January 17-27, 2012 Virgin Islands

Virgin Islands: January 17-27, 2012

Click on the above thumbnail for a map during this time period

Visit by son Jeff

Jeff flew in from Las Vegas, where he is an optical cable installer. He caught a taxi to Crown Bay Marina, where Barb met him and brought him by dinghy across the choppy waters to our anchorage in Elephant Bay. As is the case with most of our guests, his suitcase was bulging with all of the supplies we had ordered so that he could deliver. A relative beginner at SCUBA, he also brought along his own BCD, regulator, booties and mask, and we provided the rest. We had an extra lobster snare, thanks to Livin' the Dream, so during the visit both Jeff and I were mighty hunters while Barb was in charge of the catch bag. Achieving negative buoyancy while carefully easing the snare over the tail of a "bug" is no trivial task for an inexperienced diver; Jeff got several opportunities and helped us bag a big lobster, which we consumed one night along with two others from the freezer. So much lobster that Barb and I couldn't even finish ours; the leftovers later made for a nice appetizer dip. I think Jeff had an exciting time hunting and made a lot of progress on buoyancy.

We also did a fair amount of snorkeling. Perhaps one of the most interesting of those was when we decided to spend three days in the British Virgin Islands. Just around the corner from the Bight on Norman Island are several caves that are half submerged. In the lee of Norman, the water was gin clear and filled with interesting fish, including a school of glassy sweepers, with their unmistakable swollen-belly profiles.

We checked into the BVIs at Jost van Dyke, and while ashore learned that Foxy's would be serving a barbeque buffet that evening. And that there would be a band. So later we dinghied back in and were thereby treated to one of the patented party evenings at the famous Foxy's. Perhaps I should back up and say a few words about the BVIs. The islands are close together, and laid out in a double row with a wide and open channel between the rows. As a consequence, sailing the BVIs is relatively easy, and as a consequence of that, the BVIs are easily the most popular of destinations in the Caribbean for folks who want to charter a boat for a week or two. Many (most?) of these short-timers seem to want to party hearty in the evening. So not only are there many charter companies in the BVIs, but each island has one or more bar/restaurants that are anything but "sleepy" in the evenings. One of the most famous is Foxy's.

The barbeque was ample and delicious. "All you eat", but pass through the line only once. But given two plates at the outset. Chicken and ribs and fish. Foxy himself made an early-evening appearance, and stopped to flirt with Barb. Told a couple of well-rehearsed jokes and consented to posing for a picture. And then the band started, and suddenly the floor was packed with dancers, some of whom were already feeling no pain. There was the young lady who danced with herself and kept raising her skirt half-way up her thighs. And the middle-aged woman who danced solo and with others, and who kept grabbing the local men and attempting to get them to dance with her, sometimes with spectacular lack of success. In particular, there was a local man who was dancing by himself -- not unusual in the Caribbean -- who totally ignored her and instead concentrated on dancing with a support pole and a piece of rope attached thereto. Later, the middle-aged woman lifted the skirt of the young lady above her waist. (She wore a very brief black thong.) Later still, the middle-aged woman and the young lady danced atop the bar. (The bartender didn't blink an eye.)

Another famous bar is Willy T's. Located on a moored boat in the Bight, the bar has been famous for years for encouraging young ladies to shed their clothes and jump into the water from the top deck. They quit the practice a few years ago when a woman was injured in the jump, but attempted to maintain the "draw" by displaying a scrap book with pictures of former jumpers. This visit, we spent a couple of noisy nights moored next to the Willy T, and Barb and Jeff dinghied over for a drink or three. They reported that Willy T has gone high tech: they now run on a flat screen a slide show of former jumpers, some of whom were topless and some of whom wore even less. The reward for such behavior was a free T-shirt. One of our good cruising friends, who shall remain nameless in this account, revealed recently that she owns such a T-shirt, garnered for doing "the full Monty".