Anegada has the sole distinction of being the only island in the BVI’s with no mountain. It’s a flat little spit of sand and palm trees surrounded by the world’s second biggest reef. Who knew?
Not to mention it’s the loneliest and most forlorn place I’ve ever seen.
We awoke in The Bitter End to pretty much the same weather we’d had the day before so I got my hopes up briefly that we’d head downwind and, you know, have fun?
Everyone, including Captain Mo was thinking we’d head south. But The Queen Princess Cruise Director had other ideas and, of course, THE SCHEDULE clasped firmly to her bosom. We were fucked.
She called the charter company and got the go-ahead to sail to Anegada. We’re goin’ to Anegada she hissed through her cigarette smoke, cold blue eyes narrowed to slits.
Hennifer chirped that Anegada was supposed to be really pretty.
Captain Ron announced that his cold was probably viral.
Captain Mo mumbled and messed with the GPS.
And I thought, oh goody. Another day of bashing into heavy seas. I felt beat down as I unhooked us and we headed out, keeping time with destiny. Vacation is FUN I told myself over and over again.
Captain Mo had spent hours that morning and the previous evening trying to program the channel marker coordinates for Anegada into his GPS, all the while self-deprecatingly telling us that he hadn’t used it in years and had forgotten the manual and honestly wasn’t sure if he could make it work. I prayed that the earth was round and we wouldn’t sail off the edge following Captain Mo’s coordinates for Mars.
Normally, navigation in the BVI’s is pretty straight forward- you just aim the pointy end of your boat at the next big island you want to visit. Anegada is different- since it’s over the horizon and can’t be seen, it requires either GPS or traditional navigation skills. We lacked both so I opened another beer and thought happy thoughts about how if we got lost at sea I wouldn’t have to fly on any more commercial flights.
But ya know what?
It wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was fun. The seas and wind weren’t as rough as the day before and our heading was more northerly and we were able to sail so the wind pressure pushed the boat down in the water minimizing the bouncy.
And the GPS? Go figure. Somehow, some kinda way, the planets aligned and the angels smiled on Captain Mo. Strangely enough, between the Painkillers and Bloody Marys and beers, he managed to clumsily push enough buttons on his GPS that someway it put us right on the marker leading us through the channel and into Anegada.
Gotta love him.
So there we were, at the end of the world. Hennifer, Miss Carol and me, and The Queen Princess Cruise Director dinghied ashore to see what was what. Captain Mo wanted to play with his GPS some more and Captain Ron’s cold was becoming alarmingly fatal.
We walked through the one “restaurant” advertising $50 lobster on the specials board, went out onto the broken down little street littered with unfinished construction stuff and rusty abandoned vehicles, boats on cinder blocks, the obligatory barking dog.
We crossed the street and went into something posing as a “market” and that’s where Miss Carol lost her mind. Without a single word to The Queen Princess Cruise Director she’d decided she was making dinner on the boat that night with whatever she could find in the “market”.
Oh boy.
The “market” was a sad little sullen cluster of tired canned goods and warm beer sitting on broken pallets carefully watched over by the sad little sullen owner. Miss Carol and me walked back and forth wondering and trying to think of a way to make a meal for six out of Spam and canned beans and maybe rice?
We were still wandering when The Queen Princess Cruise Director strode in wondering what the hell we were doing. Miss Carol told her and the sky darkened. She looked around briefly, sneered, and stomped out.
What the hell were we thinking?
Miss Carol found some frozen pork chops in the sullen freezer at the back of the “market”. Get this- they were only 10 bucks. Normally that much freezer burnt meat would’a cost two or three times that. We snagged ’em. There was Ragu sauce and noodles on the sullen shelves and some warm Red Stripe beer on the sullen floor. Dinner, baby.
We collected Hennifer and The Queen Princess Cruise Director and headed back to the boat. And everything seemed fine, but the damage was done and we’d crossed the line.
How dare we?
But hey? the sauteed pork and noodles with red sauce were excellent and the Red Stripe didn’t suck either.
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