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.

Jost Van Dyke, Sandy Cay, Cane Garden Bay - Sailing the BVI's (4 of 8)

With our last land adventure last night being a good time at Corsairs for a few more drinks than good judgement would have allowed, we slept soundly and late into the next morning.   

"I don't know, can you tell if it is on"

We awoke once again to the smell of coffee, which was a welcome start to this morning. WildMary had woke up early and had it perking in two pots. 

(Editorial note.  I mentioned having some absinthe shots and hanging out at a waterfront beach bar last night, but when looking for photos for this blog post, I ran across a video of Deb and T working very hard to try to take a selfie sometime late last night.  I don't think they realized that the camera was recording video the whole time.  Bonus ! )

Sandy Cay (Photo taken by Oday from bow of boat at anchor)

This trip has been a series of good meals and today was another day of a well cooked breakfast.  The plan for today was to sail from Jost Van Dyke to a small island called Sandy Cay and then on to Cane Garden Bay.  It was going to be a couple of short sails for the day, so we took our time leaving Jost.  We packed up our trash and made one last run to the dock where you could drop trash for free.  

We decided to just motor over to Sandy Cay, a short distance to the East from where we were.  Sandy Cay is an uninhabited island between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola and was owned by the Rockefeller Family and donated in 2008 to the National Park Trust of the Virgin Islands.  The island is very small (just about 13 acres) but has several great attributes.   There is a great sand beach, wooded trails, rocky ledges as well as a large salt pond in the center of the island.  

Oday and T decided to stay on the boat
and relax in a Hammock on the bow.

We moored on the Western side of the island in about 15 feet of water over a gorgeous sandy bottom.  The white sand and crystal clear water form that amazing shade of blue you see in just certain places in the world.  Here the blue was so brilliant that when the seagulls would fly a few feet over the water it reflected up onto their bellies and made them look like they were a light shade of blue instead of white.  We looked through all of our pictures and just couldn't find a great way to show that, but it was truly amazing and not something we saw in any other places we went while on this trip.  

We took the dinghy to shore, beached it and walked up the beach to a small sign with a map of the island and trail entrance.  Most of us didn't bring shoes, so we stayed on the trail for the most part.  We walked about a third of the way around the island and saw many birds and lizards or chameleons.  There was something pretty interesting on many of the trees but we are not 100% sure what it was.  

Walking the trails on Sandy Cay

Our best guess was termites.  There would be these small mud like tubes that would go from the ground up the tree trunks and out most of the major branches.  We were interested to know what it was, but not so interested to knock the mud tubes down to see what may come out.   We continued to walk down the trails and stop and observe all of the amazing sites.  The chameleons where pretty neat, you would typically hear them before seeing them.  They would scurry along the ground and as the leaves would russell we would see them moving along.  

A few of them would perch on a tree branch, but if we got close enough to get a picture they would scurry around to the other side and block the photo.  We saw beautiful cactus in bloom as well which surprised me to see Coconut Palm trees and cactus all sharing the same bit of ground.   We also kept hearing what sounded like doves, but never did see any. I am assuming they were just up in the trees and would fly off as we would get close but they made that very distinctive dove sound.  Robert found a great tree that was growing an an angle and looked like a great place for a picture, or to just relax.     We continued along the path until it came to the edge of the shore again but this time it was all rocky and with our bare feet we decided not to tip toe around them.  As we turned around to head back, we kept looking through the woods to see where we could come out of the woods and onto the beach.  

Deb and I on the beach after coming from trail

We found a spot, walked carefully from the path to the beach watching out we didn't step on any cactus.  As we stepped out onto the beach, it was a really neat site.  Behind us was where the sandy beach started to turn to rock and at the edge of the water you could see the different colors of the water from the contrast between sandy bottom and rock bottom.  The shades of blue were all dependent on how large the rocks were and therefore how much water was on top of them.  Ahead of us was something from a magazine.  

