BVI SAILING PICTURE DIARY

In order to have seen many of the pictures of our BVI sailing trip, you would have to have been a friend of mine on Facebook or have come into the Cafe of LIFE. There are quite a few asking about my trip so I wanted to put together a little BVI Sailing Picture Diary for you to take a glance at some of what we did with our 10 days on our sailboat Yacht Emily Morgan.

These are my friends, some really good friends that I have traveled with often.  They all live in Denver and are all chiropractors…and have been trying to get me to move out west since I moved home 11 years ago.  I met all of them in 2001 within the first week of starting chiropractic college at Life University in Atlanta, GA.  I love each of them for what they add to my life, my being and the level of joy and laughter daily, even when we are not together.

These are my feet and this is the front of the boat.  The entire trip was absolutely beautiful, as you can tell, and this was such an awesome spot to take it all in.

Christmas morning, we are in the midst of our white elephant gift exchange and I ended up with a selfie-stick which I was totally stoked about!!!  My friends, Marco and Scott, and to the right in the picture, is Bones, the owner of the ship, host extraordinaire, comedian, dance instructor, master sailor.  We got lucky to be on this boat with him and his wife!!

Later on that day using said “selfie-stick”…

…and then I realized that I hardly needed any friends to take my pictures or be in my pictures because I now had a SELFIE STICK!!!! I am only kidding…that is not really true, we all need our friends.  

Then one day Bones took us knee-boarding on the back of the dinghy.  It has been since June 24, 1998 since I have been knee-boarding.  I remember the date so clearly because I ended up breaking my nose out on Lake Ponemah (a whole different blog post to share that story, maybe).  It was super fun to be knee-boarding and of course I can’t help but always try to see what’s still possible on that thing.  Here is me doing my best rendition of “Hey Mom!!!  Look at me!!!”  …only my Mom wasn’t anywhere around.  🙂

Emily Morgan hauls around these paddleboards we could take out anytime we wanted.  So much fun although I am not sure I used them all that much.  This trip became quite a sedentary trip actually.   

But while we were sitting around all day, we would see such BEAUTIFUL rainbows!!!  Spectacular rainbows and a few of them each day.  I know this picture may not even seem real but this was shot with just an iPhone camera, no zoom.  Crazy beautiful place!!!  

And while I am at it, enjoy these two beautiful pictures!  

Sundown time was some of the coolest lighting of the entire day.  I think coupled with the sway of sitting on the boat and about to eat some of the most delicious food, it became our most favorite part of each day.

…it was time for another selfie…  🙂

After the first few days of strictly being only on the boat, we began to crave being on land and would dinghy into shore and get grounded for a few minutes.  Sometimes we would find beautiful beaches to hang out on but mostly we just needed to not be moving, swaying and rocking for a few minutes.  

I LOVED learning about sail physics and helping with to put sails up and take them down.  The greatest part of our trip is our hosts could completely handle the boat themselves and so we could choose how much we wanted to participate in crewing the boat minute by minute.  I just loved the raising and lowering of the sails, literally the mechanism that was catching the wind and moving us around these islands…how freakin’ cool is that?!?!?!  I am still in awe of how it all works and am excited to find a sailing vessel of some sort this coming summer…maybe windsurfing.  Yeah, that sounds about right for me.

This is a picture of my room.  These 2 bunk beds that were available to me and I ultimately found that the top one had the best air flow.  I do not sleep well when my body is moving (in the car, on a plane and apparently not on a boat either).  Aside from a sedentary 10 days, sleeping was the only other downfall of being on the sailboat for me.  I am particular about sleep and need certain pillows and support and position and basically the only way to sleep in this bed was to tie up a hammock up to the wall at the head and foot of the bed to keep from rolling out at night as the boat rocks in the waves.  This took a while to get used to and then once I was home, it took a while to get use to being in a bed that was not moving. It is interesting to watch the brain try to adapt to all of that!  

This is how our days were spent…sitting, sailing and chatting.  This particular group of friends are what I consider “growth friends”.  We are always presenting ideas, talking things over, offering each other perspective and solving the problems of the world…well our own small worlds if you want to be particular.

Another incredible evening anchored in some beautiful place, rocking in the waves, chatting about the day and prepping to wind down for the night.  

New Year’s Eve was spent on the island of Jost Van Dyke at a world famous bar called Foxy’s.  It is amazing that among the 3,000 people at this party that I can be dancing around the place and come across a sticker of one of the businesses, Unlimited Offroad, here in Fenton, MI.  It amazes me to be thousands of miles away and have evidence of Fenton’s greats right in front of me!!

These guys…the greatest!!!

And these two, Bones and Anna and their beautiful boat Emily Morgan, exceptional is not even the word great enough for them.  24 hours per day for 10 solid days with 6 demanding goofballs in their home…I have no idea how they endure something like that.  This is the moment stepping off the boat and parting ways after our 10 days.  We were truly like a big happy family with them and we all miss them.  You can see in their smiles and in their energy fields, even after 10 FULL DAYS, they have the biggest servants hearts of any people I have seen in a while.  Our trip was as amazing as it was due mostly to them.  Look them up if ever you are looking to have an exceptional vacation!

So that concludes the BVI sailing picture diary.  If think I covered the trip thoroughly as I also strongly believe that pictures tell the best stories.  Until next time…I am still “Sailing the Scene, 2016!”