Chasing Blackbeard’s ghost
Sail away on a search for the famous pirate in the British Virgin Islands
TORTOLA PASSAGE, B.V.I. — Somewhere on a wind-whipped stretch of sea between Jost Van Dyke and Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, our sailboat climbs a wave, bow pointing skyward. She skids down the back of the wave. The hull hits the flat in a belly flop splat.
My hands cramp on the stainless-steel steering wheel. My shoulders knot. I wrestle “Teranga” to windward, fighting the force of seas angry as a nest of rattlesnakes.
Another wave, eight feet trough to crest, rises up between us and blue sky scarred by a battalion of cumulus clouds racing our way.
“Teranga” feels like a runaway rollercoaster.
The surf thunders beneath her hull and races for Tortola.
Breaking waves casting themselves on razor rocks tossed helter-skelter at the foot of cliffs 300 feet high.
Guana Island lies impossibly far head — no more than five or six nautical miles, but it might as well be the moon.
Mate Dave Anschuetz grinds a windlass to harden the mainsail, his shoulders straining.
I give the command and spin the wheel. The boat skitters to starboard.
Still Guana taunts us — me and my crew on a 43-foot sailboat we’ve acquired under the descriptive name of ‘bareboating’ — while Jost Van Dyke and Sandy Cay, a picture-postcard swatch of sand and palms and lime green waters, lie dead astern. Jost Van Dyke memorializes a Dutch pirate. It’s apt because I’m part of a nautical tradition here, skippering a boat in the British Virgin Islands, the shoulder of the Caribbean, making for an archipelago that is the stuff of legend, sailing past Throw Way Wife Bay and Pull and be Damned Point, bearing for a bay where Drake once lay in wait to ambush the Spanish Armada, hard by an island owned by Richard Branson. I’m chasing Blackbeard. Two days ago we anchored at the Bight on Norman Island. Tomorrow we will sail downwind, slicing sparkling royal blue waters like a surgeon’s scalpel, gliding past a forbidding leviathan called Deadchest Island, negotiating the headlands and dropping the hook for lunch at one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful beaches even though its name is Deadman’s Bay.
Remember that ditty: 15 men and a bottle of rum? On this skeletal rock outcropping Blackbeard reputedly marooned his mutinous crew with a lone bottle of rum. The gorgeous beach off our bow is so-called because that’s where the bodies washed up — at least the parts the sharks didn’t digest.
Norman Island inspired the Stevenson classic, Treasure Island. More than two centuries ago a pirate named Norman hid his treasure here.
Back on the water, making for Trellis Bay on Tortola, our boat strains with the effort. I manhandle the helm, watching as errant waves smash onto the bow sending up water like shards of shattered glass. Shoulders aching, I’m ready for a break. “Take the helm, Dave. Please.” He scans the water, he looks at the sails. He studies me thoughtfully. “No, thanks. That’s why you’re the skipper.” Fair enough. These waters are normally calm and sheltered, perfect trade winds normally provide exhilarating romps to yet another paradise island, sinuous, palm-punctuated, ringed by turquoise waters and alabaster beaches. Forty-plus islands here — each more beautiful than the last, each a mere two-hour sail from the last.
That’s why the British Virgin Islands have a reputation for the best sailing in the Caribbean. That’s why Charlie and Ginny Carey started the world’s biggest charter company — The Moorings — here back in the ’70s. That’s why we’re sailing here.
Our friends have enlisted me as bareboat skipper for this voyage. If you know what you’re doing they rent you the boat and you cast off. Back in Canada I own a sailboat and I’m a former sailing instructor. So I’m elected. Right now I’m not so sure if I’m the man for the job, but that changes when we lash “Teranga” to a mooring ball in the Bight late one afternoon, imbibing rum cocktails and hors d’oeuvres with the world’s best view — a revolving ringside seat for a perfect sunset, a double rainbow, afterglow of a line squall, the twinkling twilight lights of Tortola and St. Thomas in the distance. “Another day in paradise,” says Dave’s wife, Barb. That says it all, despite the burden of responsibility that I bear as skipper. But it doesn’t have to be that way. “You’ve got a world of options here,” says Julian Hodge, manager of the Moorings operation at Road Town, where monohulls, powerboats and catamarans share the waters facing Peter, Norman and Deadchest Islands. “If you’re qualified you can skipper sailboats or powerboats. You can skipper and we’ll provision. But you don’t have to be a sailor to enjoy the experience. For a reasonable fee we’ll put a qualified skipper on board. If you wanted to you could book a chef.” He pauses, gazing at the harbour full of sailboats. “We’ll even arrange sailing lessons.”
Or you can go with the ultimate luxury cruise: charter a luxury catamaran with a hot tub on the stern; be pampered shamelessly for a pirate’s ransom.
For there is no better way to experience this chain of islands than by water, though if after a few days you find yourself saying “yar,” you might be overdoing the rum.
On day six we’re racing across Drake Channel, boat heeled happily, waves nuzzling the hull like a friendly puppy.
I turn over the helm to Dave. He scans the horizon. He grins. “Can’t see it getting any better than this.” Mark Stevens is a freelance writer based in Palgrave, Ont. His trip was subsidized by British Virgin Islands Tourism and The Moorings.