Rum is the Answer! What was the Question? Sailing Trip Part 3

I think sailing has changed our life.

I don't know how many mass emails has been sent from my husband to the family we sailed with regarding SAILING. Every free minute is spent on researching boats, hull length, cruising speed, average weight, numbers of heads versus cabin, and other details I can't remember.

Do you know my husband?

If you know him, I mean, actually KNOW him, what I mean is have you SEEN his eyes well up when he talks about fresh snow fall, the feeling of his skis on the powder, the first day of ski season, if you KNOW my husband, you would know that this is different. It might not be strange, or even weird but sure as Hell, different.



But that was our life B.S. (Before sailing.)

Life A.S. (after sailing) is full of daydreams. What is wrong with dreams? Our life is filled with dream boats, dream life, dream job, many dreams, our life is filled with dreams right now.

The cool thing is, there is a possibility some of those 'dreams' could come true.

Part three of the vacation that may have changed our life:

One of the first conversations I have ever had with Geoff was regarding diving. I love scuba diving. I still would love to be an instructor. Love it. I was working on my dive master last I left Turks and knowing that this really hot guy I met who is really outgoing, super sweet ALSO loves to dive is NOW my husband is pretty sweet. Pretty sweet indeed and we love to dive together. We do.



Day four, we got to dive together.

Can you believe I'm only on day four??? As my friends in the Turk's would say, "To make a long story short, or in Holly's case, to make a short story long." I continue in my Sail trip 2009 series...

The dive: We parked on a buoy not as close as we would have liked. Our equipment rented from a dive shop near where we picked up our boat, and I was exhausted from being up all night with Sawyer from what seemed like a swollen penis turned out to be a bad case of diaper rash. Yes, this was an interesting day already and it was only about 7am. Yeah, 7 AM! After toying around with a bad O-ring, snorkeling to the site battling a strong current, we descended to the wreck.

The history via Wikapedia (long but interesting):

The RMS Rhone was a royal mail steam packet ship that transported cargo between England, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. She was one of the first iron hulled ships, powered by both sail and steam. Built in 1865 at the Millwall Iron Works in Southampton, England, she measured in at 310 feet (94 m) long and had two masts with a 40-foot (12 m) beam. Her propeller was the second bronze propeller ever built, and she was one of two ships deemed unsinkable by the British Royal Navy[citation needed]. Her first voyage was in August 1865 to Brazil, which were the destination of her next five voyages. There, she proved her worth by weathering several severe storms. She was then moved to the west India route. The Rhone was a favorite among passengers due to her then lightning speed of fourteen knots and lavish cabins. She sported 253 first class, 30 second class, and 30 third class cabins. On October 19, 1867, the Rhone pulled up alongside the RMS Conway in Great Harbor, Peter Island to refuel. The original coaling station they needed had been moved from the then Danish island of St. Thomas due to an outbreak of yellow fever.

On the fateful day, the captain of the Rhone, then Robert F. Wooley, was slightly worried by the dropping barometer and darkening clouds, but because it was October and hurricane season was thought to be over, he and the Conway stayed put in Great Harbor. The first half of the storm passed without much event or damage, but the ferocity of the storm worried the captains of the Conway and the Rhone, as their anchors had dragged and they worried that when the storm came back from the other side after the eye of the storm had passed over, they would be driven up on the shore of Peter Island.
They decided to transfer the passengers from the Conway to the "unsinkable" Rhone, and the Conway was then to head for Road Harbour, and the Rhone would make for open sea. As was normal practice at the time, the passengers in the Rhone were tied into their beds to prevent them being injured in the stormy seas.

The Conway got away before the Rhone but was caught by the back end of the storm, and foundered off the south side of Tortola with the loss of all hands. But the Rhone struggled to get free, as its anchor was caught fast. It was ordered to be cut loose, and lies in Great Harbor to this day, with its chain wrapped around the same coral head that trapped it a century and a half ago. By this stage time was critical, and captain Robert F. Wooley decided that it would be best to try to escape to the shelter of open sea by the easiest route, between Black Rock Point of Salt Island and Dead Chest Island. Between those two island lay Blonde Rock, an underwater reef which was normally a safe depth of 25 feet (7.6 m), but during hurricane swells, there was a risk that the Rhone might founder on that. The Captain took a conservative course, giving Blonde Rock (which cannot be seen from the surface) a wide berth.

