Amy goes sailing in the BVI - 2025

N8 and I joined up with some friends from Indiana and Chicago to go to the British Virgin Islands for some sun, sea, and sailing.

amy

2/9/202510 min read

This is the first time that we were the official captain and skipper, no pressure! So we decided to go to the BVI, where the sailing is always great, easy to navigate, and there are plenty of bars if everything else goes wrong. We hit up Virgin Gorda, Marina Cay, Jost Van Dyke, Norman Island, Cooper Island, and Soper's Hole (Tortola) with the boat. We skipped Anegada due to the seas being a bit choppy, but we had some really nice sailing for most of the days.

Getting to the BVI consisted of us flying to St. Thomas, then taking a ferry to Tortola. While we were in St. Thomas, we went to a brewery, and the owner of it was from Angola, Indiana! Small world - we had some beers and asked a lot of questions about moving permanently to the Caribbean, haha.

The ferry experience is a bit chaotic, happy the we bought our tickets ahead of time. Checking in and checking bags on the ferry is not particularly organized, and there is a strange feeling that your bag just might end up in the water (luckily, no issues with that but my brother saw it happen once). The rest of the experience, you are breathing in diesel exhaust, crammed into seats with strangers, jostling around on the choppy ride, and then standing in the customs line to officially get into Paradise. Oh, and stepping on and off the ferry also gives you a sense that you might end up in the water.

We decided to be frugal and stubborn getting from the ferry to our hotel, so we walked about 0.5 - 1 mile with our backpacks, duffels, and one wheelie bag. Sidewalk was a bit crappy, and we ended up pretty sweaty, but we saw some chickens and iguanas! Checked into our hotel, got a rum punch, then headed to Pussers to get ourselves a Painkiller, which is one of our favorite drinks, and quite the symbol of us being in the BVI!

Next morning was our check in to the Moorings to get our boat, which was a pretty easy process. We got it a little ahead of schedule, name was Nomada Caribena. I think I pronounced it wrong every time. We divided and conquered, N8 and I did the boat check and briefing, and the others went to the grocery store for some provisioning. Also, this was the first time that we did the provisioning list by ourselves, hopeful that we didn't forget anything important. One fun aspect of grocery shopping in the islands is there is a good chance they don't have something that we are used to in the States, so it can be a gamble when making the list. Not too much issue with that this time, and Cathy and Jennifer were pretty good with improvising and figuring out substitutes. Big shout out the them! However, we did not put exact numbers of what to get for the alcohol and mixers, as we weren't sure what everyone would want. So we ended up with quite the amount of booze, and interesting amounts of things.... We had 6 margarita mixers, but only 1 bottle of tequila. We had 1 bottle of gin and a few cases of tonic. I think we had enough bloody mary mix to outfit a brunch restaurant in downtown Chicago, and I have never seen so much sprite. Also, the ratio of vodka to any other liquor made it seem like this was a Russian vacation, rather than a Caribbean one. Also, there was a lot of wine....like....a lot. Needless to say, we had enough to drink for probably a month, so we did our best to get through as much as possible. But I think the dock workers really enjoyed our leftovers when we got back.

The boat was in pretty good shape. We opted for one that was a little older, since it's cheaper. A few minor things needing attention before we set off. During the trip, it seems that our water maker filters got clogged, so we fixed that. First tried troubleshooting by cleaning out the strainer, but that didn't work, and we had to find and replace the filters. These are located under one of the beds, so I crawled in there to do it. The hand-tight filters seems to have been tightened with a gorilla hand, so in efforts to loosen it, I bashed and cut my finger, so that sucked. Also, those little spaces get reallllly warm, so I was quite sweaty. Also, we were going to the beach that morning, so I was already in my swimsuit, which just adds to the weirdness of this situation, haha. N8 helped to get the filter off, with a lot of cursing, some towels, and some strained muscles. Replaced them, got excited that it would work.....and then it didn't. We were about to go snorkel under the boat to see if the hole was plugged from the outside, but luckily Nathan remembered that he had valved off the inlet when we were troubleshooting the strainer. Turned the valve, and voila! It worked! Thank goodness we didn't have to "rough it" by conserving water, haha.

Ok, now for some of the fun adventures! One of our first stops was the North Sound. On the way here from Marina Cay, one of our friends got a little seasick, and we also got a pop-up rain shower. Good thing I brought my rain coat because it was quite the shower....unfortunately N8 didn't bring one, woops. The North Sounds is so beautiful and calm, and has a couple of amazing places to visit - Saba Rock and Bitter End Yacht Club. Got some drinks at each place, enjoyed the views at Saba, and we relaxed in the water. Take a look at the pictures! Also, there is a guy on a boat called Rum Runner, and he has a dog named Drake, and they go around to the boats delivering frozen drinks, which is a fantastic idea. The drinks are very yummy and very cold - hit the spot when relaxing in the water with the hot sun. The drinks from the on-land bars were also tasty, but on the expensive side, but we splurged a little while in paradise.

