BVI – Day 5 – Cane Garden Bay to Marina Cay

Day 5, Thursday, May 5

At home in Idaho we sail primarily on Redfish Lake, a high alpine body ringed with snow covered peaks. We don’t swim in Redfish to cool off; if it gets too hot we just stand up in the cockpit and let the cool mountain breeze do its thing. We had good intentions of practicing a man over board drill in Redfish Lake but the water is cold and we never did it. So all winter we diagram and discuss MOB techniques, assuming this is something we will be asked to perform with our skipper.

I hear the splash behind me but see Bass in front of me untangling the main halyard in preparation for raising sail. I turn around thinking we have lost the dingy. Instead I see the personal strobe light has popped off its stern bracket. The strobe is flashing and, having watched too may episodes of Deadliest Catch, I mistakenly think it is an EPIRB. I start to freak out when Bass tells me it is just a strobe light and is not transmitting any signals. We turn around to circle the strobe, I pick it up with the boat hook, and we continue to motor toward Marina Cay.

The morning is subdued and there is not a lot of wind. We think we may be in the wind shadow of Tortola so tack out away from the island, but there is still little wind off shore. Bass is feeling a bit subdued today too (Bass: reference yesterday’s piña colada comments). He takes one Dramamine tablet and eats some pretzels with a cold ginger ale. We have brought any seasickness med known to man with us – we have Sea Bands, the ear patch, Dramamine and Ambien – but this solo tablet is the only med necessary all week.

We motor past Monkey Point and Guana Island and find the cut between Great and Little Camanoe islands. There is a strong current in this narrow cut (Bass: with a following sea, and edged with reefs on both sides). We decide this would be a bad time to lose power. But we make it through, passing Trellis Bay on Beef Island and into Marina Cay, our mooring for the night.

We chose a ball and are securing the bridal when Bass notices a cat called ‘ti Profligate pass us and grab the next mooring ball. The owner of ‘ti Profligate is the founder of the sailing mag Latitude 38 out of Marin County, CA (Bass: one of my preferred sailing magazines, although not as good as Small Craft Advisor). He is often down in the BVI sailing and writing in the winter; now he takes his dinghy and passengers to shore. We want to meet him and figure we will at Pusser’s bar, but when we go to the bar he is not there and his boat is gone when we come back to Neil’s. On shore we visit the Robb White house which is now a hill top bar and not open this early in the afternoon. Robb White is the author of Our Virgin Island and he and his family were the sole inhabitants of Marina Cay for 30 years. Apparently a film was made too with Sidney Poitier. Being a giant “They Call Me Mister Tibbs” fan, I make a note to find Our Virgin Island on Netflix. Bass and I dinghy in to Pusser’s – hard not to go to a Pusser’s in these islands. We have pretty good Bloody Marys, Bass likes his fish and chips and I have a tasty grilled mahi sandwich. (Bass: We check out the red box as it’s another web cam we eyed through the long winter, but don’t quite get to standing in front of it and calling anyone.)

As the afternoon gets later we see a very lovely 70 ft plus schooner, like a Windjammer charter, come in and anchor in the deeper water south of Marina Cay. While the schooner’s hands are busy shuttling passengers back and forth to the restaurant, a gigantic private powerboat anchors behind the schooner closer to Trellis Bay. It reminds us the BVI is home to many mega yachts often flying Russian republic flags. And while we have not seen Tiger’s 150 foot power yacht called “Privacy”, we have seen some really crazy big boats; their dinghies are often $500,000 power boats.

We spend the rest of the breezy night listening to the bar’s reggae band from the cockpit of our boat. We sleep like baby rocks.

Google Earth Tour:

Click the link below to download a Google Earth .kmz file that will take you on a fly-by tour of our sail from Cane Garden Bay to Marina Cay:

Pictures:

Video 1 minutes, 22 seconds: