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Day 1 is here and we are ready to depart for the Baths and the Bitter End Yacht Club

Submitted by sailtime on Sat, 11/08/2008 – 07:03

Well it is 6:30 am and life is stirring here at the Mariner Inn and the marina with all the Sunsail boats.  It is breakfast time and an opportunity for one last long hot shower before we launch a fleet of about 9 boats towards Virgin Gorda via the Baths which is a wonderful picturesque beach.  Our plan is for a great sail today and then an overnight in Gorda Sound with a dinner banquet on the beach hosted by the BEYC with some more socializing at the BEYC pub after the fact.  I will start to add some pics later this evening and look forward to adding more…watch this space!

 

Submitted by sailtime on Sun, 11/09/2008 – 07:48.

Well, I have to say that we had quite a day on the first sail of our week long flotilla.  All of our Captains dutifully completed the final touches on provisions and readiness for their vessels.  One boat had some repair issues with a mast light and needed a BBQ to be installed.  The base personnel got this completed right around 10:30am and we then left the dock and headed out into Road Harbour.  As flotilla leader boat we circled in the harbour as each boat got underway and made sure they were all ready to go.  We got a thumbs up from each and every Captain and then it was time to raise the main and head due east towards the baths for a mid day stop.  Well at least that was the plain!  In our flotilla we have 6 boats.  Five of them are monohulls and the lead boat I am on is a Lagoon 410 Catamaran.  We sailed our cat through several tacks due to a wind of the E NE.  Cats do not sail real well into the wind so our path to the baths was less direct than most.  After an hour or two of boating a couple of the less seasoned sailors were not feeling really well so we decided to start up the engines and get there more directly and a little quicker and we did.  We pulled up to the baths.  What a stunning site as this is literally one of the beautiful and untouched beaches many of us have ever seen!

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We set the anchor and started to hang out and swim, snorkel and do what you do at a beautiful.  The only hiccup was that we found out the engines would not start back up so we had to call Sunsail and they sent out a tech to work on the problem.  It appeared he fixed it as we got the engines started.  Success!  OR at least we thought…We were meeting the rest of the flotilla at the BEYC for the evening including a planned dinner with all flotilla participant.  Xpensive Care one of our flotilla boats came to our aid with some key information that helped us in contacting the base for the tech support.  Dirk, Allen and Kevin were there for us then and then later in the evening as well they helped us when we needed it.  After departing the baths we motored our way to Gorda Sound to insure a timely arrival.  We got their just in time before we lost daylight.  Low and behold we went t test the engines and they did not start AGAIN!  Like I said we thought it was fixed!  This time the batteries were completely dead and we had no DC, AC, water pressure…no nothing!  BEYC kindly towed us into the dock and got us connected at a dock to shore power which is why I am able to even update this blog this morning.  On the way into the dock, Dirk and his crew were at the dock to insure a safe landing and tie up.  After a big sigh of relief that we had a boat with power we took showers and headed to dinner.  We had 20 people for dinner at the BEYC restaurant.  John Glynn the VP of Marketing and Sales greeted us for dinner.  We raised a glass to a great first day of boating and enjoyed dinner.

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The Ostens from Chicago enjoying our dinner at the BEYC.

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The Hortons from Atlanta enjoying dinner at the BEYC.

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Dirk Wouters and Allen Andrews from Chicago enjoying dinner at BEYC.

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The Andersons from Houston enjoying dinner at BEYC.

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After dinner the crowd thinned out quite a bit as most everyone was pretty tired.  A skeleton crew of folks from the flotilla leader boat when on to the pub at BEYC for a couple games of pool and a few drinks on the house.  John Glynn was kind enough to comp us some drinks at the bar so we hung out there and had some fun and played a round robin tournament of pool.  Ryan Remsing below was knocking down.

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Today we have a plan to spend the day enjoying what the BEYC has to offer and we still have to sort out our engine issues and we are expecting to have our boat replaced as there has been one issue after another on top of the engine electrical problem.  More on that later!

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