall off his seat and hit his back on the wheel and his stomach on the seat.  Half an hour later he fell down the stairs hurting his back and slamming his front on the floor.  Tired kids get clumsy and boats aren't kind to clumsy people.
8. Schedule lots of time for their favorite activities and realize they may not be what you think they will be.  Beaches - playing in the sand - not swimming or snorkeling turned out to be Jacob's favorite.  (Also remember that kids tend to get really cold snorkeling for more than 30 minutes at a time.)
9. Be sure to explain how the head (i.e. the toilet) works and double check a few times that they are doing it right.  Jacob was really good about remembering not to put toilet paper in the head but it took him a few days to figure out to pump with water before pumping all the water out.
10. Don't forget the peanut butter!  Jacob requested a peanut butter sandwich everyday.  Ham, turkey, salami and pepperoni just didn't cut it.

And, unlike this picture, you probably shouldn't let them run on the boat.

A BVI beach that you should not miss

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, is a great beach that meets just about everyone's beach expectations.

• Lots of white sand for those who just love to play in sand or sunbath.
• Almost nobody on the east end for those that like to have a beach to themselves.
• A great view for those that like to just sit and enjoy.
• Lots of beach bars on the west end for those that like to play with others.
• A water trampoline for those who really like to play.

Highly worth the trip.

Wild anchorage at Jost Van Dyke!

On Wednesday, March 28th, we sailed from Anegada to Jost Van Dyke.  It was a long slow sail but we more than made up for the lack of excitement later that night!  A couple of other boats got their anchor chains fouled up and ran into us!

When we pulled into Great Harbor at about 2:00pm it was so full of sailboats that I briefly considered turning around and going back to Little Harbor but we all wanted dinner on shore and to see Foxys so we looked for an anchoring spot.  First, we raced two other boats for the best looking spot.  We lost.  Then we headed for the second best spot and a guy yelled at us that his anchor chain was under there so stay away.  That was a little strange as we were looking at the stern (back) of his boat and boats tend to pull away from their anchors so the anchor chain is always stretched out in front of them.  So we looked around and it looked like every single boat was facing a different direction.   A bit scary.  But we persisted and found another good spot.  We anchored and the guy in the catamaran next to us tried to tell us we were too close but we showed him which way our anchor chain was and he must have decided all was good because he didn't say anything more. (Note that his boat was facing a different direction than ours - something that's not supposed to happen when everyone is at anchor!) 

Several times that night I got up and went up top in the rain to check things out.  I had just returned to bed at 3:30am when I heard voices!  I jumped up, ran up top and discovered that there were two sailboats 10 feet from us drifting into us!   I yelled for everyone else to wake up and started the engine.  Then I realized the engine wasn't going to do us any good as we were attached to an anchor that probably ran underneath one of the boats.  By this time Bill and Frank were throwing fenders over the side just in time to keep us from crashing into the boat next door.  Turns out they had decided to pick up their anchor at 3:30 in the morning (don't ask me why) and in the process of picking up their anchor they dragged it across another guy's chain and they ended up dragging him towards us.  But neither one of them could effectively manouver away because they were attached to their anchors and to each other.

The first boat, the one that moved, ended up taking its dingy around and lifing its anchor and the other guy's chain into the dingy and untangling them and then they went off to anchor somewhere else.  At which point the second boat (the one that had been dragged) was way too close to us - standing on the bow of our boat I could almost touch their stern.  They didn't want to move but I stood there and stared at them long enough that they decided to pull up 20 feet of chain at which point I decided that I'd have to be happy with that and I went back inside, changed into some dry clothes and tried to go to sleep.  (Note that we couldn't move without them moving because they were directly windward of us which theoretically means that our anchor chain was running right under their boat.)

All of this in the pouring rain!

Belle from Cow's Wreck

Belle and her husband own the Cow Wreck beach bar and they are very popular with the yacht chartering crowd.  Here's a picture of Belle talking to Bill.

The next picture is Belle's son-in-law Alex.  He has a masters degree in music and teaches at the local school.  There are 250 people living on Anegada and 30-40 students in school.  Alex says the education system in the BVI is excellent and the government works hard to ensure that everyone is gainfully employed.  I didn't see anyone begging or living in poverty and the BVI is not a cheap place!

