Point Reyes Coast Campground

Point Reyes has two fantastic campgrounds, one of which is Wildcat, the other is Coast Campground. (the other campgrounds are either only accessible by boat or inland) We've been to Wildcat on the way to Alameres Falls but never been to Coast Campground. I saw that someone cancelled their reservation for December 30th, and the weather forecast for the 30th was good, so I shifted my existing reservation from New Year's Day to that day.

Coast Campground is uniquely accessible by bike. It's only 3 miles from the Limantour Lodge trailhead along a mostly flat trail, so we brought our bikes: I put my gravel wheels from the Roadini onto Bowen's. Boen's Salsa Journeyman was already set up with 38mm Pacenti Pari-Moto tires, and I brought my ancient Airborne Hardtail as it already had a trailer attachment installed. Xiaoqin, of course, brought her newly acquired Ritchey Montebello. I had purchased Rhinowalk Fork bags for Xiaoqin and Boen's bike, but only 3 out of 4 bags arrived, and Boen didn't like the unbalanced feel of having only one side. We also packed our saddlebags. The Yakima bike trailer was loaded with the car camping oriented Wawona tent and a backpack with all the sleeping bags.

Driving from home, we bought lunch in San Francisco and ate lunch at a picnic table along the way. Arriving at the Limantour Lodge, we saw that it had vacancy, but since we already paid for the campground just got out the bikes and started riding. The bike ride wasn't completely flat, and with a load I actually needed to shift to the lowest gear for the final approach to the campground. You actually saw the beach pretty quick, but the trail took you to the campground where there was a bike rack. We had Site #3, and to my surprise when we pitched the tent we had an ocean view. I was disappointed when I saw we had no fire ring so our firewood was useless.

After pitching the tent, we walked down to the beach and walked around before heading up the Coast trail. It was already 2:45pm, so we didn't have time for an extended walk but we'd never been on this part of the Coast trail before so we just decided to treat it as an out and back. Along the way, we could see various bluffs, beaches, and gaps on the cliff side through which we could see the ocean. We even spotted Elk towards the 3:30pm turn around point. It was very windy. We had talked to some campers who were leaving as we were entering the area and they said that it had been very calm the night before so this was just a sign of the impending storm.

Returning to camp, we made coffee and apple cider, then started making dinner. I noticed that there was a spot near the beach which was protected from the wind, so while waiting the requisite 10 minutes for the mountain house dinners to cook we walked there and admired the gorgeous sunset and ensuing light show. I'd forgotten to bring headlights, but between the two phones and my Garmin we had light.

The night was awful. The wind kept flapping and shaking the tent making it hard to sleep. Even the kids complained. By the time it was 6:00am Xiaoqin was up and in a hurry to go. "I'm not waiting for the rain!" We packed everything up and started cycling back to the car. To be honest, it wasn't very cold and I regretted putting on long underwear and wearing my jacket as I warmed up pretty quick.

We reached the trailhead and there was Yoyo Zhou and his daughter and son, whom I'd never met. We said hi and caught up while Yoyo helped us put the bikes back on the roof. Yoyo's wife showed up --- she had spotted us while we were riding and she was running and we'd never met either! We made brief introductions but since we hadn't had breakfast we were in a bit of a hurry to head home. I would only realize later that Yoyo's birthday was New Year's Eve!

It rained quite a bit on our way home, but when I got home I realized that the bikes weren't even really wet, indicating that all the spots on the windshield were because we were driving at 65mph. Nevertheless, it started raining in earnest so we were glad we got out with a dry tent.

Review: The Escape

 The Escape won an award for the best Sports-related book of the year. It was on sale for $3 on Amazon (and the library didn't have a copy). The book is an autobiography of Robert Millar (now Philippa York), a professional cyclist in the 1980s and 1990s who transitioned to being a woman after he retired from the sport.

What makes the book unique is that rather than being ghost-written by David Walsh, it is written as a series of conversations between Walsh and York as they are journalists for two different periodicals covering the 2020 Tour de France. So the book goes from the 2020 Tour de France to older editions of the same race from Robert Millar's point of view, which sort of makes you think that the various editions of the Tour are largely similar, going over the same mountains with similar rivalries between the various participants.

This is not true, of course. Millar retired from cycling just as the EPO era was taking off. Before that, the drug of choice were steroids, which weren't actually very effective for endurance sports. So while York does admit that Millar did occasionally dope, she could claim that while cheating was rampant it didn't have much effect on the race.

Probably the best reason to read this book is to gain an understanding of how someone could grow up wanting to be a woman yet was gifted with a strong body that could reach the pinnacle of an extremely male-dominated and demanding sport, but at all points could still wish that he was a woman. Keep in mind that Millar did marry a straight woman and had 2 children!

Having said that, you get the feeling that Millar was such a completely different person from York (Walsh mentioned that no way would have wanted to drive around France with Millar!) that her perspective on Millar was maybe quite warped.

I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, I think I would have preferred a traditional ghost-written autobiography. The way the book was written it felt constantly jarring to flip from a contemporary Tour De France to previous races. I feel like I gained a lot more understanding of what a body dysmorphic person feels. But I also got no special insight on what a professional cyclist's life was like. Millar's story was just too unique.

