Two hours later at the end of my watch, the sun had risen but the clouds where still blocking the strong rays, making the surroundings gray. The boat was near our intended anchorage so we brought the engine to life, pulled down the sails, and dropped the anchor in a patch of sand. We ate whatever food we had that was still on board, mostly Haitian mangoes, bananas, plantains, and miniature watermelons, and my mom’s famous fresh baked banana bread, all chased down with the first cup of hot coffee I’d had since we started our nine day sail because of the hassle of boiling water at sea. Once we filled our empty stomachs, we launched the dingy so the parents could go ashore to find the immigration office, a restaurant, and a slip in the marina, while leaving the crew to do the most nasty job on the boat, pump out SAM.

SAM is our nickname for our slimy, slick, black, stinky bilge monster that likes to swallow things such as tools, sunglasses, cups, small children, and many other items you’ll never see again once consumed. SAM stands for “sick and mucky” and if you’ve ever smelled it you would understand why it’s not a fun job. We spent the whole time my parents were ashore, manually pumping and rinsing the bilge getting SAM back into a bearable state, which made their return to the less-odiferous boat with  good news only that much better. They found the grocery store, a slip in the harbor that we could tie up to that afternoon, and had ordered cheese burgers for all of us at two o’clock at the marina restaurant. We successfully brought the boat into the tiny harbor and slip without any damage, then cleaned her throughout while the parents zoomed off in a van with a government official to fill out immigration paper work. They got back just in time for our lunch appointment at the marina restaurant. We gorged ourselves on bread, soup, and a salad bar, and then we got our hamburgers and fries and washed it all down with ice cold beverages. By the time we left the restaurant, the staff almost had to roll us out the door. After some serious digesting back at the boat, Alexis, Sara, and I went for a bike ride to see the small community and grocery store while Tracy and my parents went to check the Internet.

There were two grocery stores on the island that were minimally stocked, and the only time they had fresh food was on Wednesday when the delivery barge arrived. But if you didn’t get there within a few hours, you’d miss out on the booty. After we pedaled back to the boat with precious junk food in hand, we unloaded our plunder and went to the Driftwood Bar to have a couple drinks and check email over ice cold drinks. Sara, Tracy and I met many of the captains that ran the million-dollar fishing yachts docked in the marina. It didn’t take long for us to get invited to go marlin fishing the next morning. But when we woke up, both my sisters and I discovered that we had forgotten to reset our watches and woke up an hour late. So being stuck on the boat, we all decided to put the time to good use and worked to get her ready for the next passage, and because the weather was becoming tropical and very unpredictable, we figured we’d be staying a couple of days. Around noon that day a character named Ken raced up in a hotel golf cart, slammed on the brakes while turning the wheel hard to the left, and sent the golf cart sliding sideways to a halt in the gravel parking lot. My dad and I introduced ourselves to this new friendly visitor and found out that he owned a twenty-eight foot offshore fishing boat across the marina. We invited him on our boat, gave him the grand tour and quickly became fast friends. Before he got back in the golf cart and zoomed off, he invited the whole family to go explore and dive on the windward side of the island.

