Katharina und ich flogen mit einem süßen kleinen Flugzeug nach Beef Island auf den Britischen Jungferninseln (BVI). Bei der Einreise dann ein kleiner Schreck: Auch hier musste man die Einreiseformulare ausfüllen und darin angeben, wann die Weiterreise sein würde und mit welchem Flugzeug genau man die Insel wieder verlässt. – Blöd, wenn man noch kein Flugticket hat. Glücklicherweise hatte Katharina beschlossen für die Rückreise einen früheren Flug zu kaufen und ihr ursprüngliches Ticket verfallen zu lassen, so konnte sie mir aber die Daten für ihren Flug geben, den sie nicht nehmen würde. – Das hat dann zum Glück funktioniert.
Then we took a taxi to Roadtown, where we would spend our first night in the hotel, before we had to move to the sailing yacht. But somehow we didn't have a good start on the BVI. After the open-minded and very friendly people in Puerto Rico, it was a little difficult for us to arrive here. Moreover, it was very difficult for us to assess the country or the city. We knew the BVI were hit by the hurricane, but we didn't know how much. So we saw broken cars and half collapsed houses and didn't know if it was "normal" or if it was the aftermath of the hurricane and it should actually look much "tidier" here. It was also difficult to develop a sense of how poor or wealthy the people or the city is. It was interesting and somehow reassuring that Katharina, who had already travelled a lot in her life, felt exactly the same way as I did. After we had moved into our hotel room with a picturesque view of a corrugated iron roof, we headed off to eat something. Also at the Streetfood stand the people were anything but nice and somehow we lost the desire to get to know the city better. As girls we decided to dedicate the rest of the day to a manicure and pedicure. I felt a bit bad and disinterested, but after almost 4 weeks on the road, it was nice to take a break without getting to know something new. The evening ended with practicing knots, drinking cocktails and eating calamari. (Katharina convinced me to eat calamari again, which I hadn't touched in 10 years, because I had "overeaten" it back then - but it was delicious).
The next day we were busy again. On Sunday Lena and Stefan would arrive, who was also our skipper for the week. Unfortunately their flight (again Condor, who couldn't get it together) was postponed, so that we lost almost a whole day of sailing. So Katharina and I had the task of preparing what was to be prepared so that we could start as soon as possible.
Also gingen wir mit unserer Einkaufsliste, die wir beim Segelvortreffen in Karlsruhe erstellt hatten, los zum Supermarkt. Wir konnten einen von zwei Einkaufswägen ergattern und kauften für knapp 400 Dollar Essen und Trinken für vier Personen für eine Woche ein. Mit dem Taxi ging’s dann ab in den Hafen und zu unserem Boot. Im Hafen wurde dann das Ausmaß der Hurrikan-Zerstörung nochmal deutlicher. Katamarane schwammen kopfüber, Segelboote seitwärts im Wasser. Diego, der Manager der Charterfirma told us for the first time about hurricane Irma, which swept over the island in autumn 2017 and took everything he could seize. And what we see in the harbour today is only the remaining 20 percent, which have not yet been recovered and restored.
This was the answer to our question from the previous day. The island must have been a different island before the hurricane...
The people from the charter company were super nice, uncomplicated and helpful. Since there was no wifi, the owner of the charter company gave us his wifi on the boat, so I could then also write the Puerto Rico blog entry. For dinner, Katharina and I went to the harbour restaurant. When we cheerfully studied the menu there, two older gentlemen asked us to join them for a wine. The two were from USA, Ed and Steve and had just returned from their two-week sailing trip. We had a funny evening in the restaurant and also collected some sailing tips and must-dos for our island circumnavigation. Plus, they gave us their leftovers, which consisted of a bottle of vodka and other foodstuffs.
We enjoyed the first night on our boat "Andrea" and were looking forward to Lena and Stefan the next day. The reunion with them was great. Fortunately Diego had refused to explain the boat to Katharina and me and wanted to wait for Stefan. We had created a checklist for dummies for the boat acceptance, but we felt better when Stefan took over.
And in the afternoon we started. Our destination was actually the closer Peter Island, but then we spontaneously decided to go to Norman Island. As we didn't make it to the sheltered bay because it gets dark here so quickly we decided to anchor. And for the first time in eight years or so, I had to do bearing with a compass. For all those who are not into it: You look for a land point, which you can also recognize at night and memorize on the compass the degree number, at which the point lies, then you look for a second point and memorize this degree number. Then one checks the points in certain time intervals and can derive thereby whether the anchor is stuck or whether the boat drifts away. So my compass was used for the first time on the trip.
