My wife and I love to sail. We developed this passion thanks to my bro and his wife. We are fortunate to have sailed with them a few times as their guests. The last trip was this past fall to the British Virgin Islands. We sailed out of Tortola and we had brief stay in San Juan, Puerto Rico just before as well, where we had a COVID testing nightmare. We were told we needed a test prior to entering the BVI’s even though the Tortola airport website made it sound like we could get tested after landing. As it was Sunday in Puerto Rico, none of the testing sites were open, so we had to stay over an additional night. Thankfully, we were able to test early Monday and fly later that day.
Once in Tortola, we boarded a beautiful, brand new 45′ Catamaran and with my brother at the helm we departed. We took a brief one hour sail the first day and anchored up at Norman Island. The following days we spent quite a lot of time at various anchorage around Jost Van Dyke, visiting both Foxy’s and Foxy’s Taboo and also finding some really good snorkel spots. Our final night was back at Norman Island where went went ashore and had a really excellent dinner at the Pirate’s Bight Restaurant. We highly recommend it!
Fishing wise, I always bring my fly rod, in this case my Scott Meridian in a 9wt, and also a boat rod that we use for trolling. It turns out that our cruising speed under sail of 5-6 knots is almost perfect for Mahi Mahi or Dorado as they call them south of the border. I merely clamp a rod holder to one of the rails, set the drag and turn on the “clicker”. I usually drag a squid lure about 200′ off the stern. On previous trips we have hooked up big jacks, but this time I hooked and landed a nice sized Mahi(see pics below). We ended up releasing the fish because I did not feel that we could eat it all and I would have felt bad wasting over half of the fish.
The memorable moment with the fly rod happened at night. My brother’s boat has a blue light on the bottom that illuminates all kinds of sea creatures at night. It also attracts big schools of big tarpon. Every night, I threw about every tarpon fly I had out there, but no luck getting an eat. However, one night something special happened. A short time after the tarpon school joined us, there was a school of needle fish that swam by and the tarpon went into a feeding frenzy. The needle fish all came up to the surface and began skipping across the surface and the tarpon were boiling on the surface chasing them. I knew I needed a surface solution and I had a couple of top water foam poppers. I tied one on know this was in no way a tarpon fly, but it was the best i had. On the third or fourth cast, about 40′ off the stern and after some really fast strips, I got an eat. Everything happened so fast, I pulled hard on the strip set knowing that tarpon mouths are very boney. As soon as he felt the pinch, he immediately bolted and I looked down to make sure my line was not tangled on something. The line flew through my fingers and he was ripping line off the reel. The he took his first jump, shook his head, side to side and threw the fly. I totally forgot to “bow to the king”. But in my defense, I have had the privilege to jump many tarpon. The was arguably the most exciting four seconds of my life. Made me weak in the knees. At four feet plus long, it would have been my biggest fish ever on the fly. Had I landed it that is.
On the way home we were back in Puerto Rico for a day, prior to catching an early morning flight. We loved touring the historic section of San Juan, particularly the Castillo San Felipe del Morro, such an amazing structure built to protect the city.
