I believe this shot was taken from the top of Fort Louis in Marigot, St. Martin (the French side). This is a quick hike up from the dinghy dock and offers some nice views. The semi-circle you see in the water behind is the breakwater for the marina in Marigot. Our boat is anchored outside the marina a little to the right of the shot.

This shot was taken from our anchorage in Simpson Bay, on the Dutch side of St. Maarten/St. Martin.

We arrived here from a full 15 hour drive from the BVIs directly into the wind. We arrived about 5pm, about an hour after Sydney’s plane had landed, and quickly picked her up at the dinghy dock before the sunset. Legally, we weren’t even checked in to immigration yet, so we couldn’t officially go onshore, but she hopped in the dinghy and we went back to the boat, to check in the next day.

This is a shot off the back of the boat during our 15 hour drive from the BVIs to St. Martin.  Waves were probably 5 feet that day and we were motoring directly into the wind the entire way.  We were on a pretty tight schedule because I wanted to arrive in St. Martin before sunset so that I didn’t have to anchor in the dark and so that we could pick up Sydney before dark.

I remember calculating our time-of-arrival based on our speed and location throughout the day and determining about noon that we were running a little late.  We were already running the engines at the designated max RPM, but I decided I had to run them even faster to get there on time.  I’ve been told our brand of engines like to be run hard, so I’m hoping the rumor is true.

While the trip wasn’t a lot of work – turn the engines on, set the auto-pilot, and just hang out – it was 15 hours of a lot of pounding, which gets old after a while.  Chris was seasick and laying down for most of the trip.

Because of the compressed timeframe for us to get to St. Martin, we decided to anchor on the east-most part of the BVIs so that we could wake up and leave in the dark at 3am.

Traveling at night close to shore can be a problem. While we have GPS and a live chart (chart plotter), even if it is inaccurate by relatively small amounts, it would be easy to not see a rock or coral head and ground the boat.

So, we picked a spot on the east coast of the BVIs that was pretty clear and open water to the east, so that when we got up at 3am and couldn’t see much, we could (hopefully) take some straight shot out from the shore to open water.

Hallover’s Bay on the southwest shore of Cooper Island fit our bill. Getting there from Soper’s hole, we had to navigate through a couple of narrow passes, but we were doing that during the day. At 3am all we had to do was haul anchor, and head south and then east and we were in the open ocean.

Also, the bay was empty (the BVIs were still mostly “closed” to all pleasure boats, so we probably won’t see it empty again) and beautiful.

I can’t remember the exact timing here.  According to the timestamps on the photos, we were still under the watchful eye of the government on Dec. 13th and we needed to be in St. Martin on Friday, December 18th to pick up Sydney.

I believe we had a couple of days of things we had to get done in the BVIs after we were out quarantine – getting the GPS wristband tracker removed (another good story), taking a sailing test for the insurance company, provisioning, etc.

One of the items was to figure out what we needed, from an official immigration perspective, to leave the BVIs.  While in quarantine, we had heard differing accounts of what was required (things were very fluid at this point, as we got to understand is just part of the Caribbean culture).  So one day, when we were out of quarantine, but still at Nanny Cay, we took a taxi into Road Town, the main town, to talk to some officials.  We went to the Ministry of Health, who pointed us to the Department of Health (different), who insisted that we didn’t need any health form to leave.  This was contrary to what the website said and also to what rumors had told us at Nanny Cay.  But these were the official government agencies, so we took that to be the final word.  We then talked to someone at immigration in Road Town and they also said we didn’t need anything except the standard departure documents.  They did tell us, however, that the only port that was open for departure was Soper’s Hole.

So on the 15th we went to Soper’s Hole to clear out of the BVIs.  We still had 2-3 days before we needed to be in St. Martin, so we had plenty of time – or so we thought.

We went in to the immigration station in Soper’s Hole, started filling out the paperwork, and told the officials that we were all set from a health/COVID perspective.  The officials weren’t so sure about the health clearance, so they called the Ministry of Health (the official on the dock called a friend who knew the direct line to the Secretary for the Ministry of Health).  When the official from the dock got hold of the Secretary, they literally got into an argument while I was standing 5 feet away, about who had what authority.  It was a Caribbean, cross-department, bureaucratic, power-struggle and I was standing there watching it unfold.  At one point, the secretary (a woman) became very condescending to the dock official (a man) and basically told him to “stand down”.

The dock official finally just handed me his phone and said to talk to the Secretary.  She informed me that, because the BVIs were officially closed to all sea traffic, that I needed a special form filled out and signed by the Governor of the BVIs to create a special exception to leave.  Without this clearance and the coordination of many government departments, including the coast guard, we would literally be physically prevented from leaving.  And, by the way, this couldn’t happen overnight – it would probably take a couple of days.  (On the phone, she was extremely professional, understood our timing issues, and was very empathetic.  Over the next couple of days, although I was very frustrated, she continued to be professional, was clearly trying to do her best, and was going out of her way to make it happen at the senior most levels of the government.  And, although it took two days which wasn’t optimal from my perspective, it was greatly appreciated.)

So we stayed in Soper’s Hole, enjoying the beautiful weather and the clear water, but unsure whether we would make St. Martin on-time and unable to track any progress of our paperwork through the system.  Oh, and we had to time all of this with the COVID restrictions where we had taken a PCR test and gotten a test result that expired in a couple of days.

As I recall, we got our paperwork two days later, on the 17th at about 11am, an hour before our PCR test expired.  We went in, cleared out, and set sail for Hallover’s Bay to spend the night.

BVI’ s want to make sure you’re following COVID protocol.

We bought the boat in May of 2020, but couldn’t get down to the BVIs to enjoy the boat because of COVID lockdowns. And, June starts the hurricane season in the Caribbean, so you have to be careful about what you do with your boat.  This was only a couple of years after hurricane Irma, which as a direct hit on the BVIs and had caused a lot of damage and loss of boats. 

So we needed some safe place to put the boat while we were in lockdown and hurricane season.

We had the boat moved to Nanny Cay, a major marina and boat yard, and had it secured for June through December.

When we arrived, we needed to clean and fix things on the boat.  And, while the boat was in fairly good shape, somethings did need fixing.  The wind speed indicator and the depth sounder were two things that are pretty important for sailing and both weren’t working.

To get to the top of the mast, you sit in a flexible seat that is attached to the line that hauls the sail up the mast, and you just have someone haul you up the mast.  Since our mast is 67 feet tall, this can be dangerous.  Chris winched me up the mast.  At the top, I disconnected the wind speed indicator and carried it back down.  It turned out that it just needed to be lubed and exercised, so after the lube and exercise, I took it back up, reattached it, and it worked fine the entire season. 

Good thing because a new one is about $300 and would probably take forever to ship.

Just a pic of a sunset from our quarantine dock on the BVIs.

The view from the quarantine dock at Nanny Cay in the BVIs.  Not a bad way to spend quarantine.