Before the Dirty Work, let’s catch up on where we have been the last few days. One thing that we have been amazed by so far, is the difficulty we have getting wifi – will work on that. Also will see if we can post to the blog from our Iridium Go which has been excellent! With our email account on there we should be able to post short updates… And a photo gallery at the end of the post.

First, A special thank you and shout out to the staff at The Last Resort located in Trellis Bay, Beef Island, Tortola and Brian from British Virgin Islands Yacht Sales. They went out of their way to help us out. We were welcome on the Island any time to use their facilities and they also helped to coordinate a plumber to help fix the head problem. The Last Resort is a great spot to visit, if you are ever in the area make sure you check it out!IMG_2759

Happy Thanksgiving! No head, no problem. We motored Salmagal to Guana Island for some fun swimming and walking along the beach before heading back to Trellis Bay where liz cooked up a feast for Thanksgiving – Yum! More pics below.

IMG_2725Full Moon Party – Trellis Bay is known for the Full Moon party. As you can guess by the name, there is a beach party during the full moon. Food, drink, live music, and fire! There are some great metal artwork pieces made by Aragorn from Aragorn’s Studio that get filled with cardboard and lit on fire. Some on land to check out and a handful right in the water off the beach. Fun to see and the kids really get a kick out of it.

The next morning, Friday the 27th we woke up early and headed around the corner to Fat Hogs Bay and the Harbor View Marina to meet Walter. Walter is the contact that Brian setup us with to help sort out the head. Walter was great and put is mechanic Earl right to work helping out. With the pump out of the boat we determined the choker valves needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, there were no replacements on the island… We cleaned up the choker valves as best we could and put the system back together. We discussed the ideal situation was to replace the hoses and move the pump for easier access, but we didn’t have the time. So we put her back together as is, and viola, Earl got the toiled working again – we have a working head!

Joyfully we said thank you to Walter and Earl and set sail around 2:00 to Norman’s Island – a nice lazy and comfortable sail. What a feeling to be back sailing, and with a working head – couldn’t have been better!

And what a greeting for Salmagal as we sailed into Norman. We were beating into the harbor, tacking our way in when a wake board towed by a dinghy came by for a close pass – and low and behold it was our good friend Chris Hefferan and came right by and gave us a high five on the rail. Pretty cool entrance. And then as the sails came down we heard a voice call “Salmagal!” It turned out to be Lana Armitage on her paddle board. Lana and her husband Dave and their two boys Liam and Calan are sailing their boat Nemetona on a similar trip. Liz and Lana have been communicating and we have been looking forward to meeting up with them as their kids are a similar age to ours. And what do you know, the kids instantly hit it off, surprise, surprise. It has been wonderful meeting the Armitage family and we look forward to spending some time with them.

A trip to Norman would not be complete without a stop at the Willy T – an old schooner turned into a floating wild bar. And yes, we again run into Chris Hefferan, his fiancé Ali, and her brother Ted saddled up to the bar. The bar tenders started up a message that was going to be sent off in a bottle at the end of the night, and it was fun because each person in the bar took turns writing a line. We were there early, so I can only imagine how the letter turned out at the end of a long night at the Willy T!

It was great to be back out with a working head – new friends, old friends, and some fun adventures. Now that was more like it!

But…. We woke up to the head being broken – AGAIN. Arrrrg…. Noooooooo!

Either way we were on Norman, So Liz, Mira, and myself took a quick dinghy ride over to the caves for a snorkel mission. A nice snorkel with a bunch of fish and some small caves you can swim into. Mira took the kids gopro camera which the received as joint birthday and christmas presents from Baba for its first snorkel mission. Lots of footage and Mira is busy editing away for her first movie. Stand by.

On to the Dirty Work – We made the decision to fix the head problem once and for all and set out back to Nanny Cay (we have been to Nanny Cay far too many times!) On the short trip 5 mile trip to Nanny Cay, we had to stop and wait out an impressive squall with super heavy rain and lightning. Nice to have radar so that we could sit and hang out just outside the reach of the heavy stuff. We arrived at Nanny Cay at 11:30 and they found us a slip on B dock. And now the fun really began.  I decided to rip out the pump and the hoses from the head to the pump and replace them all. Part of the process was to relocate the pump to a different spot where it would be easier to repair if issues were to arise in the future. Everything here on Tortola is expensive, and this project was no exception… A $200 repair in the states will probably be closer to $500 here, but the good news is that by 530 the project was done, and we now have a working head! There are a few tweaks we still need to work out as a little more water gets left in the bowl when done flushing than we would like to see, but those are adjustments we will figure out with a little time.

The Marina is not the ideal place to be, but Mira and Peter make the best of any situation and quickly started up a game of soccer on the beach with their friends from Nemetona along with the other friends they have met during our frequent stops here at Nanny Cay. And after a sandy game of soccer, sometime in the pool is well deserved as well. But school first, and none of this happened until both kids made it through a math test!

But for now, our head is working! We celebrated by walking down B dock to spend some time catching up with Dave and Lana Armitage on Nemetona.

Today, with a working head we sailed back to Norman for some more snorkeling and to meet up with another boat who Dave and Lana met along the way who also have kids similar ages.  Calan from Nemetona joined us for the sail and it was a nice one. A close reach with single reef in the main bombing along. Could this be the end of our head problems for awhile? Let’s hope so, but either way, the adventures continue.

Don’t forget to track us as we go – where are we?