Logbook for the British Virgin Islands

A web log of the sailing vessel "Gyatso"

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Sailing Log for the British Virgin Islands

Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke, BVI
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We arrived in the British Virgin Islands on 11/19/06 after successfully completing the Caribbean 1500, a cruising rally. We ended up spending a month in the BVIs before moving on to explore some of the other Leeward Islands. We decided against going to the U.S. Virgin Islands because we had both already been, we heard that the customs process was not fun, and we would be visiting there in July 2007 for a family wedding. On the winter solstice, we celebrated 10,000 miles of sailing together (4,500 miles on our previous boat, About Time, and 5,500 miles so far on Gyatso).

Logbook Entries

Wednesday, 11/22/06--We spent two days at Village Cay Marina in Tortola catching up on rest, re-provisioning, washing down the boat, doing laundry and attending Caribbean 1500 events and parties. All of the running around ashore left Lisa with acute pain on the bottom of her right heel, an injury sustained before departing.from the Chesapeake Bay. She hobbled around until finding an orthopedic surgeon who was another rally participant while the fleet was docked in Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor. The doctor's "appointment" took place on the trampoline of one of the catamarans while we spotted for the owner who was hauled up his mast working on a radar problem. Lisa's problem was quickly diagnosed, but the cortisone injection treatment was going to require some time off her feet to reduce the inflammation. A week of cruising in the BVI's was just the ticket, along with icing the foot and a bit of rum-o-therapy.

Thursday, 11/23/06--After the last of the Caribbean 1500 Rally activities ended yesterday, we joined two other boats from the rally for a wonderful Thanksgiving feast at Cooper Island aboard Spirit. Gyatso contributed pumpkin pies, Cornish game hens and mashed potatoes, and Don and Donna on Destiny brought wonderful bubbly and wine and roasted carrots with Vermont maple syrup. Ruth and Jim made a delicious chicken and stuffing dish with a zucchini casserole to round out the celebration.

The next day, while picking up a mooring in The Bight at Norman Island, our friend Glenn from Island Time, the boat next to us in the yard at St. Augustine Marine, dinghied over to say hello. He was in the BVIs on Chris Marie, his 47 foot catamaran which he keeps in the Moorings fleet in Tortola We spent several more days cruising with him to Soper's Hole, Jost Van Dyke and Peter Island before returning to Road Harbour to drop off our crew, Roger, for his return flight to Maryland.

Wednesday, 11/29/06--We returned to Village Cay Marina and spent two weeks getting organized for the next phase of our trip. David recorded in the log, "We must be on island time because it is hard to figure out how two weeks at the dock went by so quickly!" Lisa found a doctor to treat her foot, we found a professional rigger to fix the staysail furling system, and we took advantage of the convenient internet connection to get caught up.

Wednesday, 12/13/06--We got back underway with a short trip to Cooper Island and ended up spending two days enjoying the swimming beach, snorkeling, watching sea turtles and enjoying a dinner ashore at the Beach Club's popular restaurant.

Friday, 12/15/06--We celebrated our first 10,000 miles of sailing together (4,500 miles on our previous boat About Time and 5,500 miles on Gyatso) at the Bitter End Yacht Club, North Sound, Virgin Gorda. We listened on SSB to Chris Parker from the Caribbean Weather Center for several days before finding a weather window to make the crossing to St. Maarten.

Wednesday, 12/20/06--Yesterday while preparing for our afternoon departure today, we saw Little Hawk arrive in the anchorage and made plans to cross Anegada Passage together. After David, Mark and Adriana returned from a nail-biting taxi ride over the mountain to Spanish Town to clear-out, we took on water at Saba Rock Resort and departed just before 3:00 PM. Our forecast was for light winds on the nose, but we were happy to motor through the night for this particular passage which is notorious for its contrary current, tradewinds from the wrong direction and big waves. We had no moon for the crossing, but saw the lights of many boats as motored east in light winds over moderate-sized swells. We had just installed a new C-map chip of the Eastern Caribbean in our chart plotter and found this to be extremely helpful in addition to our gray-scale paper charts. We arrived the next morning just before dawn along with an enormous cruise ship and waited with them for light before entering and setting anchor in Philipsburg harbor. David recorded in the log, "A beautiful crossing, but too little wind for sailing. One flying fish gave up the ghost on deck -- as stiff as a board when I threw it back to Neptune."

We spent the next six weeks in the Leeward Islands.