Day 4

Early this morning (meaning 9am--tropical sailing time "early") we spotted a small squall off our port side (that’d be the American side of the boat).  It looked pretty cool.  We kept our eye on it to make sure it wasn’t moving towards us because the morning breeze was just too nice to baton down the hatches if it wasn’t really headed our way. 

Keith ferried Mark over to Peter Island this morning so he could stretch his lets and go for a quick jog.  Sometime during his jogging he came across my favorite flower in the whole world: The RED Hibiscus.  He plucked a flower from the bush and jogged all the way back with it so I could wear it in my hair.  What a guy!

I took a nice fresh water shower in my swimsuit off the back deck.

We said goodbye to Peter Island and motored over to Salt Island to dive the Wreck of the Rhone, an old steamer ship that sunk back in 1867.

Unfortunately Keith realized BEFORE heading down,

that I had turned off his air. 

DRAT!  

A look of disgust from the British side!

 Then we sailed to the south tip of Virgin Gorda.

...where we finally met up with another larger squall that this time would be unavoidable.  The cool wind and rain was a welcome break from the humidity and heat, so we enjoyed the burst by raising the main and taking the storm for a ride.

 

 

With the wind exhaling a steady gust pressing against our sails we got our speed up to 12 knots!!  There's nothing like turning off the engines and sailing under mother natures power.  Ahhhhhh.

After things calmed a bit Kathy found some time to teach Connor some knot tying...

Our refrigerator and freezer on board works on a timer system.  Pure genius [she said sarcastically].  So much for having no schedule to worry about! Now someone has to remember to turn the timer on several times a day so our food stays cold.  Lovely.

When we reached the south end of Virgin Gorda we moored at 'The Baths' and took the dingy to the beach.  This beach had some pretty decent size waves rolling onto it, and by decent I mean leaning towards decidedly vicious, so to the beach should have been considered an X game sport requiring safety helmets.  Swirling in testosterone, Keith and Mark decided that the best scenario for storming the turbulent beach would be at full throttle.  They first decided to hastily disembark all women and children who quickly became four thoroughly soaked refugees precariously balancing cameras and dry towels atop our heads--all before the next colossal set of waves smacked us, boat and all, upside down and helter-skelter on the shore.  Sure wish I had photos of all of this beaching mayhem, they'd be prize winners.

But here we are looking cool and calm like our beach entry was no matter...

  (naturally when we took this pics later in the day the sea had pacified as if to make the above narrative seem riddled with hyperbole. Only the ocean can do that.) 

There's Hakuna Matata in the background?

Keith and Kathy went for a long walk, they found and explored a hidden labyrinth of beach caves just up the beach and along the shoreline.  And although the posted signs leading to the water filled caverns led them right there, we give them total credit for finding the signs we missed altogether.  Only Keith would be astute enough to start reading signs at a beach.  The rest of us are worried about what number SPF to use and how to keep the sand off our towels.   

After a hearty exploration, they returned and sent us to go and see it for ourselves.

 

The dingy ride back to boat proved to be even more formidable than the one to the beach and turned out to be rather precarious.  Getting inside the dingy in between shore breaks should be considered an Olympic event—I myself would have been quite lucky to have taken a bronze metal on that event, if placing at all.

Keith parked the dingy dead center into the boat and wedged it in for an easy access.

From there we motored over to the marina farther up Virgin Gorda where we had dinner.  

 Setting anchor was a bit tricky and had to be re-tried several times.  The bottom was a mixture of sand and rock so the anchor would dig into the sand and then when pulled back by the boat, it would skip out of the sand and pop out.  Finally we got it set and Mark put on the scuba gear and went down to check that the anchor had dug in firmly.  Of course it wasn’t, so he literally picked up the anchor and moved it over to the sand. Try that technique sometime.  It's not listed anywhere in the 'Anchoring for Dummies' book--but probably should be.

We took the dingy into the marina and checked to see if they had a place to do some food provisioning in the morning.  They did.  They also had a laundry mat:

Every dryer said "Out of Order" except for the one without a door.  Good thing we don't need laundry quite yet.


We were happy (a pleasantly surprised) to find our boat where we'd left it just hours before.  Guess Mark's anchor spot is holding despite a strong unpredictable breeze.

Had a little church that evening on the boat and sang a hearty version of the hymn "Master the Tempest is Raging".  Seemed fitting.

Cheers!