May 12
Not a lot going on here in paradise. Kim and I had meetings all week so that kept us busy. Our projects are coming along good. Cate got some of her books in the mail last Saturday so she enjoyed reading those. Problem is, she reads them to fast and now we need to order more. Saturday was a little exciting as we did another mail run, then over to RedHook for the animals vet appointment. We were done by noon so we headed to Leinster Bay Lat 18 21.966N Lon -64 43.395W on the way back to Soper's Hole. Leinster Bay is just around the corner from Maho Bay and a little closer to Soper's Hole. Spent the afternoon swimming and snorkeling. Great little Bay with a nice beach. Not much else there so there are not as many boats as Maho or other places. The exciting part came when we were sailing from RedHook to Leinster. We were on a tight pinch beating into the wind and would pass very close to the Two Brothers (large rocks) Lat 18 20.588N Lon 064 49.028. As we closed with them on our Lee I thought it a good idea to start the engine just in case. Sure enough we were to close for comfort. Now I could fall off the wind and pass on their Lee or used the engine and get just a little more room. If I fell off the wind I would have to tack to make the mark going through the channel between St Johns and Henley Cay. So I put the engine in gear and gave it some gas - with no response! Remember all those things that happen to keep the universe in balance? Well this was another one. Kim took the helm and I went below to find a c-ring had come off allowing the throttle cable to come off the engine. I put it back on and had Kim give it a try to make sure that was all it was. Knowing we were closing on the rocks I did not have time to fix it better. So back up top I went. Seeing where we were I decided to fall off the wind and pass Two Brothers on the safe side. Just another reason to always be ready for the unexpected. Had I waited longer and if the wind shifted or eased (and it does that a lot) we would have been in trouble and other boats going by in the future would say now how did some idiot hit those rocks in the middle of the Bay.

I did find a cool website: http://www.bvipirate.com/BVIWebcams.html
If you go to the page it has links for all the webcams in the BVI. The top one on the page is for Jolly Rogers, it is in Soper's Hole and you can see Island Siren. The picture is not good enough to pick us out across the harbor but we are there. But it does give you a look around Soper's Hole and the other links will let you look around the BVI.