Last night, John and I decided to treat ourselves with a candlelight dinner at Saba Rock, Virgin Gorda. The plan was to have a few rum punches during happy hour but we were more than impressed by the place and decided to extend our stay for dinner. The place is really magical - and the fried conch was yummy as was the all-you-can eat salad bar.....This is an impressive resort for such a small island, including a lovely beach with hammocks and its own "natural" aquarium, complete with one of the anchors and cannons from the Wreck of the Rhone. (The gift store also had an impressive display of relics from the Rhone and the Atocha - apparently the owner of the resort knows Mel Fisher !) For dinner, John and I were seated right next to the sea and the island is surrounded by blue underwater lights such that you can gaze at the enormous fish as you eat dinner.

Today, the weather can only be described as perfect - our sail (motorsail) from Virgin Gorda to Jost Van Dyke (yes, we finally made it !) took 3 hours, with 10-15 knots of wind virtually on our beam and our boat skimming along at 7.2 to 8.0 knots. And of course the sun played its part today and sparkled all day.

Today we learned a new lesson. Apparently, it is not about being polite to one's fellow sailors but who pushes their way in first. I was astounded by the rudeness of a fellow boater (well, charter boater) as we spied the last mooring ball in Diamond Cay, just outside Foxy's Taboo and went for it. The author was standing on the bow, with binoculars and pointing at the ball, giving John directions such that we could pick it up. Then, as we made our final approach, all of a sudden a large catamaran came from an angle on our port side, sped up and passed right in front of us and grabbed the last mooring ball! We had spotted them a little while before but we, at the time, were clearly ahead of them to enter Diamond Cay. I stood on the bow, with my arms folded just waiting for any recognition from this Footloose Charter Boat ("OdeToJoy") - yet all eight of the crew refused to look in our direction and pretended there wasnt a 47 foot sailboat heading straight for them....well, until I shouted across -"That was a little rude wasnt it ?" Some guy who just caught the mooring ball while the others sat there looking everywhere but at us responded, "Who knows you werent doing the same thing?". You could tell they just knew they were in the wrong - I felt like we were in a game of musical chairs and had just been left outside the circle as the bully pushed us out of the way for the last chair. But instead of playing their game, we just turned out boat around quickly and headed for the anchorage near Sandy Spit.

Our first attempt at anchoring didnt quite work out well but, in the end, we were pleased with our "forced" anchoring. Our second attempt to drop our 60 pound CQR (in 15 feet of water) was largely a success - and John and I popped on our scuba gear and dove the boat to ensure our anchor was well entrenched and that we weren't anchored on any coral. The results - our anchor was "ploughed" in and the calm conditions of today made for limited swinging and pulling on the rode. We followed this up with a snorkel to the secluded island of Sandy Spit, took a walk around the island, searched for coconuts and clams and then wrote "Lucky Escape 2010" in the sand, up the beach.

However, I earlier stated "largely a success" as John and I feel we may be a little close to Sandy Spit and its choral reef should we swing 360 degrees on the anchor as we let out 6-1 scope. So now, as I write this, John and I are on "anchor watch" and popping our heads up from the aft bedroom every one half hour to check out our position (including following our movement on our electronic map). So far so good, we are just moving in a slow crescent and, if this keeps up for the next few hours, then we can finally hit the hay and sleep well. The winds have died down nicely - only about 5 knots or less. - and the waters are nice and calm.

This location is much more secluded than the various mooring fields we have been in so far (everywhere is packed despite the recession) and encouraging us to finally break free of our addiction to mooring (which we have been tending to do as winds have been rather strong of late).

With the onslaught of the night also came the fish. When John and I snorkelled over to the island, we saw very few fish - yet the darkness brought thousands of tiny blue and transluscent fish out, accompanied by a host of rather large fish chasing them around (grouper + others we couldnt quite identify). We turned on our spreader lights and followed them with our spotlight and also became very excited as our fishing pole was out (off the stern) - complete with tasty, juicy squid bait. It appeared fate that we would finally catch another fish (sigh, only one so far under our 1-month fishing license). However, there seems to be something lacking in our fishing technique...The huge fish swum in circles around our bait and John and I were literally jumping up and down on the deck at the thought of fresh fish for several nights. Yet, these BVI fish are too smart for us and we obviously dont know what we are doing as our fish hook remains empty. Alas, we did enjoy a nice fresh fish dinner on the deck, complete with Alex's recipe for mango chutney, with the catch we bought in Spanish Town.

With the drop in the wind speeds and swell (at least into the weekend) we think we will continue to enjoy Jost Van Dyke for another day or so.....Ahh...Bliss......