There are a LOT of destinations in the Virgins

Folks,

We’re working on a long post that covers the visit last week of Trevor and Ruth Rabie.  They visit us each year and we have a blast and this was no exception.  There are lot of photo’s though which requires better internet to up load it.  So we’re slipping this shorter post in on today’s mediocre internet connection.

The image above show’s our wanderings in just a single day at Jost Van Dyke, BVI.  And we only stopped at about half the spots.  We started at Great harbor in the same bay as famous Foxy’s to visit the customs office to clear in.  Sometimes you get a good officer and sometimes it’s one of those “not my job to do anything but make you wait for me” civil servants that couldn’t hold a job anywhere but the government payroll.  Today it was a mixed bag.  I checked the boat in and when we got close to completing that step the super nice guy suggested Robin do the immigration forms to save time.  Yes!  I love it when we get a real nice and efficient officer.  Unfortunately the immigration lady wasn’t the same at all.  When Robin walked up the youngish lady officer was finishing a very long text message and didn’t bother to acknowledge her.  Things went down hill from there and I’ll spare you the details but this happens about half the time and we’re getting used to it.  To help ease the frustration we walked down the beach a ways to the ice cream lady and loaded up with a butter pecan cone each.  Then back to the dink and a short ride to Tookie to remove the yellow Q-flag again and we’re now legal to go anywhere we want in BVI.  So over to  Diamond Bay where we had a drink at Foxy’s Tabo the new Foxy place that has only been opened 7 years.  There are a few mooring balls and a lot of places to do good snorkeling and swimming.  Plus there’s this place where you sit in the rocks and get a bubble bath from waves that surge in.  All the balls were taken except one and there was a charter boat full steam ahead trying to beat us to it.  We’ve been amazed at how fast they’ll try to go to get to that last ball and even when it’s obvious they can’t beat our cat they still go full power until we’ve got the ball and they have to accept the horror of maybe anchoring with the anchor.  We’ve won this race before and felt bad afterwards since this really seemed to put fear into eyes of everyone on the charter boat.  This loss probably caused them a sleepless night out of only a week or so here and we were responsible!  Ever since if there’s a charter boat on the romp I turn off and let them have the ball.  We’re very comfortable anchoring and that way we all get to have the fun.  So we tucked in over closer to Foxy Taboo and settled in for a trip to happy hour and a real nice evening on the boat.  Next morning we stopped at Sandy Cay to finish some more SS cleaning and then went over to White Bay, one of our favorite destinations.  It’s pretty popular so all the mooring balls were taken but we found a spot to anchor until a boat left a mooring ball.  We could have stayed at anchor but we’d have had to move since we didn’t have enough swinging room to stay the night.  Late afternoon a lot of boats depart and there are good anchor spots and usually a few mooring balls.

One of the neat things about this location is that there are a wide variety of bars.  There’s everything from pretty good dining on the west end to famous Soggy Dollar in the middle to easy going relaxed atmosphere Ivan’s on the east end.  All have in common a pristine white sand beach and crystal clear water that join them.  So after a short wait we saw a boat moving off a ball and in no time we were hooked up and ready to play.  Well to be totally candid this wasn’t such a quick mooring operation.  The ball and grab line had been damaged so it took both of us in a little bit of a shuffle to grab it but we got it done fairly quickly with only a short “anchor dance”.  We got our inflatable chairs blown up and plunged off the back of the boat and paddled ashore and back to the boat for an hour or so and then had the tough decision of what bar to go to.  We have 4 to choose from and started with Ivan’s place and worked our way down to Soggy Dollar since Robin wanted to shop for tee shirts.  No arguments from me since the bar is good and there’s a fair amount of “eye candy”.  No disappointments today and we met up with several couples from California that we’d met the day before at Foxy’s Taboo.   They said their boat name was SV Viagra and they were all of eligible age so we didn’t contest it.    There are always young girls that want their picture taken and this was no exception.  So two of the guys asked if I could take their photo and here’s what I got:

Just so everyone knows, this isn’t what I do at the Soggy Dollar.  I have much more important things to do here:

Special thanks to Trevor Rabie for the photo above!

As you can see White Bay on Jost Van Dyke is one of our favorite destinations.  The word favorite in our vernacular has a little different meaning now that we’ve been cruising the Caribbean.  There are hundreds of favorites only a hair apart but the combination of great anchorage, beach, snorkeling, beautiful swimming and  multiple social venues make this one hard to beat.

Best regards from White Bay.

Chris and Robin