Anegada!

Monday the 26th we took off at 10am.  (Right after our dinghy was fixed for the second time.)  We sailed directly to Anegada - I got a bit nervous at the end as we didn't see the channel markers right away.  Anegada is surrounded by reef and there is only one channel in - if you don't make it through the channel, you ground your boat.  We ended up anchoring in only 10 feet of water!

It rained most of the time we were in Anegada but we still had a fabulous time.  The beaches were gorgeous, the snorkeling was good and the beach bars were fun!  We stayed two nights.  The first day we went to Loblolly Bay which was by far the more popular destination.  Great snorkeling and an awesome beach.  The next day we went to Cow Wreck beach which was even better.  It was even more beautiful, there were only about five other people there - on a beach over a mile long!, and Belle who ran the beach bar and restaurant was a great cook and very friendly.   It's called Cow Wreck because a boat carrying a load of cattle crashed on the reef and their bones are still there.  We didn't see the cow bones but we did see a shark, a ray, and lots and lots of conch and crabs.  Jacob put a live conch in his sand castle until Frank explained that it would die out of the water.

The night before we left Anegada the wind blew like crazy.  I was getting really worried that it was going to be a rough sail the next morning.  I needed have worried ...

Bitter End Yacht Club

After the Baths we sailed to the Bitter End Yacht Club on the north end of Virgin Gorda where we grabbed a mooring for the night.  Our dinghy broke again (this time a wire that need to be replaced) - again, they fixed it quickly when they opened up in the morning.  Luckily there was a water taxi at Bitter End that we used to go back and forth to the resort for the evening.  It was free but they asked for tips.  (People in the BVI are very open about telling you when they expect a tip!)

We had dinner at a pub like place on Bitter End and Jacob got a hot dog - the one and only place that we found that served hot dogs in the BVI!  (We had made reservations at the Bitter End restaurant but on discovering that the average dish was $50 we decided to head for the pub.)

If I were to go there again I'd grab one of the Saba Rock moorings - they were right next door and they gave you free ice and water with the mooring.

The Baths - one of the most beautiful spots in the world

On Sunday, March 25th, we sailed from Peter Island to the Baths at Virgin Gorda.  It was a long but really good sail.  We had to wait about 30 minutes motoring around waiting for one of the day moorings as they were all full and the water was pretty deep for us to drop anchor in.  Then we dinghied everyone to shore and Frank took the dinghy back out to the dinghy mooring (about half the way to the boat) and swam in.

Jacob loved the surf on the beach and we all enjoyed the caves - Jacob, Frank and I had a great time on our own personal "rock slide" - a big rock about 7 feet tall that Frank hoisted us up onto and then we slid down the far side on our bottoms.

But everyone's favorite was the restaurant, The Top of the Baths.  The view was the best in the world, the food was delicious (the jerk chicken was spicy and the coconut chicken was sweet) and there was live music and a swimming pool.  Jacob made friends in the pool and the rest of us enjoyed our meal.  Jacob was quite upset that the half eaten sandwich he left on the table disappeared - this was our first clue to how much he was going to eat on the trip!

Boat trouble at Peter Island

On Saturday, March 24th, we left Norman Island and sailed to Peter Island.  We stocked up on ice at the marina and waited to get our dinghy motor replace by the Footloose chase boat.  The throttle broke and we had two speeds - full speed backwards or full speed forward.  The Footloose chase boat arrived promptly and changed the outboard motor.  Then we headed to a beach in the next bay over and discovered that our windlass didn't work!  The windlass is the motor that lowers and raises anchor - so no anchoring for us!  We backtracked to Great Harbor on Peter Island where we could get a mooring (one of those balls you tie up to) and waited for the chase boat again!  This time the chase boat took longer so we took advantage of the time to swim to shore (after waiting for a four foot barracuda to clear the waters!) and play on the beach.  We had a great dinner on the boat of game hens and the chase boat arrived at about 7pm.  They replaced the alternator belt on our motor and did some other stuff and we were back in business.  That night at Great Harbor we caught a bunch of fish that liked chicken bones!

Snorkeling at Treasure Point

On Friday, March 23rd, we got our boat.  After a hectic three hours of loading all of our provisions onto our boat, Carino, a 433 from Footloose, we finally got off about 3:30 and arrived at The Bight on Norman Island at about 4:30.  We had a great meal of mahi-mahi on board and the next day we went snorkeling at the caves at Treasure Point.

