Prickly Pear Island

Dec. 9

     The North Sound of Virgin Gorda has been a favorite of ours since we began sailing in the BVI.    We took a mooring near Saba Rock which is really a resort built on a reef in the scant channel between the North and Eustatia Sounds and sandwiched between Virgin Gorda and Prickly Pear Islands.  This spot always provides some pleasant and free entertainment from the vessels that come and go, as mates perform a tenuous ballet while picking up (and dropping) a mooring ball due to the steady, strong current.  Last night near dusk, a young man arrived by boat and seemingly couldn’t wait to break out his kiteboard- so he did and proceeded to amaze us by skimming the board all around Eustatia Sound and over the REEF!

      This morning we were going to snorkel that reef, but there were four kiteboarders flying about, so we headed in another direction to the far side of Prickly Pear Island and beached our dinghy on a deserted stretch of powdery cream colored sand that was soft enough to nap upon.  We were mildly disappointed when we found no reef there to snorkel, but we did find a treasure of many mature conch throughout the grassy bottom just beyond the rippled sand.   We also found a surprise when we returned to the dinghy- it was almost half full of sea water and sand and held minnow captive that looked a little frantic.  We bailed out the fish with the water and sand and returned to our boat happy to have spent yet another nearly perfect morning.