The Winns were looking for another warm weather vacation for their kids' spring break, and we thought it would be fun to recreate the sailing vacation we took with them nine years ago. Unfortunately, our kids couldn't come because their spring breaks did not coincide, so just Kathy and Ben went.
This time we went with a Moorings 443 monohull which was very spacious for the six of us. We found the winds in March a little fluky -- we had little wind the first couple of days, then really none for the passage from Gorda to Jost van Dyke (had to motor for several hours), then some really nice breezes the last two days. We did a lot of snorkeling -- Ben actually had one more snorkel outing than Kathy, a first*.
We flew into St. Thomas, took the "fast ferry"** to Road Town, provisioned again with Bobby's Market (again a great job done by them!), spent the night aboard, and set out early the following morning.
Our ports of call were Marina Key, Bitter End (2 nights), Leverick Bay, Great Harbour (JvD), The Bight, and Road Harbour for the last night since we had to leave early to get back to Charlotte Amalie. One of the highlights of the trip was the cab ride from Leverick Bay over the top of Virgin Gorda to The Baths. Great views! Ben took a panorama of the view from the top of Gorda and it's here as a (large: 1.4MB) QuickTime Virtual Reality movie. If you click and drag your mouse around the edges you can scan.
* Ben snorkeled twice to check the anchor, and Kathy had one more "real" snorkeling trip, so Ben cheated. By hours below, Kathy wins fins-down!
** The "fast" ferry brochure shows a high-speed catamaran. It runs every day except the trips where they have passengers, apparently.