16/4/2011
$30 per night mooring buoys do not appeal to us, so we headed over to Sopers Hole on Tortola, to stock up and provision for the next week around Jost Van Dyke and Cane Gardens. Mastercard systems problems struck yet again, and once again we found ourselves holding up supermarket queues, scrambling for cash because the bloody card won’t work! Thanks to our secret weapon, Katiloo, who has been on Standard Banks case so often in this regard, we now have after hours hotline numbers . $40 of cell phone call time to the bank revealed that there was nothing wrong with the card, but there seemed to be a connection problem reading the magnetic strip on Standard Bank cards in America……”But I’m not in America!” , …”Our systems regard BVI as America! Tell the cashier to manually input the details, and not to “swipe” the card.” This we did, and it worked! Great, but it still wouldn’t let me draw cash from the only ATM in Sopers Hole! The delay meant paying another $25 to stay overnight on the buoy. It struck me that for the $65 Standard Bank cost me, through no fault of ours, we could have spent another night at the Willy T, drinking plenty of beers, getting tattoos , and watching topless ladies jumping around! The upside was that we were able to have a farewell drink at the Sopers Hole Pub with Walter and Jackie ( Jean Marie), and Mike and Lesley ( Extasea), as we are all setting off in different directions from here. A big black squall messed up our plans to negotiate the tricky reef entry to White Bay, so we diverted to Great Harbour ( Jost Van Dyke), and dropped anchor in 12mts, just as the heavens opened. We caught 200lts of water in the two hours it rained, filling our tanks to the brim (all 650lts). 
The sun came out, and we headed ashore to explore, and to sample conch fritters ($10), and Jamaican Jerk Wings ($10) with our sundowners at the legendary “Foxy’s”! Gadzooks!
R14 for each golf ball size fritter, or a single chicken wing, and R28 for a beer! Been there, done that, and bought the T shirt to prove it! The next morning, we moved on round to White Bay, with Mary playing every trick in the book to persuade me not to go through the reef pass into the 
beautiful palm tree lined beach beyond! 
In vain, I might add, as we are now safely anchored in this lovely bay, with at least a metre below the keel….now! At one stage it registered 0 mts! Later it was off to the Soggy Dollar Beach Bar, to sample their world famous “Pain Killer” rum punch, which is basically a Dark Rum over lots of ice, mixed with pineapple juice, a little orange juice, coconut milk, Angostura, with grated nutmeg on top! $6 a go, and very more –ish! Cheapskates that we are, we had one, and made the refills on the boat ourselves! We watched a shoal of Spanish Mackerel and Rainbow Runners in a feeding frenzy around the boat, as the charter boats headed home at sundown. Saturday. 
Welcome to the circus! The charter boats from the US Virgins packed in, taking up every square inch of anchor room, and then some! We watched in awe as one idiot dropped an anchor between two other cats, where clearly there was not enough space……. panic, go full astern over his dinghy tender’s tether, foul the prop, dive over the side to untangle the mess, while the boat is being fended off by those on either side! The name of his boat? I kid you not…”Paw Paw of Wight” !!! Despite all the drama’s it is still a very beautiful bay, and the entertainment has been non stop. We have just been too scared to leave the boat unattended to go ashore, with all these monkeys around! We understand that the US skippers ticket of competence is called a “Six Pack”, which has something to do with the 6 disciplines they need to have mastered. We think the ticket means something entirely different, given our observations!! The professional skippers’ in these parts reckon that their ticket is a credit card!
The sun came out, and we headed ashore to explore, and to sample conch fritters ($10), and Jamaican Jerk Wings ($10) with our sundowners at the legendary “Foxy’s”! Gadzooks!
R14 for each golf ball size fritter, or a single chicken wing, and R28 for a beer! Been there, done that, and bought the T shirt to prove it! The next morning, we moved on round to White Bay, with Mary playing every trick in the book to persuade me not to go through the reef pass into the 
beautiful palm tree lined beach beyond! 
In vain, I might add, as we are now safely anchored in this lovely bay, with at least a metre below the keel….now! At one stage it registered 0 mts! Later it was off to the Soggy Dollar Beach Bar, to sample their world famous “Pain Killer” rum punch, which is basically a Dark Rum over lots of ice, mixed with pineapple juice, a little orange juice, coconut milk, Angostura, with grated nutmeg on top! $6 a go, and very more –ish! Cheapskates that we are, we had one, and made the refills on the boat ourselves! We watched a shoal of Spanish Mackerel and Rainbow Runners in a feeding frenzy around the boat, as the charter boats headed home at sundown. Saturday. 
Welcome to the circus! The charter boats from the US Virgins packed in, taking up every square inch of anchor room, and then some! We watched in awe as one idiot dropped an anchor between two other cats, where clearly there was not enough space……. panic, go full astern over his dinghy tender’s tether, foul the prop, dive over the side to untangle the mess, while the boat is being fended off by those on either side! The name of his boat? I kid you not…”Paw Paw of Wight” !!! Despite all the drama’s it is still a very beautiful bay, and the entertainment has been non stop. We have just been too scared to leave the boat unattended to go ashore, with all these monkeys around! We understand that the US skippers ticket of competence is called a “Six Pack”, which has something to do with the 6 disciplines they need to have mastered. We think the ticket means something entirely different, given our observations!! The professional skippers’ in these parts reckon that their ticket is a credit card! 
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