Robert waked behind all of us to catch a quick photo of just how pristine the beach, sand, water and anchorage were.  You can see a few of the boats anchored just off the beach ahead of us.  To our left in this photo is Tortola about 15 miles away.   

We decided to walk along the water all the way back to where we beached the dinghy.  This was the first time we had taken the dinghy ashore and beached it.  Getting off the beach was not too hard, after getting a great hint from Obarr.  I was getting ready to drag it back down the beach (Stern first) and Obarr quickly said, turn it around, it will be a lot easier.  And it was !!!.  Thank you.    We pushed the dinghy into a foot of water and got Mary to load first since she typically sits on the bow seat.  

The rest of us loaded in as Obarr held the dinghy.  As more of us loaded up, we had to push further from shore.  Obarr jumped in last and we headed slowly back to the boat, where Oday was there to take a line as we pulled along side the boat.   We relaxed at this beautiful spot for a while longer.  Sandwiches were made and devoured in the cockpit for lunch while we contemplated our very short trip over to Cane Garden Bay.  With the short trip, we decided to just tow the dinghy rather than hoist it up onto the davits for this short trip.  Below in this picture you can see where we started on the left and worked our way to the right at Cane Garden Bay with our stop at Sandy Cay.   So as we sailed into Cane Garden Bay, we played Jimmy Buffett's Mañana on the radio.  The lyrics were very appropriate for the trip as he sang out:

I hear it gets better, that's what they say

As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay.

Please don't say mañana if you don't mean it

I have heard your lines for so very long

Don't try to describe the scenery if you've never seen it

Don't ever forget that you just may wind up in my song...

Obarr had been here before, on Charters but also when he and Kerri cruised on their boat some 10 years ago, they spent some time here in Cane Garden Bay.  When they did, they got to know the owners of "Myetts" which is a wonderful beach front restaurant, bar, hotel, gift shop, etc.  We walked up to Myetts to see if they were there.  Unfortunately they were not there today.  

We still decided to sit at a beach side table, enjoy some wonderful pain killers and Conch Fritters and Cracked Conch.  The view from this place was just amazing, you could see right out over the beach to the boats anchored right out front.  It was always pretty cool to see our Texas Flag waiving out there on our boat as well.  
After our Conch and Pain Killers, we took a walk through town.  We walked down to the Callwood Distillery but it was closed for a local holiday so we found out what time they opened in the morning so we could come back for a tour.  We found a place where we could drop trash here in town for free as well.  We didn't need to do so on this trip, but we planned on coming back to Cane Garden Bay on Friday when there was a full moon for the "Full Moon Party" at the BombaShack so we planned a trash drop for that day.  

We stopped at a market and picked up a couple of items we wanted.  On the way back to the boat, we stopped at Rhymers Beach Hotel and Store to pick up some ice.  They were one of the cheapest places we found ice on this trip and picked up a 20 lb bag for about $6.50.  When we got back to the boat, we swam for a while in the anchorage and again continued to be completely intrigued with the clarity of the water.  Here is a photo of our anchor chain in 25 feet of water and you can clearly see it go all the way to the bottom and head off in the distance.   We also got a chance to take some photos through our Floor Hatch in the boat.  We figure it is a safety issue if something were to go horribly bad and you happened to have the boat upside down, it allowed a place where you could still get out of the boat.  With that said, it was still very odd to see a hatch in the floor.   Someone captured a cool picture of Oday under the boat, with T taking a picture of him from inside the boat.  

We put our plans together for the next day.  We were going to get up in the morning, have breakfast and then head over to the Callwood Distillery for a tour of an old school distillery still doing things much the same way they did 400 years ago when they started brewing rum there.  

More in the next chapter of the blog !!  Here is a link for Callwood's Facebook Page, I would encourage you to Check it out. 

Below is a bit of a video capture of the days activities.  If you are reading this in any other way than online, you may not see the video below.  If not, click on this link to play the video.  

Jost Van Dyke, Sandy Cay to Cane Garden Bay

http://youtu.be/GGNpp01mFsg