//WL2K Bitter End Yacht Club, Virgin Gorda, BVI

"Listen to the sound of the rain falling on my window." It is about 4 AM Atlantic time as I write this. We were awakened by the sound of rainfall. We are sitting on a mooring ball about 300 yards from the resort and about 100 feet from the seaplane dock. I am so used to standing watch that I am wide awake. After a couple of attempts I decided to write this blog entry.

The Bitter End Yacht Club is a complete resort. That means they want to completely empty your wallet before you leave. Mooring? You pay. Showers? You pay. Exchange oxygen for carbon monoxide? You pay. The store has the smallest possible sizes of products at the highest possible cost. Beer is $7. Since Forrest races Lasers we thought it would be fun to rent a couple and have an impromptu race (I expected to lose!) At $60 per hour per boat its not going to happen.

The last time I was here was in the 2002 - 2003 year range. I came with a wife and had a job. It was a bit different. Forrest has been running "Tinder." on his phone. Not a single match. The crowd here is families and older couples. Talk about a target poor environment for Forrest. We have seen two girls that would get him sent to jail. That is it. So much for "party in paradise.".

There are only two WiFi hot spots in the entire resort. They are both slow - think 1 or 2 minutes to load a web page.

As we cam in today we were watching the RC44 class sailboats race. They are doing fleet racing so they are all out together (9 boats.) Much more interesting than the America's Cup match race.They will be doing 3 or 4 races each day for the next couple of days. We might watch them a bit before we leave.

We have started to run into other members of the Salty Dawg rally. We have also met some Caribbean ARC folks. The cruising community is small and some of the Dawg boats know some of the ARC boats and it goes from there. In fact I spent about two hours this morning trying to sort out a radio problem on one of the ARC boats.

Radio propagation has been poor. We have missed a lot of our normal check in times as we can not be heard. This also makes sending blog entires a bit iffy. The sun needs to get its act together so we have good radio communications again!

Fair winds and following seas :)