In the morning, we all walked over to Ken’s boat with our snorkeling gear and met his local deckhand, Abbey. After we got every thing stowed below, we released the dock lines and Captain Ken motored us out of the marina into open water on the lee side of the island. He pushed down the throttles, quickly bringing the boat to a twenty knot plane, and took us to the east side of the island in a matter of minutes. Once we got out of the lee of the island, the seas picked up and Alexis and Tracy started to not feel so hot. But we quickly made our way through the barrier reefs and outer islands that protect the main island, and Ken navigated us through the bay dogging razor sharp submerged coral heads that could have easily sunk his boat. Once safely inside the barrier reef, Ken located the first of two coral reefs that he favored because of their abundant life and diversity. Abbey dropped the Danforth anchor over the bow and as it quickly sank to the sandy bottom, he let out enough rode to keep us fifty feet from the thriving reef. Everyone geared up and dove off the boat into blue water that was a little murky because of the consistent high winds. We all took our own path around the reef, seeing many fish and different types of coral that I had never seen. My favorite fish was small, but the vibrant colors made it unique. It was black with bright neon electric blue stripes running down the length of the fish making it look like it had accidentally swallowed a light bulb. After everyone had done a couple passes around the first reef, we all started the long trek toward the barrier reef off the bow of the boat. The leeward side of it was pretty dead, but it became better and better as we made it around the windward side. With Ken protecting us with his Hawaiian sling ready just in case a hungry shark cruised up from the depths, we circled the outer reef. Ken started looking for lobster and conch for dinner, while the rest of us floundered around enjoying ourselves. We all eventually made it back on the boat a couple of conchs richer and ready for a cold soda where Ken told us of the next game plan, which involved going over to one of the small barrier islands to explore and snorkel over the islands sand banks to find a few more conchs.

Abbey was the first to swim ashore and while he was waiting for us, he disappeared into a small coconut grove. He reappeared once we reached the beach with his huge arms filled with fresh coconuts, which he proceeded to smash against the edge of a razor sharp limestone rock with his gigantic hands. Once filled with fresh coconuts, Ken, Abbey, Alexis, and I dove the sand bars while Sara, Tracy, and my parents explored the island. We found enough conch for a tasty conch salad and swam back ashore to gather everyone to head back to the boat.

Motoring back through the bay was a little more intense because the tide was lower and the setting sun was glaring off the water which made it hard to see the coral heads, but once we were back in deep water, it was a downwind run the whole way.

After about thirty minutes, we arrived back at the marina where we all collaborated in a feast of Ken’s conch salad, Daniel Horak’s (a new friend, fisherman and pilot) Haitian rum, and my mom’s fresh sushi. By the end of dinner, we were all stuffed, but we forced ourselves to the bar regardless to hear all the day’s fishing tales.

The next couple of days we all did the mundane sailor stuff; we did our laundry, took a dingy ride to the nearby Club Med, visited the local pubs, and my favorite, having a bonfire on the beach and playing music with occasional visitors stopping by to see what the “natives” were up to. I also got invited to go offshore fishing with two young guys from Florida that had a high performance fishing boat that their dad had recently bought them. The young captain’s name was Jason. He was a tall blonde haired guy who seemed very calm, yet there seemed to be something inherently crazy about this nineteen year old. His deck hand and best friend, Matt was a short eighteen-year-old with a passive attitude, good taste in music, and a brown lopsided white man “fro”.

The first time I met these two, Sara and I were sitting around one of our beach fires strumming away on the guitars. Now this “beach” we decided to have a fire on was some sand, but mostly small boulders that made it very hard to navigate in the dark, especially when a lot of beer is involved in the equation. So here they came, after an evening at the Driftwood Bar, stumbling through the nearby bushes and scaring the life out of us. After quietly making their introductions, they found a place to stand and attempted to conquer the bucket of ice cold beer they had brought with them. By the time the fire died, they were having a hard time standing on the shifting boulders so Sara and I called it a night, put out the fire, shuffled them back to the paved road and hit the sack.

The following day they invited me to go fishing with them but after this first impression, I was a little hesitant to get on a boat with them. About 1:00 in the afternoon I was pleasantly surprised when I walked over to their boat; it was a 28 foot Contender 1 with double 375 hp V8 Yamaha outboards and all pimped out with a stereo, radar, neon blue running lights and all the latest fishing gear, including out-riggers, rods and reels, and lures. When I got there they were ready to go so I untied the dock lines, jumped aboard, and off we went. It only took about thirty seconds to get out of the marina, crank up the stereo, and get on an eighteen-knot plane. After about a minute Jason looked over and asked if I wanted to see how fast she would go and I said sure. Before I knew it we were racing in the lee of the island at forty knots, and I felt like I was holding on to the side of an airplane in mid-flight. After we blasted around to the windward side of the island Jason brought down the throttles to an eight knot cruising speed, then ran to the back of the boat to help Matt get the lines on the out-riggers and into the water. Once everything was rigged Matt shoved a Sugar Ray CD into the stereo, and we trolled over an underwater ridge in search of fish. Twenty minutes later something hit the port line, and they let me reel in a small barracuda. After an hour of fishing we only had one other hit so they decided to pack it up and blast back to the marina.