The book is short and a quick read so maybe you should just read it and judge for yourself.

Review: Jan Ullrich - The Best there Never Was

 I saw Jan Ullrich on the used book shelf at the library for $3, and at that price I bought it and took it home and read it.

The book is written in what I consider an odd fashion, with the author going over Jan's career coming out of East Germany's training system and then joining Deutsche Telekom as a budding pro. His successes and failures (which are well documented) were at this point in the book attributed to his upbringing and personality (the guy loved food and when he was in his off season was famous for wiping out the contents of his friends' refrigerators).

Then you get into the later half of the book before the author brings up what was common in that era of cycling, which was doping with EPO. There's no question that Jan Ullrich was an enormously talented rider (his teammates described him going from getting dropped to beating them over 3 days during a training camp), and that everyone else in that era doped with EPO because there were no tests for it and the UCI simply set a hematocrit level that was acceptable, essentially giving everyone a license to dope up to the 50% mark. What I didn't know was that when the test was finally developed you could go back to urine samples taken from those years and it would definitely prove that Ullrich had EPO markers in his urine.

I have a controversial opinion about doping, which is that it should be allowed as long as the doctors and researchers involved documented and published what it did. The sport would change from being hero worship about bike riders to something like Formula F-1, where the true heroes are the engineers and mechanics rather than the drivers. I could definitely get behind a sport where the doctors and physiologists are the heroes getting paid multiple millions of dollars in salary and getting a share of the prize money. The contribution to medical science would be significant, and people would give up on hero-worshiping athletes simply for being genetically gifted. Of course, doping does distort the field --- the prize would go towards people whose bodies respond better to doping. On the other hand, none of the sporting events I've ever bothered to watch seem particularly big on "natural" human behavior anyway.

Anyway, this part of the book was badly written, I think partly because Dan Friebe probably assumes any reader of the book is a big fan of Ullrich and would know all the sordid details of his life already. I certainly didn't, so kept wondering why some irrelevant details kept coming up until the reveal of the doping scandal that ended Ullrich's career. The story all seemed pretty sad up to that point but then once you realized everyone in the Peloton was doping you found yourself wondering what was the point.

What was interesting to me was that Friebe indicated in the book that Germany became a big cycling country only after Ullrich won the Tour de France and Deutsche Telekom (later T-Mobile) became a world famous cycling team. I'd always thought that Germany was huge on cycling because I saw so many Germans on bike tours, but of course soccer was always more popular. In any case, apparently because of this Jan Ullrich got way more attention in Germany than even Lance Armstrong did in the USA during the period, which probably affected his mental health as well.

Anyway, the story of lost potential in the book comes across, as well as a note that while Ullrich never lived up to his potential, mental fortitude and discipline must have genetic components as well (and obviously many people will tell you we're all moist robots without free wheel), so overall Ullrich probably never had a chance despite his prodigious physical talent.

Review: LG Gram 17" Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Laptop

 With my ancient Dell XPS laptop feeling super slow in 2025, I decided it was time to acquire a new laptop. The Dells are no longer my laptop of choice, after they started emulated the Apple Touchbar even though Apple has already abandoned it as a stupidly bad idea. Thinkpads are no longer priced competitively, even as much as I love their touchpoint.

In the past, I've always bought the smallest, lightest laptop with a combination of portability and good battery life. But when I saw that the 2025 LG Gram 17" laptop was on sale for  $1000 during black Friday, I took a look at the specs and bought it, reasoning that I could try it for a month and see whether I liked it despite how big it would be.

The machine arrived and it's impressive how light it is. It weighs 3.22 pounds (or less than the 15 inch Macbook Air, and less than the 14 inch MacBook Pro, though slightly more than the 13 inch MacBook Pro). The 17" screen is huge, and runs at 2560x1600 resolution, with 2 USB C ports, 2 USB-A ports, a HDMI slot, and a headphone/mic jack. Because the weight is spread over such a large surface area, it feels a lot less dense than any of the other laptops I compared it against.

The keyboard feels great, and the processor is fast, especially if you turn off power savings mode. I tried several photo editing programs on it and they definitely work through photos quite a bit faster than my old laptop did. The touchpad was also pretty good --- it was big, did a good job of palm rejection, and very responsive. I still prefer having a trackball or mouse for fine great photo work, but for editing a blog post or writing e-mail this is a great laptop. It even has a dedicated numeric keypad for working on spreadsheets.

The battery life isn't as great as I was hoping for, given the relatively large battery and how the Intel 258V processor is supposed to have power efficiency in mind. It definitely qualifies for "all day" battery life, but don't expect more than an 8 hour day, and it will go much less if you're editing videos or photos. If you're writing in Microsoft Word you'll get much more than 8 hours. (Sad to say, modern web browsers are not power efficient!)

Sleep mode is usually where windows laptops do worse than Macbooks. To my surprise this laptop does a good job in sleep mode, losing about 5% overnight. This is more than good enough.

Needless to say, this is a great laptop. You wouldn't commute with it on your bike, but if you were doing a fixed based tour or on a hiking tour where luggage delivery delivers your baggage, it's definitely something worth carrying around. Color me impressed!

Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor

 The Housekeeper and the Professor is Yoko Ogawa's novel about a housekeeper who cleans the house for a former math professor who's lost the ability to form new memories a la Memento or 50 First Dates. Like in Memento, the professor solves his problem by writing notes to himself. He still has a good fundamental grasps on Math and loves number theory, so educates the housekeeper (who doesn't have a good math background) on basics like prime numbers, perfect numbers, twin primes, and Euler's identity.

The novel is basically a literary person's idea of what would make a Math person happy with a novel. It's discussion of Math is shallow (for instance, the housekeeper never gets an explication of Euler's identity), and there are lots of little factoids but no real explication of number theory. There's even a discussion of Andrew Wiles and Fermat's Last Theorem, but again, no broader explanation of what it is.

Ultimately, the story is about the housekeeper, her son, and the professor (nobody is named in the novel), and his past history, and it's supposed to be a feel good slice of life novel. Unfortunately, it uses the same schtick as Memento, which is such a superior story that this novel feels dumb instead. Fortunately, the novel is short but despite that I found myself thinking that I wasted my time and should have rewatched Memento instead.

Review: Codex

 Codex is Lev Grossman's book about a rare book hunt in Manhattan by an investment banker who was roped into doing this prior to a transfer to London. It is full of unlikeable characters (except on very sympathetic researcher), and is chock full of interesting facts about medieval books that nevertheless fails to interest me.

I have no idea why I kept reading it despite the lack of interest. The protagonist, for instance, doesn't seem like the kind of person who would unpack books themselves rather than hire a task rabbit. While hunting for this rare book, he encounters an attractive young scholar, and they develop a relationship. Yet in the final section of the novel when he has a chance to bring Margaret along he doesn't for no reason other than for the author to finish off the novel with some sort of a moral.

Lev Grossman's novels are not generally very good --- the Magicians, for instance is a much better TV show than the books would indicate. I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

Review: A Marriage at Sea

 A Marriage At Sea is Sophie Elmhirst's retelling of the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who survived a 118 day ordeal in a liferaft/dinghy combo that they used to escape after their sailing yacht (a 31' sloop). Elmhirst is not a sailor, so the book is lacking in nautical details. For instance, despite the notation that they day dreamed about their next boat during their days cast adrift, there's nothing about why they decided that a ketch would be better than a sloop-rigged boat, despite their sloop having already successfully crossed the Atlantic, and the sinking of the Auralyn was not due to its sail configuration.

The book is short and moves quickly, rapidly getting past their respective childhood, meeting, and marriage. The Baileys are quite experienced sailors, and they proceeded with their plan in incremental steps, building their own boat, selling their house, and taking shorter sails before committing to the longer journey to New Zealand. Maurice even applied for a job in New Zealand (their original intended destination) before setting forth.

Elmhirst clearly disliked Maurice Bailey. Her descriptions of him are never flattering, and she never notes how unusual it was in 1973, that the man attributed his survival to his wife. (And Maralyn Bailey did a lot, including a stint where she was nursing him back to life while keeping the liferaft operational as it was leaking and they had to pump it back up several times a day) What was even more extraordinary was that Maralyn Bailey didn't know how to swim!

Needless to say, their rescue (after 7 boats passed them by!) was a world-wide sensational story, with the story rights and press rights paying for their much bigger second boat and a second book, which wasn't a success because their second expedition succeeded. (Given that they'd already made it across the Atlantic once it was quite probably that making it to Patagonia wasn't as big a challenge as New Zealand would have been) And of course, today with modern equipment (and a Garmin Inreach Mini) such an expedition would not have resulted in 117 days cast adrift. (The author did note that Maurice didn't even have a radio onboard as he wanted complete isolation from the outside world)

The book doesn't overstay its welcome, and made me curious as to what the original book written by the Baileys was like (it's out of print). Chances are, the story is so compelling someone will make a movie out of it and that original book will get reprinted. I enjoyed it!

Maurice wasn’t quite able to grasp that it wasn’t the voyage itself that had made their last book an attractive commercial proposition, but its failure. No one would have suggested they write a book of their travels if they’d arrived safely in New Zealand. No one wants to read the story of an adventure going right. (kindle loc 2066)

Review: The Sexual Evolution

 Way back in the 2000s, during a club ride, Dick Matthews turned to me at lunch and said, "I don't think I've ever seen a D rider eat! Maybe they treat eating the way the rest of us treat sex --- it has to be done in secret and in private, and nobody can see you do it."

On Page 186 of The Sexual Evolution, I came across this passage:

The taboos that we often find associated with sex in most cultures are instead attached to eating among the Trobriand peoples. Eating is always done alone, usually at home, and with one's back turned toward any others who may be present. It is considered very rude to eat in front of others, and those who are spotted eating suffer embarrassment.

When it comes time for selecting a mate, Trobriand courtship is pretty standard. Couples spend time together talking and having fun; they have sex, of course, and spend the night with each other. To signal their interest in marriage, the woman stays in the man's home after sunrise, instead of scurrying home before breakfast, as usually expected. If the young man's mother accepts her son's choice of bride, she brings them a cooked breakfast and --- gasp! --- they eat together. The sharing of a meal together signifies the consummation of the marriage, and the married couple will eat together for about a year. At that time, the marriage either dissolves or is declared permanent, but either way, they go back to eating separately.

