Charles:
We’re tied up at Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor now, with two full days left to enjoy the rapidly-calming weather. Though it costs a little more, a slip at a marina affords the luxuries of power outlets, air conditioning, WiFi, showers, and a significant reduction in that terrible feeling that your boat is going to swing right off its buoy in the middle of the night and bury nose-first in a nearby reef.
The downside is that – at least here in the BVI – these slips are a royal bitch to get into. I’ve already scratched the paint, bonked her nose, and knocked a navigation light cover loose trying to back this boat into a twelve-foot slip in crosswinds. In Tacoma, it’s no trouble. Here – well, it’s humbling; Alicia has kept my spirits up and has always been there to throw lines and re-rig as necessary to get us to safety. She’s a natural at this.
We’ve still been motoring – at this point, sailing her just feels like too damned much work. This is supposed to be a vacation. We’ve done nearly everything else, including cooking our first dinner aboard tonight – baked some-kinda-white-fish with garlic bread and rum carrots. It’s the cap on a heck of a day – they went from red-flag to yellow-flag at The Baths today, which means we were allowed to come ashore, swimming nearly a mile today to-and-from the boat and ashore.
That’s on top of yesterday’s snorkeling excursion to a reef just off Eustacia Island, diving beneath the waves to escape the pouring rain, finding huge formations of colorful fish just below the surface. On board, we met a couple from Minnesota, and spent the evening over dinner and drinks, swapping stories of frozen winters back home and Caribbean trips gone by.
All of this reminds me daily how important a good crew is in life, in every endeavor, from sailing to singing to everyday work. I’ve had the very best people giving me all of their support every step of the way; that goes double for Alicia, the best partner anyone could ask for, and a damned fine deckhand.
Alicia:
If I am, as Charles says, a damned fine deckhand, it’s because I have a damned fine captain on board with me. Someone this charismatic and capable does not come along every day. They especially do not come along every day and sneak booze into Bond films with you.
The night before last the Bitter End Yacht Club was showing Goldeneye in their open-air theater for free in the evening. “We should watch that,” I said to Charles. “Haven’t seen it in years.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Movies, in the Virgin Islands?”
“It’d be relaxing.”
“Yeah, but I’m already pretty tired.”
“We have whiskey,” I reminded him.
“Maybe we’ll just watch the first part,” he conceded.
And that is how we wound up loading a fifth of whiskey and two plastic cups into Charles’ laptop bag for camouflage and watching a Bond flick with the theater all to ourselves.
The couple from Minnesota mentioned the weather report was supposed to improve, so today Charles and I retraced our watery steps and headed back to the Baths. Mooring buoys are second nature by now, but the only one left was the farthest one north, one bay up from the Baths proper, and the current runs north-to-south along the coastline. “Are we swimming in?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” said Charles.
And we did. It was about a half-mile jaunt, which may in fact be the longest single swim I’ve ever done. When we finally reached shore, we slipped off our fins and turned back to eye our boat.
“She’s way out there,” said Charles.
“And we’ve got to swim back,” I said. “Want to hike the trail to Devil’s Bay?”
And so we did that. And then we swam back. It was grueling — we were fighting the current this time, and the swells were impressive and swamped my snorkel more than once — but we did it. For the second half of the trip we even had an escort: a school of about fifty blue tang, who were gliding happily along the sandy bottom from boat to boat. The catamaran moored just short of our boat had a few swimmers playing around off the back: the tang swam under them with an air of unconcern, and the swimmers never once looked down to see they were temporarily surrounded by tropical fish. As we approached Mystique, the tang swarmed happily up and circled the bulb of our keel, feeding on something there and bubbling with excitement. I had to laugh into my snorkel, and then gratefully pull myself up the swim ladder.