Great and Little Harbours, Jost Van Dyke Island, BVI

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 6 Dec 2007 19:37
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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