Saba Rock to Leverick Bay - Sailing the BVI's (6 of 10)

We decided today that we really needed to get water.  We were down to about 30 gallons or so and it just made sense that if we were going to come to a dock, we may as well top off fuel too.  Since we were not able to get a mooring at Saba Rock the night before we would have to pay for water and fuel. Methods was not a huge problem but we were a bit concerned about maneuvering up to the fuel dock with the direction of the wind.  This was going to be the first time we take the catamaran to a dock and just didn't want to increase our odds of hitting the dock or not being able to get close enough to tie off.  We did a little checking and found out that we would get some free water (100 gallons) with a mooring at Leverick Bay and based on the guidebook and so e Ariel photos, it appeared that it was going to be a better spot to fill up.

This would be our shortest travel day of the entire trip, so we decided to take advantage of it and do some sight seeing.

We went back over to Saba Rock in the dinghy and walked the island.  It is a beautiful resort.  We walked the docks, around to the grassy lawns overlooking the Caribean.  As we walked along this area we saw a small headstone that read "Ganja the cat" and it looked like Ganja was good to him because based on the dates he lived 18 years.  

We continued our walk toward the sandy area and back again into the docks where the underwater lighting attracts the Tarpon at night.  

We all loaded up in the dinghy and crossed the channel to walk around the Bitter End Yacht Club.  This place is really interesting and very well appointed.  The dinghy docks were in great shape and were right in front of the hotel.  We were amazed at the wood carvings in the lobby.

View from the Hotel entrance toward the Dinghy dock

This is a typical island resort layout with all open walls but this one had really nice wooden floors and walls.  The all appeared to be hand sawn.  We walked through the lobby and certainly had to take some pictures of the wood carvings and a group photo of us all standing right behind the Bitter End Yacht Club and logo.  

We walked down the water front and looked at some of the boats that the Hokin Family had bought over the years.  The story behind the Bitter End Yacht Club is a bit interesting.

In the mid 60's they family brought their boat to this area for recreational fishing off this remote island.  In the late 60's and early 70's the land where the Bitter End Yacht Club (BEYC) is now was just a fishing camp with no running water and no electricity.

there was a Bakery with fresh baguettes for sale 

They loved it there and thought it would be a great place to live.  The attempted to lease an acre of land to build themselves a house there, but the owner "Basil" at the time didn't want to lease them an acre, but instead offered to see the whole place to them.

In 1973, the Hokins bought the property.  The family didn't know anything about running a hotel or "camp" as it were then, but they were enthusiastic about their new property.  Each year the family would all come to this area and they discovered the great sailing, diving, fishing and snorkeling from Anageda to Tortola.  They had a desire to share their love of this area with others, and had the building designed and built.  Today the Resort creates it's own electricity, collects and distills it's own water and uses treated gray water for irrigation.

View from the upstairs lobby of hotel toward Prickly Pear Island

Today is a premium stop for anyone going to the area.  Beatifully appointed, and well maintained, it is the kind of perfect trees and flowers that you expect to see on a Hawaiian resort or Disney land, but the people are all laid back islanders.

We took a walk all along the water front and shops at the Bitter End.  I did end up buying a great portable cooler.  It is a neoprene cooler that you wear on your shoulder (Soft sided) that will hold a 12 pack of beer or a 6 pack and 4 bottles of wine.  It is a great bag and I look forward to using it at sundowners and events at other people's boats when we are back home.

We filmed some of the water front buildings, including a Bakery, Movie Theater (outdoor of course) marina office, fuel dock, hotel, gift shops, restaurants, pubs and what not.  See the video at the end of this blog for some more views of this including a great little bench that was built under a stone arch for shade.

View from slip back toward the shore

We loaded up into the Dinghy and headed back to the boat to pack up for the very short trip to Leverick bay.   We dropped the mooring and headed across the North Virgin Sound and circled the fuel dock finding our best place to pull up to it.  We waited for another boat to pull out and worked our way right onto the dock between 2 other boats side tied.  O'day did a great job and the guys on the fuel dock were really helpful with guiding us to the right spot and making fast the lines as we came in.

