Discovering
the
The British Virgin Islands are some
of the least commercialized and most pristine in the Caribbean, facts made
crystal clear when discovered from the deck of a yacht.
By Terence Loose
|
O |
n the fifth morning of my sailing trip to the British Virgin
Islands, I found myself studying my feet. They hadn’t touched terra firma for
four days. They hadn’t been restricted by shoes for four days, which meant they
were the same color as my legs, islander brown. In fact, my feet seemed
uncharacteristically relaxed, like they could star in a Corona beer “change
your latitude” commercials. But I was not on a beach, or anywhere near a chaise
lounge or a tourist bar. I had gone a step further. Instead of sipping an
import under a palm and looking at the ocean, I was staring at the beach, an
empty one, across a body of crystalline water from the spacious cockpit of a
Moorings 47-foot catamaran. It was better than any commercial I had ever seen,
and I was the star.
We had chartered the boat in Tortola with another couple and
spent the last four days sailing the close-knit British Virgin Islands. Also
aboard were two crew members, a big boy-faced and affable British captain named
Will and his petite but able fiancée Julia, a trained chef who went by the name
of Jubee and could handle an anchor as well as she could a galley knife. They
were doing the sailing, as well as the navigating, anchoring, paperwork,
cooking, and cleaning. Basically, if it involved lifting or sweating, it was
Will and Jubee’s department. If it involved consuming or lounging, it fell to
us. So while Jubee fixed lunch, we snorkeled with turtles and rays and
barracuda. While Will checked the weather, cleaned the dinner dishes and
planned the next day’s route, we gazed at stars while listening to the trade
winds brush through the rigging.
But only a month before, the idea of having a professional
crew aboard for our sailing vacation struck hard at my salty bravado. My wife
and I had logged a lot of time on the water – we had sailed our 32-foot cutter
to the South Pacific only two years before –
and I hated the thought of being relegated to paying customer rather
than master and commander (as if I was ever in charge, anyway).
The final debate took place as my wife cooked dinner one
night while I scrambled to keep our 14-month-old daughter from directing an
attack on the oven with Elmo. Sure there were some bad times at sea: all night
anchor watches, hours of chart work, and some cooking and cleaning. Okay, a lot
of cooking and cleaning.
“But do we really want to give up that feeling of freedom and
independence?” I asked, thumbing through the impressive Moorings Signature
Vacations brochure. Indeed, a Moorings representative had claimed to me that with
the crewed yacht charter, a “sailor” need never have even been aboard a boat
before. “The crew handles everything,” he said through the phone, obviously not
picking up my disappointment.
My wife took the brochure, flipped it open to the page that
showed guests being served gourmet meals with cloth napkins and sparkling
silverware. She dragged a hot pad across her sweaty brow. “Definitely.”
And she was right. In fact, it turns out that much more
freedom comes from having a crew than not. It costs more, sure, but the dollars
are well spent. We were doing more of the things that we took vacations to do:
snorkel, dive, kneeboard, sail, and just plain relax. Yes, I – a father of a 14
month old – said relax. This is because we chose a catamaran for stabilization
– my daughter has enough trouble walking on a sidewalk – and for room. Though
this was another blow to my salty ego (no true sailor would opt for the cat
over the sleek monohull fleet, which includes the new $2 million 55-footer),
the minute we climbed aboard and closed the cat’s special baby door to the
patio-sized cockpit, I knew we had made the right choice.
We also avoided wasting precious time in bad anchorages, or
worse, dangerous ones, thanks to having seasoned veterans who knew every cove,
every wind pattern. We enjoyed places we would have otherwise never discovered,
thanks to the fact that a crewed yacht is allowed many places bare-boaters are
not.
One of those was the place where I studied my feet. The
anchorage, in which we were the sole boat, is at the very eastern end of Virgin
Gorda, almost two miles into the red (bareboat-restricted) zone on the
color-coded Virgin Islands chart Moorings hands to its customers. But it is
protected by more than just a stern warning from the Moorings front office. To
get to our spot, we passed Prickly Pear Island and Saba Rock, where we picked
up water from the new dock and resort, and ventured into a minefield of
“bombies,” or coral heads, rising in many places to just below the surface.
As Jubee stood at the bow, signaling when she saw upcoming
bombies, Will kept a hand on the wheel and eye on the depth gauge. The depth
had gone from 12 feet to seven and showed no inclination to move into double
digits again.
“How do you remember the path through this?” I asked.
