Sat. July 9th, 2005

Our second morning and we woke up at Norman Island early, about 6:00. Had a swim, coffee and breakfast. Chatted with Jim about our sailing knowledge so he'd have a starting point in his lessons. Once breakfast was all cleared away we secured for sailing back to Road Town to pick up our 4th crew member, Liz. She's from Bavaria originally and works for a shipping company that deals with setting up everything for the cruise ships that dock here. She's great fun.

On the way into Road Town Harbour www.yachtshotsbvi.com went by. This is basically a guy with a camera (with a huge lens) and a dog in a fast dinghy who zip around the channel taking pics of folks on their boats. The URL is plastered across the boat and if you are thinking about it you can write it down.... they post the pics on their website and you can purchase prints. If you are not thinking about it you can believe you have memorized the URL. After we SMS'ed the wrong URL twice to Adri, she finally found it on her own using the magic of Google :) Great idea and the pics are gorgeous. To get similar shots of us would be quite difficult :-). Reminds us of the Disney photographers that accost you near the castle.

After we got Liz settled in (she brought a ton more food) we left Road Town Harbour and headed west. We sailed along the southern coast of Tortola until reaching its far western shore. There are a string of smaller islands there (Great Thatch, Little Thatch, Pointy Rock, Hazard etc :-)) and we turned northward though a cut between them. With the wind to the east we did a close/beam reach up to Jost Van Dyke. We passed a tiny little island on the way, Sandy Cay (in case your unfamiliar with Cays like half the folks we've talked to, it's pronounced 'kee'... just like quay is). There was an armada of catamarans (the racing type, not the Winnebago type) anchored there as part of some event. It is what you always imagine a tropical desert island should look like; sandy beach, small hillock, palm trees and surrounded by aqua water. On the northeast of Jost Van Dyke is 'Little Jost Van Dyke'. This is pretty much an island itself but only barely technically. Should the sea level drop 3 or 4 feet it would be a peninsula. There's a little cut between the two that we watch folks walking around on and snorkeling around. We shared the bay with a half-dozen other boats.

There is a restaurant/bar on the beach called Foxy's Taboo, an offshoot of the more famous Foxy's on the other side of the island. Apparently the food is better here, but we don't know. It was closed, much to the annoyance of bunch of boats who pulled up for lunch and dinner. We kicked backed with a drink and did some swimming. Jim BBQed up some fillets while Liz was in the Galley making a ton of other stuff to go with it. In case I forget to mention it: They WAY overfed us. Jim is a really good cook and Liz is excellent. Massive quantities though. As the sun set and folks noticed that Foxy's was closed, the bay emptied out. We were left with only 2 or 3 neighbors as we shut off the light for the night.