Maybe I should stop writing now --- if the quotation above doesn't get you to read this book, why would you bother reading anything else I have to say about this book? Ok, Nathan Lents, the author of the book is a professor at CUNY and identifies as gay. He has an agenda when writing this book, which is to show that the development of sexuality amongst animals is widely diverse, and the current political agenda to fix gender into 2 is artificial and has no backing in nature.

To do this, he first turns to the animal world, and describes, for instance, the bluegill sunfish, which have 2 sexes but 3 (or maybe even 4, depending on how you count) genders. There's the female which lays eggs, then there's the large male that builds a dwelling (which usually exists amongst other sunfish dwellings, and the more central dwellings are considered more desirable since the eggs that get eaten by predators will tend to be the ones at the periphery) to attract the female to lay eggs. Then there's the small male, which in its early years basically hangs out and when the large male is distracted, sneaks in to fertilize the eggs a female may have laid. The small male grows to become a medium sized male (and never becomes a large male), and those actually try to cohabit with a large male as a cooperator, helping chase away predators in exchange for some fertilization rights. This illustrates the author's contention that gender roles can be different (these are all in the same species), and there's nothing binary about gender roles even when the actual sex is binary.

There's a huge exploration of various animal behaviors, which is fascinating and full of fun reading all in its own right. The author draws example after examples of birds exhibiting homosexuality, forming same sex dyads in many cases, and he offers hypothesis as to why that is so. The exploration of great apes and the comparison between the common chimpanzees and bonobos (which many people are no doubt familiar with) also illustrates the concepts.

The book is not divorced from politics. Frequently the author will note that societies run by females are naturally much better for everyone, even the males. The example of the Silverback Gorilla is that even though the dominant male essentially gets the harem all to himself, he had to do so by fighting (and killing) his way to the top, and most males never get there. Even after he gets there, he will eventually be disposed of by an up and coming new alpha, so his life is harsh as well. By contrast, life is much better amongst the bonobos, with everyone sharing in food and getting plenty of sex. (The author does note that the bonobos evolved in an environment where food sources were plentiful)

Then there's the exploration of human sexuality amongst many cultures, of which the Trobriand is just one of many discussed and explored. You sense that the author feels sad that of all the cultures to win the globe it's really sad that the most repressive sexual cultures of the Abrahamic religions were the ones that dominated.

In any case, the book is dense, takes a long time to read, not because it's badly written but because there's so much stuff here to learn and think about. In retrospect I should have just bought the kindle version instead of being cheap and checking out this book from the library. Recommended!

 

Epilogue & Conclusions

 We had a great time on this trip, which was expected since this is my 6th or 7th trip to the BVI, and it's one of those trips that never gets old. What was a shock was how much more crowded the BVIs were this time. The last time we visited it was right after Hurricane Irma, so there were a lot fewer boats, and it was less crowded, but this time, the new reservation system made certain places like Cooper Island or Marina Cay nigh near impossible to get mooring balls for.

The Baths in particular, felt like even though we'd gotten up early we still only managed to snag one of the last mooring balls. The fight over the mooring ball we vacated left a bad taste in Mark Brody's mouth, and we would still talk about it several days later.

The book mentioned that Soldier Bay and Privateer Bay were backwinded harbors. I didn't understand what that meant until this trip. What it meant was that the wind blows into the harbor but then bounces off the walls at the far end, and then flips back and blows against the wind. What this means is that the night is full of motion as the wind keeps swinging you back and forth between the prevailing wind direction and the backwinded direction. That's the main reason why there's no competition for mooring balls in those harbors! My crew didn't mind the wild ride but it's something to be aware of.

Someone asked me if I would do the same trip again, and I said, yes, but not right away. That's a pity because the virgin islands are so beautiful. But there's plenty of other places to explore in the Caribbean, so I'm excited to see more of it.

2025 BVI: November 30 - Privateer Bay, Norman Island to Nanny Cay Marina, Tortola

 I got up at 6:00am and made coffee but by the time Arturo and I were done with breakfast, the battery alarm went off. That meant we had to run the generator. Since we didn't need much water last night, we had turned off the generator early, and it turned out that wasn't sufficient to keep the battery charged. Since we planned to sail, we had to charge the battery so that we would have navigation instruments running once we turned off the engine. And no, you cannot run the generator while the boat is sailing.

Well, turning on the generator woke every one up, and while waiting for the battery to charge, Arturo took the time for one last dip in the Carribean. Massi, who was usually the first in the water declined to swim since she'd have to carry wet swim suits back onto the plane. We'd rinsed all the gear the night before with fresh water.

When the battery reached 94% charge we turned it off, started the generator, and started motoring to pirate's bight to clear Pelican Island before raising the sails. Once up, the wind drove us along at close to 8 knots, bringing us across the channel to Nanny Cay Marina's entrance in half an hour instead of the projected 45 minutes.

We dropped the sails and motor'd into the marina and headed for the fuel dock, with the crew scrambling to get fenders ready. There was already a Navigare sailboat docked there, and the Navigare yachting staff scrambled to move that catamaran out of the way so we'd have room to dock and refuel. Once docked, my responsibility for La Badine was over. I started packing the rest of my stuff, and Mark and Arturo took care of refueling. The bill came to around $159.89 for a week of motoring and running the generator which impressed me as I'd thought we'd used the motor a lot more than that.

