Position 28.01.2014 Cane Garden Bay, Tortolla
Stream
Darrell Jackson and Sarah Barnes
Tue 4 Feb 2014 13:26
28th January
After a short trip ashore on the Tuesday morning we sailed the short distance to Monkey Point a recognised excellent snorkelling site. What a place! By far the best snorkelling so far. We picked up one of the Marine Park's mooring buoys and swam from Stream. Much easier than using the dinghy although you have to be aware of other people motoring about and make sure they are aware of snorkelers. The coral is in excellent condition and the variety of fishes large and small is just amazing. I swim with a plastic fish identification card so I can try to identify the fish I see, but the scale of the different fishes shown is one problem, juveniles and adults another and it seems that most of the fish I see are new to science, or at least are not on my card. It does make for a good conversation as we go through the books trying to identify all the fish we have seen and narrow down what they might be. It can be quite confusing as the change as they go from juvenile to adult.
We lunched after our swim and then sailed about 8 nm to Cane Garden Bay on the NW coast of Tortolla, where we picked up a mooring buoy in plenty of time to share our first sundowner with our friends. A meal ashore at Quito's followed and this is another establishment where the owner, called Quito by a strange coincidence, performs both solo as he did for us, and with his band, The Edge. This was a very popular place and was so full we had to eat at the bar, which had the compensation that you could also be entertained by the barman whilst he was mixing the cocktails, but made talking amongst us difficult. It also enabled us to pick up wifi and Sarah was much cheered by the What'sApp video of her year 7 class and the messages that came in.