Further North (BVI’s and St Martin)

---

We originally set sail with the aim of first going to St Martin and then the BVIs, but after beating up wind for what seemed like a lifetime we decided that it was a better idea to go to the BVIs first and St Martin later. This actually turned out for the best though, as it meant that we could meet up with Paulina (Alex’s mum) who had flown down to Virgin Gorda to help sail a rather nice yacht back to Bermuda with some friends of hers. The boat is called Big Bear and is elegantly mean looking with fancy Kevlar, jet black sails. It’s a beautiful, spacious and luxurious boat, definitely the nicest yacht I’ve set foot on. It was a pleasure to meet the owner, Jonathan, who informs me he is a big fan of the blog, so a big shout out to Jonathan who I’m sure will be reading this! It was also a pleasure to meet Sheila (a fellow Northerner) and the other Big Bear crew members.

During our time in Virgin Gorda we went to The Baths with Paulina, which is an area of the island with huge, smooth boulders next to the coast. The Baths are beautiful with small cave-like areas to explore and small pools to swim in. We enjoyed a wonderful meal with the crew later that night before saying our goodbyes, as they were due to set sail for Bermuda the next day. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see Big Bear under sail, but perhaps there will be another time.

Whilst Big Bear was on her way to Bermuda, we set sail to St Martin to provision and do a few last minute jobs before sailing to Bermuda ourselves. We were hoping to set off to Bermuda on the 3rd of April, but we ended up setting off 4 days later than planned, as always seems to be the way on Bob. I ended up putting my flight back to the UK by a few days as a precaution in case we didn’t make it back to Bermuda by the 16th. Alex and I made a bet of when we would get back to Bermuda - unfortunately he won and showed me that his time-keeping skills aren’t quite as bad as I first thought. However, the delay meant that I got to stay in St Martin for a little longer which was nice. The island isn’t like any other Caribbean island that we’ve been to, it’s set up very well for tourism and is full of casinos, bars and shopping malls. Overall the island had a great, upbeat atmosphere that went on all night, so it wasn’t difficult to find nice bars that sold cheap beer. It was a nice place to finish our tour of the Caribbean and we set off on our 9 day sail to Bermuda on the 7th April.

Fishing memoirs

During our sail to the northern islands of the Caribbean we did some fishing, which turned out to be reasonably successful for a change. After accumulating about 450 hours of sea time with Scott and Shannon, the total number of fish we caught was a big fat zero. Then, during our 4-day sail to the BVI’s, we caught 4 fish, one of which was too big to eat so we put it back in the ocean. From this we can conclude that either Ryan is good luck with regards to our fishing success, or Scott and Shannon were bad luck. Either way, we thought Scott and Shannon would like to know about the wonderful fish they’ve missed out on:

23rd March @ 17.45 - Caught a medium sized barracuda, which was made into a lovely rich dish.
24th March @ 17.15 - Caught the biggest barracuda I have even seen in my life, which was thrown back into the ocean.
24th March @ 18.20 - Caught a large tuna which was made into tuna steaks, which fed us all for the next 24 hours.
26th March @ 17.50 - Caught a medium sized fish of unknown species, which was made into a risotto dish, it tasted very nice.

---

Photos

The Baths
at Virgin Gorda

Dinner at Dominoes Pizza
(St Martin)

Ryan outside the dingy dock
(St Martin)