Half way back, a thunderstorm popped up about half a mile in front of us and instead of taking an extra ten minutes to go around it, Jason decided to just go all out straight through it. By the time we popped out of the other side, my flimsy little windbreaker was soaked through, and though I was in the Bahamas in May, I felt like I had been caught in a Texas winter rainstorm.

After we docked and cleaned up the Contender, I walked back to the boat where Ken was waiting to take me and my sisters on a tour around the island in Abbey’s truck. Over all, the island’s terrain was pretty much the same except for the coastline, which changed drastically from the leeward beaches to the windward cliffs. Ken also drove us to a beach home he was thinking of purchasing, and later that day, he took us out to eat at a different restaurant where I got another burger fix just in case we were to sail off in the next couple of days. This was a smart move because the next day my dad said he wanted to be ready to leave in two days.

So we borrowed Ken’s hotel golf cart and loaded all of our jerry cans on it and puttered over to the nearby grocery store. We filled the cans from five gallon bottles, and on the way back, we discovered that Ken had “unknowingly” lent us an empty golf cart. We had Alexis steer while Paps and I pushed, but after the downhill turned to flat, we gave up the ghost, and I went to get gas. In the meantime, dad got a tow to the nearest gas station, filled up the five gallon tank for forty dollars, and then told Ken that he wasn’t giving it back until he had burned up at least half the tank.

The next day, the day before our departure, Ken asked if we would stay one more day so I could go marlin fishing with him and Abby. We all agreed that it would be a good experience, so the following morning I jumped aboard and off we went. During the first two hours we had no bites, and we had to struggle with keeping our lures unfouled of cumbersome Sargasso weed. We moved around a lot, fishing over two different ridges, and over the second one we seemed to have more luck. Once the weeds lessened and the wind calmed the mood of these two hunters seemed to get very serious. Out of nowhere, the farthest out-rigger unclipped, the line screamed off the reel and there was an explosion of water where a hundred and twenty pound marlin came flying out. The way Ken described marlin fishing to me in the pub was “complete boredom interrupted by pure hysteria,” and I now understand what he meant. When it was clear that the marlin was hooked, all the other lines were reeled in, and the yelling and profanities lessened, Ken stuck me in the chair and let me battle the fish. The stamina of the marlin was amazing, and after about twenty minuets Abbey took over and fought the fish for another thirty minutes. When we got the fish up to the side, Ken grabbed the bill, removed the hook and released it back into the deep blue sea. We flew the marlin flag, letting everyone back at the marina know that we had successfully landed one, and motored back to the docks.

After helping dock Ken’s boat and clean up, I made it back to Kai Ohana to find that everyone had prepared the boat to leave as soon as I returned. Apparently while I was gone, the wind had shifted from off the ocean to over the islands central lagoons, and the no-see-ums and mosquitoes had nearly driven my family crazy, which motivated them to move the boat and anchor off-shore to get a good-nights sleep before we continued on our way north.

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I slowly drug my carcass to the wheel where my paps was still sitting, a bit more cheerful than I had seen him in the last two days. I looked toward the bow and realized why. He was studying two chunks of high rock with a narrow pass in between. I then looked to the stern and was even happier to see that my “Corvette” (our 14ft rigid inflatable dingy with a 48 horse power outboard) was still being quickly towed behind our 50-ton ship and hadn’t been lost at sea during the night’s high seas. The only reason I think my corvette was still behind us in the morning was because the day before my dad had promised to give her a couple big smooches if she was still following us when we got into port, and later that day he kept his promise.

