Dan Neri with yacht Calvin in the background.

16 December 1999

Today Karen and I, responsible parents, gave the kids the keys to the dinghy and took a ferry boat and taxi ride into Roadtown, Tortola for the monthly parts and provisioning scavenger hunt. As always happens, Karen instantly became a soul mate with Sammy, the cab driver. During the half hour ride Sammy told her, "After Jesus, the best gift a woman can give her man is sailing. And the best gift a man can give his woman is sailing, after Jesus." I'll buy that, and it looks like about time to give each other some sailing. Jesus will have to wait a week.

We have been based in North Sound, Virgin Gorda since the 2nd of December. For the first 10 days we were guests of the Bitter End YC. Karen taught Women how to dock Freedom 30s (forward AND reverse) and Matt, Danie and I ate, hiked, ate, windsurfed, ate and then had some deserts. We also slept in beds with actual sheets, swatted mesquitoes, and took long showers with hot water. During the seminar week Matt and Danie were more or less adopted by the watersports staff and they extended us something like a lifetime pass to use the toys. So when we were kicked out of the hotel we anchored Calvin around the corner and resumed the daily routine, without the eating part. At the resort there is a constant coming and going of guests. At the end of Womens Week each morning there was a routine of sad goodbyes and jokes about the bad weather at the other end of the air tunnel. On the last morning of our free ride one of our new friends started in on the whole ritual but it ended quickly at the standard question about where we were off to. "I think, right out there next to the big Swan."

Boardsailing is an unparalleled treat for all the senses. One of the instructors here told me it is like learning to play a musical instrument. At first you can not do it at all and it is just really unpleasant noise. But it comes to you in spurts of revelation and every day the hook is set a little further. It is addicting like running but with the exhilaration of speed. To get it right with a small board and a big sail you end up in a focused trance, hyper-alert and simultaneously relaxed with the sail suspending all your weight and the board just hanging from the foot straps. Any number of times in the past week, I dropped back hard against the pull of the sail and found myself staring at the North Sails logo on my harness lines. At those moments I would think about what I would be doing back in the real world and I have to say that boardsailing is better. On Sunday afternoon I would have been out there with the guys in the Newport Laser fleet. Dave Gray reports it was an epic day. OK, for 2 hours it would have been better in New England. Maybe there will be some pond hockey days this winter. Otherwise, all other hours of the week, boardsailing in North Sound wins. (By the way, I represented the Newport fleet in the Bitter End Laser Regatta, which was essentially a match race with starting line obstacles between me and Betsy Alison. The score was Men 3 Women 1, in no small part due to Betsy breaking her mast in one race. Matt gallantly swapped boats with her but she was done. Grace and luck will beat strength and determination every time.)

Matt and Danie are now both boardsailors. Matt has put in a lot more time (like about 6 hours/day since he realized we were not going to stay here for the rest of our lives). Two weeks ago he stood up on a board and made it move for the first time. He progressed to a short board within a couple of days and has been piling on sail area every day since. Today he used a 5.4 s.m. sail, the 2nd largest sail they have here. The watersports staff have modified a chest harness for him because they don't have any normal harnesses small enough. Danie is ripping it up on an Olympic board with a smaller sail and a perpetual grin. Gordo, the watersports director, has offered them both jobs in 2004.

It is hard to leave this place. Perfect anchorage, dozens of beaches (most of which serve cold beer), free equipment, flat water, big breeze, miles of hiking trails. It is a nearly perfect spot but after a while it starts to have a bit of a Disney quality. I can only watch so many nights of sunburned guests shuffling to the strains of "No Women, No Cry" belted out by a cleanshaven quartet with an Om-Pa-Pa machine. Ahhh, Reggae - the music of revolution and tourism.

At any rate, the wanderlust has struck again and Dad is pulling the plug. Matt says, all the other Virgin Islands are Cruising, but the Bitter End is Vacation. Well the vacation is over kid, we are moving out. We have a reasonable weather window for a 280-mile sail to Dominica. It will be another close reach/fetch on port tack the whole way. The Christmas winds are here for the next week at 20-25k. The NE swell is up to about 8 feet due to a gale in the central Atlantic, which is a drag, but we just have to put a reef in, swallow hard, button up the yacht and sprint down there. It will be 2 days and one night which we will likely spend mostly in the cockpit in order to keep whatever is left of the Bitter End food onboard. We will have about a 60% moon but it is gone early in the new day.

Jill tells us that on Dec 22, the Winter Solstice, a full moon and the closest orbit of the moon this year will coincide. We might save that night for a passage to Bequia where we plan to spend Christmas with a couple of other boats. The last time the full moon occurred on the first day of winter and at its closest annual perigee, 133 years ago, the Dakota Sioux staged a punishing, retaliatory ambush on US soldiers in the Wyoming Territory. How did they know, without the benefit of a planetarium or a Hubble telescope, that was the day? Go Indians!

Calvin out.

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