A trip around Tortola

Today we explored Tortola by car.

Pottery and Art in Trellis Bay

Its late and I have to go to bed now....but will write and post some pictures of the Art and Pottery here in Trellis Bay.

Day off School

Today we had a day off school!. Why? Well, because Ryane had a day off school and so we decided to join him. On his way to work Brian dropped Ryane off to have a play and at the same time to pick Sven up as he had a few things to do in Road Town and Nanny Cay. Julia, Carlos and Ryane had lots of fun playing Monopoly together and after Ryane hurt his toe they all had an hour of watching movie to settle things down. I cleaned and tidied the boat up after the long weekend, that feels good.

Visitors on JUCA

For the last couple of days we had Georg, Sandra and their 3 year old son Levin visiting us on JUCA. They are from Germany and out on a search for a boat to buy with the mission to cruise the caribbean. The first time we met this lovely family a few days ago at Nanny Cay, when both our boats were surveyed. The only difference is they look for a boat and we want to sell our boat. The second time we bumped into each other when they got stranded without accommodation on the beach. They were supposed to fly out the next morning at seven to Trinidad. We offered them a bed for the night and I suppose that was a beginning for a friendship. We dropped them off the next morning and thought we would not see them again. Wrong….they missed their flight that morning and had a few more days on Beef Island. We wanted to spend some more time with them and invited them again to stay on our boat. This time for a couple of nights and they happily accepted. Georg came to celebrate the Full Moon Party with us and the next morning they boarded JUCA with backpack and stroller. It was fun having them on board, while I was preparing a meal Sandra read a story to the children. Then it was Georg’s turn to cook and Sven took over doing the dishes, I love sharing the chores like that. Yesterday we went over to Cam Bay for a snorkel that was fun. Trish had taken me there a day before and had told me that you can go for a little walk across the island. We took the children for a walk and came out on the other side, where it turns out to be another beautiful spot to snorkel. We had lots of fun together. Coming back home we settle the children down for the evening and then shared a nice bottle of white wine between each other, what a beautiful ending after an adventurous day.

Exploring Trellis Bay surroundings

This morning I started my day with a Yoga class on the beach. How can I describe a start like that other than …. Pure Bliss! Despite the fact that everyone celebrated the full moon last night, I had nine people in my class…which is wonderful and a great compliment. Once I came back to the boat we had a quick breakfast and then hopped into our Dinghy to explore Trellis Bay surroundings. We went over to Marina Cay and smooched around that area a bit and one beach looked especially inviting to us. We anchored and jumped into the water for a swim and then we all played in the sand thereafter. It was just what we all needed on a Saturday morning after a long night at “The Last Resort”. They had a band playing there and they were absolutely fantastic and my legs did not get tired at all from all the dancing that night. They are playing again tonight and I would not mind to go out again….but no one wanted to join me. After we came back from our little exploring trip we picked up our visitors from the beach. Yeah we have got some overnight visitors for a couple of night, Georg, Sandra and Levin did not fly out that morning we dropped them off at the airport. They had to postpone their flight to Monday morning, so we invited them to come and stay with us for a couple of days; so to have visitors on board should be fun. While they settled in Trish took me for a little snorkeling trip across from Trellis Bay. Wow…..we saw lots of colorful fish, a couple of stingrays and a moray eel. That was a lot of fun….thank you Trish for taking me and giving me such wonderful experience. In the afternoon we enjoyed the company of Georg, Sandra and Levin and went over to “The Last Resort” for a drink. The children had fun with the skateboard, but we all behaved tonight and came home early and we settled in for an early night tonight.

Another Full Moon Party.....

Yes this will be our second Full Moon Party here at Trellis Bay and yes we will keep on cruising as the boat has not sold yet. In some ways it has been good news and bad news. The good news is that we keep on cruising and enjoying this amazing lifestyle and the bad news is that the boat has not been sold yet. Never mind... someone else will fall in love with our JUCA and take her cruising around the islands in the meantime we will keep cruising until then. It just means that we have to go back to the drawing board and have to plan our next step. I believe our next step will be sailing to St. Martin and see what is happening down there. Cruising around the BVI's has been fun, but it is really time to move on to see what else the Caribbean has to offer. We had a pretty relaxing day today with soem school work, swimming and now we are just getting ready to head over to the shore for the Full Moon Party. The little bay is overflowing with sailing boats and there will be lots of people joining us for the Full Moon Party. It was a lot of fun last month and we met heaps of people...will be interesting what it will be like tonight.

