So for Ben’s upcoming birthday and the full moon party we set sail to Trellis bay on Beef island. Beef island is connected to BVI’s main island Tortola by a bridge and does not have many more buildings then BVI’s largest airport, a couple of beach bars and a resort. In Trellis bay it was obvious that Irma had struck hard in the fall of 2017 there were still plenty of boats and what’s left of boats on the beach. Because of this reason the bay also became an interesting snorkel area, although you wouldn’t spend your time in the water looking at fishes or coral reefs. Instead it’s a peaceful grave yard for boat parts. I swam across countless of anchors, a couple of anchor windlasses, toilets, sails, railings and other boat parts you wouldn’t find in most anchorage.
All and all this hurricane phenomena is a really sad part of travelling in this areas. In the BVI’s they got hit twice, what Irma didn’t hit Maria took a few weeks later instead. The clean up and restoration process seems to bee very long and slow. But sometimes you can’t help to be amazed by the forces and consequences that is involved in those big storms. To rip of the windlass of a boat and just tangle the railings as if it was spaghetti, it makes you wonder how Chibidarra would have handled it.
Well back to our mission. We arrived sometime in the late morning and the mooring field had already started to fill up, the charter catamarans were speeding to get a good mooring before us. Little did we care since we rather put in our big ass anchor anyway. It wasn’t many other boats anchoring, apparently some people don’t want find treasures on the bottom (read random stuff from hurricane strucked boats).
Well we anchored right outside the beach bar and started to celebrate Ben. During the sail to Trellis we had baked a cake and as it now were time for a well deserved mimosa breakfast we combined that with the cake, freshly baked bread and all other stuff that is suitable for a luxurious breakfast. During the day we did our best to have a good time and didn’t do anything work related.
When the night fell the three bars lit up some bonfires, and plenty of people walked between the different bars. I don’t think that all six of us spent much time together, since we all ended up on different bars and “dance floors”.
The following day we spent cleaning and planning our remaining time in the BVIs. Since both Lotte and the Frenchies where to leave us in a week, we decided to make the most of it.
First of was Peter Island and by chance we accidentally found our self anchored next to the floating bar Willy T II who’s predecessor was the famous floating bar Willy T on Norman Island which we had planned to visit the following day. Little did we know that Irma and Maria had been on a pub crawl there two years ago. Well bigger, newer and better it was now resurrected in great harbor on Peter Island. So we spent the afternoon back flipping of the top floor of the new Willy T.
The next morning we set sail to Norman Island and the wreck of Willy T. Well the new purpose of going there was to snorkel the caves by treasure point. We had a really nice snorkeling in some cool caves, big squalls of small fishes and a lot of really big and lazy tarpoons, they seamed to hope for some food rather then hunt.
Then we spotted some previously rarely seen Hooting whales. Description as follows, frequently mistaken as charter or cruising passengers equipped with snorkelling equipment, a flotation device and little to none experience of sea water. The word goes among cruiser that the flotation devices actually is to protect the reef from them and not them from sinking in to the reef. Distinguished by their insanely loud wohoo;s and strange to obscure movement in water the Hooting whale is found in packs, close to or on shore.
Amused by the loud and wild life of the snorkeling attraction, we went back to the boat to rest, before we went for a wifi beer at the beach bar. We then had a nice sunset dinner at the boat.
The next morning we went to Salt Island and the nice dive site of the wreck of the steamer RMS Rhone. Me and Lotte went in first. We started by the propeller of the wreck and made our way forwards. The wreck is scattered across a large area of the sea bed, and it is hard to recognize all the different parts. But all the parts had plenty of healthy corals and a rich fish life, which made the dive really nice. We spotted some decent sized reef sharks and got scared by barracudas. The dive was well worth the trip there. Since it’s a bit of a process having six people diving two by two, it took us the majority of the day. Sadly we haven’t been diving as much as I thought we were going to but that keeps it exciting every time we actually do it. When all the tanks where filled we went ashore to explore the salt lakes, on top of the island. Salt Island has been abandoned since the hurricanes. There is still a couple ruins left on the beach. We went to the dried out lake and had a look. It’s not much more on the island it self.
On our way back to the beach it started to rain a bit, and when we got back to the beach hundreds of hermit crabs had woken up and were crawling every where. Since they were playful we decided to have a race. Ben’s crab was the only one to actually be close to even compete in the race. Although it crossed the race track diagonally instead of straight forward it made it across the finish line, so he won. The longest distance however was made by a totally different crab in a very wrong direction but we didn’t give him a price for that. We did explain the rules for the crabs before so all of them knew about the rules.
Back at the boat we picked up the anchor and moved once again.
This time we went to the close by island Cooper island well we went there for some snorkeling and a micro brewery but since the day already had been pretty eventful we went to bed and skipped the brewery. The next morning we went for a nice snorkeling with sharks and rays.
At noon it was time to once again pick up the anchor and move once again. This time we were gonna try to take Lotte, Ben and Martin off the crew list in the main immigration and customs office on Tortola. Well turned out we went there totally in vain, since that wasn’t necessary until we all checked out of the BVI’s some week later. So after a quick visit we picked up the anchor and moveed again. This time to the familiar grounds of Trellis bay.
SV Chibidarra 