{"id":438,"date":"2000-11-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-11-18T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=438"},"modified":"2012-03-07T20:22:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T01:22:40","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew77\/","title":{"rendered":"British Virgin Islands Before the Crowds"},"content":{"rendered":"
Enjoying the British Virgin Islands during off season, before it gets innundated with charter boats.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

It is easy to see why the British Virgins are such a popular charter spot. The waters are protected, there are lots of anchorages to hang out in with bars and restaurants ashore, and the weather is for the most part wonderful.<\/p>\n

The only negative is that we and several thousand charter boats know this secret. But this is still the slow season, so the anchorages are not yet jammed – although they are far from empty. <\/p>\n

The last couple of days are a good example. We had dinner with some old friends in Road Town on Tortola. Then, yesterday morning sailed to the west end of Tortola, to Sopers Hole. Sopers is a long, narrow harbor and we had a good time sailing up the bay, through various anchored boats. There wasn’t really space at the top end to turn Beowulf around and head downwind, so we went head to wind, rolled the jib, and backed down (under sail) until we were in a good spot to set the hook. <\/p>\n

We had lunch aboard, and then launched the dink for a tour of the harbor.<\/p>\n

After our tour we upped anchor, and sailed the four miles to Jost Van Dyke – and anchored off the famous “Foxy’s” Bar. Foxy himself was there with his guitar, entertaining ten charters. There is seating for hundreds, and when the season gets rolling Foxy’s is a hot spot in this part of the world.<\/p>\n

About 1600 we picked up the hook, and powered the two miles to the N. end of the island, and an almost deserted anchorage (just three other boats). A lovely, low beach with open sea on the other side made for a nice breeze all evening long – an important factor for comfortable sleeping as it is still toasty during the evening.<\/p>\n

Today (Friday) we decided to sail back to the other end of the British Virgins – to Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda and check out what was happening with the many entrants of the Caribbean 1500.<\/p>\n

It was a beat all the way – 20 miles uphill in smooth water, crossing tacks with a variety of charter boats – a wonderful day of sailing. We arrived in time to catch the last of the “debriefing”. Tomorrow is trophy presentation time and when we’ll find out about handicap results. <\/p>\n

Incidentally, we think we know why this is called the Caribbean 1500 – even though it is just 1275 miles down here from Norfolk. We had exactly 1501 miles on the log, so there must be a a factor in the name for those boats which jibe downwind rather than run!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enjoying the British Virgin Islands during off season, before it gets innundated with charter boats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beowulf-logs","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}