BVIs Week 3

Hi everyone,

Our third week in the British Virgin Islands saw us exploring the north side of Tortola and the Jost Van Dyke (JVD) islands.  We ended up at Soper's Hole (aka West End) where we cleared out.

View from Foxy's Taboo bar on JVD

Moving short distances between anchorages made us a little lazy about recording our tracks.  Below are the tracks we captured...

Partial Week 3 Tracks

From Lee Bay on Great Camanoe Island we motor-sailed the short distance to White Bay on Guana Island.  We anchored in about 12m over sand N of the mooring balls.  Using our WiFi Extender we could access the internet via the password-free resort WiFi.  Very nice!

White Bay has some nice coral regrowing on the reefs inshore of the mooring balls.  Monkey Point to the south was a well-known snorkelling spot but strong winds made it unattractive during our stay.  We spent two nights at anchor here.

View towards JVD from Guana Island

From Guana Island we sailed W to Diamond Cay off JVD island.  We anchored off Little JVD in a 10m 'hole' over sand.  The anchorage gave surprisingly good protection from ESE winds.  And we were well clear of the moorings further W.

Rainbow at anchor off Little VJD island

It was a short dinghy ride to JVD.  We tied up at Foxy's Taboo dinghy dock.  From there it's a 15 minute walk to the Bubbly Pool.  Seas funnel through a narrow gap into a pool, with each producing a literally bubbly rush of water.  Certainly worth the walk to experience.

Foxy's Taboo bar on JVD

The Bubbly Pool on JVD

At the Bubbly Pool

Back at Foxy's Taboo we had a cool drink before dinghying across to the B-Line bar on Little JVD.  This is a much smaller bar and we each had one of their rum punches.  The bar is covered in boat and crew names - all dating from after the recent hurricanes.  Zen Again is there on the roof and on the leg of one of the benches.

At the B-Line Bar on Little JVD

Decorations welcomed - and we're from down-under

From Diamond Cay we motored the short distance to Great Harbour on the S coast of JVD.  We tried anchoring but found only rubble.  After a week anchoring we were content to take a mooring.  They're all US$30/night.

We dinghied ashore to explore.  We tied up at Foxy's Bar dinghy dock.  We walked all around the periphery of the bay to the ferry dock and marina.  We returned to the famous Foxy's bar for lunch.  Lots of boat names all over the structure, nice drinks and very good food too.

JVD taxi

Foxy's Bar at Great Harbour, JVD

Zen Again at Great Harbour, JVD

We spent only one night at Great Harbour.  From there we motor-sailed across to Soper's Hole on the west end of Tortola.  We cleared out there in 2016 for Bermuda and it was good to return.  We took a mooring between the marina and the Customs/Immigration office.  We spent the afternoon rewatering and provisioning at the Harbour Market supermarket.

Throughout our time in the BVIs we had been reviewing our plan for the rest of 2022.  Two weeks in we discovered the US Embassy in Nassau's visa waiting time had blown out from 43 to 99 days.  Emailing them resulted in our understanding the waiting time was optimistic for third nation citizens.

We certainly don't want to end up 1000nm to leeward of alternative places to spend the hurricane season.  So we took the sad decision to give up on visiting the US this year.  We decided to head E to Sint Maartin and cruise S to Grenada where we'll spend the hurricane season.  Such a shame to miss out on the Bahamas and the US east coast.

Soper's Hole

We spent two nights at Soper's Hole watching a developing weather window for our passage to Sint Maartin.  By then we'd accepted our decision and were looking forward to exploring south.  But first we needed to work our way 80nm east into the trades.

It was great to visit the BVIs again.