More from Anegada

One of the great things about live aboard cruising vs. chartering is you get more time to talk with the locals. On the 26th we paid a visit to Neptune’s Treasure, a hotel/restaurant owned by multiple generations of the locally famous Soares family who settled here several decades ago. Besides being a hotel/restaurant, Neptune’s Treasure operates a small fishing fleet that supplies game fish to a majority of the restaurants in all the BVI. Many cruisers may recognize Argus III, their light blue fishing boat in front of the restaurant. Directly to the north of Anegada is a steep drop that goes from 30 to 20,000 feet within a few miles. We were able to observe this extreme when as we finished the Caribbean 1500. In this drop are an abundance of Mahi, Tuna, Swordfish, and Wahoo that Argus III catches daily. This drop also contains a seismic fault and serves as a boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. We sat down with Randy Soares and he shared with us his how they prepared for Hurricane Irma. Two days before the storm they took Argus III to Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor (VGYH) for haulout. They then took one their center console outboards back to Anegada, pulled it out, and parked it between some mangroves in the inland salt pond. Miraculously, Argus III was one of the four boats not destroyed out of over a hundred on the hard at VGYH. Randy had a few cosmetic things to repair and was ready go but it took a year or more for the charter bases to get back to normal operations.

We are amazed at the rotation of boats in the anchorage. Every morning around 50 charter boats leave and around noon 50 boats arrive. Most all boats are cats with eight people aboard. That is around 400 new customers daily so the local businesses should be recovering well. It does have a Disney World feel as our rally friends on FreeWill phrased it and felt the pull to go south. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we are heading over to Tortola in the morning to see if we can scout out some ingredients for a mini-feast.