Mom please send money, SPF 100, a liver and wind.

Friday May 25th, Norman to Cooper to Trellis

We dropped the ball at Norman Island at 7:30am and motor 8.3 miles into 2 knots of wind to Cooper Island. We pick up a mooring ball at 8:45am. The water and air is FLAT calm. Even at 8:45 it's scorching with no breeze.
Friday morning we blow up our rafts with a 12v inflator we brought.....tie them off the back and are floating by 9:30am......a start to a long day in the sun.

We head in to Cooper Island Beach Club, have a 2 for 1 Cooper Dream thanks to the "coupons" in our "Drinking Mans Guide To The BVI's" book and walk the grounds for a bit.
After (1:05pm), Josh and I drop the ball (the act of removing one's boat from the mooring ball) we have lunch under way to Trellis Bay.

There is little to no wind at first but then the wind kicked up.....ok, well, it got above 5 knots or so. Therefore, we raise the sails and sail for a bit at about 3-4 knots. This is Josh and Pam's first experience at being under power by solely the wind. We weren't breaking any speed records but it was nice to just cruise along in silence. We drop sails just outside Trellis Bay and grab a ball at 2:20.

Trellis Bay, Beef Island (Norman Island to Trellis via Cooper: 16.2 miles)
N18.26.866 W64.30.965

We chill on the boat at Trellis trying to stay out of the sun.....all 4 of us are cooking.
We call Marine Cay (pronounced "key") to check into their shuttle/ferry boat schedule for a ride to check out the much acclaimed "one-man band", Michael Bean. We get bad news and more bad news....the last ferry FROM Marina Cay leaves at 6:30 and Michael Bean only plays Sunday to Thursday.




(The following was posted in a separate blog earlier, but have since decided to move it here for continuity)
Not long after being on the ball do we notice several dolphins in the mooring field.







Josh jumped in with a snorkel and mask and was swimming along side of them. He said there were 2 big dolphins and a baby. Soon after about 15 people were in the water watching them play. They even leaped out of the water a few times. Josh took my underwater camera with him and took a bunch of photos. They swam away and he got out. But soon after they came back so I jumped in and I must say it was fantastic. To watch them play underwater and then come right up along side you is something I'll never forget. Soon I was video recording one as I cruised along side him. Even with flippers it was tough to keep up.It was nice to see that it seemed everyone else in the water was respecting them and not trying to hold on or touch them.




That was the good news of the day....the bad news is I (my underwater camera) lost all those photos and video, along with most of the prior two days worth of photos. I had a really great underwater video while swimming along side the "papa" dolphin...he turned right in front of me, looked into the camera and stalled....just floated....incredible. While trying to download my pictures from the camera to the laptop there was a "glitch" and in short, lost a lot of pics...oh well, move on. At least we have photos from Josh's camera.

We decide that since the seas are very flat to dink over to Marina Cay to show Josh and Pam the island and do it on our own schedule.

After the Marina Cay tour we clean up and make reservations at The Last Resort, a restaurant on it's own island in the middle of the "anchorage".

We head over to the restaurant and each have 4 fantastic meals. Soon after finishing, a band starts up and challenges the patrons to "name that band".

Apparently I missed the part about guessing the band wrong will earn you 5 shots of Tequila. Well...I yelled Ramons to an Eurithmics song and was sternly called to the stage for my shots and personal mic to sing the song......terrific....lights out early for Bryan.

~Bryan