Prickly Pear Island and Leverick Bay (North Sound Virgin Gorda)

Here's a view of the Northern shore of Prickly Pear Island.

Walking along the shore, Karen and I came upon a very rare mocko jumbie, but was only able to get a fleeting shot of its shadow. This one is especially unique, as it is probably a decendant of the jumbies from India. They probably came over in one of the British trade ships during the 1800's.

Karen and I walked up through a lot of brush to get over to the shoreline and then along the beach, then back up over rocky outcrops, then back down to the beach, then waded through shallows along the shore to get around the mangroves, then back up behind the mangroves through the mosquito-infested brush, and then finally through the cactus to make it back to the dinghy. I had a great time! It kind of reminded me of hunting with my best friend EK. I especially like this photo of Karen...it's the only one I got of her when she wasn't giving me the evil eye.

Karen took this of me right before the rock climbing adventure...we were still on speaking terms then. You probably noticed the rocks were rough...they are volcanic and have lots of sharp edges. Did I mention Karen had a lot of scrapes and scratches on her legs?

This is our sailboat, Outta Control, looking down from the trail on the island. If we haven't shared with you where the name for this blog and our boat comes from, here it is: when I was finishing up the final days before retiring from the control tower, my coworkers and I were chatting about Karen and my boat plans and keeping everyone informed of our adventures. One of them, Jeff Ake, said we ought to name our boat Outta Control as a acknowledgement to my ATC career. Karen added that it would be great, and to name the blog the same thing, so there you have it! The name kind of works on a couple levels, especially because a lot of friends and family initially thought we were nuts (selling off almost everything and the home too). To be honest,...talking to airplanes is fun and I highly recommend it as a career, but I really only miss all of the people I worked with. Some of them I have known and worked beside for almost 20 years. And I miss cleaning the leaves off of our little pond, but that is for another story.

Leverick Bay, on the other side of North Sound, was a fun place to visit...I found myself taking lots of flower pictures for Karen.

And not harassing her for wanting to take stoopid CAT pictures! I'm not sure if this one was alive. As a side note, one of my absolutely favorite scenes from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation involves a cat.

There is a weekly party at the bar, featuring live music and mocko jumbies. We are pretending to be them here. We planned on pirating time in their pool but the weather was a little cool and it started getting late. For all of you suffering through the bitter, bone-numbing, wayyyy below freezing weather, I want you to all know that we, too, have some "crosses to bear". It's still occasionally humid and windy with some showers during the days and nights. Oh, I almost forgot...the temps have been getting a little chilly...the overnight lows are now averaging the mid-70's.

These are a couple of pictures of the resort at Leverick Bay. This may be one of the places to recommend for folks visiting us that don't want to spend overnights on the boat. We will have lots of interesting sights to share with all of you!

Saba Rock, BVI

On our way through Sir Francis Drake channel, this cruise ship passed right in front of us. It was actually much closer than the picture shows...about 1/2 mile away. We had to alter course, as we were heading for each other. Someone once told me that size does matter...maybe this is what she was talking about.

Here's a picture of an island we anchored near...Saba Rock. It is in the NW corner of North Sound, Virgin Gorda.

This is some of the fruit on some kind of palm trees on Saba Rock. The variety of plant life including the trees is so different than what I'm used to in MT and WA. It truly drives me "nuts" to not know what the variety of tree and shrubs we see. At least I know what a coconut palm looks like...I can spot them a mile away!

Here's a shot of the inside of the open-air restaurant on Saba Rock. There were so many different museum quality items on display...antique outboard motors, old fuel pumps, old photos and gas station signs, a small hydroplane used for local racing...

There were probably 30 different motors on display in the restaurant and the gift shop.

Here's one of the people riding small sailboards being pulled along with a parachute. Paraboarding? Anyway, there were about 5 of them gliding around in the area west of the restaurant, doing aerials and flying around...Our son Cody is really missing some fun here! He just can't seem to give up snowboard season right now.

Adults only look below:

What were you expecting to see?

Little Harbor, and How to avoid getting "Rolly"

We are learning more about this "sailing life" and realizing how much the wind and waves impact our everyday decisions. Bays and harbors that face in a general direction of the winds and incoming waves can be very rough to spend time in, even if the conditions are fairly mild...last month we spent time in Charlotte Amalie harbor (USVI) and got reaaaalllly tired of the pitching and rolling of the boat (rolly) . It's a South-facing harbor, the winds were from the East which made the boat face into them but the waves were from the Southeast...think of it as an "E" ticket ride (for those of you old enough to remember Disneyland tickets) every minute. And I didn't even mention the non-stop ferry traffic adding their wakes to the fun! Little Harbor BVI is much more protected from the waves and wind and there are no ferries. We sure slept well there. When we arrived there from Leinster Bay, we discovered that all of the other 15 + boats were not only anchored off of the bow but also stern-tied to the shoreline. When in Rome...so we did too. This was our first time doing this method and we were glad we had studied it in the training books in September. We were a little nervous as too why everyone else was using this anchoring method...bad weather, high winds, something else? I drove the dinghy over to some of the other boaters and asked them why, and they said that they anchored that way because the others before them did it. Well, nothing came of the weather, so I can only figure that the reason was that it made for more space for other boaters; using this method keeps the boat in a very small space while using a single anchor off of the bow lets the boat swing in a radius of about 100' or so, depending on how much anchor chain is let out.  Anyway, about the pictures: While in the bay, Karen and I took the dingy to shore and walked up to an abandoned set of buildings. They appeared to have been built to start a resort complex or an elaborate home, but have been vacant for the last 15/20 years. Pretty sad shape. The top picture is of one of the bathrooms...the narrow brown lines are termite tubes. These were everywhere on the structure. We didn't walk on any of the wood floors for obvious reasons. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to build nice tile features on some of the walls, but vandals have ruined most of them, except for the one shown. The last pic is of the Westerly-facing porch, overlooking Little Harbor. The whole complex is overgrown with trees and shrubs, but the view must have been spectacular. We really had a nice walk up and down the trail to the buildings, creeping and forcing our way through brush at times. Karen noticed there were little yellowish spots all over me and the backpack when we got back to the boat, and they were moving. GROSSSSS!!!!! I was covered in termites, Karen didn't have any on her. Mosquitos like Karen and I, evidently, must attract termites. Maybe it's my logging background. Anyway, I stripped down to my b-day suit, jumped off the dinghy to rid me of pests, and left all of the clothes and backpack in the dinghy overnight.

The next day, some friends of ours (whom we met online) arrived in their boat...Jim and Katie Thomsen (their interesting website is attached in the sidebar) They are world travelers on their sailboat. We spent a wonderful evening with them and made plans to stay in touch. The next day they left for St. Maarten, then planned to work their way down island, eventually transitting the Panama Canal. Then they are headed to the South Pacific islands. How cool is that! Maybe someday we will travel in their wake...for now, we have a lot to learn still.

This is a picture of Jim and Katie on their boat Tenaya. We sure hope to run into them again some day.