Jacob, who had never been snorkeling, jumped right off the dinghy into 25 feet deep water, came up and yelled "there's lots of fish down here!" Needless to say, he took right to snorkeling.

There are some great pictures of our boat with us sailing at Yacht Shots.  If we'd realized what they were doing we might have smiled!

Finally, the British Virgin Islands!

We arrived at Beef Island airport at 6pm EDT and took a cab to our hotel on Tortola.  It was a long day as we left the house at 3:30 MDT but Jacob still had plenty of energy for a swim and then he tried conch fritters for the first time.

Groceries for a week on a boat

We're chartering a sailboat from the Moorings for seven days and we had to order all of groceries ahead of time.  It was hard to plan all of our needs for a week in an environment we aren't used to.  How much water do you need?  How many cookies?  What to eat for breakfast?  We ended up planning for four meals onboard: cornish game hens, salmon, mahi-mahi and steak.  Frank is planning two of them and our friend Barbara is planning the other two.  Then we planned to eat most of our breakfasts and lunches on board with lots of snacks and appetizers included.  We didn't skimp on anything and all our food and drinks ended up costing us almost $800 (for five people) from Bobby's.

We ordered by downloading their spreadsheet, filling out our order, sending it back to them via email and then they sent us a quote.  They will deliver it to our boat at noon on Thursday!  I'll let you know how it goes!

Not just dreaming of sailing anymore

I've been dreaming of sailing in the British Virgin Islands for a while now.  I even posted on how to plan a sailing vacation.  Well, I'm not just dreaming anymore - we decided to go ahead and do it.  The question is just which month and exactly how much are we going to spend on airfare!

I took a liveaboard sailing class a year ago September in the British Virgin Islands and loved it - I blogged about it.  (Remember the entries are in reverse order.)

Here are some reasons to sail in the BVI:

• It's beautiful.
• The snorkeling is awesome.  I've seen turtles, octopus, squid, barracuda, ... in addition to the regular coral and fish.
• You can always see land.
• All the islands have beaches with great sand and beach bars.
• Sun.
• Warm water.  Even I don't get cold after a couple of hours in the water.
• Everybody there is in a good mood.  (Probably because they are all on vacation. :)
• Boats.  Sailboats.
• Sailing.  Crossing the ocean silently with the wind in your hair and the sun on your face.
• People.  Everyone is ready to sit back, have a beer and laugh.  Or dance.  Or party.
• Willy T's.  The bar on a boat.
• Foxys.  The beach bar.
• Great weather.  It's the same 75-85 all year around.
• The place on top of the Baths with the great hammocks.
• The Baths.  Who doesn't like scrambling through rocks and caves.  Especially caves that are open to the sunlight!
• Good food.  Conch fritters, anyone?

I'm very much looking forward to going back!

How to plan a sailing vacation

  Ever looked at a magazine cover of a beautiful white sailboat surrounded by gorgeous turquoise water and wondered how in the world do people plan a vacation like that?  Well, I've been dreaming about sailing lately, and since I'm not planning on taking my three month old sailing any time soon (they won’t let me start him in swim lessons until he’s six months!), I thought I'd share how I planned my sailing vacations and live vicariously though those that might decide to go.  Feel free to send me questions!

First you have to decide what type of sailing vacation you want.  In part it will depend on how much sailing experience you have and in part it will depend on how comfortable your traveling companions are with sailing.

There are five basic ways you can take a sailing vacation:

Pictures from Sailing Class

I had a great week sailing in the BVI on the Moorings boat Salaway with Offshore Sailing School.  I made new friends and learned a lot.  One of the coolest things we learned was how to "heave to", how to stop in the middle of the ocean.  The joke of the day was several thousand dollars and a whole week of class and we learned how to stop!

Here are the pictures I took.

www.flickr.com

Back on Land

Today we had a smooth sail home with the wind on our side.  We tried to stop at the Indians for some snorkeling but there were way too many jellyfish.

Now if the land would just stop moving ...

On our own!

