Anchorages Away
Family and friends enjoy a six-week sojourn in the BVIs.
By Randy Williamson
Last winter, 17 family members and friends joined me for a six-week stop in the British Virgin Islands during my voyage from the Chesapeake Bay to the Caribbean.
Sailing in the BVIs is easy as the wind blows mostly from the east, varying only from northeast to southeast, and safe harbors abound. Because of this, the area has the world’s largest charter boat population. Most harbors have plenty of mooring balls so charters won’t have to anchor, and slip rentals usually cost around $25 per night. Here are some of my favorite anchorages.
Road Town, Tortola
Road Town’s several supermarkets carry a variety of foods and wines, making it a great place for provisioning. However, expect to pay 150 to 300 percent more for items than you would in the U.S.
The Village Cay Marina staff was helpful, friendly and competent. They don’t have maintenance facilities, but local vendors seem to give priority to the marina’s customers. Their laundry service charges just $8 per load to wash, dry and fold.
On Friday and Saturday nights, a food truck serving barbecue ribs and pulled pork has the locals lining up for nearly an hour. The food was definitely worth the wait. The big seller was pulled pork covered in a sauce so spicy it practically cooked the meat, yet the heat never slowed me down.
For more elegant dining, we enjoyed The Dove, a small restaurant on Main Street. Their menu is excellent, and the chef takes great pride in preparation and presentation. Reservations are a must on Friday nights.
Norman Bight
With more than 100 mooring balls and still room to anchor, the Bight at Norman Island is quite large. Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly visited the island while writing Treasure Island. The caves described in the book are favorite snorkeling areas, with many brightly colored fish and medium-size lobsters.
A fishing boat anchored in Norman Bight has served as a restaurant for years. In times past, people could earn a free T-shirt by stripping naked and jumping from the upper deck bar into the water and swimming back to the boat.
Pirate’s Bight is smaller and just at the entrance to Norman Bight. Commercial boats bring snorkelers here some days and tend to stay on the mooring balls until about 1700. Consequently, you can sometimes luck into a vacant mooring if you arrive then.
Great Harbour on Peter Island
Our favorite snorkeling location is Great Harbour on Peter Island. Ocean 7 Beach Club on the western end of the harbor has 10 moorings from which you can swim to the coral along the rocky shore. We saw 3-foot-long tarpon, turtles, rays and the largest assortment of fish that we had seen except while scuba diving. The restaurant has an excellent menu, and every meal was well-prepared. The bartender likes to put on a show when mixing drinks and is quite accomplished at flipping bottles and glasses.
Trellis Bay
The airport terminal on Beef Island is only about 1,000 yards from the dinghy dock at Trellis Bay. There are three restaurants, an island craft center and one small grocery store along the shore. Our favorite spot is De Loose Mongoose—a restaurant with a good menu, friendly service and free Wi-Fi Internet access, which we used to update our Web page, send e-mail and make Skype telephone calls. Skype calls to the U.S. cost us about 2 cents per minute, compared with the more than $4 per minute charged by the local phone service.
The Last Resort, a restaurant on a little island in the middle of the bay, has live entertainment most nights.
Gorda Sound
Gorda Sound has anchorages to suit every taste. If you are looking for restaurants and night life, Leverick Bay and the Bitter End are your destinations. If you want solitude, choose Drake’s Anchorage or Prickly Pear Island anchorage.
My wife, Susan, and I obtained our open-water dive certifications from Dive BVI at Leverick Bay. The dive locations were wonderful.
When our daughter, Julie, and her friends arrived, we did two dives each morning for two days. The fish and coral were spectacular, and we enjoyed seeing an airplane wreck that had been moved from the water at the end of the runway on Beef Island to the coast of Great Dog Island, where it has become a fish haven. However, the most spectacular dives were the two we did over the wreck of the steamship RMS Rhone, which sank between Peter Island and Salt Island during a hurricane in 1867.
The Leverick Bay Resort & Marina offers moorings for $25 per night. The expanded fuel dock has free water from a reverse osmosis system—most places in the Caribbean charge 10 to 25 cents per gallon of water. The marina also offers free Wi-Fi access and three restaurants including a beach bar and an upscale dining room. All serve excellent food, and we sampled everything from pizza to a full-course meal.
Drake’s Anchorage is across the sound from Leverick Bay and just off the privately owned Moskito Island (named for the Indians who used to populate the area). The owner reportedly plans to build an ecologically friendly resort community. Although it’s usually empty, the anchorage has an excellent sand bottom and good holding in about 15 to 30 feet of water. For snorkeling, you can swim or dinghy to a nearby coral reef.
Prickly Pear Island guards the east side of the entrance to Gorda Sound, where you can anchor in a good sandy bottom at 15 to 35 feet. Two liveaboard boats are anchored here, but there’s lots of room for visiting boats.
You’ll find the nightlife at the Bitter End Yacht Club on the eastern end of Gorda Sound. Right next door, a new restaurant on Saba Rock has an excellent menu and a good party crowd that celebrates well into the evening.
The exclusive Biras Creek Resort requires more formal apparel than we typically have on board, but just inside the creek is the Fat Virgin’s Café, which I love to visit. The owner makes you feel welcome and sometimes asks you to order when you make reservations so she’ll be sure to have the ingredients on hand. The island-style food is delicious, and there’s even a Wi-Fi system.
Eustatia Sound
Just north of Prickly Pear Island is a beautiful anchorage with excellent holding in 10 to 20 feet of white sand. In the middle of the sound, there’s a reef with interesting fish and coral. You can anchor close enough to the reef to swim, or you can anchor closer to the shore and dinghy over. When we tried to walk the long, beautiful beach, we were assaulted by biting gnats, so we quickly retreated to the boat.
Jost Van Dyke
Like most visitors to the BVIs, we made our pilgrimage to Foxy’s on Jost Van Dyke, the westernmost island in the BVIs. However, we chose to eat at a quieter, less crowded restaurant, Ali Baba’s, where we had an excellent dinner though the service was slow.
With excellent sailing and fun people, the BVIs have something to suit almost every taste. If you’re just starting to explore the Caribbean, this is a great place to begin.
Randy Williamson, of Wilmington Power Squadron, is a licensed captain and USPS instructor who has been sailing for 35 years. When not sailing in Maine or in the Caribbean, he and his wife, Susan, sail their Beneteau 445 out of Rock Hall, Md. To read more of his sailing adventures, visit mywebpages.comcast.net/windwardpassage/windward/index.htm.