Great and Little Harbours, Jost Van Dyke Island, BVI
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 6 Dec 2007 19:37
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18:26.350N 64:43.803W
On Monday (12/3/07) we finally left Leinster
Bay and St. John behind us and crossed over the international border
into the British Virgin Islands. Although this was a big international
step (we won't be in the US again for a good 17 or 18 months), it was a small
distance (about 5 miles) and a short ride.
We checked into customs in Great Harbour on the
island of Jost Van Dyke, and then decided to check out the town and buy some
groceries - after the time we spent in Leinster Bay, we were growing a bit short
on fruit and vegetables. We dinghied in to the beach and wandered down the
main drag (picture 1). At this point, we decided that we had truly arrived
in the Caribbean. The main drag of Great Harbour consists of a police
station that doubles as a customs office, about 5 or 6 beach bars that
double as restaurants, a couple of t-shirt shops, a dive shop that doubles
as a dive charter, a bakery that doubles as a cafe, and a grocery store that is
just a grocery store (picture 2 is the grocery store). All the buildings
were open air (to be expected given the all-around lovely weather), with the
enclosed portions looking a bit questionable from a construction point of
view. The overall atmosphere did not seem scary or even destitute, just
Caribbeanish.
We ventured into the grocery store, which
interspersed with a fair number of empty shelves, had a decent selection of
supplies - with the exception of fruit and vegetables. The produce section
consisted of several stalks of bananas and about three boxes of very nice
looking onions. Unfortunately, we already had some nice looking
onions and bananas on board, so we bypassed the produce section and feeling like
we should buy something, went for the 32 oz bottle of cranberry juice for $6.95
instead.
On our way to the grocery store, we noticed that
the bakery was closed, with a sign that said, 'Back at 1:00'. It was 2:00
at the time. When we were purchasing our precious cranberry juice, Don
asked the proprietor if she thought the bakery would be opening back up
soon. She looked at us strangely and said, 'The bakery not open?'.
We shook our heads and she proceeded to pick up the telephone and call Christine
at the bakery and inquire why the shop wasn't open (the bakery was about 10 feet
away from the grocery store). Christine answered and said she would open
the bakery right away. Pleased, we walked the 10 feet over to the bakery
and stepped into the shop. More so than the grocery store, the shelves
were pretty much bare. Christine asked us what we wanted and out of
nowhere two muffins and a loaf of wheat bread appeared. Excellent, this
will be one more week that I can put off making bread myself (knowing that it
would be quite an experiment even though my sister Suzanne showed me how to bake
bread back in July). We purchased the baked items, made one more sweep of
the main drag, dinghied back to our boat, weighed anchor and motored over to the
next bay, Little Harbour, for the night.
Little Harbour on Jost Van Dyke is a small harbor
(big surprise) with three beach bar/restaurants and about 20 moorings - all full
of charter boats.
Just a quick note about charter boaters... We
have nothing against them, of course. Don has chartered a sailboat down
here in the Virgin Islands several times in the past and found it to be
delightful. However, these people are on vacation on a rental boat.
This generally means lots of partying and not always a tremendous amount of
concern for their boat. A bit different than us cruiser sailboater types
that are generally trying to live quietly and safely on a boat that we happen to
own and care very much about. So, like most cruiser sailboat people, we
are a bit leery of charter boats, and tend to steer clear of them. The
British Virgin Islands, however, is the capital of sailboat charters in the
Caribbean. It is not even high season yet and of the three
or four harbors we've been in so far in the BVI, non-charter boats like ours are
extremely rare.
So anyway, we squeezed ourselves in with the moored
charter boats and spent the night at anchor in Little Harbour on Jost Van Dyke
(picture 3). In the morning we awoke to the sound of a rooster and a bunch
of sheep. We've definitely arrived in the Caribbean.
Anne
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