We still had about two hours before we made our way through the Ginger Island Pass into the lee of the islands south of Spanish Town. While we sailed toward the pass, Captain Daddy Paps told me about an experience he had had the night before. He had not slept properly in about thirty-eight hours and was starting to get a little loopy around 10:00 pm when our small red-lit Danforth compass started to make animated faces at my sleep deprived father, then proceeded to give the captain little pearls of knowledge which he couldn’t quite make out. Moments later, mom (The Admiral), walked up to the helm to see how he was doing. Paps’ immediately asked if she was coming to relieve him explaining the compass’ antics. She stopped him halfway through and told him she didn’t want to hear any of that freaky stuff. After he had finished telling me his story, I was even happier to see the Virgin Islands because that meant he wouldn’t be having any more late night conversations with Mr. Danforth Compass.

We had just done our first passage in our refurbished boat from St. Martin to Virgin Gorda and it was an absolutely hellish trip. When we pulled into Spanish Town and performed one of the most perfect anchor jobs we’ve done to date, the majority of the crew was ready to jump ship and never do an overnight sail again. Then we all went ashore. My parents found the immigration office and filled out the repetitive paperwork, while my sisters and I explored the waterfront, letting our sea legs wear off and searching for all the facilities on our list (drinking water, grocery stores, restaurants, garbage bins, laundry, fuel, bar, coffee shop, internet, bus stops and routes and an assortment of other cruiser necessities). Then we went on a search to finding the greasiest cheeseburger on the Island. I’ve never really related to Jimmy Buffet’s “Cheese Burger in Paradise”, but after that sail, it was one of my favorite songs.

Once satisfied with a big grease bomb, we all did our own thing. My parents, Sara, and Tracy stayed at the Internet café, and Alexis and I walked down the shore of Spanish Town, which after St. Martin, I found to be old and run-down. The only businesses on Virgin Gorda are about 3 restaurants, a hotel, a marina, a small expensive market that is stocked mostly with booze, and one gigantic taxi service that transports all the large, sun burnt tourists from the ferry terminal to The Baths and back. Just before it was time to get back to the boat, paps and I did a quick beer run and had our first relaxing evening in a week on a small beach being bathed by an amazing sun set and gently lapping turquoise water. Later the girls showed up and we went back to the boat for a big family meal with bottles of champagne and many toasts (and hooting and hollering in between) congratulating each other for surviving the sail and finally being at anchor. Many of the charter boat tourists tied off to mooring balls all around us peered in our direction wondering why they weren’t partying on our boat.

In the morning we had a long and proper breakfast of Texas toast, scrambled eggs with cheese and sausage, fresh fruit and a cup of hot coffee. And after not much contemplation, and despite the long boat to-do list, we decided to waste away the afternoon at The Baths. All six of us piled into the dinghy and headed off toward the marina in search of a taxi. After we tied her off, it didn’t take more than thirty seconds until we had numerous cabbies asking if we needed a ride. We quickly found our man, JD, and piled into the back of his 15 year-old shiny white ford truck that had red, steel, cushioned bench seats welded into the bed with a red and white striped cover to keep baking sun at bay. He pulled out of the parking lot and off we went twisting and turning down a dusty paved road snaking through a dense carpet of dry, coarse shrubby and low growing trees with the occasional huge granite boulder poking out among them.

