Alright, so we left St.John this morning & cruised to Cooper Island. It was the longest trip yet. Took a couple of hours to get there. Chef Fred wanted to make
Osso Buco with Lamb so the guys had to rig up a strap to hold the pan on the stove so it could cook slowly on trip over. Wow that was delicious! We just kept having to check on it everytime a ferry or large boat passed to be sure it didn't slip off the burner! Everyone in our wake must have been so jealous of the wonderful smell coming from our boat.
So we arrived at Cooper Island and hooked up to a mooring to have lunch and evaluate the bay. Nice breeze.
Steve & I took the dinghy and went to shore. Cute place. A bar and restaurant, a small resort, a dive shop, and a gift shop, that's it. Only about 20 people live on the island. They close up and go home for September so we hit the very end of the season.
By the way, my turn to step on the bee today! What is with all the bees on the beach around here?
So Steve & I are sitting on the beach drinking something with several kinds of booze in it and Fred is snorkeling, and all of the sudden Steve says, "Is our boat loose?"
And I said, "looks like it, go, go go". He took off and ran to the dinghy and raced over to the boat about the same time as Fred was swimming back to it also. In the meantime I am watching our boat drift dangerously close to the rocky shore. The guys got it in time and saved the boat. I guess the rope slipped off the mooring buoy. We won't be letting that happen again.
This evening after happy hour, Fred whipped up some pasta with shrimp, sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms & onions. Another great meal. I am afraid if we eat much more we will sink the boat!
A gorgeous sunset over Tortola tonight. Quite a breeze right now! Nice for keeping the bugs away but a little much for sitting on the fly bridge and enjoying our music.
Can't believe tomorrow is our last full day! It went so fast. Hope to get to Norman Island tomorrow and the famous Willy T's bar. Time will tell. I'll let you know.
Goodnight
Turns out we decided to cruise past Ginger Island, Fallen Jerusalem, Virgin Gorda, Mosquito Island, Prickly Pear Island, and stop for lunch at Necker Island. We anchored off Necker is the most pristine and blue water I have ever seen. Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines and Virgin Records owns this island. He gets $25,000 a week to rent out a cottage on it and has a full time staff of 60 people to maintain it! Needless to say, we did not go on land but we anchored for lunch and were soon joined by a very hungary Barracuda! I will post a video of Fred spoon feeding him! I took awhile for him to warm up to us, but 'Barrawoody', as we named him, warmed up to Fred pretty fast. He was like having a garbage disposal. He ate all of our scraps and leftover lamb bones and we even gave him a couple of our precious shrimp we were preparing for dinner that night! By far the prettiest stop on the trip! After lunch we cruised all the way back through the Sir Francis Drake Channel to Norman Island where we stopped for the night. There was great snorkeling near some caves and we did make it to the infamous Willy T's. It's a bar and a restaurant on a boat. I guess it gets pretty wild here during the busy season! This was our last night!! The next morning we knew we were supposed to get the boat back to the Marina by 10am, but by now we are on island time! So we dragged our heels a bit. We cruised over to see the East End of St. John then went back to Peter Island to make some lunch before taking the boat back.