The next sailing day was not such a success in terms of weather conditions. A lot of wind, all grey in grey and a relatively strong swell. It started with Lena, she got whiter and whiter around her nose and at some point she hung her arms over the railing. I'm not sure if it was the waves or the fact that I thought to myself "just don't get seasick now", that it started with me, too. So we hung over the edge of the boat like two wet sacks on the side facing away from the wind and fed fish. Our faces were approx. 10 cm away from the water, because the boat stood by the wind in a 45 degrees inclination. While Lena fought even longer, my condition fortunately returned to normal after 45 minutes. Then we reached Salt Island. Ed and Steve had recommended us the night before to snorkel to the wreck off Salt Island. So I left my badness behind me, swung into my snorkel stuff and swam to the wreck with Katharina. In the 19th century, a mail ship crashed into the rocks during a storm and was crushed.
On the way back to the boat I swam after Katharina. She had already reached the boat and was on the swimming ladder when I came to the boat shortly after her and discovered a shark just two meters below our boat. I thought to myself: "Just don't look.... swim to the bathing ladder and out of the water." That went well until I got to the ladder. Katharina took off her diving goggles in peace of mind and I started to panicked. I told her to hurry because there's a shark next to us and I want out of the water. And then I foolishly tried to climb the bathing ladder with my fins, which of course makes no sense if you even think about it for a second. But my brain didn't seem to feel like thinking at the time. Stefan grabbed my arm and wanted to pull me out of the water. After that didn't work out, I finally pulled my fins off and climbed halfway back onto the boat. With my knee bleeding open I got angry again, why I can't just stay calm when I see a shark. Katharina also saw the shark and thought " Wow, this is a big fish" - but would not have identified it as a shark. Later it turned out that it was very probably not a shark, but a very big barracuda, because they love to stay in the shade under boats, while sharks can only be found in deeper areas.
While anchoring, our sailing boat neighbours from Luxembourg invited us for a drink, so we jumped onto our dinghy with a bottle of white wine as a present and poured to the Luxembourgers. They were a mixed group of people who had got to know each other through an expat organization called "Internations" in order to go sailing together. On the boat we also had our first "Painkiller". We've seen it on the menu in the restaurants several times, but had no idea what it was and hadn't tried it yet. It spontaneously became my all-time favourite drink: The ingredients are essentially rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, coconut milk and nutmeg. We ended the evening with a cosy dinner on our boat.
The next days promised better weather, more sunshine, less waves and still good wind. The seasickness was forgotten (@Johannes Becker: Of course we continued to take our Stugeron tablets from you diligently) and we enjoyed the crystal blue water during a morning swim and our sailing trip to the fullest.
The islands themselves for the most part were unfortunately not as you would imagine the Caribbean. The overgrown hills were brownish and there were bushes and trees with almost no leaves. Palms had almost disappeared completely. In the conversations with the people of the island we learned that the hurricane and the tornadoes had flooded or rained the saltwater to the earth and thus the whole plants died. So we were all the more happy when we saw a few isolated palm trees. Since many harbours, bars and shops were quite destroyed, we saw no reason to go ashore in the first days. So we spent four days only on water and with anchors. The roles on the boat were already well distributed. Stefan was the professional on board and could of course take on all roles without any problems and he taught us what to do and always jumped in when we couldn't make it. While Katharina was mostly at the steering wheel, Lena and I were responsible for the turns and I was the anchor commissioner. We visited white sandy beaches, anchored in the bay and snorkelled through the bays without any sharks.
Since we did not call at any ports, we were of course unable to refuel with water. So the highest premise on the boat was to save water. So the dishes were rinsed with salt water in the first wash cycle and a shower looked like you jumped into the water, climbed out, soaped yourself in and jumped back in again. In one week with four people we had a water consumption of far less than 200 litres.
Am vierten Abend steuerten wir dann die Cane Garden Bay an. Die wurde uns als Party-Place empfohlen. Hier hatten wir eine tolle Unterhaltung mit dem „Hafenwärter“ Elvet Meyers, der früher Segelbauer und professioneller Regattasegler war und sogar bei der Olympiade teilgenommen hat. So philosophierten wir, er auf seinem Dingi-Boot stehend, wir auf dem Boot sitzend übers Leben. Eine der schönen Begegnungen, die das Reisen für mich zu dem machen, was es ist.
After dinner on the boat we dedicated ourselves to the pre-glowing and headed then in good party mood on land. Our Luxembourg crew was also there. Since everyone was eating or sitting at the bar, we opened the dance floor and accompanied by a strong but warm summer rain we danced into the night and were the happiest people ever. (Note to myself: I have to dance in the rain more often).
