We’ve been roaming around the British Virgin Islands where we landed just over 2 weeks ago. The Salty Dawg Rally we came down with is centered at the Bitter End Yacht Club in Virgin Gorda – at the extreme eastern end of the islands and it was nice to arrive in amongst a group of familiar faces. However, we took off to explore some of the other islands and bays, initially stopping at Spanish Town where we managed to get a local SIM card for the phone

and then we moved down to the Baths – a very interesting formation of granite boulders whose origin nobody can properly explain and anchored close by – right opposite a beautiful sandy beach – best beach I’ve ever been exposed to with lovely surf and wonderfully soft sand. In the morning we dinghied over to the baths – which proved interesting gaining access to as you’re not allowed to beach your dinghy there with a large area cordoned off by rope. The drill is you row the dinghy right to shore and drop anyone off that needs – along with electronic gear (cameras, etc.), then row back out about 50 yards through the surf to the start of the swim area, tie your dinghy up and then swim in. I’m not the best swimmer in the world – so it was all quite taxing! The reward however was a fascinating scramble through the piled-up granite boulders and rock pools.

Next we headed over to the east end of Tortola where we anchored in another rolly spot. We were here in order to drop the mainsail off for it’s second repair to the batten system. Wandering around the small town was interesting – but showed the poorer side of the BVI’s…

We then headed over to Norman Island – a major destination point for the numerous charter boats that ply the seas here. Willie T’s here is a converted old steamer – to a bar and restaurant – where people come to be rowdy and enjoy jumping off the back of the boat from the second floor. Had to be done…

Our next destination was Soper’s Hole – and nice little harbor with quite a lot of activity. We were able to catch up on internet stuff here and make more inroads to our charging system woes. However, we didn’t stay long – instead heading off to Jost Van Dyke – the party island of the Virgins apparently.

 

 

We had a lovely stay in Great Bay for a couple of nights – with yet more pondering about the charging system. Lunch at Foxy’s was good and we had drinks at one of the numerous beach bars. We walked over to White Bay – home of the Soggy Dollar bar – arriving as complete sweat balls with sensible walking shoes on – with crowds of half-naked people enjoying the beach and the water. How clever of us to arrive at such a great beach without swimming trunks! Never-the-less we had a lovely afternoon there and enjoying watching all the young things strut their stuff!

We returned to Soper’s Hole in order to put Toodle-oo! on the dock so that we could re-charge the batteries properly – our whole charging situation is clearly a mess. We ended up staying there for three nights – getting fully charged and working out a complete solution for the situation. It turns out that the problem is lack of brains – in that I did not work out how serious our draw was compared to our charging capability.

This goes a long way to finally explaining why when we purchased the boat, she had so many hours on both the engine and generator – they must have used both simultaneously to charge up the batteries for hours each day. Hopefully we have a solution that will reduce the charging time – I just need to find someone sensible to confirm my idea before blowing the whole boat up!

We’re now back at the Bitter End with the majority of the other Salty Dawgs – ready for a luncheon event today. After that, who knows where we’ll be heading! Our long term plans have been up in the air for quite a while, but if feels like we’re finally settling on a plan to head “Down Island” – to the Leeward islands and perhaps one or two of the Windward Islands, before heading across the Caribbean towards Panama… Another plan laid out in the sand at low tide…

A bit of a strange start to our first winter in the Caribbean – it’s hot and humid and the boat projects just keep on coming!

The warm water down here (80F+) is very nice for swimming, but plays havoc with our fridge and freezer which are cooled by means of “Keel Coolers” – bronze plates bolted to the underside of the hull. Up in New England and Canada, these work great – the water is 20+ degrees cooler. Down here, the compressors have to work double time to get the heat of the system and they are just eating up our battery supply. So much so that we’re having to run the generator for several hours a day. And of course, the generator is acting up too! Whereas I used to be able to run the watermaker and the battery charger at the same time, I can no longer do that… And water costs $0.25/gallon down here, so we could really use the watermaker!

On top of that, the head stinks! I’ve had to replace the one way “Joker” valve to prevent nasty stuff coming back into the bowl – and this joker valve was only 3 months old! I’m now out of joker valves!

We’ve also had to deal with a badly fixed mainsail repair – fortunately the outfit that did the repair in Virginia recognize their mistake, but they’re only going to assist to the tune of $100 with the new sail loft – in spite of them charging us $430 for the lousy repair!

