This morning we found ourselves swimming along Peter Island, into the wind, between 2 harbors. The chop was really steep, and sometimes we found ourselves waaay up high on a wave, and sometimes the wave slammed into us, head on, breaking our stroke. This went on for about an hour. Alison eats this kind of thing for breakfast, and I caught her smiling several times. Patrick was unphased. As a group, however, we started to grow a tad weary, so John and I broke things up into 7-minute increments. Like, jeez you could hang by your fingernails for 7 minutes so what’s 7 minutes of a bumpy swim? At any rate, this gang kept plowing into the wind until we reached our yacht and downed a lot of coconut water to counteract the salt water sitting in our bellies. Yeah we call this fun. We are open water swimmers.

The reef in Great Harbour appears to be recovering after the devastation of Irma in 2017, with large patches of new coral growth among the destroyed reef. Check out the map of our swim!

Captain Richie and Zack set sail and we tacked way over on the other side of the channel near Tortola and zipped back across to Salt Island and the Wreck of the Rhone, grabbing a mooring ball. Beneath the calm waters here lies a shipwreck from 1867, where over 100 lives were lost when a hurricane slammed the massive Rhone into the rocks. Now it’s a great place to dive and snorkel, and maybe think about the souls lost, before things like weather radar could have prevented such a tragedy. There are a couple of swim-throughs here at the stern of the wreck, and the crew and guides took turns challenging ourselves.

A spotted eagle ray shows us how easy deep water swimming should look. Richie, Zack, Heather and Hopper took turns free diving through the hulking wreck.

In this video: Richie sneaks up behind Zack as they free dive through the wreck of the Rhone. A friendly little turtle lets us swim with it for a while in Salt Bay. Strange Spotted Eagle Ray behavior! I saw this large eagle ray come to a stop, then lie still on the bottom with 5 remora swimming around and underneath it! I thought perhaps it was injured or worse…it suddenly sprang to life, then commenced Pas de Deux with another! It was dusk and there was barely enough light to record, but what a thrill! - HP

A quick motor around the corner brought us to Salt Bay for our evening anchorage. A young, friendly turtle swam with us for a while. Most of us walked or swam the beach, looking for very very old seaglass from the 17 and 1800s, when ships anchored here to take on salt for their journey back to Europe. It seems they drank a lot of rum and threw the bottles overboard. Swimming back to our yacht, we spied two spotted eagle rays, seemingly dancing with one another.

*Catharine got up close and personal with a young green sea turtle.*

White sangria, yacht-made french onion dip and chips, goat cheese and rosemary stuffed dates greeted us. Fajitas for dinner. This group has so much energy. Uh-oh are they gearing up for another skinny dip?

Hopper

Dance of the Eagle Rays

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