Soggy Dollar Bar, White Bay, Jost van Dyke

Ocean Gem
Geoff & Eileen Mander
Tue 4 Mar 2014 22:30

Date: Tuesday 4th March 2014

 

On Tuesday morning we thought that we’d take a look at The Soggy Dollar bar which is situated in White Bay, just along the coast from where we were moored in Great Harbour.  We had been warned that it would be difficult to find somewhere to anchor there so we decided to go there by dinghy. It took about 20 minutes to zoom over there with our new engine and when we arrived we could see that there was no dinghy dock to use to go ashore.  There were a few small breakers washing up on the steeply shelving beach so getting the dinghy ashore, and subsequently launched again would not be straightforward.  So we anchored the dinghy a few meters offshore and swam on to the beach.  This is the traditional way of visiting the bar, hence its name, taken from the oversaturated state of the greenbacks after being swum ashore by sailors.

 

It was a rather special kind of place, until that is the day trippers started to arrive, when all of a sudden the bay became crowded with boats all trying to get their passengers ashore at the same time and the number of people in the bar grew from a dozen or so to maybe a hundred.  But everyone was having fun and we enjoyed the time we spent there.