We Sailed Her 'til We Broke Her

Wednesday May 24, 2023 Jost Van Dyke --> Road Town (Alan)

It’s said that all good things must come to an end and so it goes with our sailing adventure. We had planned a fairly long leg back to Road Town and we had to make it by noon in order to turn in the boat and catch some of our flights. In spite of a hangover and a bruised ego from last night’s misadventures, exacerbated by some of the tall tales you may have read in previous postings, Alan was up at 6:30 ready to make an early start. Deb was up too to help slip the mooring, so we went ahead and got under way using our “iron spinnaker”.

It was a beautiful morning to be on the water, with light winds, calm seas, and interesting cloud formations. There was even a beautiful full rainbow to guide us toward Road Town.

We chased the south end of the rainbow until we found it over Deb's shoulder!

With the north end firmly implanted in Jost Van Dyke near our starting point for the day

Everyone was in a quiet and reflective mood. After an hour or so we passed through the Thatch Island Cut at the western end of Tortola, hoisted the sails, and began a pleasant beat to windward with building winds and Kyle at the helm.

We made it to the entrance to Road Town harbor at about 10 AM, about an hour earlier than we planned. Rather than go sit around the marina, we decided to keep sailing for just a bit longer. With Ryan now at the helm, we saw a nearby channel marker and decided to use it as a simulated race mark (yes, this disease runs in the family.) We made a couple of sharp tacks, rounded the mark, and gybed to return to the harbor. Yay for us, first to the weather mark! That is, until we looked up, and saw that the mainsail had lowered itself halfway down the mast! It turns out that the halyard had snapped during our maneuvers. We managed to get the sail secured and motored into the harbor. How fortunate that the halyard waited until the very end of the trip to fail rather than somewhere along the way. (Fixing it is not straightforward; it involves climbing the mast and fishing a new line through – not something we could have done ourselves.)

Soon we were tied up at the marina and offloading our gear. One of the dockhands took the helm and moved J Dog to the fuel dock. It’s fun to watch the pros move the boats – they are not afraid to gun the throttle and whip the boats around, but they are skilled so they can do it safely.

Soon we were all unloaded, showered, fed once again by the delicious French Deli at the marina, and headed for the airport. Tortola’s roads have lots of bumps and lots of extremely steep hills, and we weren’t sure that our ancient Ford van taxi was up to the job, but we made it. We said our goodbyes to Erika, Ryan, Deb and Bronny, and then Lisa, Alan, and Kyle continued to the hotel (we fly out tomorrow).

Kyle relaxes after wrapping up our journey

This has been truly a wonderful trip for all of us. It’s such a special thing to be together with people you love doing something you love to do. That was one of Dad’s mantras, so I can’t think of a better way to honor him. And it was great that Deb and Bronny were both able and willing to join. I’m very proud of them for doing so.

We’d like to offer a special thanks to Brad and Erin Shaw, friends who were here a couple of months ago for their honeymoon and shared some very helpful intel with us.

And of course Lisa deserves most of the credit (as usual) for boldly making this trip happen.

And now, it’s time to go watch the sunset in BVI one last time. Cheers!

J Dog, out.

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