BVI 2017: Prologue

Last year, after finally learning how to swim and snorkel, Bowen asked for a sailing trip back to the BVIs.  I was very proud of him, because that previous sailing trip included a trip to Disney World, but Bowen very much preferred the sailing. After much planning, we decided on Spring break this year. Joining us this time was Boen, Xiaoqin's mom, Arturo, Mark Brody, and John Gates.

We flew from San Francisco to San Juan, Puerto Rico, spent 2 nights there, and then onto Saint Thomas and then took the ferry to Road Town, Tortola, where we visited Conch charters for our first night sleep-aboard.

Ominously, Boen started throwing up at the docks, before we even took possession of the Kokomo III, a 9 year old 46 foot sailing Catamaran that was to be our home for the week. Arturo would later diagnose this as a case of the Norovirus, which would go on to infect every one of us except for Mark during the week.

After Arturo and Mark showed up, Conch charters finally gave us possession of the boat, and we moved in. Bowen immediately went for the V-berth in the forward port cabin, which he loved. He wouldn't even hear of Arturo stealing it from him.

Provisioning was a taxi trip over to town, where we bought a few days worth of supplies. We forgot that the shore power wasn't powerful enough to run all the ships systems, and could only run the salon AC. That got fixed in a hurry, but after that we were OK.

Boen was having a terrible time sleeping at night, but other than that, we looked forward to being able to sail the next day!

Next