{"id":6452,"date":"2017-01-12T08:15:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6452"},"modified":"2017-01-12T08:15:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T13:15:55","slug":"were-here-finally-welcome-to-tortola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6452","title":{"rendered":"We’re here, finally. Welcome to Tortola!"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Thursday morning and the sun is just coming up over the mountains here in West End Tortola. \u00a0After \u00a08 days at sea, 189.5 hours actually, and over 1,100 miles of blue water along with three days of gale force winds, not to put too fine a point on it, we arrived at our destination only a little worse for wear.\u00a0 Our average speed was just over 6kts which was less than I would have expected since there were plenty of times when the GPS reading in the double digits as we plummeted down the face of 20\u2019 waves, several times topping out at better than 17kts. \u00a0“Hang on guys! ” \u00a0However, as we crawled up the face of the next wave we\u2019d quickly slow to something like 4.5kts.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I guess it\u2019s all about averages and well, that\u2019s the average.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this blog isn\u2019t about numbers (well mostly) so I won\u2019t beat that horse any longer.\u00a0 All and all, it was a good run, if in a more than \u201csalty\u201d way than I would have liked.<\/p>\n

All I can say is that WE HAD BETTER HAVE FUN here in the Caribbean as it was totally frigging hard to get here.<\/p>\n

I did learn two things from this trip.\u00a0 First, I can endure hardship better than Brenda (I knew that actually) but not as nearly as well as Jerry and Dave, two of my crew who seem completely nonplussed by constant depravity and discomfort.\u00a0 Amazing!\u00a0\u00a0 The second thing I learned is that Pandora is an AWESOME boat.\u00a0 My thanks to Rodger Martin for designing a world class ocean ride. \u00a0 But, I guess I already knew that too.\u00a0 Oh well, I must have learned something but I won\u2019t think about that too much for now as my crew, who will be cruising with me here for the next week, really want to, as my father used to say, \u201cget the lead out\u201d and move on with our day.\u00a0\u00a0 Besides, we have snorkeling to do.\u00a0 More to come on that score.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, after over a week at sea we somehow managed to time the sight of first landfall at sunrise yesterday.\u00a0 This was our first real view of as the crew shouted, with enthusiasm and in unison \u201cland ho\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBob, Bob, there\u2019s no way that happened. \u00a0You’re totally making that up.\u201d \u00a0 OK, OK, call it editorial license.\u00a0\u00a0 We were happy to be here at last.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this was the first view of land for us in more than a week and how sweet it was.\u00a0 And unlike those \u201cadventures of yor\u201d who didn\u2019t have GPS, we actually knew where we were.\u00a0 GOOD MORNING TORTOLA!\"\"A frigate bird flew out to make a formal greeting and to be sure we were flying our \u201cQ\u201d flag.\"\"And speaking of \u201cfrigate\u201d the crew was more than happy to pull down those \u201cfrigating\u201d sails.\u00a0\"\"And in the \u201cyou can\u2019t make this s*&% up\u201d department a rainbow formed as we entered sheltered waters.\u00a0 \u201cNo way Bob, you Photo Shopped that.\u201d\u00a0 Yes way…a real BVI rainbow to greet us. \u00a0\u00a0Those Brits, they really know how to say welcome.\"\"Yes, welcome to paradise and to paraphrase my late father after 8 days at sea, it was \u201cgood to be seen\u201d as we arrived in the beautiful BVI.<\/p>\n

It was a remarkable if often really annoying journey and I am so happy to be here. What a beautiful harbor. \u00a0\"\"Time to make the donuts.\u00a0 Hungry crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It\u2019s Thursday morning and the sun is just coming up over the mountains here in West End Tortola. \u00a0After \u00a08 days at sea, 189.5 hours actually, and over 1,100 miles of blue water along with three days of gale force winds, not to put too fine a point on it, we arrived at our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6458,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452\/revisions\/6458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}