However, just as the Rhone was passing Black Rock Point, less than 250 yards (230 m) from safety, the second half of the hurricane came around from the south. The winds shifted to the opposite direction and the Rhone was thrown directly into Black Rock Point. It is said that the initial lurch of the crash sent Captain Wooley overboard, never to be seen again. Local legend says that his teaspoon can still be seen lodged into the wreck itself - whether or not is it his, a teaspoon is clearly visible entrenched in the wreck's coral. The ship split in two, cold sea water made contact with the red hot boilers which had been running at full steam, causing them to explode.

The ship sank swiftly, the bow section in eighty feet of water, the stern in thirty. Of the original 146 aboard, plus an unknown number of passengers transferred from the Conway, only 23 people on board (all crew) survived the wreck. The bodies of many of the sailors were buried in a nearby cemetery on Salt Island. Due to her mast sticking out of the water, and her shallow depth, she was deemed a hazard by the Royal Navy in the 1950s and her stern section blown apart. Now, the Rhone is a popular dive site, and the area around her was turned into a national park in 1967.

I've dove over a hundred times which is most likely an understatement and I still kick myself in the butt for not keeping a log book. We were exhausted and this was my first dive back since November. I felt rusty, but man, was this dive tops on my all time list. The boat was huge, and coral grew freely. Since this was not a wall dive, there was no real vertical, but slanted, diagonals, spheres, it was easy to feel off, dizzy, odd. I was checking my depth ever few seconds and STILL this dive rocked. There is no other way to describe it.

We saw the tiles from the old dance floor.

We saw the propeller.

We rubbed the 'luck porthole' three times in a clockwise direction.

This dive was amazing.


After the dive, we freshened up and headed out to Latitude 18. Barefoot Davis, a shaggy white haired white boy was singing, like he always had, every Monday at Latitude 18.

Barefoot Davis married the couple we were with, Dave and Becky and when he fist met them, he mooned them from his boat.

Did I mention he LIVES on his boat?! Sweet!

He noticed Dave and Beck right away, we were serenaded and Becky and I were called onstage to 'help' aka- Dance and pull the winning raffle tickets during his breaks.



Barefoot Davis reminds me of Sunsets, 5pm cocktails, watching the water turn colors, sitting on the dock, listening to live music, enjoying great company and relaxing after a relaxing day of work. Hey, it was the islands, even work was pretty relaxing.

This is why I'm happy we took a sailing trip. THIS is why I'm happy Geoff is looking at life a through different lenses. I'm an island girl who married a mountain man. What to do with life???



Day five: Willie T's.

Willie T's, the floating pirate ship bar.

I heard some crazy things about Willie T's.

I've been quoting Willie T's Ship Articles on my blogs because I think we should all live by them.

One last rule, " The Willie-T shall be respected as a community service, allowing those in need to shed inhibitions. Anyone betraying the confidences of this vessel shall be flogged."

We heard some crazy things about this place and after meeting the bartender who in no doubt is a 'lifer', I see why. Our favorite drink 'Dark and Stormy's' became 'Dark and Hony's' and the blonde blow up doll behind the bar is your first clue, you might not want to bring the grandparents. Little hotties in bikinis, free of boyfriends, dressed in bathing suites I drooled over roamed the boat. We were told if you jump off the boat topless you get a free drink. We jumped off but NOT topless. I can pay for my own drinks.



I was in a drinking mood.

My husband pulled a Geoff.

This was a sailers paradise, the boats were a plenty.

We met the filthy (and proud of it) old man in his thong, perhaps hoping to get some sort of excitement from us, sprucing up his average, money can buy him anything, seriously ANYTHING life.

Must be nice.

Must not be so nice.

I don't want to be so rich, I turn into a sucky person.

Maybe I just want to be a little bit rich.

Anyone want to donate to my cause?



Willie T's was awesome, we headed back to the boat and passed out. We all pulled a Geoff and then woke up with some Rum.

Because, as Barefoot Davis would say, RUM is the answer, what was the question?