One more day ......

well hopefully only one more day until we know what is happening in regards of selling or staying on the boat. In the meantime life is going on on JUCA and Julia and Carlos did really well today with their school. We finished school with no huge effort and kind of faster than usual. I am back teaching Yoga in Trellis Bay and totally enjoyed it. Everyone is so nice here in Trellis Bay and we totally enjoy being back here...it nearly feels like home!

Back to Trellis Bay

Today we decied to sail back to Trellis Bay. We have got another 2 days before a decision will be made and so we have planned around these two days. Today we are sailing back to Trellis Bay and tomorrow or on Friday we are going to St. Thomas to organise the chain for our autopilot.

Virgin Gorda

Today our destination was “The Bath” on Virgin Gorda. I have had heard a lot from this place and have seen a few inviting and interesting pictures. Sven was not very keen to go and it took me a good deal to talk him into coming with us. When we arrived at Virgin Gorda we found a great anchor place close by and got the Dinghy ready straight away to check out the place. We went along the coast and admired the bolders that were lying along the beach. The coast line was covered with huge rocks and we admired the site from the ocean, we were planning to go to “The Bath” tomorrow morning. We went into town and did a bit of shopping in that nice clean supermarket. We treated ourselves to some nice special extras and then went home for the rest of the day. We went swimming of the boat and settled in for an early night, because I have heard that you have to be there early otherwise it will be hard to get a spot on the Dinghy line. I am very excited and soo looking forward to the trip tomorrow.

This is the British Virgin Island at its best.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines to all our friends and of course family.

Today was the day to leave for Virgin Gorda. I stocked up on some fresh bread, tomatoes and lemons, drinks and got rid of our rubbish. At roughly 10.30 we untied our lines and moved JUCA slowly out of the safe dock from Nanny Cay. We stayed here much longer than anticipated, but again that is nothing new. We totally enjoyed the comfort of showers, electricity and others amenties so close by, especially Julia and Carlos will miss the pool and their friend Rayne very much. Off to new adventures and new islands to explore. Our next destination will be Virgin Gorda, it is suppose to be very beautiful especially the bath with its rock formations. We are looking forward to it.

Fully recovered

Yes I am a 100 % again and more or less back to normal. Today is Sunday so that meant no school and a relaxing day. However as Valentines Day is coming up I decided to use it as a school project and so we have been busy preparing our own Valentine Cards. We had collected flowers, pressed and dried them and today we used them to decorate our Cards. It was a lot of fun, especially as the whole family has participated. Carlos even made a Valentines boat and decorated it with flowers. So today we have been busy making the cards and decorating them with the dried flowers. We also baked our favourite desert, a Key Lime Rasberry Pie and enjoyed it with lime cream....yum yum!! We had a lot of fun making the cards, baking the cake and thinking of different ways how to celebrate Valentines Day as a family. This has been a very relaxing fun day, but also a very disguised creative school project. Today will be our last night at Nanny Cay as we are going to leave for Virgin Gorda tomorrow morning.

Road to recovery

I finally feel a bit better and the cloud around my head has lifted and it is now sitting in my throat and chest.....
...as we were taking some pictures this morning....I said to Carlos " please no picture of me this morning I do not look that pretty" and he took me in his arms and said " oh mummy you always look pretty and I love you very much " oh well... no wonder that I do feel better after such soothing comment from my 7 year old son !!!
....we did our school work before we enjoyed ourselves at the pool for the rest of the day!

sorry....we did not know that

Yesterday afternoon we got approached by a customs officer and he asked us nicely to see our papers. Believing that everything is in right order we gave him our papers only to be informed that we had not declared our boat here in the BVI's. We were allowed to stay for 30 days and thereafter we had to pay a fee to have our JUCA in the BVI's. Autsch...we did not read the small print when we entered the BVI's and when we extended our Visa with immigration we thought that would covered the people on board as well as the yacht. However we got summoned to custom for this morning at 10. Long story short...we did not have to go to prison and did not have to pay a fine of $ 5000....but we still had to pay a fine of $250 plus the $ 200 fee on top.....that did not go down very well. After that we went for a small shop and then went back home. I am still feeling not much better and took my mothers advise to take it easy and to look after myself and went to bed for the rest of the day. Sven and the kids went out..so I had the boat to myself and rested in peace until they came back for bedtime.