British Virgin Islands: Fantasy vs. Reality

This is a photo taken on the first night out on the boat, after checking into the BVI at the customs office in Soper's Hole, Tortola. It is a busy harbor, not much of a town to speak of, but it commands serious respect for offering perhaps the most beautiful sunsets in all of the Virgin Islands. Absolutely gorgeous!


After sailing out of Soper's Hole, we spent a good portion of Monday sailing for The Bitter End Yacht Club, located on Virgin Gorda (that's right, it's the Chubby Virgin Island). And the picture below shows the weather that we got for much of Tuesday through Friday. Blaaaaaah. Ftttttp! Hiss!! The good thing about rain there, though, is that it usually passes through quickly. Unless it is a Tuesday and the Bitchin' Wife is vacationing there. Then it will rain ALL DAY. And people will exlaim, everywhere you go, "Oh my goodness!! It NEVER rains like this this time of year!!" "Oh my stars!! I've never even HEARD of weather this bad in March!!!" Uh huh. Riiiiiiiight.


So that was the weather part of the vacation.... let's move on to our boat. My husband is a bit of boat snob. The Daddy-007 is going back to school to get his yacht design degree, after all. So even though, I wasn't expecting the boat to be like this one (below) that we spotted in The Bight at Norman Island (wouldn't 100+ feet of yachtiness just go straight to your head, though? I'd need a special dinghy just to carry my head to shore, I'd be so impossibly conceited):
I was kind of hoping for at least this (and really, I shouldn't say "at least" because this sailboat is GOR-GEOUS and almost ruinously sexy and caused an absolute sensation in the harbor when it motored in and set its mooring.... it is a Hinkley, 'nuff said):

Instead, we got THIS:

Kind of like the Clampett's toolin' around the BVI with their floatin' clothes' lines full of dirty laundry. :) In all fairness, when we did this same bareboat trip two years ago THIS was the same boat we took out then and it was fine! Totally fine. But since then, this poor thing has been rode hard and put up wet more times than any boat can handle. And this hard use and questionable mechanical work left us with a boat with so many problems, it almost sank our whole vacation. It was one of those situations that if any one of the EIGHT people on board the boat (hard to believe eight of us could fit on there, right? But catamarans have tons of room, so there are actually four staterooms in that sucker!) had unleashed their negativity, everyone would have fallen into that pit and it would have been miserable.

I give HUGE props to Daddy-007, our captain for the duration of the trip, for keeping morale high. I'm not sure if it was his stern come-to-jesus pep talk that said, "Look, either we make the best of this or we go back to St. Thomas and stay in a hotel for a week." or the six bottles of rum we doused ourselved in over the course of six days (and only six of us were drinking, hmmm, YOU do the math); but everyone held their negative remarks to a minimum and we ended up having a great time.... Despite our tired, rustbucket-y boat that gave up one of its engines the first day out, blew the impeller on the generator on the third day (necessitating a boat-visit/repair by "Polo" the roving boat mechanic), had myriad cosmetic issues, stinky closets that made some of our clothing unwearable, a leaking freezer, a broken head (fortunately the toilet only gave up the ghost on the last day out!) and a broken windlass. :)

And with a view like this..... how could anyone stay negative????


And in other news.... I was so pleased to find myself the recipient of a couple awards!!! Thank you so much to the delightfully cheesy and always entertaining Carma, from Carma Sez.