Lameshur Bay, Jost Van Dyke, Soper's Hole & Trellis Bay

We've been everywhere...and then some. After Puerto Rico, we moved east to Lameshur Bay (catching our first fish while underway-Cole gets credit for hollering "fish-on!"). What a beautiful, calm location! It was just us, and the turtles, sting rays and sharks, nurse sharks that is. After some fun snorkeling, we did a little hike and enjoyed the vistas. We learned from a local, who was an "old salt" volunteering for the Park Service, that Lameshur Bay was originally the training center for the first astronauts. An underwater community was assembled to simulate cramped space travel.

After years of reminiscing about a fateful night of New Years Eve anchor-dragging on Jost van Dyke some 18 years ago while chartering a huge Morgan sailboat, it was time to face our demons again. Off we went, blasting through the island chain, across the Sir Francis Drake Channel and straight on at 10 knots toward White Bay, JvD. It was a tight anchorage, loads of head boats, charter vessels, megayachts and anything else that would float. But, we pulled up the daggerboards and found some real estate, hook secure, and we started thinking about one of the many places ashore for dinner.

It was a great couple of hours watching phenomenal anchor follies, but as the day wore on, so did the ocean swell. Boats in front of us were rocking from gunnel to gunnel as the waves picked up and gained fetch over the shallow reef. Kayaks were surfing them w/glee. Finally, a "Cap'n Ron" came in w/some paying day customers on his sloop. After abandoning his dragging vessel, while it ran into a huge skippered catamaran, he re-anchored only a few feet from us. That was the tipping point. It seems Jost would continue to hold its lure over us, never a dull anchorage.

Tom started scanning the nearby bail-out harbors, while I scanned Cap'n Ron and his hunk-o-junk swinging a foot away from us. Thinking we'd arrive in Soper's Hole at 5:00 pm with all moorings taken, it turned out to be fortuitous timing instead. One mooring, just for us!

Dinner was ashore, followed by another family movie night (a new tradition loved by the kids especially) and all was forgotten of our whirlwind day.

Today, we enjoyed the thrill of tacking up Sir Francis Drake Channel in 30 knots of apparent wind. No boat was safe from our race zone. Zen was smooth with one reef in the main and one in the jib. She was moving through 100 degrees and never dropping below 8 knots in a big choppy sea. At many times we were over 9 or 10 knots and it became difficult to find a contender.

The full length of Tortola was completed in 3 hours flat. Our "prize" at the finish line, Trellis Bay, was witnessing a pair of monster-sized manta rays soar completely out of the water, flap their wings, and then dive back again. It was such a crazy sight, I yelled to Tom "What the hell kind of swimming bird was that?"

Trellis Bay was a blast from the past. It's an artist haven; pottery being made before your eyes, handmade baskets and the infamous woodcut printed shirts. We were here w/Uliad in 2000, and it was just as good the 2nd time around. Maybe better! The Last Resort Restaurant is home to this ridiculously talented chef from Portugal. Best meal we've had ashore, hands down. Tomorrow is laundry, watermaker pickling, and full cleaning before we head out on Monday. Eh...I'm not whining...it's all fun work when done under the sun, in the tradewinds, w/family only 48' away.