50 Not Out - Day 9. Soggy Dollar and Sydneys.

A chilled out day today. We were staying put in Great Harbour, so we had a quick wander around the sandy main street of the settlement, arriving just in time to see Taboo swimming back to shore after diving out to greet a party of school children who'd arrived on a wooden boat with a rig that looked like an arab dhow. Very unusual. I thought I'd taken a picture of it, but obviously not, so here's a long-shot of the church at Great Harbour instead.




We took the dinghy round the headland for lunch at the Soggy Dollar bar and had a very pleasant time, although we did find ourselves getting slightly sniffy and snobbish when the day-trippers arrived. Even more so with the fairly rough two English couples who showed up later on (tattoos, ciggies and loads of effing and blinding. Charming).

We did meet a couple who have retired to a liveaboard life on their boat Invictus2. We were pretty jealous. Boo hiss. They were pretty dismissive of a lot of charterers, but they seemed to like us for some reason.



Anyway we had lots more Red Stripes before retiring back to Sunshine for a well earned snooze, meeting this wonderful boat on the way back. Her name's Kokomo and she's very big and beautiful indeed. For about the first time on the trip, we didn't have nice fluffy white clouds and blue skies today. Ah well, I guess sometimes we just have to suffer a little :-)



Dinner this evening was at Sydney's Peace and Love over in Little Harbour. While waiting for the cab driver, Missy got to have a beer and a chat with Ivan, which she was thrilled about. Not much to report about Sydney's, really. The pig-roast was really good, though. Sydney's still works on the Honour Bar system, so you can just nip behind the bar and pour your own beers if you feel so inclined. Our paths crossed with the two catamaran-loads of a capella girl singers again here, but also with a miserable boatload of Americans who just had to be lawyers, trying to scam as much from the restaurant as possible. Ah well, not everyone can be as nice as us :-)

50 Not Out - Day 8. Anegada to JVD and Foxys.

This was our longest sailing day, heading downwind from Anegada to Jost Van Dyke. There's nowhere to get water on JVD, so it involved a pitstop at Marina Cay to fill the tanks and get ice.

We had to make an early start, and for once managed to get away in decent time. We left at around 8:30am with a gentle broad reach taking us back down towards Tortola.

It was a lovely sail and Missy didn't move much from her spot in the picture here. She stayed lost in her thoughts for almost the entire trip. We managed a rapid 20 minute turnaround at Marina Cay, made our way through the Channel to the North Side of Tortola (remembering Georgina's briefing advice to take the narrow channel between Great and Little Camanoe and not the inviting wider passage). At about this point we lost the wind a little and had to motor the rest of the way, behind Guana Island and out to Jost.

One lovely moment was when a dolphin spent some time with us, diving in front of the boat, then following us underneath the dinghy before heading off. The only reason we saw it was because it was silhouetted against the sandy bottom, so we might have had more visitors along the way that we missed.

We got to Great Harbour just about in time to be able to anchor without having to struggle to find space. Just within earshot of the large group of friends in catamarans who were partying hard on their whole trip. Fortunately, their playlist was pretty good, so the music wasn't intrusive.

For the first time on the trip, Missy decided it was time to get the air be out and spend some time in the water. After a shower and another brave attempt to reduce the Red Stripe stash we headed off to Foxy's.








It's unlike any of the other places in the BVI that we've visited, which are generally pretty small. Foxy's is a cavernous sort of opened walled space and we were slightly nervous that it wasn't going to be us, but it was terrific. Foxy clearly relishes his role as an island character and wanders around swapping anecdotes with his guests for the evening, and being happy to pose for cheesy photographs with dodgy characters like these two!

The bar is home to a few cats, who know how to spot a sucker (me!) who is likely to take pity on their poor, starved animal impression and feed them tasty bits of barbeque, plus Taboo, Foxy's big black dog who is one of the few dogs I've met who has a better life than Clementine! He cadges scraps in the evening, wanders around JVD during the day, taking his naps in the shade under the trees and generally having an idyllic life.