Day 9--April 30, 2014 Thursday--Still at The Bight of Norman Island

Although we invested in a company that guaranteed that we would be able to get internet service onboard our boat anywhere in the BVIs, it just wasn't true.  Rarely did our online service work.  So we became dependent upon the connectivity of local bars and restaurants, which is not always an unpleasant thing--but not as convenient as hooking up to the internet onboard.  Also, if we could have gotten reliable service onboard, we could have called home via Skype quite easily.

Today (Day 9) Thursday we decided to invest in finding a good bar with internet.  Well, that wasn't too hard!  Our boat was moored in The Bight of Norman Island right in front of a brand new fabulous beach bar & restaurant--Pirate's Bight.  Although we were a couple hours ahead of the bar's lunch-time opening, we had gotten the password last night and were ready to log on as we lounged at the beach in front of the closed bar.  Here's a picture of me--hard at work!

And, as nice as this looks, I welcomed the opportunity to move into the cool shade of the building when it opened for lunch.  The laptop's power needed boosting and I needed a cold beer!  We had an excellent lunch--John had ribs with a great BBQ sauce and I had some lime chicken wrap something.  We kept blogging until we got all the recent pictures posted.  Then we made plans to visit the floating bar/ship William Thorton--fondly called the Willy T for happy hour.

This big old steel schooner is permanently anchored in the bight and has been converted to a party bar--definitely seemed to be something we should check out.  We posted some pictures of the Willy T in yesterday's blog, but here are the up-close-and-personal shots. 

Here's the floating dinghy dock along the port side.  The bigger boats can tie up along the starboard side.  I thought at first that the only way you could get to this bar was to boat over, but then we did see some folks swimming over from some sailboats moored/anchored nearby.

The stern had two levels and some folks were jumping off the top level when we arrived.

Here's the bar area on the first level--nice. huh?

Also, there was a nice Galley area where John and I perched ourselves at one of the picnic tables to play some dominoes.

In the middle of our third game (I was winning, by the way), a local fellow came over saying he wanted to play with us.  Well, okay--what can you say?  As it turned out, he was the cook waiting for the bar owner to arrive with some fresh fish.  The galley wasn't open yet and the fish hadn't arrived, so the cook wanted to play dominoes with us.  He would not tell us his name, so I first called him Willy T, for the boat.  He thought that was rude (funny, a guy joining our game uninvited would think something was rude), so we called him Thornton  which was the official name of the boat.

Shortly after joining us, the bar owner pulled up in his fishing boat so the cook had to go.  We probably would have stayed for dinner had we seen any fresh fish coming off that boat, but there didn't seem to be any.  Here's the cook Thorton up on the bow.

We decided to go back to our boat to make our own supper and get to bed early.  Tomorrow, Friday, will be our last day and we were hoping to snorkel on the Wreck of the Rhone in the morning before sailing back to Road Town by 4 pm to check the boat in at Conch Charters--a busy day ahead!

Here's one last look at the Willy T.