We are happy to announce the premiere of our film “Sailing the Sea of Cortez”. The movie was filmed in December 2007 while chartering out of La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, and was inspired by John Steinbeck’s Log of the Sea of Cortez.
Note: the format of the film is small to conserve server space. I will be uploading a medium-sized format in the next few days.
This video was shot by Panini on the first day of our charter.
The smoke from the hundreds of forest fires burning in Northern California has hung ominously over our town since our return from the islands.
The air quality is so bad, seniors and infants are directed to stay indoors, and outdoor activity has been curtailed by most others. Outdoor recreation is out of the question, as the smoke is dense enough to irritate eyes and throats. I’m even worried about our almost 15 year old dog, Vega, sleeping outside…
On a brighter note, we are wrapping up the Sailing the Sea of Cortez crew cut project, and plan on logging and capturing the BVI footage in the coming weeks. Our next trip is rafting the Grand Canyon, which begins in September (sorry, no blogging from the Canyon!) and lasts for nearly a month. I hope to have the BVI crew cut complete by our departure date.
Keep checking in for updates, and pray for rain – we need it!
Q
The only downside of such a fantabulous(sic) trip like this one is that it must eventually come to an end. The mood amongst the crew was somber and subdued, knowing that our 11–day BVI non-stop sailing/partying adventure would end today. But is it
really accurate to say the trip has definitively ended if it continues to live strongly in our memories when we relate our various adventures to friends and family, when we review the photos from our trip — each one sparking a distinct memory of experience, when years later someone asks where we got a certain souvenir or memento? In any case the crew split up today to go our separate ways. Moss Landing(*) went with Sadsack Rita and Dive Goddess back to Cane Garden Bay. Captain Cupcake, Twirly Wonder, Guava Bean, and Goat Boy boarded the ferry to Virgin Gorda — leaving me all alone in Roadtown, wandering around a bit dazed and already missing my fellow crew. Although Roadtown is the largest city and the capital of the BVI, it still lacks one thing common to almost every city — traffic lights. That anomaly is about to be corrected, apparently. I found this sign amusing as it seemed to be positively boasting about getting a new traffic light!
My trip continues solo for a another 2 weeks. Tomorrow I plan to visit St. John in the USVI, and then on to other Caribbean islands yet to be determined. My schedule is open and I will play it by ear. You can follow my continued adventures on my personal blog here:
I’m not nearly as diligent as the Captain was with posting daily blog entries and I’m currently several days behind, but I’ll catch up soon.
Panini
(*) We each had (multiple) nicknames imposed by the rest of the crew. The crew itself had nickname, of which I can only give the acronym: FPCC
The highlight of the diving portion of the trip was the wreck of the RMS Rhone. Built in 1865, the 300+ foot steamship was one of the first two ships to use a propeller instead of a paddlewheel. She did the mail run from Britain to the Americas and back, using the Virgin Islands as a hub. In 1866, the island of St. Thomas went under quarantine because of an outbreak of yellow fever. As a result, the Rhone began stopping at Peter Island and using a tender boat called the Conway to deliver to St. Thomas and refuel the Rhone with coal.
In 1867, on October 29th, the Rhone and the Conway were anchored in Great Harbor on Peter Island when the barometric pressure began to drop, indicating a severe change in weather. The captains of the two ships had to decide what type of storm was approaching, and they agreed it was an early season norther, which made a run north to Road Town on Tortola the prudent choice for shelter.
What the captains did not know (nor could they have) was that the pressure was dropping because of a category five hurricane! The Conway, a paddleboat, barely made it across the Sir Francis Drake Channel to safety. The circumstances for the Rhone are less certain. What is known is this: the Rhone’s anchor, and all the chain rode, are on the floor of Great Harbor. In such violent conditions, abandoning the anchor would have been safer than attempting to free it from the coral heads. After cutting free, she ran for the safety of open water through the Salt Island channel.
The fact is that as the eye of the hurricane passed overhead, the Rhone was dangerously close to Black Rock on the western tip of Salt Island. As the eye continued on, the wind shifted and drove the RMS Rhone onto the rock, piercing her hull and exposing the overworked boilers to the relatively cold sea water, causing an explosion which tore the ship in two.
