Fun times with Gregg and Cyndi, part 1

C. S. Lewis once asked, "Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?"

I am sure that he would agree that spending time with Christian friends sailing, diving and sharing adventures would be a great joy, also.

Yep...that's them

Gregg and Cyndi flew down from Idaho to share their time with us...what a great time it was! We met them in Red Hook, St. Thomas and made a short sail to Christmas Cove. Straight off the dock, they were introduced to sailing, navigation in narrow channels, anchoring and mooring...all in the dark. This turned out to be a precurser for almost every evening afterward; we were having so much fun filling our days with activities that it was difficult to get to the daily anchorages before dark. Of course, when this happens, It becomes quite a challenge...you can't see where you want to be, the person at the helm (Karen or Gregg) can't see the person on the bow doing the hand waving and guiding (me.) Gregg and Cyndi had a lot of fun teasing us about our lip-biting commentary during it all.

Our first morning we sailed along the south side of St. John, headed to Lameshur Bay. Full sails and having a ball in 8' seas...right up to the point we were hit with a rain squall. We were going east and the cloud was coming west. We almost made it. If there's too much sail up, it gets kinda "sporty" on the boat when the wind goes from 15 knots to over 35 knots in seconds. Like the quote on our blog...experience is a good teacher. And we sure got some experience this time.

Tube sponge

Diving at Great Dog Island

Large pufferfish near "The Rhone"

We should leave a brick also...
but what should it say?

I always thought "The Chimney" referred to a large
hole in the rocks. Nope! This is it...a narrow opening
between two rock faces.

We spent some time visiting friends in cool places...such as Kim at Rob White Bar on Marina Cay. We were there to see her boyfriend, Eric Stone, and enjoy his nightly singing performance.

Kim showing Karen and Cyndi the proper
way to enjoy Pusser's Rum and Bilge Cleaner

MMM...MMM...goood!

A message in a bottle

Riches...lost treasures...maps to untraveled foreign lands...saving lost souls on deserted beaches...maybe even a magic genie...What does finding a bottle on a deserted sea shore bring to your mind?

We, of course, think of pirate treasure just waiting to be found!

Ahhh...a deserted beach on Virgin Gorda, one of the homes of pirates of the past as well as the present

No, we didn't just stage this...neither of us like this brand of wine!

Before

After

We decided to take a stroll along the beach looking for whatever had floated onto the shore...shells, japanese fishnet floats, wrecked boats, etc.

Among the rocks was this bottle with a mysterious note inside. We still can't understand how it remained sealed and unbroken among the boulders. Whoever put the message in it had sealed it with some kind of melted plastic, so removing the message wasn't going to be easy.

We got back to the boat, grabbed a small knife and the bottle corkscrew and proceeded to start working on our future riches. I was certain the message was written with disappearing ink or had some kind foreign language that would require greater skills than ours to decipher. Of course, all-important messages or secret maps are written that way. I know this because I've seen movies about it.

We spent about a half hour trying to pull the message out of the bottle. Yes, I was frustrated, but I also realized that nothing comes to those that don't make the effort. Alas, the anxiety got the best of us...we were unable to keep the bottle intact...my message removal method became as follows...wrap neck of bottle in paper towel, strike wrapped bottle with metal object, remove small fragments of bottle from area where we were standing because the paper didn't hold it all, let Karen dig out the message from the remnants of the bottle while I threw away the larger pieces and swept up the small shards.

What riches did the message have for us? It had been written and tossed into the sea by Tom Hanks as he was waiting for rescue on the island, as depicted in the true story "Castaway." Of course, that part of the story was not shown because the message never got to us until years after the movie was made.

We plan on letting him know of our find and hope that we will be shown all the riches we deserve!

Ok....

So you don't believe me...

Alright....

The message had been written by a couple on vacation in Anguilla, about 100 miles east of where we found it. They had stuck it into the bottle, sealed it up, tossed it into the ocean near the resort where they were staying...about 10 days before we found it.

We didn't have any way of contacting them, except through snail mail, and you don't do that in the BVI...it might not get to them until 2025. We emailed the info to our friend Pam in Montana to forward to the couple's address in Oklahoma.

Haven't heard back from the Oklahomans whether they got the info or not. And I still can't understand how it made it onto the rocky shore of Virgin Gorda without breaking into a million pieces. I'll bet if I solved that puzzle there would be all kinds of engineering and stress analysis companies looking for that kind of talent.

But we're retired so I guess we'll have to pass on the opportunity and, instead, contemplate the "bartender's job" for the evening.