“Fish On! Fish On! Fish On!”
Havana, my 8-year-old son, yelled as the reel on the aft rail began to sing. It was mid-morning on our seventh day out of Bermuda, sailing down to the British Virgin Islands. The Puerto Rico Trench and the open Atlantic were behind us; we were over Kingfish Banks with the islands of Tortola and Jost Van Dyke in sight ahead.
I reeled in a 20-pound wahoo as our two kids and the crew gathered around, providing encouragement. Dressing and filleting the fish was a bloody operation that the kids watched with gory delight. After the aft deck was washed down, I called Foxy’s Tamarind Bar on the VHF radio, asking if they would grill up the wahoo for our dinner that evening. There would be six of us, and there was no other option, since we’d run out of propane.
Jost Van Dyke is the best place to clear into the BVI. The customs and immigration office is in the building at the foot of the town dock. Foxy’s being willing to cook up our dinner was a bonus to anticipate as we sailed in that direction.
On our way there, we stopped to cool off at Sandy Cay. We dropped the hook, dove overboard and swam to the beach. It was a few days before Thanksgiving in 2009, with our cold New England lives three months behind us. Searcher, our 57-foot Bowman ketch, had carried the six of us safely through gales and calms, over the Gulf Stream and through the Bermuda Triangle to this paradise of blue sky, warm water and gentle winds.
By the time we’d left Maine, both kids were already savvy boat rats. They’d grown up on and in the water, and on Searcher. They could swim by the time they were 2, row a boat by 4, and paddle their own kayaks and sail a dinghy by 6. The family had been in the BVI when they were young, but there’s little they remember. This time, they were 8 and 10 and ready for adventure.
We were spending the entire winter exploring the islands from the BVI down to Grenada and back. To get the boat here, we’d been joined on the delivery from Newport, Rhode Island, by a young couple, Rob and Emily. They’d be flying back north soon, but first, we spent a few days at Foxy’s, sailing around to West End on Tortola to take on fuel, water and propane, and then sailing over to Norman Island to prepare for Thanksgiving.
Norman Island still had the original Willy T back then, anchored in the Bight, surrounded by dozens of charter boats. I’ve always favored Kelly’s Cove behind Water Point, away from the crowd. You could drop the hook in sand and run a stern line ashore to keep the boat pointing north. There was room for only a few boats. I’d spent months anchored there when I was single.
As a family, we’d have nearly a month to spend in the Virgin islands before heading south—lots of time for the kids to explore the pirate caves, sandy beaches, coral reefs, markets, museums and old colonial ruins.
The pirate caves on Treasure Point were overcrowded with charters, so we took the dinghy to a walk-in pirate cave above the waterline. It’s on the point between Soldier and Benures bays. There’s just enough room to nose the dinghy in and offload young treasure hunters. The reefs were worth an hour of snorkeling, too.
After that, since we were dropping off the crew at St. John’s in the US Virgin Islands, we had to clear immigration at Cruz Bay. There’s no getting our 57-foot ketch into the inner harbor, so we picked up a park mooring outside and took everyone ashore in the dinghy. The family then had the afternoon to explore the village.
Cruz Bay is a bustling village with ferry boats coming and going, shops, stores, a post office, a hardware store and, at the top of the hill, a modest market with a larger supermarket a 10-minute walk away. We stocked up after visiting the National Park Service visitors center, next to the dinghy dock across from the immigration office.
The next day, we motored over to Maho Bay, where, on one of my previous boats, I’d ridden out Hurricane Luis in 1995. Ashore was the Maho Bay eco-campground, since taken over by more upscale cottages, but the beach is great. I’m told there’s a knock-up village there with a food truck now.
Around Mary Point to the east is Leinster Bay, and the Annaberg sugar and rum plantation. We anchored (you pick up moorings today) and went ashore to explore. There’s a well-maintained trail from the beach up to the grounds of this sprawling plantation—a step back into the colonial period. No one was there, but the signage explains the process of turning sugar cane into sugar and the by-product, molasses, which is then turned into rum.
We cleared back into the BVI at West End, Soper’s Hole, and spent the afternoon snorkeling around The Indians off Pelican Island.
The anchorage and beach on Deadman’s Bay, to the east of the Peter Island Resort, can be crowded, but there’s good snorkeling around Cabey Point. The next day, I took the kids to the wreck of the Rhone, off the western shore of nearby Salt Island. This British mailboat sank during a hurricane in 1867. The wreck became a classroom for underwater film and photography workshops I ran in the 1990s. The stern section, rudder and propeller are near the beach and can be explored with a mask and snorkel. The rest of the ship, scattered over the bottom, descends more than 60 feet. Dive operators on Tortola will meet you there with all the gear.
We anchored off the old village on Salt Island and took the dinghy around to the Rhone so the kids could free dive down to the stern section. Later that afternoon, the kids paddled their kayaks to the beach to explore the abandoned settlement and salt works that once extracted salt from the salt ponds. The kayaks proved invaluable, as the kids could go off on their own (always together) to explore. They had a sense of freedom and independence, and we got a few hours of peace on the boat. We also brought their bikes aboard, but they were seldom used. Island roads are usually too narrow and full of potholes.
Bring off the grid with no TV or, in those days, social media, the kids lived life in the present. We had board games, books, and painting and drawing materials. Havana began building model boats from scraps of wood. (Today, she is a graduate yacht designer and naval architect.)
Searcher provided us with a backyard for play. I’d brought along hip harnesses so the kids could clip into a halyard and swing out over the water, from bow to stern and back again. We also had a boogie board and used it to tow the kids behind the dinghy. The 15-hp outboard had enough power to get them water skiing and wakeboarding.
Swimming with Dolphins
Julie had heard about a park on Tortola where the kids could swim with dolphins. It was based at Prospect Reef Resort in Road Town. We sailed over and anchored, then spent a few hours one afternoon watching Ren and Havana become familiar with two of the dolphins. They hugged and stroked their new friends, and got dragged the length of the pool, thrown into the air. It was hard to tell who was having more fun, them or the dolphins.
That facility was wiped out in Hurricane Irma in 2017. Still, Road Town is a busy place, more so now than 15 years ago. Today, there’s a cruise ship dock, shopping malls, supermarkets and the huge Moorings charter operation. There was a time when this port was a small, quiet village with just two stores for provisioning.
What hasn’t changed is that the BVI is a great place to start a life of Caribbean cruising. The sailing is easy. You can pick up a mooring every afternoon in a different cove or off a beach where there’ll be a bar and a restaurant. It’s just more boats now, so start early each morning in order to pick up your next mooring by noon.
A 10-day, around-the-islands sail will help you feel more confident before undertaking more adventurous voyages farther down the island chain—such as the one we did next, heading from the southern tip of Virgin Gorda for the French island of Guadeloupe, 200 miles and 36 hours to the southeast.
