7. Up Gun Creek

North Sound, Virgin Gorda. Prickly Pear Island in the distance

One day I walked from Leverick Bay up over the hill to Gun Greek. There’s a cheap supermarket there, and I wanted to check where the immigration office was and see where I could anchor. Gun Creek has a fairly new immigration office – you can clear in and out, even though some of the tourist brochures still say you can’t. It’s long hike over a steep hill. On the way back I managed to hitch two lifts. Two rides that took me pretty much all the way. First a local woman on her way to the post office took me half way. Then an American guy took me, out of his way, right to Leverick Bay marina.

I like hitching in the BVI, lots of people stop, and they’re usually interesting. There aren’t many buses, and taxis are really expensive. I started by just sticking my thumb out, but apparently here that’s like sticking your middle finger out. What you should do is point to the road and the direction you want to go. Once, in Tortola, an old man stopped for me, and when I thanked him, said: ‘don’t tank me, tank da lord, was ‘is decision to stap.’ Such a nice old guy, took me all the way to the Airport. Another time I got a cool dreadlock reggae drum and base guy wearing shades. He just opened the door, nodded and played his music full blast from at least eight speakers. After he dropped me off, I could still hear his music as he drove over a hill.  

North Sound looking West, Prickly Pear Island, and Gun Creek in the distance

The last few days have been so fun hanging out with Kerstin and Robert. Laughing and chatting, swapping music and stories. Happy hour at Saba Rock, pizza at the Bitter End, afternoon tea on Sonic Boom, dinner on Trinity. What an amazing yacht that is, and an amazing couple. They helped me so much, they taught me so much too, sharing all the things they’d learnt on their boat. A couple of times they came on board Sonic Boom, looked around, and said I need to this and this, and fix that and that. Each time the next morning I would do all the things they said.  Tomorrow they will set sail for St Croix. I’m so sad they’re leaving; I will miss them very much.

Trinity and Sonic Boom

Trinity call their dingy Minity. I hadn’t thought of naming my dingy. I’m not sure what I would call it. ‘Pop’ maybe? Or ‘poop’. My dingy leaks, the seems are coming apart. I keep gluing it back together and adding new patches, but it’s PVC and soon comes unstuck again. So there’s not much point putting a nametag on – no one would want to steal it. At Manuel Reef marina, there was an American sailor moored next to me who thought his might be worse. But when I talked him through it, he conceded. Once when I went to Saba Rock, they asked me ‘ did you swim here?’  I need a new one, but new ones cost a lot. Thousands of dollars. I will wait until I get to St Martin and try to figure something out.

My plan is to wait for the wind to shift to the north, and then head to St. Martin.