The British Virgin Islands - virgin indeed and the land of the catamarans!

We were a bit anxious due to stories about the cost of visiting the BVI’s. We read: it’s very expensive, at least 30$ a night, 200$ entrance fee, 200$ cruising permit … But you shouldn’t miss it! The latter is true as the islands are very beautiful to sail around, but the cost was far far less 💪😅

We paid approx 65$ and only two times, they came to collect 30$ when we picked up a mooring. We guess it is due to the lack of infrastructure since the hurricanes hit the island very very hard…

I think people who have seen the BVI’s prior to the hurricanes will cry a bit. Again they are building everywhere. Palm trees are all gone… Towns are destroyed and are the last ones being rebuilt I guess. You’ll see the pictures... All rubbish from the water and beaches has already been cleaned up, which is great for the marine life to reconstruct their habitat!

A glimpse over the Virgin Gorda and a change of flag:



17th February 2019. First stop: Richard Branson’s private Necker island.

Also under construction AND with three new palm trees 😏

Our private beach across from it: Virgin Sound, Eustatia.

A beautiful place to arrive in the BVI’s (even though we should have been straight to immigration. They told us off afterwards like true Americans (yes yes no British here anymore)😔). Two lawn chairs washed up in perfect condition on the beach and there was a beautiful volleyball. We felt a bit like Tom Hanks with his Wilson 😝

18th February 2019.

We sailed through the Eustatia Sound and passed Mosquito Island towards Spanish Town. It looks like a very well protected bay surrounded by nice big villa’s and some hotels. But no overpopulation at all.

Again a lot of it is still under construction/renovation.

 3 friends ‘hanging’ with their families. Looked great! We saw them like that, a bit all over the BVI’s.

This is the moment we realise that this is the land of the cats (catamarans). They're all over with or without sails and they move around at a speed we’ve never seen before. It’s like they're running from their own shadow! Also they don’t move in a straight line, but more like a cockroach, changing direction at the very last minute.

Arrival at Spanish Town.

We have no pictures of the town as there just is no town!

Immigration went ‘quite’ smoothly since the booth order was logical this time. You need to go to booth number one first, she explains it all, and then the girl in number two gives you a stamp, the man in number three needs to listen to his song first before letting you pay for it all and make you go back to booth number one to deposit the papers.

You have to imagine an office not bigger than 6 meters on 5 maybe. So physically they seem to be incapable to deposit a paper next to their colleague and apparently they can handle only one action instead of three 😏
Or they ‘invent’ new jobs as to decrease unemployment?

Going to an ATM is again quite tricky. There’s only one on the whole island (Virgin Gorda). You have to walk a bit to arrive at a queue where they tell us there’s no money anymore in the machine. Apparently, it’s filled up only once a week and runs out in about two hours time!
We’ll have to try another island. We get a ride to what seems to be the Main Street so we could buy a SIM card. When we arrived in front of a Digicell store (that’s supposed to be open all day) we saw a hand written sign they're gone for lunch, aargh! Luckily the guy was still inside and after a big persuasive smile he re-opened his shop 😉

4 hours later we’re back on the boat and decide to go to “the Baths”. We arrived at 3 o’clock which is great as we were almost alone! You have to tie up your dinghy and then swim ashore.

A bit challenging with the current and the waves crashing on the rocky beach, but very doable 👌 Then you stroll around amazingly big boulders and chill in little private swimming pools.

19th February 2019. 
We went to snorkel on Dog Island. In particular George Dog (I just love all these names! ) 😅

The BVI’s are amazing in that you can go to a new well protected anchorage in about half an hour! At George Dog we took a mooring to protect the marine environment and had a wonderful time swimming along the reef. 
It is again very sad to see how it’s all been destroyed by the hurricanes, however it’s still very pretty and you can see the corals growing back 😌 
I got a big sting in the heart when a charter threw anchor 3 times, pulling and yanking on it and breaking the beautiful coral 😡😖 Please please, just use the moorings or anchor in sandy patches 😓 

In the afternoon we had the bright idea to try and get money at the airport. It was a hit, but the Trellis Bay is so full, shallow and surrounded by stranded boats that it really freaked me out to get in there. 

Luckily Geoffrey is so calm manoeuvring our LouiseAnna (even though it was blowing hard again) and we anchored in front of the airport dock. 

Just half an hour later we were gone in search for a not smelly and more quiet beach 😎 We stranded at Lee Bay and had to push a bit to find a good spot between all the other boats and to be able to anchor as it’s quite deep. 

Maybe we should have stayed longer as there’s a huge rock, to the south of the bay, you can climb on and jump in the water. I assured Geoffrey we would find another rock he could play monkey on 😉




20th February 2019.
We anchored in-between White Bay and Monkey Point on Guana island (so not between the yachts on the picture), which was devine! It’s a wonderful snorkeling area. We saw nursing sharks and rays and got a bit stung by jellyfish but it didn’t hurt that much this time 😍

21st February 2019.
Hup to Jost Van Dyke Island.
It’s supposed to be the pearl of the BVI’s, but it looked completely wrecked… The eastern anchorages looked great but were full and not well protected from the big swells so we checked out little harbour and great harbour.
There’s not much left of the infrastructure, the harbours were full and also offering a very poor shelter. We tried to take a mooring at Sandy Cay, to at least set foot on this island, but the waves were so unpleasant that we decided to skip Jost Van Dyke and go to the closest bay on Tortola.

