The past couple of days have been spent exploring a couple of new (to us) anchorages and provisioning on our way to Nanny Cay Marina for the scheduled repairs to begin tomorrow. We had a good sail from North Sound to Diamond Cay on Jost Van Dyke, with winds ranging from 8 knots up to about 23 knots. We had initially been tempted to try flying our spinnaker in the light winds but were glad we didn’t when clouds rolled in and we began to see winds in excess of 20 knots and rain that lasted for the majority of the rest of the trip. We managed to find one of the few moorings in Diamond Cay and had quite a comfortable night, despite a significant North swell being evident. It was a lovely spot with good snorkeling and views of waves breaking over rocks on the narrow shallow waters between the main island and Little Jost Van Dyke. The photo (above) of the mooring field was taken during our short walk from the bar/restaurant “Foxy’s Taboo” to see the Bubbling Pool (see photo below).
The following day we had another lovely sail into Thatch Island Cut off the West end of Tortola and almost managed to continue sailing into the Sir Franic Drake Channel but unfortunately the wind headed us and died so we resorted to the iron sail to help us make it to Road Town in reasonable time. For the first time we picked up a mooring ball near the cruise liner dock, intending to only stay long enough to do some provisioning but ended up staying overnight, which meant that we also managed to pick up a few boat bits from our favorite chandlery, ‘Golden Hind’ and restock Second Wind’s rather depleted bar (very important).
Last night we picked up a mooring ball in Kelly’s cove, which is almost part of The Bight (home to The Pirates restaurant and Willy T’s) on Norman Island but has much better snorkeling. We were happy to be away from the midst of all the associated activity on a Saturday night….. It was bad enough hearing the noisy engines of departing vessels returning to Tortola after their captains no doubt had imbibed a few drinks…
From Norman Island it was only a short hop across to Nanny Cay today, taking just a little over an hour. Never-the-less, we raised the full mainsail and rolled out the Genoa and had a very pleasant gentle sail. The photo taken underway shows Pelican Island with “The Indians”, the rocks that are a popular lunchtime stop as the snorkeling there is so good.