Will gave a school kid’s grin. “Actually, this is the first
time I’ve been up this way,” he said. As we passed a large, but hard to detect
reef to port, he added, “I once watched a boat get towed off that reef, though.
So I knew not to go that way.”
I pulled my daughter a little closer. “Great,” I said.
Will said the spot we were driving for “looked promising” on
the chart. Translation: wind protection, sandy bottom, marine-life-filled reef
close by, hard to get to, desolate. It’s the modern-day equivalent of treasure,
and what every sailor worth his salt is hunting for. In the increasingly
commercialized Caribbean, it’s also becoming as rare as pieces of eight.
After 30 minutes of dodging coral heads and shallow spots, we
entered a huge, pristine bay, surrounded on three sides by white beaches and
green trees. No one was in sight. The feeling was magical, as if we had sailed
back in time and discovered the inviting beauty and warmth of the Caribbean for
the first time.
That’s about when we hit bottom. Any sailor can imagine the
stomach-sinking feeling the thud of keel touching sand gives. And for you
non-sailors out there, imagine driving your brand new SL 500 the wrong way over
those tire spikes that promise “severe tire damage.”
I looked at Will; everyone looked at Will.
He actually seemed calm as he said, “I’m happy to report the
depth gauge definitely works.” He then spun the boat off the sand and backed
her to a deeper patch for anchoring. Jubee dropped the hook, Will set it, then
donned a mask and snorkel and went over the side to check our “swinging area.”
In case the wind switched unexpectedly in the night, Will wanted to ensure the
depth gauge didn’t get another test.
Soon, we were all in with him, snorkeling in the clear warm
water. I found a few sea turtles and swam shoulder to flipper with them until
they decided they had had enough tourist sightings for the day, and swam
quickly into the underwater horizon, proving very un-turtle-like. We also saw
various corals and too many reef fish to count. We only got out because the
oysters on half shell and smoked salmon lunch Jubee had created was waiting.
Over lunch, I commented that probably most people see Will
and Jubee’s jobs as idyllic, sailing among some of the Caribbean’s most favored
islands. That most probably don’t realize how much real work is involved in
keeping a ship ship shape while pampering five-star vacationers. Will
acknowledged it was hard, but the good days made up for the bad. And as for the
guests, most were absolutely great, and all were interesting. There were
drunkards, who did nothing but drink all day and ask to be dropped at the bars
at night. But they generally wanted little more than a refill from Will and
Jubee. There were groups who dreamed of sailing their own boat through the
Caribbean someday and spent the week learning the ropes, “helping” Will steer,
anchor and raise sails. Then, there were the total surprises, like the
attractive New York couple who both had high-pressure jobs and packed very,
very light for vacations. “As a release from their jobs,” explained Will, “they
went nude on vacations. They called at least three times before the charter to
make sure that was okay with us, though, and turned out to be two of the most
normal and likeable people we’ve had aboard.”
The story reminded me of the dedication the Moorings staff
has to service, from providing discount airfare to pre-planning every meal. I
remembered the multi-page Guest Information packet we had filled out, two pages
of which were dedicated to food and drink. We checked off foods and beverages
we wanted on the menu and answered questions ranging from “Are there any foods
you can’t live without?” to “Will there be any special occasions while aboard?”
As if to emphasize this point, Will, who now had become our
personal chauffeur, got up and readied the dinghy – our personal water
limousine – to take us ashore, and 15 minutes later, while Jubee cleaned the
dishes, we were carted to the perfect and desolate beach.
The British Virgin Islands are unique among the islands of
the Caribbean for offering the best of both worlds. If you desire, you could
easily spend every night anchored off a different resort, with nightlife and
shops. And the islands are close enough together – over 60 islands, cays and
rocks stretch across only 30 miles of ocean – that by day you could explore
pristine beaches and dive uncrowded waters. The mobility of your own small
“resort,” a sailboat, makes it possible. So as my wife and I played with our
daughter in the warm waters off the beach, I marveled that just that morning,
we had passed two resorts and a hopping restaurant before we turned the corner
into our own perfect world. It seemed the Virgin Islands really were virgin,
thanks to the express policy of the tourism authorities to protect the island’s
biggest draw: it’s natural environment.
|
T |
here comes a point in every trip when the traveler realizes
that he is closer to the end of his vacation than the beginning. It’s a
horrible moment, when a pall descends like a rain cloud at a wedding and an
uncontrollable angst takes over as the traveler wishes in vain for time to
slow. I have a theory that the better the trip, the closer to the actual middle
of the trip that point comes. This is the paradox of the perfect trip, and on
my BVI escape, it came on the night of this fourth day, exactly halfway through
the cruise.
