Teaching Parents To Sail In The BVI

David Peters and his girlfriend Frances spend a week teaching her parents to sail in the BVI.

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‘We’ve sailed a dinghy around Millwall docks, but this is a bit different!’ After a week sleeping aboard, knot practice, dinghy training – which was a slightly terrifying experience for all involved – and lots of land-based fun on Tortola, my girlfriend Frances’s parents, Mick and Mandy, were ready to set sail for the week.

Frances and I were skipper and mate. Our crew, her parents, were slightly anxious about trusting the kids to sail them around for a week. Frances and I had been living aboard Venture of Tortola, a Beneteau 50, in the British Virgin Islands for five months, travelling to work at the local dive shop by dinghy. Fran had worked on a private charter boat while I was on the water most days picking people up on various islands and diving nearby. So we had plenty of favourite spots to show them.

Sailing for cocktails

The first leg was a beam reach to Great Harbour, Peter Island. It was a perfect start, taking just 45 minutes in 10 knots of wind. On arrival, we jumped in for a snorkel with a hawksbill turtle, then later toasted our maiden voyage with an outrageously expensive and rather fruity cocktail on the beach at Dead Man’s Bay. The bay overlooks Dead Chest Island, half a mile offshore, where the pirate Blackbeard is said to have marooned 12 mutineers with only a bottle of rum between them. The story goes that they could not swim and those who tried to make it to Peter Island drowned and washed up on Dead Man’s Bay with swollen chests, much like the sloping crest of Dead Chest Island.