29th January

18 25 N
64 39 W

Weather; sunny, Wind 5 Knots N, Waves 1 to 2 feet

We began our day making plans to move to Monkey Point on Guana Island where the snorkeling is supposed to be good but before we took off Gerry took the dinghy for a run to Scrub Island, just across the bay as they have a dive shop at the resort there and he wanted to get his Pony botte filled and get rid of our small bag of trash at the same time. They filled his Pony bottle, accepting the dive license that is about 40years old - with a photo of Gerry that looks nothing like how he is today (he had hair in those days!), I'm sure they see many licenses from us older citizens that reflect a youthfulness long gone! Anyway with the bottle refilled and the trash deposited it was time to get the boat ready to move. Gerry had gleaned a bit of information from the dive shop about the restaurant on Bellamy Cay that I wrote of yesterday. Apparently the airport had planned to extend the runway prior to the hurricanes and was buying the restaurant as the extension would require the land on which the restaurant sat. Of course the hurricanes hit here badly and there has been no further movement to date on the runway extension, the lady who told Gerry this wasn't sure if the selling of Bellamy Cay or the runway extension was still going ahead, only time will tell. I suggested that as we were only going a very short distance, about 3 NM, to Monkey point that maybe we could tow the dinghy for once rather than stowing it in the davits and going through the effort to unload and stow the fuel and outboard. To my surprise Gerry agreed so we made sure that the dinghy was well secured to the stern of the boat, started up the engine, dropped the mooring ball and headed out of the anchorage. As the airport is so close by there is a boat exclusion zone marked by yellow buoys which we had to go around to avoid any mishaps with planes landing or taking off. The wind was, of course, on our nose - we are beginning to wonder if there is any other direction it can come from, so we motored all the way - not that it was very far. As we rounded the end of Monkey Point, heading in to the bay of Guana Island we noticed that there were half a dozen boats on day moorings there, all of them were rolling - not a place to stay for any length of time. We spotted a vacant mooring ball away from the crowd and picked it up. Out came the snorkeling gear and we jumped in the dinghy and made our way across the bay to the edge of Monkey Point and tied the dinghy up to the dinghy mooring ball. We struggled into our snorkeling gear in the tight space on the dinghy and back flipped into the water to begin snorkeling around the point. It certainly wasn't the best snorkeling area we have seen; the coral had been affected by the hurricanes and a lot of it looked dead but was trying to revive itself. We saw some brain coral, fan coral, some parrot fish plus a few smaller pretty fish that I have no names for (really should have bought a fish identifying book) but not a lot else. We snorkeled all along the shore line, almost back to our boat before giving up and returning to the dinghy where we did the minor struggle stuff to get ourselves back into it. We had bought a new ladder especially for climbing back into the dinghy as we figured that we were getting too long in the tooth to do the propelling at warp speed out of the water and trying to land gracefully in the dinghy (more like beached whales than ballerinas pirouetting) any way the new ladder seemed to work reasonably well and we both managed to get back into the dinghy without collapsing in hysterical laughter at the attempt, as we had on previous occasions. Back on the boat it was hot shower time and clean clothes before a brief lunch, I must add that we had some of our basil from the aero garden with lunch and it was delicious - well worth us growing it! By now it was early afternoon and there was no way we were staying in this rolly spot for the night so we decided to head off to Cane Garden Bay on Tortola Island which is on the West side of Tortola (our previous stops on Tortola have been on the Eastern side) and was about 7NM away. We dropped the mooring ball which was picked up moments later by a charter catamaran, and began motoring to Tortola, again towing the dinghy. We saw a very odd looking boat, it appeared to be a catamaran but it had 2 masts, we weren't close enough to work out the logistics of it, maybe we will get to see it someplace else and get a closer look at it. The wind wasn't perfect for sailing but we put out the staysail and jib and motor sailed along for a while until we were in spitting distance of Cane Garden Bay then we furled everything away and motored into the bay. Again there were mooring balls everywhere, mostly with charter catamarans tied to them but there were still enough free that we could have taken one but we decided that if there was a good spot to anchor that's what we would do and save ourselves the $30 a night mooring fee. We motored around and found a good spot, dropped the anchor which set well and sat there admiring the view. Gerry got out a cleaning rag and began to polish the electric winch as it had salt water spray on it, I watched and encouraged! We pondered for a while about the houses that are built around the bay, I have previously mentioned the very bright colours that the houses are painted - here was no different, but we discussed the logistics of building the houses on what are very steep hillsides and the size of the houses - they are all enormous. We wondered who could afford to build a house here, how difficult and expensive the build would be and why would you live on such steep terrain where there is nothing but a decent view to give it any merit, we didn't come up with a solution - it was just an exercise in pondering! With our pondering done for the day we dinghied into shore in time for happy hour and walked the short distance along the beach to Pusser's restaurant/bar where we had a few adult beverages and dinner. We watched the sun set behind the Islands opposite Tortola but over Cane Garden Bay, it was a pretty sight but of course with the islands blocking the sun hitting the water there was no chance of seeing the green flash. We walked back along the beach to retrieve our dinghy and headed back to the boat for a decent night's sleep at anchor.