Norman Island, BVI
18.19.026N
64.37.048W

Much to our surprise this morning, there had been no collisions during the night and only one boat had left; a large motorboat. We noticed that he had been conscientious about setting his anchor but must have run into problems during the night as he left well before dawn.

We said our goodbyes to MTNest; they are trying to make their way directly to Virgin Gorda so that they can make a crossing to St. Martin by Friday. DocNoMore thought that they would transit the BVI’s slowly and stick around with us for a while. We wanted to show Gerry and Nicky some of the sights, so we took off for ‘the Indians’.

Gerry was at the helm and seemed to truly enjoy racing the Palace against anyone who happened to be going in the same direction. We were able to sail from Jost Van Dyke to Norman Island quickly but since we still had the 20+ kt gusts periodically, we elected to snorkel ‘the caves’ on Norman Island instead of ‘the Indians’. The caves were more protected than the exposed Indians and assumedly offered better visibility.

The water was brisk and presented an array of coral and fish, including a spotted moray, along the route from where we moored to the 3 caves we had come to see. From the direction we took, each cave we entered was larger that the previous one. The first had a few fish and some interesting orange coral ‘flowers’ along the rocks. The second you could go further into with a school of fish (glassy sweepers) at the entrance and the last was bigger, deeper and went further back to where Dale was able to climb out and stand up in the back most portion.

On our snorkel back, we checked out the coral formations leading up to the caves and played among the sergeant majors guarding every entrance.

I really do think that the moorings are allowing the coral to return as there seems to be more live coral now than there was 12 years ago. Again, there doesn’t seem to be as many schools of fish but more varieties of the ones we do see. Maybe the hurricanes have something to do with it.

We had a quick lunch and sailed around the corner to ‘the bight’ where the Willie T Floating Restaurant is. The Willie T we knew sunk in a hurricane but the new one provides food and drink for those brave enough to cross the many dinghies tied along her rails to the dock to gain entrance. We noted that even along the opposite side, the go-fast boats come from afar to quench their thirst at her bar, rafting 5 and 6 deep in rows of 3 along the side that used to be the exclusive domain of the cook’s ferry.

Of course, we’re brave and had little problem scooting our dinghy into a spot almost underneath the aft section of the boat, so that we could get a foot up on the corner of the dock.

We soon discovered that several young ladies (extremely young in my opinion) had already jumped naked from the uppermost deck into the waters aft of the bar to receive their commemorative t-shirts. The last of the group was resisting extreme peer pressure, who were literally pulling her bathing suit off her, and was able to at last declare that there were boats in the way and couldn’t jump.
Needless to say, Dale and Gerry were very attentive in getting Nicky and I our drinks from the aft bar as we held the table waiting for our dinner. Being gentlemen, not once did they ask us to offer our bodies for belly shots! Our knights in shining armor were actually willing to cut through the crowds just for us.
After dinner and an evening of watching people leap frogging from dinghy to dinghy, we made it back to the Palace just as it started raining. Perfect timing.