When we got to the parking lot my expectations were smashed. We hopped out of the taxi and the whole area was swamped with tourists. We started walking down the main trail, and though it was beautiful, there were so many people at some points on the trail we had to stop to let groups of them squeeze between us and the boulders and trees. The experience was a bit like walking through throngs of people at Disney Land. We finally arrived at the beach and took a right, walking to the northern portion were there weren’t so many sizzled people. My Mom, Alexis, and Tracy went snorkeling while Dad, Sara, and I explored the huge stacked granite boulders at the end of the beach that lay upon each other from the top of the hill to the bottom where they disappeared into the sea. It was like climbing straight into an Indiana Jones movie minus the bugs, snakes, and Nazis. After an hour or so of climbing over, under and around walls of roots, 50ft high rocks, and small cavern beaches, we came back out and all the tourist were gone. It was like after hours at Disney Land but we were allowed to stay.

In talking to some locals, we discovered that the last ferry left the docks at 3:00 pm so the park was emptied by the pushy cab drivers by 2:00. By the time we came out of the boulders, we had the trail on the south side of the beach (the popular side with its dedicated trails, stairs and rope handrails) to explore and tourist-free snorkeling to still experience. Sara, Dad, and I were sweating from climbing on, in and around hot graniteboulders and decided to get on our snorkeling gear and jump in the water. It was the perfect Caribbean blue (a little murky from the wind swell), but the sea life was diverse, though much of the coral had been destroyed by people that had either touched it with their hands or fins. It proved to be the perfect dive for both advanced and beginner divers.

Once we had seen our fair share of fish cruising around, we swam ashore, gathered every one and our gear and walked onto the trail heading toward the south end of the island. That, in my opinion, was the best part of the whole park. The trail was so diverse that it was almost like you were walking through different places in the Caribbean and the United States at the same time. Like Enchanted Rock in Texas, or trails on the north shore of St Martin, there are many granite boulders that lean against and on top of one another to make large caverns that often have small beaches inside that glow turquoise from the light outside. If you have ever read the book “The Hobbit” there are caverns that would make you think of Gollum’s creepy cave and areas that would make you think you were walking through a scene in a Star Wars movie on a rocky dessert planet with a couple of out of place palm trees here and there. The deserted area was limitless, but we had made a cab appointment for our return trip at four o’clock so we didn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked to. But we did get to hike the majority of the trail, even those side routes on the windward side not visited by many of the tourists.

We had a nice dinner that evening of salted baked pork chops, rosemary potatoes, bread, and baked carrots then hit the sack early. The next couple of days were spent maintaining the boat that was only interrupted by a small surf session on a shallow reef right outside the protected Spanish Town Harbor inlet. With our boat and a stunning sunset in the background, we joined a South African guy who was surfing while his girlfriend sat in their dinghy and read. When we showed up, he decided there wasn’t enough surf for the four of us and went back to his boat. The wave was one of the smallest I’ve ever surfed, yet one of the scariest. The south swell came out of deep water, then jacked up on a 1ft foot reef with plenty of large antler corals, one of which grabbed my dad by the neck after a nasty wipe out. By twilight, we had our fill of hairy two to three foot waves and paddled back to the dinghy then blasted back to our ship now rolling in the newly arrived swell.

The day before we set sail, the whole family took one more trip to The Baths, which I enjoyed just as much as the first. We took the dinghy over this time instead of taking a cab, so we had plenty of room for our underwater film and photo equipment Once we had gotten enough footage (and after two o’clock so Disney Land was once again closed), we swam ashore and took another hike around the trail.

Our final day in Virgin Gorda was spent preparing the boat for the short sail to Trellis Bay, Tortola, but during our weeklong stay, the boat spun a full 360 degrees and twisted the two anchor chains together, which made them very hard to pick up. It was perfectly fine with me because I didn’t want to leave, but the anchors eventually did come up to the hawser pipes, once I dove down in twenty-five feet of water to wrestle them free of each other. Then off we were, sailing in light trades toward our next adventure.

Want more on Virgin Gorda?
Read the Virgin Gorda Article.
And watch the Virgin Gorda Video

Want more on Virgin Gorda?
Read the Virgin Gorda Article.
And check out the Virgin Gorda Photos