We had finished dinner, our daughter was asleep in the cabin
that she had commandeered with her toys and changing mat and extensive baby
paraphernalia. Will, Jubee and our friends had turned in early and my wife and
I had the boat to ourselves. We stretched out on the trampoline that serves as
a catamaran’s foredeck, one big lounge chair floating on the sea. We sipped
wine, listened to the wavelets caress the hull and watched the starlit sky
above. It was intoxicating and movie-perfect, but, like all movies, promised a
third act.
“You always do that. Why can’t you just relax and enjoy the
moment,” asked my wife when I told her my thoughts.
“It’s not the moment, it’s the moment after I’m worried
about,” I said, hoping for a smile.
She just leaned back and stared at the sky. I did the same,
and silently struggled with the fact that we only had four days left. Once
again I found myself wondering if a great vacation might be the worst possible
thing for a stressful year. Give me lost baggage and bad weather and dishonest
cabbies and bugs and rain, I thought. Maybe then I can survive the other 50
weeks of the year feeling lucky.
But there was none of that during our week in the BVIs. It
was all disturbingly perfect. I could tell you about the fact that not one drop
of rain fell during the entire eight-day cruise. About diving historic wrecks
in 100-foot-plus visibility. About The Baths of Virgin Gorda, which can best be
described as a series of naturally formed warm-water pools made private by big
round boulders straight out of Walt Disney’s imagination. About how we visited
over a dozen anchorages off eight islands but never felt rushed. About the
windsurfing, knee-boarding and kayaking in what seemed like our own private
watery playground, a space teeming with colorful reefs and fish thanks to the
fact that most of the waters surrounding the BVIs are part of a National Park.
About the relaxing downwind sailing we did while a dozen bare-boaters scratched
upwind and fought unfamiliar rigs.
But I won’t, because that would just be boring. Worse than
boring, it would be envy-inducing. This is the problem with travel writing: the
worse the trip, the better the story. Who wants to read My Dream Sail when The
Perfect Storm is available? So instead of describing the romance that quiet
moonlit nights on the balmy Caribbean sea conjures up, I will instead focus on
the one sour note of the week: the free shot of Pusser’s rum – the official rum
of the Royal Navy – we had at Pusser’s Landing. Jubee aptly described it as
“paint thinner grade” and it became pungently clear why they give the stuff
away. (Although, for business purposes I would suggest they give away a shot
only after a customer buys a bottle.) But that hardly seems adventurous.
In the end, our sailing vacation was too idyllic to be
included in any travelogue anthology and seemed more suited to a splashy
“Travel Café” episode. Instead of battling tempests and finding my way into
strange anchorages using only my wits and a star, I was pampered and fed and
held the wheel only when the temptation moved me. I was not the salty sailor I
pictured myself to be. And my manhood was a small price to pay for the
pleasure.
For detailed information, visit www.moorings.com or call (888) 952-8420.
The
Yachting Experience
What you should know
before you go…
|
T |
he Moorings is the original and largest yacht chartering
company in the British Virgin Islands, established in 1969, and also has
chartering centers in virtually every desirable port world-wide. Their Moorings
Signature Vacations, the crewed yacht charters, are available in the Bahamas,
the BVIs, St. Thomas, St. Lucia, St. Martin, the Grenadines, Belize, Tahiti and
the Seychelles, with varying fleets ranging from 45- 47- and 62-foot custom
Catamarans to 50- and 55-foot monohulls. Guests are able to book the entire
yacht, which have three or four air-conditioned double cabins with private
bathroom and hot shower, or book a single cabin. Everything is included in the
price, including an open bar, gourmet meals, kayaks, windsurfer, dinghy,
snorkeling equipment and much more. The Moorings can also book discount
airfares through their travel department.
Sailing experience is not required and children are welcome.
The wide and stable catamarans are perfect for kids of any age; they even come
equipped with a child safety gate which encloses the large cockpit. The
luxurious and sleek monohulls offer a more traditional feel and higher
performance sailing. Guests are allowed to sail the boat as much or as little
as they like and have full say over the destinations (though one of the big
advantages of having a crew is their local knowledge).
All things considered, we found the crewed yachting vacation
was comparable in price to one ashore in a fine hotel, as well as much more
private and hassle-free since everything was no more than a deck-length away.
For detailed information, visit www.moorings.com or call (888) 952-8420.