Virgin Gorda BVI 18:26.00N 64:27.00W
Lotus
Sun 31 Jan 2010 14:21
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There are four main islands, a dozen smaller
islands and lots of small islets in the BVI's, all of which form an inner sea
which is protected from the ocean swell. This makes for perfect sailing
ground and there are hundreds upon hundreds of charter boats
here.
We landed in Virgin Gorda and went into the local
marina, a real treat after 2+ months of boat showers. After John
had cleared customs and immigration; not an easy task when the
local officers kept disappearing for lunch just as he got to
their counter, we set off for a walk to the Baths. The Baths is a maze of
huge granite boulders on the beach, which when there's a swell, which there
was, causes big waves to come crashing in, quite a spectacular sight.
Normally the site has pretty good snorkelling in the emerald pools but
there was no way we were venturing into the
water.
  The BVI's is fab for diving, we went into
the local dive shop and were able to buy a map with all the dive sites on and a
little bit of blurb about each one. All the sites have mooring buoys
on them so we can dive straight off
the yacht. Everywhere else, quite understandably, the dive shops have
wanted to keep the dive sites under wraps to encourage you to pay to go
with them, but here because there is so much yacht charter business, it's set up
so that anyone and everyone can dive off their boat - brilliant!
After filling our tanks with plastic tasting water,
we set off for Mosquito island to do some snorkelling around the horseshoe
shaped reef. On the way we caught a fish, what a calamity, I think we
really should give up on this fishing malarkey. Having tired of reeling
the fish in, Ann handed the rod to John who promptly stuck it into the
wind generator and damaged the blades, so a pretty pissed off John carries
on reeling the fish in only to find that our 3 foot fish is nothing but a
head. You'd think sharks could do their own fishing.
 We anchored on the inside of the reef and set off
with our snorkels. In an attempt to get to the outer reef we all swam
aground and had to stand up and walk over the reef, not an easy task with
your fins on, but with all those spiny normans (otherwise know as sea urchins
(black spiky things)) about you want some protection for your
feet. When we eventually got to the outer reef we decided to snorkel all
the way round the horseshoe shape to get back to the yacht, a mammoth snorkel
but we saw a great barracuda, plenty of fish life and lots of hermit crabs with
massive conch shells on their backs. Guy needed to rest for several hours
afterwards, in fact we all did a bit more snorkelling on our beds when we got
back to the yacht.
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