Mixing with the rich & famous
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sun 25 Dec 2011 13:26
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Virgin Gorda's North Sound is, it turns out, a bit
of a Christmas gathering place for the Hello! magazine crowd (due I
suspect not only to the beautiful location but also to the shelter from the
wind and the marriage last weekend of Richard Branson's daughter on his nearby
Necker Island. The bay is full of huge super yachts, both sail and power, and
their attendant toys - jet tenders, kite surfers, ringos etc etc. The inventor
of Google is here, as is the co-founder of Dreamworks, to mention just
two. Helicopters ferry guests about overhead while we poor impoverished
cruisers beneath look upon this unreachable other world with
bemusement.
But we enjoy tthe same surroundings. Here is a view
looking north from Virgin Gorda with Necker Island in the distance. the light
blue water is shallow, the the reef line shows as brownish with a line of
breaking surf, and then the darker blue denotes deeper water.
 And here is Oil Nut Bay right at the very northern
tip of Virgin Gorda, with a new super-duper gorgeous resort under construction.
We walked down to look around and chat to the staff (the resort is about to
open) who very civilly offered us a bottle of water each from the bar. Not to my
surprise, it was Fiji water.
 This place is really exclusive. There is no
road access, nor ferry - guests must arrive by private boat (or
helicopter). The BVIs are unseasonally quiet at the moment which is a big
concern in an economy so dependant on tourism - but no such worries at Oil Nut
where developments are selling like hot cakes - according to the staff, their
clients are just not affected by the curent global economic situation. Bankers,
I guess.
Here is another view of Necker Island in the
distance, with Eustatia (now half-owned by Larry Page of Google) in the
middleground, taken on our Christmas Eve walk:
 And finally Saba Rock (scene of our Christmas Eve
all-you-can-eat buffet) with the flamingo pond on Prickly Pear Island in the
background and our boat just out of shot to the left). Please don't be too
concerned on our behalf about the cloudy skies - we get the odd squall come
through off the Atlantic with a rain shower but it doesn't last long and then
the sun's out again. And the rain is warm anyway.
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