Sunday evening, 8 women met on the dock of the Beef Island cove in order to board Four Two Knot... Our home for the next seven days. We took our little dihgney over to the boat, boarded, found our roommates and our "staterooms", did a little unpacking and then met up top deck to eat dinner and cover all the beginning basics. The next morning, after an interesting night getting adjusted to all the warmth that no air and the horribleness of not being able to open the hatch in our rooms, we finally awoke with the excitement of our first day out. A quick breakfast, a run to the shore in order to pick up coffee - that five desperate women demanded as we had found the lack of the substance of life on board. We buzzed, in our boat and on our coffee high, back to the boat, boarded again and then had our first divisions of learning. Some of us sat at the wheel to learn all those basics while others of us went up to the bow in order to get the boat off the buoy.
We got two of the sails up and then had a nice little ride over to a small, deserted island called Salt Island. Our chore of the sails being raised over, several of us had the opportunity to sit up on the front of the boat on the "trampolene" and just relax and get to know each other a little better. Our aim of the Salt Island trip was to do some snorkelling and explore the small island a little. The island was actually a place where they used to "harvest" salt. This was done until recently when the salt was basically used up. All of the little houses there are now all deserted but apparently sometimes some of the people come back every once in a while. We had a nice little while just snorkelling around. It was a little mirky in some areas, but there were some beautiful purple/yellow fish that were just mesmerizing. There were also some bad things that were mesmerizing, but we were warned not to touch them. Specifically, I was entranced with the black sea urchins. Apparently its like 100% and if you hit it, its little spiky will get stuck in you and will absolutely burn. Not fatal, but painful. It was just amazing watching it though - it was like a porcupine ball, but the "spiky" things looked like there would be soft and supple if you touched them. They would kind of sway in the waves. I didn't touch - my motto was "not planning to touch much..."...
Most of us snorkelled from the boat to Salt Island but there were a few who went ashore in the dinghy. We all met there at some point and then took a little sightseeing trek around the island.
We took a hike around the, now lake, that used to be the salt pond. Apparently it used to be a lot smaller and you could see the salt, but now, with all the rain, its turned into a lake. You could definitely feel the salt as you walked into the water - you would raise your leg up to walk and your foot would just float up behind you.
We slogged through the mucky water to the other side of the island and wound up on the other side at the shore. The water of the ocean was much more rough on that side.
After a hike back to our side of the island we explored a little more and found a coconut tree with coconuts just waiting for a good shake. We tried throwing rocks - with our softball champions mean left arm...
We tried climbing the tree, but were scared away by a major infestation of ants...
There those coconuts sat, just laughing at us...
Finally, "someone" found a big stick and started whacking like a pinata...
SUCCESS! We got one of those babies down and gave a laugh back at that tree!
We then started our little walk back to the dinghy and were given one last treat with a little story of how the dead are buried on Salt Island...
Pretty cool deal - so we had some fun and then we headed back to the boat for lunch and to take off back to Tortolla because we had to get over to make sure we got away from a storm that was coming our way.
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