Since we decided to skip Anegada due to choppy conditions, we went to Leverick Bay the next day, which is right next to North Sound. On the way to Leverick, we headed outside of the bay and into the channel in order to uh...open the holding tanks (i.e. get rid of our shit). This process consists of climbing down in the hulls to open a valve for a little bit of time, and then close them before heading back into a bay. I volunteered for this, and unfortunately, due to the choppy conditions, this is the only time on the trip that I felt a little bit of seasickness. So some land time on Virgin Gorda was nice after that. We decided on Leverick Bay so that we could grab a taxi and get down to the Baths. Normally, we would do a day-mooring right outside of the Baths and swim into them, however with the choppy seas, and the fact that we were already on the opposite side of the island, we thought this would be better logistics. Plus it gave us the chance for some amazing land views. The Baths are a bunch of rocks that are on the beach and in the water, and you can climb in and around them, so it is a unique experience. Also, the taxi itself is quite an experience....steep and curvy roads combined with bench seats and no seatbelts....we were living on the edge, haha. Some picture below to show how cool Virgin Gorda is.

Next we headed to Jost Van Dyke. Had an awesome day of sailing on the way, got another pop up shower, but no issues on the way. Once we got to Diamond Cay, the mooring ball we booked was already taken, but luckily we were able to snag a different one. A little while later, we noticed that the power cat near us didnt seem to be attached to their mooring ball anymore and was drifting back towards the shore....yikes! N8 and jumped on the dinghy to try and see if we could do anything to help, and another couple people were thinking the same as us. We didnt make it before the boat got beached on some sand, but we tried, along with a number of other people. It was probably the best place for something like this to happen, since the bottom was sandy and the current pushed the boat that way (instead of out to sea!). After a bit, the folks on that boat got back to it, had it towed off the sand, they put it back on the mooring ball (with better lines this time), and continued their partying and vacationing. Remember getting the lines on the mooring ball correctly is important! Our land excursion here was to get to the bubbly pool, which is a little pool behind some rocks, so when the ocean waves come in, they get bubbly and frothy and it kind of looks like a jacuzzi with a mean rip tide. The "hike" to get there was not as well marked (or we didn't see the signs), so we did make a couple wrong turns, and there was a few steep/rocky areas. I wish I had my altras, since those are so grippy, but instead had my Oofos flip flops. Great on the way to the bubbly pool, but once my feet got wet, it was slippery city between my foot and the sandal. So my review of Oofos....not so grippy, haha.

OK, now for probably one of my favorite days of the trip. We got up early and headed to White Bay to visit the Soggy Dollar, which is the original creator of the Painkiller. Yummy. We got there before too many other boats were there, which was good since we are not as confident with our anchoring skills. But we anchored successfully on the first try (had to set the bridle twice, oops). Then we swam into the bar....so our dollars were soggy! But not really, we used a dry bag so our phones didn't get wet, cuz you know we can't live without our phones. Got some painkillers from the bar, walked around the beach, and just enjoyed a really nice morning and afternoon . After the sun and sand, and maybe another painkiller, we sailed over to Soper's Hole for the night. More fun times in the water with the paddleboards and floaties, and a beautiful sunset. There were also some very fancy boats in this marina, so we drooled over those a little bit.

After Soper's Hole, we went to Norman Island. On the way there, we stopped off at a day-mooring at the Indians for a little bit of snorkeling. This was pretty fun, as it was our first good chance at snorkeling. The choppy water wasn't too bad - we tried to stay together and not stray too far out of the middle area. Unfortunately, my go pro memory card was full, so I got no pictures of videos of this, but I promise, it happened!

Norman Island is home to Willy T, which is a bar that is on a boat. Pretty fun place - a lot of folks jump off the second story, despite the signs that say no jumping/diving, even though they seem to have a jumping platform there....I didn't jump this time, but have done it before. It is a good time. We went to Willy T in the afternoon, as we decided to have our own pirate party at night. Steve and Cathy were gracious enough to lug all the pirate gear to the BVI. We had some shirts, swords, parrots, and I think about 1 million fake mustaches, which we continued to find all over the boat the following couple of days.

Last full day of the sailing, we headed to Cooper Island. Again some nice sailing to get there. Once we got there, we snorkeled a bit (go pro was ready this time!) and we also got some drinks at the bar (surprise surprise). Pretty chill overall, and a lovely final day with the boat.

The next day, we took the boat back to the Marina. Packed and cleaned up the boat - guys on the docks got an interesting assortment of beverage options, haha. We had lunch at the restaurant and swam a little in the pool (more iguanas!), and then we parted ways with some of our friends, who were going back to St. Thomas for the night. Tony, Alan, N8 and I stayed in Road Town one more night, so of course, we found ourselves at Pussers for dinner and a final painkiller (or 2!). The next morning was another ferry ride, but slightly more exciting....this ferry had seats far below the windows, so we couldn't really see out. Also, the ferry kept speeding up and slowing down - they were having some technical issues, and it seemed like the boat could not go full speed. So this added a little bit of time to the trip. But we made it safely, headed to the airport and proceeded to hang there for a few hours, getting our last bit of time with Tony and Alan.