John and Sharon

John and Sharon's British Virgin Islands Sailing Adventure

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Day 8 - Friday, Nov 10

Time to go home. We spend the morning packing up our bags. At 10:00 we slip the mooring line and raise the sails for a slow sail across the three miles of the Francis Drake Channel. The wind is slowest of any day at around 8 knots. So we take about an hour to get across the channel under sail direct to Maya Cove and Sunsail. We call Sunsail on the VHF and he gives docking instructions and telling us to put fenders and lines to Starboard. We tie up at the dock and ask him what we need to do. He said remove our personal belongings and the trash. They would take care of everything else! So we left behind our leftover, unwanted food, including a few beers we and said goodbye to the boat. We had bought three bottles of Asti-Spumante, our favorite form of champagne and one was left over, so went up to the porch at Sunsail, overlooking the marina and popped the cork. We drank from the bottle which which astonished another couple who was getting ready to leave on their trip. However they offered to take our picture and we will be an event that they will remember from their trip. (The two lushes from Virginia drinking champagne from the bottle :) Our flight was scheduled for 4:45 so we went to the marina bar/restaurant at Sunsail to have lunch. The waitress tells us the cook goes off duty in 15 minutes (It was 1:15) and not sure if she could cook us anything. She comes back and said it was OK. So Sharon has Jerk Chicken Caesar salad and I have chicken wrap. She comes back and says the wrap is too much work and salads only…so I have the Jerk Chicken Caesar salad as well.

We get to the airport in plenty of time. Fare was only $5 per person. They levy a departure tax of $25 per person and we go to the airport bar and have our last rum punches. We go out the departure gate and depart for San Juan. San Juan was quite a challenge to get through. First we walked a long way to immigration and customs, not a big deal for us but I was feeling bad for any elderly. Then we went through Immigration. Not too bad. Then we waited almost an hour for our luggage, then we went through customs and then had our bags scanned for agriculture products. Then we drop off our bags at TSA for rechecking thinking we are on our way….NOPE, we then have to go through TSA screening again which was backed up a mile long. We get through TSA walk a considerable distance to our gate and grab sandwiches to take aboard our flight as they are making last call for everyone going to Dulles-Washington. Three and half hours later we are at Dulles, our bags are there (Yay!) and after a little trouble finding our car in the long –term parking lot we head for Quantico Marine Base and spend the night before driving on home to Chesapeake, VA Sat. morning. It had been a VERY LONG day.