The little harbour convoy
After our little beach party, we all wanted to move anchorage to find somewhere slightly flatter and to explore the BVIs some more. Some of our boat friends such as Danae and Vela had already spent quite some time in the BVIs and had recommended a spot called Little Harbour, come to think of it SV Zoe whom we met back in Portugal also recommended this anchorage to us, as we have a waypoint set form them.
So our little convoy set off to Little Harbour.
Despite our best efforts, Blue Note, Extress and Escapade all beat us to anchor, but no worries, there was plenty of space to anchor and tie to shore (though that wouldn’t be the case in the coming days).
Escapade put their drone up and got what might be one of our favorite shots from the whole trip so far…
The water in the BVIs is super clear, as you can see in the drone shot above. The one downside of Little Harbour is there is not much beach, and what beach there is is rather stoney.
To get around this while enjoying the cooling sea we created a floating SUP bar for 8!
Little did we know, this was the start of a magical 4 days anchored in Little Harbour, including joint meals switching between the 4 boats, and 3 day trips out all on 1 boat per day.
Outing number one took us to The Indians aboard Extress where we picked up a buoy and snorkeled around some lovely rocks. There wasn’t much wind so motored there and back again, so taking one boat really made sense!
The snorkeling here included a bit of a drop-off filled with sea life, and a cave that we could swim through.
The second outing took us to Salt Island to snorkel around a wreck. The weather for this sail wasn’t so nice, and we ended up sheltering down below aboard Escapade to hide from the rain for most of the journey to the moorings.
Once getting in the water at Salt Island we found a fairly strong current dragging us past the wreck (just about okay to swim against), but snorkeling on the wreck was quite a bit of effort and it was fairly deep.
The wreck is of the RMS Rhone, which was a Royal Mail Ship that sank in a hurricane in 1867. The size of the propeller on this wreck was rather insane.
Thirdly we headed to Road Town aboard Blue Note to visit the chandlery, throw out some trash, do some shopping, and fill up a bunch of water jerry cans. To make this easier, as we would be shopping, we actually took 3 dinghies with us!
We even managed to sail on the way back to the anchorage!
That night the dinner was Paella aboard Hannah Penn for 8, one of the largest paellas we have had to make ever, let alone on board Hannah with smaller hobs and pans. It was delicious, but we were also apparently enjoying ourselves too much to have any foody pictures.
Fun was had, and as the night continued many hats came out…
Escapade were the first boat to leave Little Harbour, setting sail once again to Saint Martin where they would be restocking, picking someone up from the airport, and also leaving for the crossing from.
Extress and Blue Note also headed off to other anchorages one by one over the coming days.
For us aboard Hannah, it’s boat job time…
- Rig check
- Fitting the water flow switch for the UV light
- Adding string to mast steps
- etc…
Some of this will be covered in future posts, and we can wrap this post up with the great turtle we saw with a shark sucker on its back in the bay.
We also went snorkeling and saw some Yellowhead Jawfish under the boat. These little fish swim backward into their holes in the sand when you approach, but also have these funny little faces.