Anegada

This island used to be off limits to charter boats without paid captains because the one channel through the reefs that guard its sole "harbor" was too difficult to traverse. Now that most all boats down here have GPS, however, it is a stop on the circuit of the BVIs. It is about 15 miles north of the north end of the Sir Francis Drake Channel, which runs between Tortola, to its west and north, Virgin Gorda to its east and most all of the other BVIs to its south.  None of the other islands are more that about two miles from their next door neighbor. Anegada is also the different Virgin because it is a coral reef rather than the remnants of a volcano. You se the others from 30 miles away; this one from five miles away. Thus the BVIs are the opposite of the Tahitian islands where only Tahiti is volcanic and all the rest are flat coral based islands.

I felt betrayed by the manufacturer of the expensive little electronic chips that contain the electronic charts which we view on our Raytheon GPS/chartplotter.  When navigating, this instrument shows a symbol of the boat where it is on a chart; you want to actually see where you actually are. The device displays charts with much larger areas but most on the time we view charts which show 48, 24, 12, 6, 3, 1.5 .75, .5 or .25 miles of area across its 3 or 4 inch wide screen. When out in the middle, the 12 mile scale view or larger is most useful, showing where you are relative to land. But in close, you want the small area “large scale” views. The chips for the waters of the US have all of these views, selectable by the push of a button.  And a chart plotter is very useful at Anegada because the island is 11 miles long, only 25 feet high at its highest point and the buoys are tiny especially when viewed against that 11 mile coastline. We were able to get close enough to the first red buoy to see it with binoculars by using the 6 mile scale. But then comes the tricky part. There were no larger scale charts in the system until you tried at increasingly small areas, one at a time, down to ¼ mile. And this ¼ mile scale chart showed, crudely, only the area inside the reef.  In other words there were no views (other than the 6 mile view) while passing through the channel between the reefs. For such close work, a six mile view is worthless. By contrast, the passage between two unmarked reefs when going from Long Island Sound into Ziegler’s Cove, in Rowayton CT, when viewed on ¼, 1/8 or 1/16 mile scale, shows you both unmarked reefs and exactly which side of the channel between them you are nearer, so you can stay safely in the middle. I am going to have to write to the manufacturer of the chips that contain the electronic charts; maybe I’m not using them correctly. If it is not my fault, then they are selling a defective product that can result in a sailor who is used to and expects a useful product going onto the reefs when he or she discovers, at the time he needs it most, that his trusted instrument does not have the data needed. There is enough traffic into this anchorage each day to warrant a decent chart. Most of these boats stay only one night. (ILENE is fifth from the right)

We stayed on a mooring inside the reef for two nights and dined aboard both nights. On the day between them we rented a car to tour the island. There are no roads to the east end of this eastmost island and the roads to the north  (this is the main or only road) are not paved but sandy.

How can the BVI government spend a lot of money for infrastructure on an island with only 300 residents. The only other time I was here, I walked for a few miles but saw only a small part of the south coast. Here is the shallow pond which takes up a good part of the island, with a flock of flamingos, the pink dots on the far shore, right.

We drove through the only village on the island, “The Settlement” is what it is called, and on to the North coast. There Roger swam, and snorkeled in a two hundred yard wide band of five feet deep water inside the big reef which protects the island by breaking up the huge Atlantic rollers.

 There were a few fish playing near some corals in the pool inside the reef, but this was not good snorkeling compared to other places we have been. We had lunch at Big Bamboo beachside restaurant  in Loblolly Bay on not so good lobster and not so good fish. The bread and rolls at Pam’s bakery, however, were excellent. Here is Lene at Pam's dinghy dock with Virgin Gorda, left, and Tortolla, right, on the horizon..

 Anegada is the type of place people visit so that they can say that they were there. Most are charter boats and most stay only one night.

Posted from Charlotte Amelie, St. Thomas, USVIs