Cane Garden Bay Tortola BVIs

After our fun evening with Brian and Agnes on Brag, in the morning, after a short trot ashore to D Best Cup Café to use the internet, we went our separate ways. Brian and Agnes needed to move Brag to the USVIs so that she could be shipped home but, frustratingly, they were having to deal with constantly changing dates and departure ports by the shipping company.  We had no such constraints and, instead, decided to move 6 miles around to Cane Garden bay on the northwestern coast of Tortola.

Cane Garden Bay, Tortola

Tucked in behind a reef, the bay offers excellent shelter and was just a really nice place to stop.  We had anticipated going ashore but, as it turned out, there was a bit of a drama in store for us.

A large yacht, Capricho II, turned up and attached themselves to a mooring buoy before the crew all went ashore.  Meanwhile, a French yacht we had seen earlier in Sopers Hole arrived. As they had done in Sopers Hole, the French crew spent the best part of an hour trying to find a place where they would be comfortable anchoring.  We sipped a cool beer in the cockpit wondering where they would eventually end up when we heard a shout from a Polish couple on charter yacht moored just forward and left of us. Sitting in the shade with our backs towards her, we had missed that Capricho II had broken her mooring buoy cable and was drifting directly towards us. Thus started a frenzy of activity.

Nicky dug out fenders to try to protect BV whilst I started to get the outboard motor into our dinghy.  Our ultimate plan was to tie our dinghy onto the side of Capricho II to allow us to manoeuvre her to safety but we were running out of time and a collision with BV looked to be imminent. Nicky prepared our fenders for the impact when suddenly, the unfendered French yacht motored between us and Capricho II, ramming into her and pushed her so that she passed just ahead of BV.  We were very grateful for their action but it came at the cost of several very large and deep gouges along the beautiful topsides of Capricho II from the impact with the French yacht's anchor.  Close proximity manoeuvring was definitely not the French skipper’s forte and he was in danger of doing a lot more damage.  After shouting their warning, the Polish couple had immediately dinghied across to Capricho II and were on board and trying to start the engine when the French yacht pushed her clear of BV.  With Capricho II now drifting clear of any other yachts but and a good few minutes from drifting onto the reef, we and the Polish couple waved the French yacht away and took over the rescue of the drifting yacht. The Polish man continued to try to get the engine started whilst we, working with his girlfriend, started to secure our dinghy to the yacht’s quarter so that we could act as a pushing tug.  In an amusing comedy moment, the Polish chap had found everything open on Capricho II but reported that he couldn’t get the engine going.  He had actually got the engine going but it was so quiet that he couldn’t hear it!  From our position outside, however, I knew that he had successfully got the engine going because the exhaust was right above our dinghy and the cooling water from the big yacht was now trying to fill and sink our dinghy!!!!

SY Capricho IIsafely attached to a different mooring buoy after the excitement!

We untied promptly and went for a different tactic.  Having thought that the engine was not running, the Polish chap had started to honk the very loud foghorn to try to attract the attention of the crew of Capricho II.  Now, with the engine clearly operating, he was a little concerned about manoeuvring the large yacht so we pointed out to him what looked to be a suitable, easy to reach mooring buoy and worked with his girlfriend to clear the tangle of lines and the offending, failed mooring.  Happily, when we had jumped into our dinghy we had grabbed a handful of BV’s mooring lines to take with us and so, as we went along, we were able to set those up ready to tie Capricho II onto the available mooring buoy.  We managed to secure Capricho II to that buoy just as her skipper rushed up in his RIB and ran to her bow.  We explained what had happened and left him to tidy up the chaos.

The Polish couple joined us on board BV for a beer to help our heart rates return to normal and we heard how they were in the process of ordering a Hanse 40 sailing yacht.  They were really interested in where we had been on BV and the conversation flowed freely for an hour or so when we were interrupted by the skipper of Capricho II.  He arrived bearing gifts:  BV’s mooring lines were returned and 4 bottles of wine, much finer than our usual fayre, was split between us as a thank you for our rescue efforts.

Servicing the galley foot pump; the big seal had a split in it which had caused the leak

Drama and excitement over for the day, we switched our attentions to more mundane ‘boat maintenance in exotic places’. We dug out the servicing kit that we had bought in Road Town and, after we had stripped down and rebuilt the galley foot pump with the kit’s new rubber seals and valves, it functioned perfectly again.

It would have been nice to stay in Cane Garden Bay for another day but we had a plan to fit in a trip to St Croix before we had to escape north to avoid the hurricane season.  We therefore concluded that we should plan to check out of the BVIs and progress on to the US Virgin Islands.

Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, BVIs