While we fueled up, Deb inquired about the Mooring versus a slip in the Marina.  We were shocked to find out that if we took a slip, we would get al the water we needed for free.  So a slip, with electricity, was only $25 more for the night than the mooring ball.  It had been 5 nights and we all thought that we would take advantage of the power and air conditioning while we were here.  After fueling up and filling with Water, we moved into our assigned slip.  Again Oday made it look like he had been Captain of a Catamaran for many years.  Once tied up, we connected power and flipped on the Air Conditioning units in the boat.  No water flow coming out, so we started to investigate what happened.  Turns out that with all of the sailing and beating, we just lost the prime to the pumps.  After reprising the pumps for each air conditioner, we were pumping cold air into all of the staterooms and salon.

Lunch time visitor

We emptied the trash, cleaned up the boat (Taking advantage of the water) and walked up to the restaurant for lunch and some Pain Killers and Caribe beer.  I love Island restaurant, it is not uncommon to see a dog wandering through looking for a handout.  In this particular one, we had a chicken come through looking for some food.

After a really good lunch including drinks, Conch fritters and cheeseburgers in paradise, we decided to go for a swim in the pool on shore that was included with a slip rental.  The water was warm, but it was very relaxing to just chill in the pool for an hour or so.   Right next to the pool was one of those great outdoor tiki style bars, so we had to swing on over and have a drink or 3.

Yep, Texas Flag is us

One of the other cool things about hanging out in these water front bars and restaurants is the characters you meet.  We met a guy that was there and he was full of rich stories.  Really nice guy, and he was sailing "down island" on his "french cat" that was anchored out in the bay.  In the hour or so we sat there he shared all kinds of interesting stories.  If I were to sum it up quickly, he was a cowboy from Wyoming or something like that.  He told stories of doing work for Nasa and rockets.  He also talked about doing some kind of work for the Russian space program.  He discussed national security type work he had done, He supposedly did delivery of private Boeing aircraft including delivering the 777 to Sir Richard Branson.  He suggested that he was going to stop by Richards Island, but the wind was just too good, he didn't want to stop sailing.  He is a test pilot and, oh yeah, he is a kite surfer that flies to all locations when there is a hurricane so he can kite surf in those.    I personally think 85% of it was BS, but it was all interesting.

View of the restaurant, stores, bar and pool from up on the hillside

While we sat at the bar, Obarr took a little walk up the hill and around this part of the island.  He used his amazing zoom on his camera to get pictures of the boat, the marina and even zoomed in on us sitting at the bar from a 1/4 mile away.

We slowly worked our way back to the boat and enjoyed the nice cool air that was in the boat.  We were able to connect to the Leverick Bay restaurant's wifi connection so we all posted a few pictures on Facebook and I must confess I did download my work email so that I could sift through it to find the important stuff.  We slept really good at the dock and planned to sleep as late as everyone wanted to.

We have a small video from our walk around Saba Rock and also Bitter End, It you are reading this anywhere other than the blog online, you will need to click on this link for the Saba Rock, BEYC Video.

Cane Garden Bay, Callwood Distillery and Saba Rock - Sailing the BVI's (5 of 10)

(Editorial Note - You will notice that the chapter count is now x of 10, I had to increase the # of chapters with the content we had from the trip) 

It is amazing how great we all slept every night on this trip.  This was another night where we slept at anchor, breeze blowing in nicely and while a bit warm, always comfortable with that breeze.  We were really worried about not having air conditioning on the boat thinking it would be a too hot at night.  O’barr was adamant that it wouldn’t be needed and he was right.  Each bunk on the boat had a small fan that had both a high and low speed.  They drew very little amperage and just having it on low speed was enough to just keep the air moving.

We did find that it was cooler if we slept with the stateroom doors open.  The wind would come from the bow (where our stateroom was) and blow through the hallway to the aft stateroom where Obarr was sleeping.  He had his windows and hatches open as well so they ended up being a wind tunnel.  It was the same setup on the other hull sleeping configuration with Wild Mary and Robert up front and Oday and T in the back stateroom.    You just had to be a little cautious when you got up early or in the middle of then night to use the restroom.  I would do a bit of a peek around the corner to see if Obarr was sleeping before moving around in the stateroom.  And I guess in the end, you had to just be ok that if someone saw something, oh well. The risk was worth the reward of a good breeze every night through the boat.