Unsere letzte Etappe, bevor wir in den Heimathafen zurücksegeln würden, war die Insel Jost van Dyke. Mal wieder haben wir den Anker gesetzt, sind aber am Abend nur auf unserem Boot geblieben. Das Dörfchen in der Bucht sah aber super süß aus und zum Glück hatte Katharina am Morgen drauf bestanden, dass wir an Land gehen sollten. Dort trafen wir dann einen Kanadier aus Kitchener, der uns erklärte, dass wir unbedingt in die nächste Buch fahren sollen, zur Soggy Dollar Bar. Ich war so froh, dass wir ihn getroffen hatten. Ich habe nämlich in einem Spiegelartikel über die Soggy Dollar Bar gelesen, die dafür bekannt ist, dass die Leute von ihren Booten zur Bar am Strand schwimmen und mit ihren nassen Dollars die Drinks bezahlen. Jedoch hatten wir die ganze Woche kein Internet, so dass ich nicht recherchieren konnte, wo sie liegt. Umso mehr hab ich mich über den Zufall gefreut. Also sind wir auf zur Bar und konnten die Karibik noch einmal so erleben, wie wir sie uns eigentlich vorgestellt hatten, mit weißem Strand und vielen Palmen. Die Bar wurde auch zerstört, aber komplett wiederaufgebaut. Palmen wurden wieder eingesetzt und bis sie stabil von allein stehen noch gestützt. In der Soggy Dollar Bar haben wir natürlich Painkiller getrunken und mit einem Burger zum ersten Mal im Urlaub Fleisch gegessen, was vor allem Katharina sehr freute. (Man muss sagen, dass sie von Beef Island schon sehr enttäuscht war, als sich herausstellte, dass es – zumindest heutzutage – mit Beef gar nichts zu tun hatte) 😉
With a heavy heart we had to say goodbye to the beautiful bay and started our "journey home". On our last day we sailed and turned a lot. While all the other boats with their engines and sails were sailing through the bay, we turned and sailed through the shallows and changing currents.
Towards evening we reached our home port where BJ from the charter company was waiting for us and did us the biggest favour of the week and brought us to the well preserved neighbouring port, where we had hot showers with proper water pressure. Unfortunately we had a big misunderstanding with him, when we sailed off, he gave us his mobile phone number so that we could contact him if something happened. Since we had no problems with the boat, we didn't get in touch. On our return we told him that we were celebrating and he was very disappointed that we didn't let him know, because he normally never gives guests his mobile number, but found us cool and would have liked to spend time with us. That was a real pity, but then he accompanied us to dinner and told us a lot about the country and people and especially about what it was like when the hurricane came and what he did. Within the hurricane were eleven tornadoes that simply lifted boats out of the water and spewed them out somewhere on land. A catamaran landed headfirst on a two-story house. Before the hurricane, everyone nailed up their windows with boards and during the hurricane all they had to do was wait and see. He told us that he sat down in his living room and read a book and waited until it was over. He told about people whose houses were hit by the tornado and who were in the eye of the tornado, when you looked up the sun was shining in all other directions it was dark. The island was mainly hit by Irma, who exceeded the highest hurricane level 5 by far and was actually a level 7. The storm had top speeds of 218 miles per hour. My 100km/h in Iceland was a joke compared to that. After the storm there were riots on the otherwise very peaceful island, among other things because of drinking water. The British military then came to calm down the riots and they set up, for example, supply stations. Here is a small impression of the remaining traces of destruction:
Overall, one can say that the BVI did not look much like the Caribbean picture we had imagined, but on the other hand it was very interesting to see how much power and destruction a hurricane brings and how people get up again and renovate their house or boat in tiny steps.
Our last evening we danced on the pier and ended with a chat before we all went our separate ways the next day. There was a full moon that night and a huge bright circle around the moon. I've never seen anything like it. Do any of you know that?
The next morning Katharina left first and somehow I could not imagine at the farewell that we would not see each other for 8 months now. Stefan, Lena and I went to the airport together. (Meanwhile Lena and I had decided to travel on to Guadeloupe and bought a flight). You can imagine the airport on the BVI as a large room, which is open on one side and has a few counters on the other. That's why cats and chickens are running around in there;).
The only really stupid thing was that our taxi was 40 minutes too late and no other taxi was available. Stefan could no longer check in to his plane because the airline had overbooked it. As in the domino effect, he missed his connecting flight to Germany and arrived exactly one day later. At least they paid him for the hotel and the flight and he could stroll through the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico again.
Lena and I also had a very exciting flight, because we had to change in Antigua and had exactly 60 minutes for it. The luggage was not checked through, so we had to pick it up. So first we had to go through immigration and then we had to check in again. I've rarely run like this at an airport. But with the help of our flight attendant and the ground staff of the airlines we got our flight and could hardly believe it when we were sitting in the plane to Guadeloupe.