Once the boat was moved by the Navigare staff to a slip we disembarked and prepared to settle up after using the land bathrooms for the first time in more than a week. We settled the final bills, and Arturo kindly remembered to bring back the cruising guide, the boat phone, and the ship's papers to the receptionist, and when they heard that we planned to catch the 10:30am ferry, they sped everything up and called a taxi to get us there by 9:45am. I was impressed by their customer centric-ness. The boat might have been in bad shape, but the Navigare Yachting staff cares!

At the ferry terminal, we bought tickets for everyone, and paid the exit tax. The wait wasn't very long before the ferry started boarding, and it was a much faster ferry than the one who took on the way to Road town. Arriving in Charlotte Amelie we were happy with how quickly the customs and passport office cleared us, and then the Taxi terminal let us store our luggage with them while we explored the town before going to the airport.

We had a slow lunch, then ice cream. I'd never been to downtown Charlotte Amelie before, but this visit made me realized that I hadn't missed anything. It was mostly a bunch of jewel and souvenir shops all looking for cruise ship tourists to buy. The place look pretty sad when a cruise ship wasn't disgorging its tourists to make things look busy.

We got to the airport with no trouble, and said goodbye to Kathryn, Mark, and Mingkuan who were staying another night in St Thomas. At Miami airport, we said goodbye to Stone and Ying, and had dinner with Massi and Arturo before we said goodbye to them as well, and slept in the airport hotel so we could catch the 8:00am flight the next morning. Our cruise was over.

2025 BVI: November 29th - Privateer Bay, Norman Island

 I got up at 6 in the morning, and despite being slower than usual, we still managed to start moving the boat by 6:30am, landing on the ideal mooring ball at the Indians at 6:45am. The water was a lot clearer this time then when we were there a week before, and we had a nice long snorkel, with me finding the
snorkeling tunnel which was a swim through this time, and doing it three times. Returning back to the boat, we ate a quick snack and then repositioned the boat to the other side, on Pelican Island for more snorkeling.

Pelican Island has much the same wildlife as the Indians, but with a wall so scuba diving is also feasible. What I hadn't known was that the mooring balls off the Indians were all marked as commercial only. Well, with no one else nearby, we grabbed one of the commercial balls and then used it for a whole hour. During that time a commercial dive boat came by and did a dive, but no one complained.

After that, it was almost time to visit the Willy Thornton. The restaurant was only open at noon, and we arrived after a mere 15 minute motor in the Bight, and grabbed the nearest mooring ball. It was 11:40pm, but we could see activity indicating that it would open soon. We were close enough to swim or paddleboard to the restaurant. Mark and Mingkuan decided to paddleboard, and I got out my snorkel (no fins), and debated whether to swim while folks lowered the dinghy and got ready to motor over. The decision was made for me when Kathryn said "the towel just fell off the boat!" I hurriedly jumped into the water and dived from the towel.

Well, since I was already wet, I decided to just swim to the Willy Thornton, which conveniently had a swim ladder down. I didn't beat any of the paddleboarders to the restaurant. Once on board, we ordered food on one side of the restaurant, ordered drinks on another, and walked upstairs to hang out and dine. There was a Puerto Rican family who were jumping off the upper story of the Willy T, blatantly ignoring the "no jumping or diving" sign. Their boat was the "Rum Away", and we would end up parking near them tonight.

Lunch over, Kathryn bought some souvenirs and paid up. Having seen the Puerto Rican family ignore the "no diving" sign, I was obliged to jump off the upper story of the boat to swim back to La Badine, and so I did that. After I landed in the water, I saw that Boen had decided to jump as well. Arturo had to join in the fun. I swam back to the boat, and then we motor'd back to Privateer Bay. I noticed there was a mooring ball even closer to the Caves, but when we tried to pick it up there was no pennant, so it was broken. We ended up on the same mooring ball we were at again.

I then called the Navigare customer service number again to get them to come fix Massi's cabin. We then went for a snorkel out to water point. That snorkel wasn't actually very good, just for the novelty. We came back to La Badine discover the kids were done with paddleboarding and that Navigare's chase boat had showed up to fix the leaking cabin. I took the paddleboard and went out paddleboarding to water point and the caves, instructing Stone to also complain about his head being broken. I went out to the caves as well and discovered that Arturo was also out paddleboarding. Later he would tell me he saw the crew dump the contents of the sewage overboard while fixing the toilet.

The chase boat showed us pictures of the stuck toilet with toilet paper wrapped around the macerator. It probably came from the previous charter, but the way marine toilets are, if you stare at them wrong they break. The boat was in surprisingly poor shape for only a 3 year old boat, but if you're in charge everything's your fault. Massi told me she'll bargain with the base commander and ask for them to waive the toilet fee in exchange for her waiving her fee for the broken cabin which wasn't fixed o 2 whole days.

I had one last snorkel and we ate whatever was leftover food. We had too much bread, instant ramen, and various canned foods, but all the desserts were gone. We had extra milk for cereal the next morning, and just enough coffee for one more morning. One last star gaze, and we had to start packing our luggage for the return of the boat early tomorrow. I expected it to take 45 minutes to return the boat, but I figured there was a chance to catch an earlier 10:30am ferry instead of the 12:00pm ferry if we returned the boat early.

