Offshore Sailing School

I had a great week sailing in the BVI on the Moorings boat Salaway with Offshore Sailing School.  I made new friends and learned a lot.  One of the coolest things we learned was how to "heave to", how to stop in the middle of the ocean.  The joke of the day was several thousand […]

Today we had a smooth sail home with the wind on our side.  We tried to stop at the Indians for some snorkeling but there were way too many jellyfish. Now if the land would just stop moving …

Today we dropped off Anne-Marie, our instructor, at the Moorings and sailed over to the Bight ourselves.  It all went very smoothly, no hiccups until after we moored and the fastening that held our mainsail to the halyard broke, but Jeanne managed to fix it.  Willy T’s wasn’t officially open but they fed us anyway. 

We sailed to Jost Van Dyke today and anchored next to Foxy’s Taboo.  On the way over we stopped at Monkey Point for some awesome snorkeling.  Big coral with lots of ledges.  Lots of fish of different kinds and sizes.  Caves.  And I saw a turtle! About 2.5 feet in diameter. I floated right over

We arrived at the North end of Virgin Gorda today where we practiced docking, my least favorite of all boating activities.  We did pretty good and I asked to practice again in the morning.  50 foot of boat with lots of mass in winds and currents next to hard surfaces like docks just make me

Today we sailed from Marina Cay to Anegada.  On the way we learned how to turn the boat around in a space no wider than two boat lengths when motoring.  It’s called back and fill and it uses your prop tilt to help push you around.  Then we practiced man overboards which was a lot

We are on Salaway, a Beneteau 494.  There are four of us, Anne-Marie, our instructor, and Larry and Jeanne, my fellow students.  We sailed from the Moorings in road town to Marina Cay where we anchored for the night. According to Anne-Marie, the Last Resort in Trellis Bay has a comedy show on Thursday, Friday,

I’m sitting here on Cane Garden beach on Tortola staring across the cove at blue and turquoise water with islands in the background and puffy white clouds in the sky and wondering what makes it beautiful. I could sit and watch forever. On my way over the taxi driver, a West Indian, said "There’s Skyview."

Mariner Inn is nice.  I was a little worried because the reviews on TripAdvisor were pretty iffy.  But it’s been remodeled recently and my room has tile floors, tall ceilings, balcony and king size bed.  Fridge, coffee maker and hair drier.  The bathroom wasn’t remodeled with the rest.  My sink squirts water sideways. They kept

I’m on my way to the BVI!  I’m on the Denver-Newark part of my DEN-EWR-SJU-EIS trip.  As luck would have it I am sitting next to a woman from Colorado who is reading a Sailing for Kids book so I pulled out my Basic Cruising book and we had quite the conversation.  They just bought