Today we dropped off Anne-Marie, our instructor, at the Moorings and sailed over to the Bight ourselves.  It all went very smoothly, no hiccups until after we moored and the fastening that held our mainsail to the halyard broke, but Jeanne managed to fix it.  Willy T's wasn't officially open but they fed us anyway.  Good food and a couple of Dark and Stormy's.  After we finished eating they immediately informed us that we had to go and their boat left Willy T's before we had even gotten in our dingy!  So we went back to the boat and had a few glasses of wine and several long philosophical discussions.

Snorkeling at Monkey Point

We sailed to Jost Van Dyke today and anchored next to Foxy's Taboo. 

On the way over we stopped at Monkey Point for some awesome snorkeling.  Big coral with lots of ledges.  Lots of fish of different kinds and sizes.  Caves.  And I saw a turtle! About 2.5 feet in diameter. I floated right over him for a while until he decided he wasn't sure what I was and swam off.

We motored a lot today as their was little to no wind but a huge storm coming up behind us.  After we anchored, we had our lesson standing in the cockpit so that at least our heads would stay dry because nobody wanted to sit in the hot steamy cabin.

We took our last test (of three) today and we all passed!  After the test we went over our wrong answers as a group and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time!  We all went over why we had picked the answer we did and our reasoning (or guessing) was often hilarious - even to ourselves.

Docking

We arrived at the North end of Virgin Gorda today where we practiced docking, my least favorite of all boating activities.  We did pretty good and I asked to practice again in the morning.  50 foot of boat with lots of mass in winds and currents next to hard surfaces like docks just make me really nervous.  We learned how to do it with just two people.  Figuring out which spring line to tie up first is much less intuitive than you'd think.  We all had to think about it quite a bit.

Maneuvering and Man Overboards

Today we sailed from Marina Cay to Anegada.  On the way we learned how to turn the boat around in a space no wider than two boat lengths when motoring.  It's called back and fill and it uses your prop tilt to help push you around.  Then we practiced man overboards which was a lot of fun.  Poor Bob the life jacket got tossed overboard 6 or 7 times as we learned two ways to quickly turn around (while sailing) to recover someone.  Be careful coming in to Anegada.  We ended up with less than two feet of water under our keel where we anchored for the night!

Salaway

We are on Salaway, a Beneteau 494.  There are four of us, Anne-Marie, our instructor, and Larry and Jeanne, my fellow students.  We sailed from the Moorings in road town to Marina Cay where we anchored for the night.

According to Anne-Marie, the Last Resort in Trellis Bay has a comedy show on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights that is well worth seeing.

Cane Garden Bay, the beach

I'm sitting here on Cane Garden beach on Tortola staring across the cove at blue and turquoise water with islands in the background and puffy white clouds in the sky and wondering what makes it beautiful. I could sit and watch forever.

On my way over the taxi driver, a West Indian, said "There's Skyview."
"What is it?" I try to see what stands out. The mountain top? The building?
"Skyview."
"Oh. Where?"
"Skyview!" He points at the sign.
"A restaurant?"
Clearly frustrated with me now, he says "Yes, a restaurant."

FYI, the last two weeks of September is the low of the low season and all the beach bars are closed.

P.S. Locals consider Cane Garden one of BVI's most polluted waters because they don't think the waters circulate fast enough to deal with what's dumped in it. Looked and smelled clean to me, like almost all of the BVI.

Mariner Inn

Mariner Inn is nice.  I was a little worried because the reviews on TripAdvisor were pretty iffy.  But it's been remodeled recently and my room has tile floors, tall ceilings, balcony and king size bed.  Fridge, coffee maker and hair drier.  The bathroom wasn't remodeled with the rest.  My sink squirts water sideways.

They kept the bar open until we got here.  Before we even checked in they asked us what we wanted so they could hurry up and close.

On my way to a sailing class in the BVI

I'm on my way to the BVI!  I'm on the Denver-Newark part of my DEN-EWR-SJU-EIS trip. 

As luck would have it I am sitting next to a woman from Colorado who is reading a Sailing for Kids book so I pulled out my Basic Cruising book and we had quite the conversation.  They just bought a 30+ foot Beneteau in the Florida Keys in anticipation of retiring in 18 months when the youngest is done with high school. They plan to keep their house in Colorado so they can live there during the summers.  She really liked their wind generator.  Said it kept their fridge cold all the time.