BVI's
Lotus
Thu 18 Feb 2010 13:00
|
Hi Folks
For all those people who thought we'd sailed off
the edge of the world and fallen into hell for our sins, you will be pleased to
know, well most of you will, that we haven't. We are very much alive and
still in the BVI's. We've had a few decisions to make about our choice of
route from here onwards, although our initial plan was to sail round the world
via panama and Australia, we had started to have reservations about the long
passages that we have to make if we took this option which would mean many
months at sea for a few weeks on land, the return from Australia is almost 5
Atlantic crossings in itself. We've been looking into having the yacht
shipped back from Australia on a cargo vessel or brought back by a delivery
crew, unfortunately the quoted prices were astronomical, around £24k. We
finally made the decision not to go via this route when we did some research on
cruising websites and found out the piracy situation off Africa has deteriorated
further, with the pirates now coming upto 500miles offshore. The safety
advice effectively rules out any return via the Indian ocean and the return legs
from Australia to Panama are almost un-sailable as you are against wind and
currents. Our pre planning for piracy had included an eye patch, blow up
parrot and cardboard cutlass which we'd hoped would make any pirates laugh and
therefore not kill us, but we have since been told that the Somalis have no
sense of humour so we've packed that gear away and have decided to continue
heading north via Puerto Rico, Turk and Caicos, the Bahamas and up the East
coast of America and maybe into Canada. We fancy sailing into New York
harbour and under the statue of liberty.
So, with very little internet access and lazy US
embassy staff who only give visa advice over the phone for one hour a day, we've
spent a frustrating few days trying to ascertain what exactly we require to
travel to the USA. We've discovered that we need a full B1/B2 visa which
you can only obtain by visiting a US embassy and having a formal
interview. The nearest one is in Barbados, the Bahamian US
embassy are too lazy to deal with us, so we intend to fly to Barbados (it
will be like a little holiday for us!) at the week end and hopefully be given a
US visa by the end of the week. if we don't get one we might be home
earlier than expected!
In the meantime just to catch up on a few of our
exploits on forays throughout the BVI's. We met up with Nathan (aka Mr
sugared almonds ) and Sue and had a really pleasant day sail to the Bitter
End yacht club where not only did they used to work but got married on the beach
there too. We were delighted and very grateful too, to have all our drink
and food paid for that evening, a most generous gesture from Nathan and
Sue.
 We've had a few really nice dives with turtles and
some quite scary looking barracuda who seemed to be stroking our toes.
John was very gallant and leapt into the boat as quickly as he could as one was
lurking around our feet as we were getting our diving kit off. That night
a shadow of the same beast was seen beneath the yacht and we wouldn't even
dip our toes in the water for the next two days.
 We've been to a few nice bars with these kind of
views
 
 We drank cocktails lying in a hammock on Jost Van
Dyke, an island, not a person and had more to drink on the floating Galleon
called Willie T's where john enjoyed the computer screen that played a loop of
all the women that had got there kit off on this floating bar in drunken
merriment, in the past, I think it was intended as an encouragement for all
future women guests to do likewise. We left at 10pm and heard roars
at 11 which we could only guess that some poor lady had been drunk enough to
strike a pose! I think you can see at http://www.williamthornton.com/
 We've also been to one of the outlying islands
where John has proved that I need to refit the stabilisers to his bike, we were
out on a ride to the west of the island when he veered off to avoid a rut
in the concrete road, but ended up loosing control and I crashing shoulder
first into the said concrete and crying like a baby for 10 minutes. I then
had to carry all the bags upto the beach where we swam naked in the sea, just a
lovely thought to leave you all with! Click here for photos.
Not bloody likely you pervs!
|