Jordan motored Steve and I ashore to buy more provisions (2 dozen eggs and two green peppers for $15). The shore is a high-end landscaped strip of shops and bars along the water with hotel cottages sprinkled on the mountain face above at the end of long flights of stairs. The view would be lovely but I wouldn’t want to have to climb those stairs after a night of rum punches. The boys rented a sunfish sailboat for an hour while we waited on the mechanic and had to be ingloriously towed in from the mouth of the harbor because the interior plug hadn’t been put in, and their hull filled with water, which made it hard for them to get out of irons. The boat mechanic didn’t arrive until a little before nine, so we won’t have time to make Anegada today. Instead, we’ll sail to Trellis Bay and try for Anegada tomorrow morning. Since Anegada is surrounded by reefs, it’s best to arrive early in the day to have the best visibility in the water to spot the brown of reefs.
Adastra
We sailed to the Dogs and anchored off of George Dog beside what has to be a boat out of a James Bond movie, the Adastra out of Hong Kong, a silver spaceship with flying buttresses. It looks like it could as easily submerge as take flight. The cabin steward was setting the table for lunch as we launched the dingy to take us to the end of the island on advice from a departing ship that the current was strong and hard to fight. Dave and JP stayed aboard.
The snorkeling was quite good with more varieties of coral than we’ve seen anywhere else, thin, straw-like branching coral (stag horn?) and rounded globule coral. We were drift snorkeling back towards the boat when I noticed our dinghy floating away carried by wind and current, and JP launched himself into the water in pursuit. Luckily he caught it and we sailed to Trellis Bay, arriving in mid-afternoon. We celebrated with rum punch and headed in to explore Aragorn’s metal sculptures and pottery studio. Huge globe sculptures cut from old mooring balls decorated the beach. They are filled with wood and lit for the full moon party. We didn’t come over on Saturday, figuring it might be hard to pick up a mooring, and indeed we were right, the moorings were filled two days in advance. The boys all got Aragon T-shirts and I got a pair of bamboo dolphin earnings. We also restocked beer and rum and then dinghied out to the Last Resort, an island bar/restaurant with a cage full of parachutes and an iguana. The sun filled the sky behind the mountains with gold, silhouetting the fifteen-foot cactus. The boys played spirited corn-hole and then we watched JP and Jordan split big jenga games.It was dark by the time we left, motoring around the invisible sand bar beside the island and back to the Paradox for chicken fajitas (surprisingly good with canned chicken) and chocolate torte for dessert. After dinner the boys motored over to the Abracadabra and took the girls they had been talking to at the Bitter End (all from Russia and Ukraine by way of San Diego and LA) out to the Last Resort. It turned out that the flipper Dave had recovered at the caves was one of theirs. At the Last Resort, they met a group of young people from all over the world (Australia, Paris, US) working and living on Tortola.