On the day we planned to leave, April 3, 2008, we woke to cloudy skies and gusty northeast trade winds. Sailing across the Francis Drake Channel in these conditions would have been effortless, but gracefully anchoring in a potentially crowded anchorage could pose some problems in adverse conditions, and I had no idea what to expect at our destination.

We prepared the boat for the sail to Trellis Bay and by noon we were hit by a 25-knot squall that lasted about an hour and a half. The wind clocked all the way around the compass toward the tail end of the squall, which resulted in the twisting of our two anchor chains (we set two hooks out anticipating the same wind we had in St. Martin), so when the squall stopped and the wind completely died, Preston had to dive the anchors to untangle them.

As we got the anchors in and the sails raised (about 3:00pm), the wind was so light that it did no good in pulling us away from being drawn by a current into the other boats at the anchorage, so we started the engine and pushed our way west out of the lee of Virgin Gorda. Once around the point, we picked up a light north breeze and slowly made our way across the channel. As we progressed, the wind increased to 12 knots out of the northeast, which put us at the mouth of Trellis Bay just before sunset.

Our exposure to the charter boat community in Spanish Town did not prepare us for what we were about to experience on the other side of the channel. Certainly The Baths (just south of Spanish Town) are a huge tourist draw, but the lack of “good” anchorages near them makes it more of a ferry destination than a charter boat destination. It’s true we had a few charter boats pull up beside us and tie off to the mooring balls, but due to the southern exposure of the anchorage and the few days of rolling that we experienced (though nothing near what we had lived through in Marigot Bay) there were often days where the moorings sat empty.

Not so in Trellis Bay. When we rounded the northeast point of Tortola, there was literally a wall of hulls against the yellow buoys (the airport southwest of the bay prohibits anchoring outside the yellow buoys – for some reason they don’t like masts in their take-off zone) blocking all access inside the bay. As we approached the line of boats looking for the smallest of openings we could squeeze our 50 ton vessel through, we were greeted with many cruisers on their decks with hands on there hips and shaking there heads in a, don’t-even-think-about-it sort of posture. We turned around and headed north to Marina Cay where our luck was not to change for the better; it was packed as well. We tucked up in behind the edge of the reef as close as possible, but the 15 to 20 knot wind and the resulting chop coming out of the southeast was barely thwarted. Also the fact that we had anchored upwind of two boats whose combined value exceeded $10 million prompted me to issue an all night anchor vigil.

Preston and Alexis took first watch while I pretended to sleep (I just knew I was going to hear those dreaded words, “We’re dragging!”), then Lauren and Sara took the watch until 2:00am (while I continued to pretend to sleep), then I took over until 8:00 the next morning, at which point an unexpected mass exodus of the charter fleet had begun, the two private yachts behind us being the first to leave.

The way the mooring balls work is the white ones are pretty much for the charter fleet (though anyone can use them) on a first come, first serve basis and cost around $15 per night. Unfortunately for us, they only accommodate boats that are a maximum length of forty feet (about half the size of us). Any colored balls are reserved for commercial use, owned by others, or reserved for dive boats. I had my eye on a big orange ball right up in the crook of the reef near the fuel dock, and luckily enough, a huge privately-owned catamaran untied itself and departed with the rest of the fleet. I asked Lauren to jump into the dinghy with Preston and ask the guys at the pump for permission for us to tie off (we’ve learned long ago, never send a man to ask another man for a favor, when there is a woman there who can do the job so much better). The guy at the pump’s response was more than gracious, “Yo beautiful boat would be da perfect fit tied off to dat der mooring, mon.” It ended up that it was the private, yet un-used, mooring ball of the guy who owns the island (and Pusser’s Rum), Charles Tobias, and ours for nearly two weeks for a mere $15 a night.

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

We decide to run for Virgin Gorda anyway. On the morning of February 25, 2008, we weighed anchor in the lagoon and followed a number of boats into the channel from Simpson Bay (on the Dutch side of the lagoon) to the Marigot drawbridge for the 8:15 opening. The tide was slightly less than half way out and I was concerned with our 7-foot draft (we’ve only just made it through the channel at high tide). We grounded in the north part of the channel, but accelerated to the point of digging our way through. A 90-foot luxury yacht behind us grounded where we did and missed the bridge opening.

We sat on the hook in Marigot Bay in nearly dead calm all day (something we were very much enjoying) and prepared the boat for the passage. At 9:00pm we were blessed with a final farewell from our Czech friends Martin and Romana, and by 10:00PM, we had the anchor weighed, sails hoisted and were on our way west toward the southern tip of Anguilla.

By 11:00PM, we were traveling at 1-2 knots in 5 to 8 knots of wind and I took to my bunk for some shut-eye. Sara and Alexis had taken turns steering all night (I woke every hour to check on them), and I took the helm just before sunrise (5:00AM). Since we had worked our way out of the lee of St. Martin, they had both grown increasingly sick, and by the time I took the helm, they were ready for bed.

