Bound for the BVI's!
- tonileebeaton
- Jan 17, 2022
- 4 min read
Hi friends and family! Thanks for taking the time to check-in on us. First off, we hope you had a very pleasant holiday season and would like to wish you a Happy
New Year 2022! Even though we may be far apart, know that you are in our thoughts and hearts.
We’ve had a pretty balanced mixture of relaxation and boat work since arriving back from our mini getaway to St. Barth’s. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was spent with our cruising friends: SV Vesna, SV Otoka, SV Hope, and SV Dawn Treader. On Christmas Day we had a great afternoon at Kimshaw beach with sunning, chatting, and beach volleyball. We even got to Zoom call Paul’s family; it was so nice seeing aunties, uncles, cousins, and parents all together even though we were so dispersed across Canada, Mexico, and St. Maarten. On New Year’s Eve, Paul and I had a pretty relaxed and quiet day on the boat. After taking the dinghy to a nearby beach for sunset, we came back to the boat and Paul cooked a delicious steak and caesar salad dinner. We both fell asleep LONG before the fireworks went off, but were awoken by the multitude of
megayachts inside the lagoon letting their horns blow at midnight. We were able to see lots of fireworks from our place inside the lagoon, and even had an extra fireworks show around 1:30 AM. We’re still not sure who had the show arranged… Someone set up a barge about 200 ft away from our mooring and set off a full fireworks show; we had front row seats and felt like it was put on just for us. It was a pretty special NYE onboard Panta Rhei!
Since then, we’ve been able to spend time with friends on the island, as well as taking the boat out of the lagoon for some sailing, fishing, and freediving. We’ve also been making sure to stay on top of the ever-growing to-do list, and… (I say with some hesitation – am I cursing myself by unconsciously adding MORE to the list?!) … we have completed all of our ‘must-do-before-leaving-SXM’ items! Now that we’ve checked off these important to-do items, as well as done some major shopping and provisioning for our upcoming trip to the Bahamas in the spring, we’re logistically ready to say good-bye to St. Maarten. We may not be emotionally ready to say good-bye, but it’s time to move on in our adventure.
Our next stop will be to a long-awaited destination – the British Virgin Islands! We’re fortunate enough that our point of sail is going to be a beautiful downwind sail, and we’re timing our departure from St. Maarten with a lovely weather window (10-13 knots gusting 17 knots – full sails, here we come!) The trip from SXM to the BVI is approximately 90 nautical miles, so it should take us about 14-15 hours to make the trip. We plan on leaving SXM tomorrow (Tuesday, January 18th) a few hours before sunset, enjoying a night sail, and arriving to the BVI just after sunrise on Wednesday, January 19th. We’ll be sure to check in and connect as soon as we have access to internet. We were actually supposed to make this trip several days ago, but an unexpected hiccup formed in our travel plans. As Paul and I were checking off boxes on the proposed day of departure, one of those ‘checks’ was each of us getting a rapid antigen test for COVID since we needed to present a negative test on arrival to the BVI. And wouldn’t you know it, it was my time to test positive! It was a completely asymptomatic experience, and I was pretty surprised I tested positive at all. I had zero symptoms and felt perfectly fine and healthy (still do), which was really fortunate. It just ended up delaying our departure from St. Maarten as I completed isolation on our boat before taking another antigen test. You make plans, and then… life happens (particularly life in a pandemic!) Anyways, now we have both tested negative and we are ready for our departure.
As always, you can follow our trip by tracking our AIS position on the Marine Traffic website. I’ll also be trying out a new app, called Nebo. It’s had really great reviews amongst our cruiser friends, and is supposed to show a much more accurate location than on the Marine Traffic website. You can click the following link to see our satellite positioning as we make our sail; hopefully this app has success… fingers crossed & we shall see! We thought it best to test on a short trip like this one, versus a longer multi-day passage in the future. Keep in mind that the link below will not be activated until we depart tomorrow afternoon.
We’ve loved the familiarity and comforts of home being back in St. Maarten, but we are so excited to be travelling again to a brand-new destination. Sending tons of love your way, and please wish us fair winds!
With love,
Toni & Paul
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