Cane Garden Bay wasn’t a planned stop but turned out to be very nice! It’s a great bay, no underwater life anymore unfortunately, but a very nice beach. Stay on the beach as along the road, all is broken … 

They have rebuilt provisionary beach bars who serve wonderful ‘painkillers’ at very decent prices. It’s the only place we saw an authentic steel band! Louise is building a small house for the dog with her new friend 😜
 

22nd February 2019.
It’s time to go further South. We’re a bit cold here 😳 Do you notice the kind of weather we have here? It’s winter! So we go to West End/Sopers Hole where we should find a supermarket, internet, …

 Steel Point, the entrance of the bay:

Again everything is gone… A new clothes shop just opened on the day we arrived and we bought another T-shirt for Geoffrey as we felt sad for this woman trying to get her business up and running but there are not many tourists passing in this bay. There’s one restaurant which is actually quite good. They have an Indian chef and very good spicy curry’s (this is where you feel the British influence 😂).

After having played shipwreck with their lego’s (I don’t know where they get this from?!), the girls are chilling in the front, while mum and dad are figuring out where to go next. 

As we start to run out on provisions, we decide to go a bit faster. But before checking out in Road Town, we want to see Peter Island and Norman Island.

 

Note for those who don’t know: You HAVE to pass immigration and check in to a country as soon as you sail in its waters. This means you cannot go anywhere you like as these offices are not found in every bay. It’s the same when you want to leave a country, you have to check out and pass immigration and then you have 24 hours (or sometimes 48 hours) to leave that country…

23rd February 2019. The Bight, Norman Island. We take a 30$ mooring to be a bit protected as I started to make a dress for Bob. I get a bit nauseated when we’re rolling. (Nautical term: ‘rolling’ = dancing on the waves, up and down, up and down, up and down, …)

It’s a good place to take your dinghy out to see the caves at Treasure Point. The bar ashore however is ridiculously expensive and on top of they are very unfriendly! But there wifi is open and free and so while we wait 45 minutes for a drink, we have all our procedures for the Panama passage, the information for our visit of Columbia and the weather charts downloaded.
A glimpse of the Caves:

Louise dives already quite well! Another cave with fish. Fish we’ve never seen anywhere else than inside this cave. Too bad we didn’t find the treasure :-)

24th February 2019. On our way to Peter Island, we stop at Key Bay. Very beautiful but rolling anchorage. We received a facebook message with a picture attached to it from LouiseAnna in this bay:

25th February 2019. The next day we are at Willy-T’s in Great Harbour, Norman Island. It’s a boat-bar not really for children! While ordering at the bar a woman gets two (fake) tattoos on her breasts. Needless to say, the girls (also) had their mouths wide open! In the same bar, we met the author of the facebook picture and a few other boats had also read the blog and recognised the girls. It looks like they are famous 😋

It’s not the most beautiful bay, but again well sheltered and nobody came to collect money for the moorings. On top of that the many charter boats in the bay have open wifi just strong enough to get our mails and the weather 😎

26th February 2019. Bob is half ready: We manage to save a paddle floating by from the catamaran in front of us and got to meet its owner: four very nice Americans that came by for a “planteur” later that night. We had a great time and interesting conversations about the American political system. It was the end of their holidays and they left us with an enormous amount of food. So we only had to buy some vegetables and fruits. Thanks again !!!

27th February 2019. We are almost ready to leave for Columbia. We’re in Road Town, Tortola, to do some shopping and deal with checking out and immigration. We beg them for an exit stamp in our passport, but apparently that doesn’t exist and luckily we didn’t have any problems in Colombia.

Road Town is dirty and very smelly (sewage system is open and runs all through town…). We did find one bar/restaurant with nice greasy ribs 😑 Plenty of fat to keep our strength for the next days.

We quickly leave town and stay one amazing night at Benures Bay, on Norman Island, before leaving the BVI’s. We’re a bit sad as this is the most beautiful bay we’ve been to in the whole of the BVI’s. Close to the rocks in wonderful turquoise water:

Octopus hiding under a tree:

Louise is training:

We were not able to film these very cute and tiny fish that were vertical above there hole. We think they’re called “Fire fish” or “Poisson de feu décoré”. About 8 of them were living together and lit up with the sun. Very very cute!




We had some boxfish and five rays swimming under the boat:

Aaaaaaaah, jelly fish! That’s our signal to get out of the water 😇 (it's there somewhere in the picture, if you click on it, you should be able to make it bigger).






The view out of the bay over the American Virgin Islands:

28th February 2019. Ciao BVI’s.

While we were sceptic on arrival, it turned out to be a great experience. So why "virgin"? We would have loved to see more ‘native’ cuisine and influences and be able to hike in pristine forests... However, even though it’s a bit too American for us,  these islands are beautiful because there’s little construction and it seems to be quite harmonious with nature.