Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, BVI

Today I’d agreed to lend out Kevin again to help Mike with some of his boat jobs, so late morning he headed across there. I had decided to look up the Susan Boyle video on You Tube whilst I had the boat to myself. We’d seen something on US news a couple of days before but could not see what it was about. I’d seen yet another headline on the internet that morning and decided to have a look. Just as she was about to pipe up, Mike and Jean arrived on their dingy, Jean had come to visit. So we both got to watch the video, both with a tear in our eye to see someone achieving their dream.

Obviously this then sparked a conversation about why it was such a story just because of her appearance… well 5 hours later the men returned and we were still chatting. Jean mentioned they’d be surprised we were still chatting, I said Kevin would not be in the least surprised that I was still going and actually she conceded that Mike wouldn’t be either.

We had a couple of beers / G&Ts and Kevin & Mike told us their progress for the day. They’d serviced winches and resolved a leak but unfortunately didn’t make it up the mast, the original job due to the wind and swell.

As our fridge was bare from our defrosting activities Kevin and I then had to go ashore for supplies before we could make dinner. Jean and Mike headed back for burgers on their barbecue and Kevin decided he’d be looking for those too. When we arrived at the dingy dock there were three local teenage lads in one dingy who climbed out and stood along the pier chatting not very convincingly as we came by. Kevin was not sure about them and we hadn’t locked our dingy as the swell on the dock here is quite bad and it holds us too close when it is locked, plus it had seemed fairly safe. Anyway as Kevin stood at the top of the dock watching they jumped in another dingy. I asked the guy who runs the food stall at the top of the pier and he said yes they are always taking dingies! Well that’s ok then! It now added up to who the young lads were that were racing back and forth in a dingy at full speed through the anchorage the first couple of days we were here. There was nothing much we could do and by all accounts they would bring it back – though the fuel level at that point would be less assured.

We went up the the shop deciding to be quick so we would still have a means of getting back to the boat. We’d only been in the shop a few minutes when I thought I recognised the same lads enter, so I guess they’d quickly had their fun. We got our burgers and a pizza for me and went back to the boat.