Mar 5, 2024 3 min read

Little Harbour, BVIs

Lynda looking at a spotted eagle ray

One of our best sailing friends told us to make our way here to Little Harbour as quickly as possible. He was right (thanks John!). It's so beautiful here, with super clear water, reminiscent of the Bahamas, but with rocky hills.

We were kind of anxious about the process, because anchoring here involves stern tying. We've never done this before.

With normal anchoring, you drop the anchor, pay out the right amount of chain, set the anchor, then attach the bridle, let out a little more chain, and you are done. At all times, the goal is to stay away from shore, rocks, other boats, etc. Like, stay well away, a few hundred feet away if possible.

With stern tie anchoring, you are trying to get quite close to shore, along with all the rocks that are strewn about, and other boats. You still have to figure out the right amount of chain to let out. And you have to position the boat approximately that far away from where you want to end up.

Then you drop the anchor and let out chain, all while BACKING THE BOAT TOWARD SHORE AND ROCKS. It's utterly insane. Then, once the anchor is set and bridle attached (please please please don't let the anchor drag and send us into the rocks), you swim to shore with a giant strap and some floating line, attaching things TO THE ROCKS AND TREES WHICH YOU ARE ALREADY FAR TOO CLOSE TO but somehow are still too far away for the line to reach. It took a bit of fiddling with the lines and boat position to get it right.

Thankfully, we had wonderful friends already here who helped us with some great advice and took the straps and lines to shore for us (thank you thank you thank you Joss and Julia!), and it all went just fine. But holy smoke was it stressful! Doubly thankfully, the wind was super light, there was no current, and there weren't any boats close by.

At the end, this is what our situation looked like:

Boats on boat sides, and our stern entirely too close to shore. Oh, and just 7.3 feet under the keel...red means danger, shallow!

Our starboard stern line going to shore, which is simultaneously too close for comfort and too far to reach the tree we wanted to tie up to...

Our navigation map says we are really really close to shore

Now that we've done it once with training wheels on, I feel like we can do it again, and can do it better. Stern tie anchoring is a common thing here in the BVIs, so we will have many chances to get better at it.

And hoo boy is it worth it! We went snorkeling, saw turtles, a stingray, an eagle ray, lots of cool fish, lots of urchins, an anemone, mostly rocks and sand, with some coral. And clear clear water...

We are kind of sad that we are leaving tomorrow, but we have friends in the area to meet, and we wouldn't miss them for anything! We will certainly come back later on.