2025 BVI: Nov 28 - White Bay, Peter Island to Privateer Bay, Norman Island

 Getting up at 6:00am, I made coffee for Arturo, and we ate a quick breakfast, checked the engine oil, and then started driving towards Salt Island, where the wreck of the Rhone was. The ride was pretty bumpy, but in exchange for a minor rain cloud blowing through we got a nice rainbow which didn't linger.

Arriving at the wreck of the Rhone at 7:30am, we had beaten everyone else there, and so had our pick of the mooring balls. However, Arturo had gotten sea sick from the transit (which was admittedly rough), and so picked the most sheltered mooring ball rather than the optimal one for diving. Massi's cabin leaked the night before during the rains, but customer service for Navigare wasn't open till 8:00.

We ate breakfast and prepped the dive tanks. Arturo snorkeled around to find the wreck so he could confirm he wasn't on the optimal dive ball. Meanwhile a professional dive boat arrived and sat on the optimal dive ball (which was out of bounds for recreational boaters), marking out where to tie up for all the following boats to come in.

At 8:00am, I called Navigare. They asked us where we would be and I told them we'd be on the wreck of the Rhone all morning and then at Norman Island in the afternoon. He said to call again after we had settled in at Norman Island. They apparently didn't like servicing a yacht at the dive site.

Indeed, it was a horribly long swim to begin diving to the wreck of the Rhone. By contrast, the snorkelers didn't have any issues, and Boen reported he enjoyed playing with the bubbles emanating from the scuba divers who were diving the wreck. Once we had descended, the dive was superlative --- the wreck was so old that it's been overtaken by coral, and wildlife was abundant. I frequently think that snorkeling is way better than diving because you have so much more freedom, and so much less equipment. The wreck of the Rhone is the exception that makes me think it's worth lugging around all those air tanks, BCDs, and weight belts, not to mention the hassle of refilling air tanks on a boat without a compressor. We even saw a full sized reef shark on the way up!

Coming back up for the surface interval, we discovered that other boats had disappeared. Easy enough, we moved the boat (after making sure everyone was on board) so that our second dive would be much easier. It should have been much easier, but I screwed up, giving Xiaoqin Arturo's BCD and giving Arturo Xiaoqin's BCD. We would only discover that under water when we discovered that Xiaoqin was overweighted and floating around in a BCD that was much too big for her!

We did the dive anyway, grateful for the easy access on our new mooring ball. By the time we finished the dive it was 12:00pm, and we ate lunch before casting off the lines and raising sail. While the wind was blowing nicely from behind, Norman Island was directly downwind and there was Pelican Island in between, so I opted to sail halfway across the channel before turning back towards Norman Island so we could make more speed.

As we passed the Indians I noted to Arturo that there was no one there! "Hm... very tempting," he said. But he reminded me that it was already close to 2:00pm, and we needed to be on Norman Island to get his sister's cabin fixed. I concurred, and we kept sailing until we got to Privateer Bay and found one of the mooring balls available. Surprisingly, it was one pretty close to the caves!

We tied up, and then I called the Navigare customer support. "Our chase boat is at Jost Van Dyke right now. We'll tell them about you so they can go there." Of course, they never showed up! Of course, we were not going to sit there waiting for people who might be no shows. We went snorkeling at the caves again, and the kids went paddleboarding. The sunset was spectacular, and when I got back after snorkeling and saw that the kids had left the paddleboards tied up but not stowed away, I went for another paddleboard!

By this time, Arturo had figured out how to get the watermaker working consistently. We were tempted to write down the instructions proper in blood and tape it on the machine, but of course, paper in an engine compartment is just a disaster waiting to happen. We realized this was the last night of running the water maker anyway, as we didn't care about returning the boat with any water left in its tanks!

Star gazing was a wash. Clouds still came in often enough to make it real iffy, and there were still occasional sprinkles. I flipped through the cruising guide looking for ideas, and solicited where people wanted to go for the last day. The Yans wanted to return to the Indians. I looked at the book and decided we could do another snorkel there, then reposition the boat at Pelican Island, then visit the Willy T's (since it was effectively a new boat and we hadn't been there for a while), and then come back to privateer bay. I went to sleep hoping that our attempts to fix Massi's cabin worked.

BVI 2025: November 27 - Long Bay, Jost Van Dyke to White Bay, Peter Island

 It was Xiaoqin's birthday, and what better way to start it off than to do a 10 minute motor to Sandy Spit (which we'd been staring at all evening yesterday) and swim to shore while we had the island all to ourselves. When we set the anchor, Arturo said: "I know you said 10 minutes but I didn't expect it to be this quick."

Boen was determined to the first person on the island, and went into the water first with Massi. Arturo and I followed after checking the anchor. The others took their time, eating a leisurely breakfast. Boen was already playing in the sand when I got to the island and realized that he hadn't had sunscreen on. I checked my watch and it was only 7:30, so I told him he had to get back to the boat to put on sunscreen at 8:30.

