North Sound, Virgin Gorda 2013

North Sound, Virgin Gorda 2013

 After a couple of good nights' sleep we pulled up our anchor at Foxy's, Jost Van Dyke and headed to North Sound. It was time to fuel and water up at Leverick Bay and wait for a good weather window to cross the Anegada Passage to Saint Martin. Our little five hour run on the water was one of those where you just shake your head and say “This too is sailing”. The wind was blowing 20 knots from the east, the waves on the north side of the BVI’s where 12 to 15 ft. We were heading east. So being the old salts that we are, we fired up the Ford Lehman and headed for the cut at the airport on Beef Island to put land on our port side. Not a bad day. How bad can it be when you are in the beautiful Virgin Islands?

                                                                  North Sound                         

We dropped the hook in front of Saba Rock with the plan of spending the night and heading to the dock at Leverick Bay in the morning. Saba Rock is one of those places that we keep going back to. It’s got a great internet connection that we get  on the boat and when there is that urge to talk to someone other than someone your sharing the small living space with, we head into happy hour. Three dollar drinks, good chicken wings, watch them feed the tarpon and nice friendly people. Life is good!

                                                                        Saba Rock                       

One night became two nights, lots of wind (20 knots plus). It was looking like it was going to be blowing a stink for a while so we decided to head to the dock to get some maintenance done on Sinbad. That way if the wind ever laid down we would be ready for Saint Martin.

                                                                     Sinbad at the dock   

 Leverick Bay Marina we like. It’s the only marina that we've spent a night at in the last 12 months. We've stayed there four times, two or three nights at a time (this time five). Friendly staff, free water, nice showers, fresh-water pool, bag of ice, and all for one dollar a foot!

                                                             Cap'n Di became Painter Di !   

 Our days at the dock were made up of a little of this and that. There was the cleaning, ejector oil pump changing, cleaning, zinc pencil changing, cleaning, painting our two propane tanks, and did I mention cleaning? Having all the fresh water we could use is something we are not used to. We hit Sinbad hard inside and out. The cleanest it’s been since we left Tawas Bay in August of 2011! With all that we still managed to play a little, swimming, hiking and Happy ARRR !

                                                                        

                                       When Di say's we are going for a walk its always up hill!      

                               The fat guy taking a break, Saba Rock and Bitter End in the back ground.

                               

 HAPPY ARRR at Leverick Bay is the Michel Bean pirate show. Great show!

                                      Beans holding a pic of Cap'n Di & Lou from yrs gone bye              

                                                                      

                                                                      

                                                                               

If you can’t make it to the BVI to see Beans check him out at the Grand Haven Coast Guard Festival or on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. He’s there for a couple of weeks every summer (his old stomping grounds), usually around the first of August.    

So we've been here over a week and it looks like at lest another week will go by waiting for our weather window- it's not easy being stuck in paradise!  

Randy                                                                 

Old Year's Night at Foxy's, BVI 2012-2013

After Christmas in St. Thomas,we left Lindbergh Bay and headed for Coral Bay, both of us hankering for delicious bacon bleu /cheese burgers and the old hippy vibe at Skinny Legs Bar and Grill.  We anchored out near the channel markers, next to the orphaned sloop ACATSGRIN, with her mast hung down alongside and her moorings festooned with seaweed, unchanged from last year.

Coral Bay, St. John,  USVI

 Also unchanged is the gang of friendly pirates at Skinny Legs, from Robby the peerless burger chef, Tiny with bootleg lobsters in  his backpack, and Laura the bartender, who is now starting up a day charter business. We stayed for an evening and left the next morning (Dec. 27) for Jost Van Dyke to get a good anchoring spot ahead of the hoards arriving for Old Years Night at Foxy’s, the Times Square of the Caribbean.

We got settled and headed over to White Bay to the beach, the finest beaches we have visited since April in Antigua. Blazing turquoise waters and ivory sands welcomed us, and we wandered among the visitors and met a lot of nice people. 

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke.  Lotsa fudgies!

Di met the Uncle Wendell, a local fisherman and mahi connection, and Toughest, a lean and muscular workman who was digging out a pig-roasting pit, and the same man who felled three coconut trees with a cutlass just before Christmas and gave Di two jelly coconuts. We danced to a great band at Gertrudes, met up with Captain Ron, Randy’s pal from Coral Bay with starboard (red) and port (green) toenail polish, and Gary from Boston, recovering from cancer, who kept us company and provided lots of savvy local knowledge. We also met Grady-mon and Hyas, local dudes here for the Old Year’s beach party.

Each day the beach filled with a larger and larger, younger crowd, ‘til Old Year’s Day when it looked like Panama City Beach at Spring Break. We met up with Tracy and Angie from “Caribbean Rose”, a boat we knew from our months in St. Thomas, and Englishman Bill aboard Corus, a fine 1984 Whitby out of Roadtown, Tortola whom we encountered last year. Delightful folks. 

Corus of Roadtown, a 1984 Whitby

Randy enjoyed watching as arriving boats did the anchoring show, speeding in on the approach and dropping anchor and chain like a bowl of spaghetti off the bow, then dropping back to within 6 feet of other boats in the neighborhood.  We made sure to hang fenders all around our boat and drop the solar panels to a protected position in case someone dragged down on us. Randy hauled Di up in the bosun's chair to photograph the crowded harbor.  What a view!

We bought tickets for Old Year Night to see the concert at Foxy’s Outback, featuring Tarrus Riley , said by all to be a great performer. 

Old Year's Night at Foxy's---Randy was the most photographed person there!

 We spent the day at the beach, rested up a bit, enjoyed a wonderful American porterhouse steak dinner grilled by Randy, with mushrooms in garlic-wine reduction and creamy mashed potatoes and asparagus, and Freixinet Cordon Negro to bubble in the new year. Then we headed ashore.  Well, the concert was interesting.  It started with an OK local dance band at around  1030.  The second band was a white rasta guy who sounded like Sting on a bad day. Midnight passed with a ten second countdown and issues with the sound system… a few cheap thrills when they dropped in part of a Bob Marley song to fill some dead air time… next came a lip sync act which left the crowd flat.  At 0130 came Tarras Riley at last, but by that time we had nicknamed him “Tarrus Bulba” and couldn't really appreciate the show, due to the late hour and the botched warm-up acts. (I think he’s good and would buy his CD- his musicians were professional, but alas the production was not.)  We stayed for about six songs and were ready to leave, weaving through the solid bouncing mass of young partiers dancing to the techno outside at Foxy’s.

New Years Day, we awoke at 0600 as usual (ugh), drank two pots of strong coffee, and in dinghied over to the beach for one last time.  We did a slow-motion stroll up the beach and back, and collapsed on the pontoons of our dinghy to lie in the sun like beached walruses.

Happy New Year 2013 to all our blog friends and family.  Love, Randy and Di