The Lure of the Soggy Dollar
By 10:30, we are headed for White Bay, under jib alone. It takes some doing, a lot of inching around and watching the depth sounder and looking out for rocks on the bottom, but we find a safe spot to anchor. In theory, we are only here for lunch and a few hours of playing; in practice, we know that a few Mellow Mango Magics and we could be here for the night. Hence, good anchoring is essential. Rick dives in and directs me from the water as the anchor skitters across the bottom as I reverse, and then digs in for good. It's a 35 pound CQR -- smaller than I would like -- but we also lay down 50 feet of chain.
At last, we head to my favorite beach bar, The Soggy Dollar. One of the prettiest beaches anywhere, paired with one of the friendliest, most laid-back bars anywhere. Beckoning hammocks; bar games that get more difficult as the day wears on; an eclectic collection of people -- you just can't beat it. It's Saturday, and it seems like a lot of people have the same idea we do. There are probably 20 or more boats in the anchorage, though when we arrive, the bar is largely empty. One of those Mellow Mango Magics (painkiller mix and Artic mango vodka), some friendly conversation, and sand gravity sets in. All of a sudden, I'm not worried about weather or anchors -- we're not going anywhere.
Lunch (flying fish sandwiches and conch fritters) follows bar games and more mango madness. We chat with a mother and daughter from Missouri staying at the Sandcastle, capping off a stay at their villa in St. John; a businessman sailing a catamaran with his brother and son, leaving wife and baby at home; a young family from San Diego who've come down to purchase their sailboat; and many others. Soon the Soggy Dollar is jam-packed with day trippers, so we settle up and cede our coveted bar stools. I need a swim anyway, so we dink back to the boat to drop off our stuff, swim to the beach to snooze a bit, and swim back.
I'm curious to visit the east end of the beach, so we dink over to have a few drinks at Ivan's Stress Free Bar. Unlike the Soggy Dollar, there are few tourists here and mostly islanders and their kids. The walls are covered with shell artwork and photos of past visitors. The bar is an honor bar, but I didn't know that, so one of the teenaged girls made me a painkiller-type drink with banana rum. She sings like an angel along with the radio and mixes a great drink to boot.
By 4:00 p.m., the anchorage is clearing out. Only those seriously bewitched by this spot (or seriously confident of their anchoring abilities) are staying the night. Showers and cocktails precede watching the Anchoring Olympics. (Subtitle: There But For the Grace of God). Some roll in dangling their anchor off the bow (wonder why they have no bottom paint there?). Others scream futilely at each other, not having worked out hand signals. Finally, the ones who make me question our overly conservative methods: the ones who zoom in, heave the anchor overboard heedlessly, and consider themselves set. Dinner is jerk pork, curried cauliflower, and cucumber salad. The weather worsens, with big gusts of wind and lots of swinging around the anchor. Our anchor feels secure, but we take nothing for granted because it looks like the tropical wave is going to have an impact tonight.
Shipwrecked!
It's just after dark on Saturday night, and the nearly full moon peeks out from between the clouds from time to time to illuminate our surroundings. About this time, with the Anchoring Olympics concluded, we see a blue-hulled boat, probably not a charter, approaching the anchorage. They have no running lights nor, apparently, much of a clue, because no one with a clue would attempt White Bay under sail after dark. It's a very narrow anchorage, bounded at the north by the beach and rocks, at the east and west by rocks, and at the south end by a reef, which has two marked -- but NOT lit -- openings. The boat is headed not towards one of the marked channels (not that they could see them anyway), but right for the middle of the reef. Sure enough, the boat hits the reef and is hard aground with storms coming.
Rick can't sit still and watch, so he heads off in the dinghy with a flashlight and our handheld VHF, while I am to man the VHF and cell phone on the boat. A Hatch Drill ensues, as the first of many rain squalls hits just as Rick reaches the reef. A few other dinghies join him, and they try to talk the foundering captain off the reef. They try kedging him off, and heeling the boat by pushing the boom out, but nothing works. Meanwhile, they learn that the boat doesn't have a working engine (the owner uses his dinghy motor if necessary, though I'm not sure how -- as a tugboat, maybe?); he has no working spotlights or flashlights; he has only a 15-20 pound anchor; and judging from his attempt to anchor in White Bay under the circumstances, he has no chart or cruising guide.
You can hear the boat pounding on the reef with every surge. Rick radios over and asks me to call VISAR. I can't raise them on the radio, so I call on the boat's cell phone. VISAR is all volunteers, and I talk to the guy on duty tonight, but this is not a VISAR rescue situation, as life or limb is not at stake. The VISAR volunteer does contact a towing/salvage company for me, who calls a few minutes later. Given the situation, he asks me to get confirmation from the boat's owner affirmatively seeking help. I radio back and get confirmation, but the boat's phone is only set up to call Footloose and VISAR. Luckily, we are in sight of St. John, and my Verizon cell phone works here and I make the call for "assistance," quickly correcting my initial choice of words: "salvage."
An hour and a few more squalls pass, and Rick returns to the boat, having done all he can. No one has arrived to help, so I call the salvage company on the cell no answer. A call to VI Radio indicates that the salvors had almost arrived by 11, but someone called them and told them the boat was off the rocks -- which was far from the case. This delays assistance til around 1:00 a.m.; though I am not sleeping, I'm semi-conscious and don't watch what happens.
The night is very stormy, and all night I'm wishing I were on a mooring instead of a meagre 35 pound anchor. The distance we left between our boat and the reef seems so insubstantial right now, though it is more than adequate, and we keep an anchor watch. I can't sleep anyway, with all the lightning, thunder, rain, and wind roaring through the rigging. While another boat in the anchorage (the 38 foot cat whose captain we talked to at the Soggy Dollar) broke anchor around 4:00 a.m., ours held heroically.
Morning dawns dreary and stormy, and the grounded boat is now in the anchorage. Our decks are covered with a greyish gritty film -- we're surprised that pristine BVI rain would leave such a mess on our boat. The skies are dark, but not just because of the tropical wave. Unbeknownst to us, the Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat a few hundred miles away started erupting on Saturday and was spewing ash all over the northern Caribbean, including us. Scores of airline flights over the next few days are cancelled.