By this time it was becoming very routine that whomever was up first would put on the coffee and everyone would just enjoy it as they came up from their bunks.  Another morning of a well cooked breakfast.  Today we had fresh fruit and some yogurt with our breakfast.  We had oranges, apples, grapefruit and some mango that we had fresh from one of the markets so it was quite a treat.  We started to rinse out the coffee grinds on the aft deck rather than in the sink as it was much faster to get the grounds out of the percolator.  The process was pretty simple.

Look at the Teeth on this guy up close

We had a bucket tied to a short line and we would drop it off the back of the boat and then use that to rinse the parts and dump it overboard.  Today we happened to notice a fairly large fish swimming off the back of the boat.  We figured he was used to hanging out in an anchorage and looking for food scraps to be tossed overboard.  So we didn’t disappoint.  We took a bit of some left over steak we had on board and cut a few pieces and dropped them in while holding the camera down below.  He was a 3-4 foot barracuda and had a pretty amazing set of teeth.  It was really cool seeing him up so close.  

We planned a trip over to Myett’s gift shop and the Callwood Distillery so we needed to get going as we had a pretty good long sail today to get to Saba Rock in the North Sound.    We all piled into the dinghy and headed for shore.
We walked back to Myett’s and the girls all went a little crazy with souvenirs.  We saw these cool black and white shirts there that filled in with color when they were in the sun.  Deb picked one up for our GrandKiddo and T wanted one as well.  The good news is that she was able to fit into one of the kids shirts they had there so she got a pretty cool one for herself as well.  

We walked down the street toward the distillery, passing the grocery store, an art studio and the postoffice, churches and the school with all of the children in their uniforms there.  Pretty amazing view these kids have from their school which was a great view through a few trees of the beautiful Cane Garden Bay.  We made the left hand turn onto the Distillery road and as we walked the block toward it we could already see smoke rising from the still.

This place is really amazing, it is the Callwood Distillery and has been in operation here in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola for over 400 years.  They are one of the oldest operating pot distilleries in the world.  We met the one employee working that day who was outside stoking the fire to heat the mash.  From that outside still the pipe comes in through a wall and into a small bucket (about 4 gallons) on the floor inside.  As it fills up, it is poured from there the bucket into the storing vessels.  These vary depending on the type of rum they are making.  For white rum, it is poured into glass vessels of about 4-10 gallons (they just had a variety there).  If they are going to be making spiced or aged rum, they would put it in the wood barrels and store them.  They get their barrels from Kentucky (old Whisky barrels) but I forgot to ask what they did prior to that.

The gentleman working there was really generous and provided samples of any of the variety they had there.  Mary had some fun with him when we were selecting what we would buy and after him counting out the bottles, Mary asked "So what do you own me" and he was stumped for a minute.  It was pretty funny and I think he had a clever retort like, if we had this discussion at 4pm, that may have gone more in your favor.  We ended up buying quite a few bottles based on what we would drink on the rest of the trip as well as what we could take home.    Deb and I picked up a bottle that was really good, lightly wood barrel aged, but had a large stick of sugar cane in the bottle to sweeten the drink.

The entrance and sign for the Distillery                                 The stock to be purchased (note TX flag)

After the distillery, we were walking back to the dinghy dock and saw that glass blowing studio.  This is the Green VI Glass Blowing Studio and it was founded as a way to have a more sustainable way of living on the BVI's.  The studio uses all glass that the find on the beaches and in town.  When we were there, they were telling us that they are about to convert their furnaces to use old cooking oil as a way to further enable their sustainability.  See their beautiful work on their Facebook photo album.  It was really cool and they were making starfish and turtles out of molten glass they found on the beach.  We watched them doing this for a while and got some pretty cool video of them doing it.