Feels like we’ve been working harder than we did when we earned money – and now we’re spending money faster than ever thought possible too! Still, I’d rather be doing this than sitting behind that desk again!

 

It’ll inevitably get better!!!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone – we’ll be sitting on the beach today having swum for our beers at the Soggy Dollar!!!

We arrived in Virgin Gorda on Sunday afternoon! 1320 miles sailed in 8 days, 8 3/4 hours – therefore an average speed of 6.58 knots through the water. Our planned route was 1295 miles – so we therefore managed to follow the rhumb line very closely – and our average “Velocity Made Good” was 6.45knots. Not bad!

The trip started really badly! 6:00am – still dark: At the dock, I unclipped the electric hookup and the heavy bale end collided with the latch on our monitor windvane gate mechanism and knocked it to pieces – with two critical components ending up in the water! Fortunately, I was apparently wearing my MacGuyver hat and managed to bodge it back together with two hose clams and we were ready to leave by 6:30. Leaving was not pretty – but we managed to extricate ourselves from the pilings we were between with just a couple of non-damaging bumps! We were one of the last  boats in the remaining 24 boat fleet to leave.

We motored out into the Hampton river where we raised the main in the building breeze and quite heavy chop. We’d just had the main repaired – with a new improved system to hold the battens in the sail – but on first hoist two of them broke out! What a waste of money that was! We ended up sailing without battens for the first couple of days and then managed to bodge something up once the seas had calmed.

The first couple of days were boisterous with big seas – and even though they were supposedly only 12-15 ft, that means we should expect some to come in at double that – seemed to us that most were coming in about 20 – 30ft! Toodle-oo! managed the seas with aplomb and we managed to get across the gulf stream in about 30 hours. Full foul weather gear was removed and replaced with shorts and tee-shirts.

We had a day or so of no wind and calming seas – so ran the engine which was a bit of a blessing since the generator had decided to quit working and we needed to charge the batteries – which were now being challenged significantly by the warmer water making the fridge and freezer draw considerably more power than normal. Without the generator, we also couldn’t make water – but that turned out to be a non-issue for us as we carried sufficient water for the entire trip.

The last few days we sailed – and were always in company with a couple of more boats from the fleet, or others that were part of the Caribbean 1500 rally – all rather reassuring. On one day, we had a deja vue experience in that like the time we sailed from the Azores to Ireland with great wind and the rest of the fleet were becalmed, on this day, we had good wind – 15 knots on the beam (perfect!) and boats that were within 5 or 10 miles didn’t have enough wind to sail! I couldn’t even blame it on the beans!

We fished the entire way – but caught nothing. I finally got Laurie to admit that our selection of lures was inadequate so with any luck, next time we’re near a fishing shop, she’ll let me loose! However! On the last day, we managed to bag 2 tuna! First a Bluefin – which sadly had been hooked without us knowing, so when I did notice about 20 minutes later, I just hauled in the drowned fish. I cleaned this guy out and prepared tuna steaks and then put the pole out again – and about an hour later we caught a Yellowfin – both of them were about 10lbs. We had enough Tuna now for a few meals!

The last day was great sailing, but unfortunately we had to turn into the wind after rounding Anegada, so we took the easy way out and motored the last 3 hours and took a mooring at the Bitter End Yacht Club.

 

It’s hot here! Really hot!

The arrival beverages were good, strong and plentiful! We slept well!

We have a new Tracker – a DeLorme – which will allow us to send a satellite signal out giving our position. It was a requirement for the Salty Dawg rally we’re about to embark on from Virginia to the BVI’s – a roughly 10 day passage. We’ll be sending out positions every 4 hours once we start – probably Saturday morning. You can track us here: https://share.delorme.com/Toodleoo

Unfortunately, we’ve had our first abandonment… Ship’s cat Bella is headed back to Massachusetts, to new Staff. With our constant changing of schedules and destinations, it was proving impossible to have a cat aboard without risking the possibility of her being put into quarantine – or worse – and suffering potential high penalties. So, a very difficult decision made but Bella’s new staff Marie will undoubtedly take really good care of her – with routine visits to the groomers, etc. – and she’ll be with her sister, Lola. She will be sorely missed by her old staff, the crew of Toodle-oo! There’s not a dry eye on the boat.