We woke to the cruise ship, Lips going past us in the channel. Lips! We saw her almost every day in the Canary Islands, once in Antigua and now roaming around the BVI. Hey, Lips. She was heading towards the capital in Tortola. Road Town. Just then, a seed was planted… we hadn’t checked out Tortola yet, the biggest island in the BVIs. Our pilot guide mentions two anchorages in Road Town and we were running low on fresh food and there’s a couple of days of strong wind coming. Road Town also has the biggest supermarket in the BVIs… ok, decision made. Dive boat (dive gear drying everywhere) became sailing boat (dive gear put away) again and we said a very fond farewell to the Great Dog. 

It took an hour or so to motor sail over to Road Town. Enough time to become re-acquainted with the ‘rules of the road’ as charter boats zipped all around us. Lulu and Delphine took to a game of Monopoly downstairs and weren’t seen again for most of the day. We entered Road Harbour and the Cap and I looked around. This was it? The so-called anchorage on the edge of Road Town consisted only of mooring buoys with boats already stuck to them. No one was anchoring and with good reason; at 21m it’s a bit too deep to anchor. Anchoring in 5m is good, 10 in a pinch. Huh. Around the cruise ship dock was the other anchorage. It was off the breakwater and a largely empty space, save for two boats attached to mooring buoys. The Cap wasn’t happy. ‘Any serious wind and we’re going to blow towards that breakwater.’ He looked out. ‘How can this be protected?’ Wind and rocking waves were moving over us… We shook our heads. Weird. 

So, no visit after all to the biggest supermarket in the BVIs.. we kept going. We’d heard that Soper’s Hole, at the West end of Tortola is also a good place to provision. It’s little claw shape was once the perfect place for pirates to launch their raids. As we got round the headland, we could see why. The straights between the large USVI islands of St. John and St. Thomas are visible from here in a you-can-see-them-but-they-can’t-see-you way. Sneaky or what.. boy, those pirates must have enjoyed a game of hide-and-seek!

What would pirates have made of this place now, we wondered? Would they have picked up a mooring buoy since once again, no one was anchored but attached to buoys? Would they have approved of the pastel-coloured, gabled buildings or would they have spat on their white-washed decks? Would they have raided the supermarket for its frozen food which wasn’t quite frozen but just soft and very cold, poked at the sad-looking fruit too and swatted the overly-serious Americans charging around the aisles? Would they have paid $50 for a trip to the big supermarket that we’d aborted a short walk to only a few hours ago? Hmmm. Back to Quest. Take the cravat off and get some sleep. And listen to the wind howl all night, the rain lash the decks and know that we probably made the right decision. Even if it sucks. 

Love from Quest and her crew xx