Basically they take a molten hot glob of this class, and spinning it get it to the shape they want.  They then take other molten glob of glass and touch it to the body and shape it with pliers to make the fins and head.  They were willing to custom make one any colors that we wanted so Deb picked out what she wanted.  We were running out of time and had to start heading to the North Sound so we asked them if we could pick it up on Friday when we come back to this spot for the Full Moon Party.  Arrangements were made and off we went back to the boat stopping to refill the ice in the coolers since this was a cheap place to get 20lb bags of ice.

We sailed North of Tortola and had planned a few course changes to keep the wind moving us at a good pace.  We happened to notice the depth on the charts showed that just a little ways beyond where we intended to change course the depth would go from 150 feet deep to 1400 and we thought it would be cool to sail out into that really deep water.  We extended one of our lay lines and were excitedly watching the depth sounder.  It went to 200, 220 and then up to about 75 feet which we expected, and we were anxiously waiting for the drop with cameras ready to capture the view on the depth sounder.  It started to drop, 90, 110, 160, 190, 200, 240, 270, 320 and then the depth sounder just went to three dashes when the depth sounder could not longer read depths more than that.  It was really disappointing because I was really looking forward to that.

We sailed into the north sound by heading directly toward Sir Richard Branson’s island (small light colored island on the top right of the map enclosed) and then turning to the south around the shallow reefs.  We went into this great area of North Virgin Gorda Sound with Virgin Gorda in front of us to the south.  We nagivated in with Prickly Pear Island to our port, and as we rounded Prickly pear, we could see the Bitter End Yacht Club and Saba Rock.   Our intent was to grab a mooring at Saba rock because if you paid for a mooring there, you could get 200 gallons of water and a bag of ice for free.  We got there a little late and there were no moorings left at Saba Rock.

We actually thought there were a few but as we got close we noticed they were labeled as "private".  We decided that we would grab a mooring at the World famous Bitter End Yacht Club.  I had the helm and found that it really is pretty nice to have the dual engines for maneuverability.  We picked up the mooring and decided to just take a swim for a little while after our long sail.  We were moored just outside of a channel that was used for boats taking workers to resorts on some of the outer islands, so we had to swim fairly close to the boat at all times.  Each time we swam, we typically just jumped off the very low stern entrance and into the water, but today we decided to jump from the sides of the boat.  I was amazed at how wimpy I was about it.  I thought it would be no big deal, but I had to think about it for a 3-4 second period of time before doing it.  Geez.

With the current coming in from between the islands in front of us, we decided to tie the life ring to a line and let it flow behind the boat.  That way if we were swimming or relaxing on a float, we could just hold onto the line and relax.  We did this for a couple of hours before grilling a nice dinner of marinated Mahi.  It was such a nice and relaxing evening.  We sat in the cockpit after dinner and just had a few drinks.  After dinner we decided that we should head over to the bar at Saba Rock and maybe grab a drink.  Saba rock has a great dinghy dock with underwater lights as you get close to it.  From the lights, you could see a bunch of 3-5 foot tarpon.  They feed them at certain times during the day, and we heard someone at the bar talking about them doing that at 9am in the mornings.  We made a mental note to head back in the morning to check that out.

Another case of "it's a small world", we sat at the bar and ordered some drinks.  We started talking to some folks at the bar who were sailing for the first time without the kids. Sounds like their kids usually come with them but not this time.

Turns out they are from the same town that several from our party are from and Deb lived for many years.  Contact info was swapped and we received a nice invite to come to their house for a party near the end of July.  Really cool to meet people so nice and close to home.  We did count the number of boats in the mooring field flying the Texas Flag and we counted 5 boats including ours.  We met at least 2 other people from Texas that were not flying the flag, so Texas was again very well represented.

We headed back to the boat from Saba rock and just relaxed before calling it a night.

Below is a video that summarizes the days activities.  If you are reading this blog from email or a print out, you will not see the video embedded below and will need to click on the following link to our Youtube Chanel.   Please click here to see the video of Callwood Distillery, Cane Garden Bay and Sailing to Saba Rock.