Sandy Cay was the island we'd always visited in the past, right down to being able to run around the entire island in 1.5 minutes. Even Bowen deigned to do so, once he realized how small the island was. This time, there was no way for him to disappear or find coconut trees, as there were only 5 trees on the island, none of which were coconut trees. Interestingly enough, there were signs that the park service or some such was trying to plant more trees on the island, as there were baby palm trees in plant supporting containers sitting on the ground, so we might have more trees the next time we visited.

At 8:15, another Catamaran approached the island, drawing in much closer to shore than we had dared. "It must be a professional skipper," I told Arturo. Indeed, the denizens of the catamaran swam to shore but the captain stayed aboard, an indication that he was a paid professional. We had seen signs of it yesterday when they picked up a mooring ball near us, with just one person steering and one person working, while the rest of the boat applauded. I confirmed that when I spoke to some of the folks who'd swam from the boat.

It rained and we got some very nice rainbows from our spots on Sandy Cay, and then swam back to La Badine to raise anchor and sail to Sopher's Hole on Tortola to reprovision and buy a birthday cake for Xiaoqin. With a beam reach we reached as much as 8 knots heading towards Sopher's hole, and took down the sails and motor'd into the harbor, tying up on a mooring ball and then dinghying in ashore for the supermarket. Arturo had scratched his head this morning over how we were running out of water and diet coke much faster than anticipated, but we reminded him that Mingkuan was a last minute addition to the crew, and he was therefore off by 1 in his provisioning. "That makes sense."

Once ashore, we bought more cereal, bread, and I made a suggestion to buy the Rotisserie for lunch, but Arturo thought it would work great for dinner and eliminate the need to eat out for one night. We bought vegetables, and Xiaoqin decided against a cake but instead we got a bunch of fruit tarts instead in various flavors, pineapple, guava, and coconut. The last was a mistake as I thought I was getting more pineapple, but people ate it anyway! We also bought some ice cream and more bags of ice to refresh our supply. With the big reprovision we couldn't all fit on the boat at once, so Arturo made a separate run for groceries (along with the people required to organize the groceries). While he was so occupied I asked Boen if he would like a rash guard so he wouldn't have to wear more sunscreen on his body and he agreed. He even decided to buy one that was bigger than a tight fit so he would be able to wear it longer.

Stone, Massi, and Kathryn went shopping for a birthday present for Xiaoqin. After we returned to La Badine we ate a quick lunch before casting off the moorings and heading out onto the Drake passage. This time, we headed East against the wind on motor for quite a bit so that when we raised sails we wouldn't have to tack back and forth on our way to Soldier Bay, Norman Island.

Arriving at Norman Island, it looked awfully windy, but it was a relatively sheltered bay with several mooring balls so we picked one that looked more sheltered and tied up to it. Once in the water we discovered that there wasn't a current. The snorkeling was quite good but we didn't find the cuttlefish we had found the last time we were here in Soldier Bay.

Done with the snorkeling, we made ready to head to White Bay, which Xiaoqin had fond memories of on one of our last visits. It would also set us up for a dive of the wreck of the Rhone for the next day as well. It was close enough and directly into the wind so we just motor'd. As we motor'd along, however, a wild storm ran up and blew one of the cushions into the cockpit away and out of the boat! "Are we going back for it?" I asked Arturo. "Heck yeah, that's $650!"  We immediately went into man overboard operations. As many people as could be spared would point at the cushion. The boat hook was readied. I then turned the boat towards the cushion and then tried to maneuver it so that it was up wind and someone could pick it up.

Well, that was the plan. First, the storm picked up even harder, making it hard for me or the crew to see it. Then the wind tried to pick up another cushion to blow it away. I slammed my body against the cushion to keep it from flying away, and called for someone to come sit on it. It blew away from me anyway (bruising my knee in the process), but fortunately it flipped over and hit Arturo in the back, which prevented it from flying off the boat like its brother. After that, I became thankful for the cockpit being much higher than on other catamarans I had rented, for I could now see the dang cushion flipping over on the waves and made for it.

The recovery wasn't smooth, I ran over the seat cushion once, and then a second swing by happened to quickly for anyone to pick up the cushion, and on the third try the intrepid crew finally snagged it with both hands and boat hook and lifted it back to the boat. Cheers went all around, and I turned the boat back towards White Bay, where we arrived in good weather.

To our surprise there were two super yachts anchored right outside White Bay, but there were plenty of mooring balls available, so we grabbed one. Arturo went for a swim, Mingkuan grabbed a paddleboard and went to shoot more video after the kids got tired of paddleboarding, and I grabbed the other one. I paddled Xiaoqin to the shore of White Bay, where we walked the beach. We asked a couple (the only other people on the beach) to take a picture of us and they asked us about boating. "My kids are too young for the boat," said the man. "My son's been sailing since he was 18 months."

Xiaoqin chose to swim back to the boat, since she'd brought her snorkel gear, but of course while trying to get the paddleboard back to La Badine I slipped and dunked myself into the water. After I returned the paddleboard, Mark took a turn on it and he too, dunked himself in the water. The waves were still a little churned up from the storm.

Arturo noted that one of the super yachts was owned by the CEO of Blackberry and the other by the original tech lead of Microsoft Office. He said that both those boats apparently visit White Bay every Thanksgiving. We setup dinner, hungry from the day's activities, and ate everything, sang "Happy Birthday" to Xiaoqin using a lighter as a candle, and ate all the dessert as well. Star gazing was out of the question as the rains had made the decks wet. But what a day!

