Spanish Town Virgin Gorda BVI

Finally leaving Sint Maarten

So, after a somewhat prolonged, but very useful, stop in Sint Maarten we finally lifted our anchor and headed northwest towards the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) at 1740 on Monday 9 April. We had a nice easterly breeze, about 18 knots or thereabouts, and made good progress overnight, bowling along at between 6 and 7 knots for the most part. As on the last overnight passage, Charlotte did a 4-hour stint on deck, sharing her watch with Nicky for the first half and me for the second.

Anchored off Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda

We entered the BVI archipelago to the south of Virgin Gorda, passing Round Rock to starboard at 0700. From there it is only another 3.5nm to Spanish Town, the port of entry on Virgin Gorda, so we were anchored off just after 0800. Also in the anchorage were Brian and Agnes on Bragand their friends Beverley and Frank in a Norwegian registered yacht whose name I can’t remember. They all popped past to say hello on their way ashore to walk to The Baths, a ‘must see’ site which we visited by sea the next day. We had thought to see them later in the day but a reality check (number of places to visit vs Charlotte’s time remaining on board) prompted us to move on. We caught up with Braga couple of weeks later in Soper’s Hole but, unfortunately, we didn’t see Beverley and Frank again this season.

We made our way ashore to find the Customs and Immigration office, leaving the dinghy in the very empty marina. The marina looked to be fully functioning, albeit with some berths still damaged by Hurricane Maria’s ravages……

One of many wrecked business premises in the marina complex

……but much of the rest of the marina complex and, indeed much of Spanish Town itself, was clearly still waiting for repair.

However, Customs and Immigration, down at the ferry dock, were fully operational and we completed our check in procedure fairly efficiently, even though there was a vast amount of paperwork (multiple copies of everything and bring your own pen!). We asked if we needed to revisit the office prior to Charlotte going to the airport to fly home and were told that that would not be necessary. All we needed to do was amend the crew list to say that she had left the boat (we put the flight details as well) and that was that. We were quite relieved – most of the other islands we have visited require the captain and departing crew to revisit Immigration within 24 hours of the crewmember’s flight home in order to have the amended crew list formally ratified by the authorities. The BVIs make things very easy for visiting crew – something we will definitely bear in mind for the future.

Spanish Town taxi

Paperwork complete, we took a further stroll around Spanish Town and, in an inspired moment, got some more cash out from the ATM at the marina. ‘Inspired’ because 1) we subsequently found ATMs to be somewhat thin on the ground with the only other one we saw outside Road Town being at the airport and 2) the whole of the island chain proved to work primarily on cash, with only a very few places taking plastic. With that job done we decided to move on from Spanish Town and up to Gorda Sound at the north end of Virgin Gorda. From our reading of the pilot book there looked to be some lovely anchorages up there and the wind had built nicely for a good beat northwards.

Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands