Heading Out to Explore with Friends - Leg 2

After leaving the beautiful beach of White Bay and the fun at Foxy's in Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke, we sailed east in the waters of the Atlantic on the north side of Tortola. There are not many anchorages on this side due to the surf and the steep mountains dropping into the water. There is one beautiful bay we will visit later. Our purpose on this leg was to sail all day to get to Marina Cay in time to pick up a mooring ball. Since it is a 20 mile trip as the crow flies, we had a full day of sailing. In the end we covered 25 nautical miles as we had to tack into the easterly Trade Winds most of the way.

View from anchorage at Marina Cay

Marina Cay has changed a lot since we were there three years ago. There are fewer mooring balls and they are further off the island than before. This probably due to the new luxury development on Scrub Island and the access route to it. The balls were filled so we anchored between shore and the reef. It seemed like a good place since the reef would break the waves. What we didn't count on was the water hitting the mountain on the other side of us and going back out to sea! We had never experienced that at Marina Cay the several times we stayed overnight there in the past.

The result was a real rock and rolling night with little sleep! Both of us were up most of the night in shifts keeping watch on the anchor and to relieve our bodies from rolling back and forth across our queen berth. It was probably a better time to be sleeping forward in the V-berth. Who would ever think that leeclothes would come in handy while at anchor in so close to land!

Skipperette & the Captain at Pusser's Marina Cay

We had a good dinner at Pusser's Beach Terrace Restaurant and visited the Pusser's Company Store. There are facilites for showers, laundry and provisioning on the island. Marina Cay was island in Robb White's book, Our Virgin Island, which was made into a movie starring Sidney Poitier and John Cassevetes. The book was reissued in 1985 retitles to Two on the Isle.

It will be a long time before we go back to this anchorage, even though it used to be one of my favorites when you could snag a mooring ball.