BVI 2025: Nov 26 - Marina Cay to Long Bay, Jost Van Dyke

 We were not in a hurry this morning, so after getting up at 6:15, Arturo and I made coffee and then ate breakfast before getting the boat ready to go, checking the engine oil for the first time on the trip. We cleared Great Camanoe before raising the sails for a downwind run to Brewer's Bay.

On this trip, Mingkuan had brought a pirate costume and on this long downhill run, he directed his mom on how to shoot a video for a cool riff on Pirates of the Carribean. Over the next few days he would run out and shoot various scenes and at the end he put together what looked like a pretty great video.

Arriving at Brewer's Bay, we peeked inside the bay to discover there was only one other boat there. The cruising guide mentioned that Brewer's Bay had limited anchoring room, and many charter companies prohibit anchoring there because of numerous undersea cables. Well, we had waived our chart briefing so we didn't hear of any prohibitions on this charter. The book also noted that they'd never heard of anyone fouling the cables

Taking down the sails and motoring in, we took care to avoid the reefs (which turned out to be so deep that our Catamaran wouldn't have run aground), and found the sand patch that the book described and dropped anchor. Snugging everything up at 1500rpm, the anchor held so Arturo and I jumped into the water to check the anchor. The anchor was stable, but Arturo noted that we were a bit too close to the reef. "It's OK for a day stop." "Yeah, we let out way too much chain."

The snorkel was weird. Arturo, Boen and I missed the reef that Xiaoqin found, which had a lot more wildlife and ended up all the way across the bay. It's a testimony to how much more efficient fins make you that you can swim all the way across a bay and come back. The snorkeling was decent, but not "excellent" as described by the cruising guide, though we did see a lobster. Nevertheless, it was a good stop. After we had lunch, we raised anchor, motor'd out and headed straight for Sandy Cay, which was so close that it wasn't even worth getting up the sails.

I'd confused Sandy Cay with Sandy Spit, and so was very surprised when I saw there were mooring balls on the west side of Sandy Cay. Well, we picked up the closest mooring ball since there were no other boats, and then swam ashore as we had the entire island to ourselves. The snorkeling towards Sandy Cay was pretty good, and when we landed ashore it was obvious to us that this wasn't what we were thinking off, as there was a National Park sign which didn't remember, and we remembered we could run around the island in a matter of minutes whereas Sandy Cay didn't have runnable trails once you were outside the beach.

We shrugged, since finding a new place we'd never been to before was worth it, and we had the place to ourselves. Bowen and Boen started building sand castles. "It's very good that your kids are so independent." We walked the length of the beach, which was big enough that we could be out of sight of the kids. We found coral, and then Ying and Xiaoqin found a super cute Atlantic Ghost Crab. I shot a video of the crustacean, which must have been mystified at the large number of cameras pointed at it as it skittered along.

I went to find Bowen and Boen so they wouldn't miss out on the excitement, and we found Boen who went to see the crab, but Bowen was nowhere to be found. When asked, Boen told us he went to find some coconuts. There was a good 15 minutes of panic as we ran around looking for our wayward son. "OK, maybe it's not such a good thing that your kids are so independent!" said Arturo. Eventually, though, Bowen was spotted coming out of one of the trails with 3 coconuts in his hands, oblivious to the fact that the rest of us had spent 15 minutes searching for him. "See?" said Boen. "He was looking for coconuts." Mark Brody, who'd be on the La Badine the whole time would later describe his perspective from the boat, where he saw Bowen wandering off, and then see (but not hear) the panic, the search, and the spreading waves of people looking for Bowen.

Alls well that ends well, so we swam back to La Badine, coconuts and all. When we had de-sanded everyone properly ("No sand on the boat!" cried Arturo and I), we got ready to move La Badine again, this time reminding everyone not to take showers, as our next destination was Long Bay and the hike from Foxy's Taboo to the bubbly pools where we expected everyone to get more salt water exposure. Arturo had checked the mooring ball status for Long Bay in the morning and it was very clear that there wasn't going to be a problem getting a mooring ball or anchoring at the location. In fact, when we got there we saw that the reservable balls were all the desirable ones, while the white balls were further away from Foxy's Taboo. It was a windy location, so we would expect to ship water in the dinghy coming back, but going there we simply loaded the dinghy up for all the people and went at a moderate speed.

Tying up at Foxy's Taboo, we walked the 2 mile walk to the bubbly pool, which was a much shorter walk than I remembered. The pool was a hole in the island's reef where high waves from the Atlantic would push through and create foaming water, much like a Jaccuzi but at Caribbean temperatures instead of a hot tub. It was a fun activity and a change from the snorkeling and swimming, and the weather was warm enough that the water was fun.

When we were done we walked back and had drinks at Foxy's (non alcoholic for us), and then dinghy'd back to La Badine in 2 batches so that we wouldn't ship too much water into the dinghy. It was much too windy to risk paddleboarding, so we raised the dinghy and made dinner, eating the rest of the quinoa. The next day's weather forecast called for  a small craft advisory, but we were in protected waters. The stargazing was good, but the clouds started gathering and the bright moon made it difficult.