New York to Tortola

I awake refreshed and none the worse for wear for watching “The Perfect Storm”.  Back on the courtesy bus and back to Liberty Airport feeling like I never left it.

Amazing, but it’s only a 4-hour flight to St Thomas from New York.  I always forget that America is twice as wide as it is long (roughly anyway).  Just before we land, I start talking to the girl sitting next to me and then the woman sitting next to her.  She tells me that she is going on a sailing holiday with the Moorings out of Tortola and I tell her that I am expecting my husband to pick me up in our boat at West End.  She looks at me in amazement.  “Are you Jean?” she asks.  I gape at her, wide eyed.  Fame at last!!  When I tell her I am she launches into a tale of how she and her friends chartered Jeannius last year and what a great boat she was, and what a great time they’d had.  I still can’t work out how she’d figured I was Jean.  It turns out Mike had written on the TTOL forum that he was picking me up that day and she had read it. 

What a small world.

I shared a taxi with Patti, her husband Craig and their friends, and then the ferry to West End.  They are in party mood and won’t take no for an answer to the question of rum punches, so I give in and join the party.

Photo:  Partying on the ferry to Tortola 

As we pull in to West End, we see Jeannius with Mike waiting patiently in the cockpit for the arrival of my ferry.  Mike was obviously bemused about all the people with me waving madly as we zoomed past.

I am now a resident of the British Virgin Islands (for a year anyway) and so for the first time I am able to get into the resident’s queue for immigration which proves to be quicker but no less chaotic when you get to immigration on the other side.  We wait 20 minutes outside so that Mike can meet his ex-charterers then go off to find the dinghy.  Getting my loaded bag into the dinghy from a floating dock and then onto Jeannius is tricky but we manage it and immediately sail off to meet Kev and Jo for happy hour in Myetts, Cane Garden Bay.

I have only met them once, briefly in Rodney Bay, St Lucia last December but Mike spent quite a lot of time with them and they were really helpful when it came to putting a new propeller on Jeannius.  I recognised Jo’s smiling face immediately I saw her though, and we had a lovely couple of hours with them before going back to the boat and eating leftovers from the last charterers.