Old Year's Night at Foxy's, BVI 2012-2013

After Christmas in St. Thomas,we left Lindbergh Bay and headed for Coral Bay, both of us hankering for delicious bacon bleu /cheese burgers and the old hippy vibe at Skinny Legs Bar and Grill.  We anchored out near the channel markers, next to the orphaned sloop ACATSGRIN, with her mast hung down alongside and her moorings festooned with seaweed, unchanged from last year.

Coral Bay, St. John,  USVI

 Also unchanged is the gang of friendly pirates at Skinny Legs, from Robby the peerless burger chef, Tiny with bootleg lobsters in  his backpack, and Laura the bartender, who is now starting up a day charter business. We stayed for an evening and left the next morning (Dec. 27) for Jost Van Dyke to get a good anchoring spot ahead of the hoards arriving for Old Years Night at Foxy’s, the Times Square of the Caribbean.

We got settled and headed over to White Bay to the beach, the finest beaches we have visited since April in Antigua. Blazing turquoise waters and ivory sands welcomed us, and we wandered among the visitors and met a lot of nice people. 

White Bay, Jost Van Dyke.  Lotsa fudgies!

Di met the Uncle Wendell, a local fisherman and mahi connection, and Toughest, a lean and muscular workman who was digging out a pig-roasting pit, and the same man who felled three coconut trees with a cutlass just before Christmas and gave Di two jelly coconuts. We danced to a great band at Gertrudes, met up with Captain Ron, Randy’s pal from Coral Bay with starboard (red) and port (green) toenail polish, and Gary from Boston, recovering from cancer, who kept us company and provided lots of savvy local knowledge. We also met Grady-mon and Hyas, local dudes here for the Old Year’s beach party.

Each day the beach filled with a larger and larger, younger crowd, ‘til Old Year’s Day when it looked like Panama City Beach at Spring Break. We met up with Tracy and Angie from “Caribbean Rose”, a boat we knew from our months in St. Thomas, and Englishman Bill aboard Corus, a fine 1984 Whitby out of Roadtown, Tortola whom we encountered last year. Delightful folks. 

Corus of Roadtown, a 1984 Whitby

Randy enjoyed watching as arriving boats did the anchoring show, speeding in on the approach and dropping anchor and chain like a bowl of spaghetti off the bow, then dropping back to within 6 feet of other boats in the neighborhood.  We made sure to hang fenders all around our boat and drop the solar panels to a protected position in case someone dragged down on us. Randy hauled Di up in the bosun's chair to photograph the crowded harbor.  What a view!

We bought tickets for Old Year Night to see the concert at Foxy’s Outback, featuring Tarrus Riley , said by all to be a great performer. 

Old Year's Night at Foxy's---Randy was the most photographed person there!

 We spent the day at the beach, rested up a bit, enjoyed a wonderful American porterhouse steak dinner grilled by Randy, with mushrooms in garlic-wine reduction and creamy mashed potatoes and asparagus, and Freixinet Cordon Negro to bubble in the new year. Then we headed ashore.  Well, the concert was interesting.  It started with an OK local dance band at around  1030.  The second band was a white rasta guy who sounded like Sting on a bad day. Midnight passed with a ten second countdown and issues with the sound system… a few cheap thrills when they dropped in part of a Bob Marley song to fill some dead air time… next came a lip sync act which left the crowd flat.  At 0130 came Tarras Riley at last, but by that time we had nicknamed him “Tarrus Bulba” and couldn't really appreciate the show, due to the late hour and the botched warm-up acts. (I think he’s good and would buy his CD- his musicians were professional, but alas the production was not.)  We stayed for about six songs and were ready to leave, weaving through the solid bouncing mass of young partiers dancing to the techno outside at Foxy’s.

New Years Day, we awoke at 0600 as usual (ugh), drank two pots of strong coffee, and in dinghied over to the beach for one last time.  We did a slow-motion stroll up the beach and back, and collapsed on the pontoons of our dinghy to lie in the sun like beached walruses.

Happy New Year 2013 to all our blog friends and family.  Love, Randy and Di