Back in 2007, Vicky and I took a vacation to the USVIs, renting a house on St. John with some friends. We spent most of the time exploring the beaches on the island – and quickly picked Maho Bay as our favorite! For whatever reason, we had the entire beach almost to ourselves each day. We would relax and watch the sailboats moored out in the bay.
“One day that’ll be us”
I promised Vicky. She hadn’t started sailing at the time, so was like “meh that’s cool”.
(Vicky at Maho bay, 2007)
Fast-forward five years…
After sailing with the Liberty club for a while, we started to get the itch to do some cruising. Thoughts of living on a boat, exploring the coast and the islands began to creep into our thoughts. We figured the best way to do this would be to do some chartering, but having no real “big boat” experience, we didn’t really know where to start. Then we happened to find out that the sailing school which shares our clubhouse did a class which covered ASA 103, 104, and 114 (catamaran sailing) – by chartering a big cat for a week in the BVIs. We signed up immediately!
It was our first trip to the BVIs by boat, and it was everything we expected and more. We did all the usual stops (The Baths, Foxys, Willy-Ts etc…) and basically just had an awesome week of sailing. However the highlight of the trip (by far) was pulling into Maho bay and picking up a mooring.
Vicky and I stood on the deck, looking at the beach where we stood on 5 years earlier, this time from the other side. It was one of those moments that are filled with so much emotion that they are almost indescribable. I think there was triumphant whooping involved. That was definitely one of the moments that we both realized this was something we *had* to do – that sailing was the lifestyle that we wanted for ourselves.
(Vicky at Maho bay, 2013, with our boat in the background!)
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