Monday, December 20, 2010

Thanksgiving sail

For Thanksgiving this year we were extremely thankful to be invited by our friend Shaun to go sailing on her sailboat to the British Virgin Islands.  John, Sue and Sophie Barimo came along too. John is a new faculty member at UVI but him and his family are old friends from our Miami days. John was a fellow graduate student at RSMAS and, more importantly, a fellow Wetlab bartender!

We set sail on Kachina on Thanksgiving morning (see below) and headed over to Jost van Dyke.  We stopped for some snorkeling and bird watching along the way. Unfortunately, we were a a little late in getting to White Bay where the markers were hard to see and so we spent the night anchored outside the reef.  Tyler, Sophie and I slept on deck and although it was not the most restful of nights it was still incredible. Sometime in the middle of the night someone turned on a bright light. It took me several minutes to realize that in fact a very bright moon had just risen and it was an incredibly clear night. For once, I didn't mind losing sleep.


Day two took us inside White Bay where Tyler and I stole a moment to get a delicious Painkiller at the infamous Soggy Dollar Bar. We had Painkillers as the drink of the day at our wedding and so we couldn't leave without having one at the place we were both introduced to them, even though it was 10 in the morning. After checking in with immigration we set sail up the picturesque Drake Passage which lies between the line of British Virgin Islands.  That afternoon we pulled into a beautiful, uninhabited bay and set up camp for the next two nights. That night we cooked some delicious fish and watched the sunset on the beach.



Saturday was our true Thanksgiving Day. No parades and football, just snorkeling and hiking to the nearby salt pond. We built an oven to cook the turkey in and that night we feasted on an incredibly delicious Thanksgiving dinner, compliments of Shaun's incredible cooking.  Below is our turkey oven and our Thanksgiving spread.



Sunday we said goodbye to our private paradise, pulled anchor and headed back, with a quick stop at Norman Island.  We entered the U.S.A. properly with blue cheese burgers at Skinny Legs in Coral Bay, St. John and then pulled into Brewers that night.  All in all, an incredible adventure!