18:23.0N 64:42.3W

Sun, Mon, Tues & Wed –  9^th & 10^th 11^th & 12^th March

We went ashore in the morning, anchoring the dinghy more successfully this time (!), and visited the Annaberg Sugar Mill.  We had picked up a leaflet at the National Parks office which was very informative of the fairly extensive ruins of the mill built in 1805.  Otherwise the day was spent doing boat jobs.  The next day we set off early to travel the short distance of 1.5 miles from the USA to a British overseas territory, arriving in Soper’s Hole in the BVIs.  Here we were lucky enough to be meeting up with Sapphire, with Bill and Linda Knowles (and their brand new sea dog, Zoe, a delightful Jack Russell) on board.  Bill and Linda have hosted us for 2 years on July 4^th in the US and are the very hard-working instigators of the Salty Dawg Rally which we joined to come down from the US to the Caribbean last autumn.  They had generously arranged a mooring ball for us in this popular bay (hen’s teeth come to mind), as well as making all the arrangements for Richardson’s Rigging to come and re-swage our staysail halyard the following day.

In between whiles they invited us for supper, took us shopping by car in the great metropolis, procured elusive filters for our water-maker and most amazing of all, added us to their invitation to join guests of John Maynard for his pizza party.  John owns Little Thatch Island and several houses in Soper’s Hole – he learnt how to buy an island from that well known teacher, Richard Branson!   Every so often he throws a very exclusive pizza party at his beach house – we were 14 - with its own wood-burning pizza oven:  you make your own pizza, which is then cooked and brought to you….!  The evening had had quite an exciting beginning, first we had torrential rain for almost an hour, then in transferring to the nearby dock to pick up the boat ride to Little Thatch, the puppy, Zoe fell in the sea in the dark but was luckily easily scooped up, and then one of John’s guests slipped off the dock into the water while helping to manoeuvre the huge rib.  It then transpired that John is an Essex boy from Southend, about 15 miles away from where I (Sarah) was born.  He hankered after living in my village where he could fish to his heart’s content – I wanted to “go down the pier” at Southend with all its seaside entertainments, it’s a very small world.  So oddly we had quite a lot in common.  All the other guests were equally interesting, a stupendous night altogether in a unique environment..

We have successfully had the halyard repaired and I went aloft to re-attach the halyard to the sail.  There was a definite chop not helped by the ferries that rush in and out of West End, so it wasn’t the steadiest of masts to work on and unfortunately I dropped the shackle from 60’ up, extremely luckily it didn’t land on Rob’s head who was stood on the deck below me feeding the halyard up to me.

So we are about ready for our son, Ewan to join us at the weekend: we are fully provisioned and all parts working (fatal words in the boating world!).  After a few random jobs tomorrow we will probably sail off to Norman Island to check out a new snorkelling area, but if time allows may indulge me in a spot of whale watching (well you never know) between here and Jost van Dyke a few miles away, as apparently there is a mother and a newly born calf Hump Back in the vicinity.