Of three hundred passengers and crew ( over one hundred passengers were transferred to the Rhone from the Conway because the Rhone was one of two ships deemed “unsinkable” by the British Royal Navy (the other was the Titanic)) only 26 survived, some by clinging to the aft mast of the ship, which settled in shallow water. Of the survivors, only one was a passenger, and it is his account which most often quoted. In those times, it was standard practice to tie passengers into their bunks in rough weather to prevent injuries which may cause complications while at sea with limited medical help available.
Today the Rhone is remarkably well-preserved. Her bow section lies on its starboard side in 80 feet of water. Divers surround the ship during daylight hours, and you can swim through the breached hull in numerous places. There are the resident barracudas Fang and Fred as well as numerous other fishes and animals. The scale of the early design of the propeller and rudder are enormous.
The Rhone is considered the most spectacular wreck dive in the Caribbean, and her story, to me, is one of the most compelling. Unlike the bucanneers of old, the Rhone remains to tell her story, incomplete as it may be.
Q
Soper’s Hole was our anchorage for our last night aboard. A tropical wave of thunderstorms came through the islands while we were ashore at Diamond Cay. By the time I had the crew ready to dinghy back to the boat, winds were blowing 30 knots and there were four foot waves trying to swamp the dinghy! Everyone made it aboard safely, although a few crew were visibly shaken. We cast off the mooring and ran for shelter at Soper’s Hole.
Like every anchorage in the BVI, Soper’s Hole has a famous bar. The Jolly Roger Inn is a harbor-side BBQ joint with a mean rum punch. Their dinghy dock is part of the outdoor dining deck, and the view of the surrounding islands, including the USVI, is spectacular.
We did some final souvenir shopping before a nice dinner aboard with wine from home.
We left Cane Garden Bay after a long morning spent refueling after the Bomba’s Shack full moon party. The shack is another legendary location in the BVI’s. It was built from the wreckage of hurricane Hugo in 1988, right on the beach in Cappoon’s Bay, on the north side of Tortola. There was live music, and hundreds of people from all over the islands. The monthly party is the place to be under a full moon.
Just north of Tortola is the small island system of Jost Van Dyke. Home to the famous Soggy Dollar Bar, the birthplace of the painkiller. The bar got its name from the fact that there is no dock in White Bay, so patrons from afloat swam to shore for the tasty cocktail and a round of the ring game (swing a ring on a string and land it on a hook), and their wet money is hung on a clothesline to dry. 
We anchored in Great Harbor with the intent to eat dinner at Foxy’s, yet another famous location. Foxy is a soulful calypso singer who improvises lyrics based on where his customers are from, but he was not performing last night, and the wait was too long, so we ended up at another restaurant, Corsair’s. The food was excellent, the best of the trip thus far. 
The owner, Vinnie, spends the off-season at his summer home in Colorado. He told us about some local spots and was a very gracious host.
Today we visit the bubble pool in Diamond Bay and Green Cay for some snorkelling before mooring in Soper’s Hole for our last night aboard. The trip has been fully realised, and was more rich than I imagined. We are at that point in our trip when our origins are far away, yet we are closing in on our return to “normalcy” rapidly.
Greetings from Cane Garden Bay, on the north side of Tortola.
We had another full day, which began with a long night. By the time we had returned the scuba gear in Spanish Town and returned to Cooper Island, all the mooring buoys were occupied! We tentatively set an anchor outside the mooring field next to the biggest sailing tri-maran in the world, the Cuan Law (www.cuanlaw.com or www.bvisailing.com). This boat has two Hobie Cats on deck for leisure, but the main activity aboard is scuba diving. I slept for a few hours at a time, waking up to check the radar and GPS to ensure we did not drag our anchor, and because a squall came through around 2 am that reduced visibility and flattened any sea in sight.
Around 8 this morning, we moved the boat to a recently vacated buoy for the morning so that Drew, Kim, Achut and I could go dive the RMS Rhone while the other four crew had a liesure morning in Manchioneel Bay. The Rhone was epic – watch for another entry on that.
After the dive, we had lunch and sailed around the eastern end of Beef Island and headed west for Cane Garden Bay. When we arrived, there were only two mooring balls left – both in swimming distance from shore. Again, four crew went ashore to explore and four sat on board blogging, napping, and soaking in the afternoon light.