We had just gotten around the southern tip of Anguilla (nine miles in seven hours) when the first squall hit. The wind went from five knots to 20 knots in an instant then calmed to slacked off to 15 to 18 knots thereafter. By 9:00AM, we had picked up a few miles, but we appeared to be on a collision course with a freighter (we were heading west/southwest, they were heading northwest). With one eye on the growing freighter to our south and one eye on a growing squall to our north, I feared the worst, but the 25 knot wind from the approaching squall left me no choice but to veer north west (into the wind to relieve the sails), which allowed the freighter to pass with plenty of room to spare. Forty minutes later, we were back to 15 to 18 knots of wind and skating toward the Virgins.

Against Preston’s advice I decided to drag the dingy behind us, but it was becoming very apparent that I had made a grave error in judgment. The dinghy was really banging around in the swell behind us, and I knew the weather was only going to get worse over the next 24 hours — how long it would take us to get into the lee of Virgin Gorda. But on we sailed in the growing wind and swell and prayed for the best because there would be no way we could have gotten that dinghy on board in those seas, not without tearing something (or many things) up in the process.

Preston came up to keep me company at 9:00AM, but he didn’t look too good. Lauren came up shortly thereafter, and she didn’t look so hot either. I on the other hand felt miraculously well. I have been very prone to seasickness in the past, but I had been spared of it so far. For the next several hours we took turns steering and sleeping in the settee. The wind had built to 18 to 22 knots and I actually thought at the rate we were going, we might make it to Ginger Island Pass by sunset, especially if we used the engine. So we fired her up, picking up a few more knots and watched the chart plotter for an hour.

It was evident that if we made it to the pass by sunset, we wouldn’t have enough time to anchor in front of Spanish Town in twilight so we turned the boat up into the wind and reefed the sails down in 25+ knot gusts dipping the bowsprit every few waves and nearly capsizing the dinghy. I came as close to getting sick here as I did the whole trip.

We shut the engine off and calculated on the chart plotter the downwind tacking strategy we’d have to take to slow us down enough to get us into the pass by sunrise. I was exhausted, though I’d recovered from the reefing experience, and I tried to get some sleep on one of the settee benches while the boat pitched and yawed, waking up every so often to check and re-check my calculations, inspect the rigging (at some point in the chaos, we accidentally jibed which broke the port fore spreader off — it was hanging on by the spreader light wiring and beating the rigging aloft) and look with dread at my still-attached, but badly abused dinghy.

Lauren and Preston took turns at the helm while I dozed, but by sunset, they had both gone under for some sleep in their own bunks. It was lonely at the helm by myself, but there was no time to dwell on it. The seas were tall, very steep and close together — as the bow would come off the back of a swell the stern would immediately lift with the oncoming one. The boat never found a rhythm and had to be constantly corrected for fear of accidentally jibing again. And the dinghy would surf down the oncoming wave, sometimes plowing into the stern of the boat and then jerk on the slacked painter as Kai Ohana would pull away. It was waking a nightmare. By 9:00PM, I had resigned myself to the fact that we would probably be replacing the dinghy in the Virgin Islands.

The wind had relaxed at sunset to 16-18 knots, but after it got dark, it was back up over twenty and didn’t let up until sunrise. By 10:00 I was literally hallucinating. The compass, right in front of my face, with its red glow was starting to take on a life of its own. It looked like a face in my blurred vision and as it bobbed in its fluid, it looked as though the face were trying to say something. Just before I had gotten immersed in a conversation with this newly animated object, Lauren had come up to check on me. “God, I hope you’ve come up to relieve me because this compass is trying to talk to me!” I confessed. “Yeah, I can relieve you,” she replied, “but I don’t want to hear about any faces in the compass.”

I laid on my stomach in the settee on a couple of pillows, gripping the edge of the bench for fear of sliding forward or backward off the bench, and slept in fits and starts, raising up occasionally to look at or discuss the proximity and course of nearby boats. Lauren, bless her soul, took the helm until 2:00AM, which provided me enough rest to get me through the early morning shift with a somewhat clear head. By sunrise, the lights on dark horizon faded into the profile of the islands and the wind had dropped to 8 to 12 knots. We should have shaken out the reefs, but Preston was still down below and I couldn’t bear the thought of pointing back into the wind, slamming the bow into the oncoming swell and un-reefing the sails. So I watched as one boat after another raced into the Ginger Island Pass while we crawled.

Eventually we made it into the Francis Drake Channel and in the lee of Fallen Jerusalem, we motor-sailed north (in the northeast trades) in a “mill pond” toward Spanish Town. As the motion of the boat slowly abated, its hibernating inhabitants started to come to life — first one, then another, and another, crawling out of their cabins rubbing their faces and trying to see through the sleep (and who knows what else) that sealed their eyelids. By 8:00am, we dropped the sails and then the hook in 30 feet of water off Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda.