Sailing in the British Virgin Islands. What could be more relaxing? I'd had visions of gliding languidly on mirror-smooth water from one picturesque spot to the next, sipping rum drinks or ice-cold beer as I delved into a good book or did a little creative writing on my laptop. How fitting that the vessel on which I would be whisked away was named Celebration of Life.
Instead, the first sea leg of our trip found me clinging miserably to the back of my seat, the wind whipping through my hair as the 42-foot catamaran rose up over each swell and slapped back down on the water with a stomach-turning thwack. Silently, I mourned the six novels in my luggage that would almost certainly go unread, the laptop that would go untouched, and the drinks that would go unconsumed in the week to come. If this was what sailing in the BVI was really like, so much for my relaxing vacation. I wouldn't be celebrating life, I was sure, until the next time I got to live it on dry land.
JORDANA BIEZE FOSTERMaureen relaxes aboard the Celebration of Life. But as it happened, the water that first day was unusually choppy; that it coincided with my first time on a sailboat was just bad luck. And, to be fair, none of the other eight people with whom I was traveling, including the two children, seemed to be at all fazed by the bumpy ride.
By the next morning, the seas were calmer, and, eventually, so was I. Though I never was able to stomach reading while the boat was actually moving, it turned out that there was plenty of time for that – along with snorkeling, sunning, and, yes, drinking – once we had moored. From the manta rays at the Bight on Norman Island to the sculpted rock formations at the Baths in Virgin Gorda to the deceptively creamy Painkillers we sampled at every beach bar along the way, each stop indeed offered ample cause for celebration.
The BVI, it turned out, is not a bad place to spend a few days.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
The rough going that first day did set the tone for the trip in one respect, which was to expect the unexpected. My husband Dan and I, both first-timers, tried to ask as many questions as possible before the trip, but some aspects of sailing are difficult to fully prepare for until you have actually experienced them yourself. And then there's the fact that a sailing vacation itself, apparently, is subject to change at any time.
Even before we left Nanny Cay, the marina where our charter company, Horizon, was based, we already had a change in plan. The Celebration of Life, a Lagoon 420 catamaran, has twin engines that can be used to power the boat when not under sail, and as the charter staff were doing their inspection they discovered a problem with one. We never learned exactly what the problem was, or why it took an entire afternoon to fix it – other than the fact that now we were on "island time." But no matter. Braxton and Andrina, our friends who had chartered yachts from the same company in the past, weren't worried. Sure enough, the engine was eventually pronounced fit, and Capt. Brax navigated us out of the marina and toward the Bight, where we would spend our first night.
When we reached the popular anchorage, however, we were confronted with another unexpected situation: because of our late start, by the time we arrived there were no available mooring sites in the main bay, so we ended up mooring around the corner in a much less sheltered area.
