I was in the BVI just this last March (and last July, and have been there a few Decembers too). Great place to sail with many destinations, all within a days sail.
If you go to Anagada on that 50 footer, DON'T pick up a mooring in the second mooring field!! It's way shallow, trust me... I speak from experience:
Well, it was the second time I sailed from Virgin Gorda to Anagada, and it was an easy beam reach the whole way, winds were 15-20kts, with 4ft seas. Not a problem on the Jeaneau 42 we chartered through Conch Charters (11 days for $2200 awesome deal). Best to make sure you have good binoculars, as it is surrounded by the third largest reef in the world, there is only one way in and you have to spot those channel markers. There was only one outside channel marker (red), so we kept it close on our starboard side, farther down the channel was a green, so we made a hard left around that mark. If you get too close to shore, you'll hit the unmarked reef. Seems that the hurricanes keep taking the channel markers away, and they are in no hurry to replace them.
Having done this before on a Jeaneau 36, with a shallower draft I might add, we headed straight through the first mooring field and through a small channel to the second mooring field. All was fine, though our depth finder said we had 4.8ft. Now if that was true, we should have been hard aground having that 6ft keel under us, so I figured that it must be wrong. We were kicking up some sand as we maneuvered our way around and picked up the mooring, but we did not touch bottom. . . at least not yet. As we had lunch, I felt the first "bump", and then a couple of times later. I figured with the almost non-exitent tides in the area, this should not be a problem, so we went to shore and left the boat for a couple of hours.
Well, I guess there was more tide than I thought, and when we first came in, it must have been high. (They don't give you tide charts at the charter company, becuase with tides at less than a foot, what difference would it make?) We had bought some ice ashore, and I decided that it would be faster to go back to our boat by myself, as I can get the dinghy on a plane with one person. As I approached, I noticed that the boat was listing a bit. Once I stepped aboard, I could feel the boat rock back and forth on the keel.
That night was going to be uncomfortable, unless we moved to deeper water. I returned to the dock to pick up my three companions, and told them that we needed to move.
There was a mooring that we passed by on the way in that I recalled was a few inches deeper than the one were were on, so I figured we could just slide on over to that. Not as easy as it sounds. The boat was definately aground. I ran the motor in reverse for a bit, hoping that I could blast some of that sand away in front of the keel, but she just would not budge. We were still tied to the mooring, so the next thing to try was to use it to kedge off. We put the rope around the windless and put tension on it as I motored forward. Hah! we moved. But only about a foot, and the dock line we were using was looking a little stressed.
I suddenly had an idea, so I shouted up to the foredeck to slack off of the mooring line as much as possible, so the bow could move freely. I throttled up and began turning the helm hard to port, and then hard to starbourd. Back and forth, back and forth, we began to wriggle our way forward like an eel in the mud. First a foot, then three more, there were cheers from the foredeck and I gave the order to let go the mooring line. We suddenly came to a stop again, but this time I just kept wriggleling and we got through it.
We tied up at the next mooring over, in "5.2ft" of water, and had a restful night without another problem. I thought the whole experience was educational and fun, but none of the others on board wanted to try it again.
We are always looking for people to join us when we charter. It seems that most of our friends are either not sailors, or don't have the money. If anyone is interested, let me know.
--Richard
