Sail away into the British Virgin Islands

By Olivia Stren

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest,

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest,

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

So goes the famous sea shanty from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, referring to the British Virgin Islands' Dead Chest, where Blackbeard allegedly stranded 15 mutinous sailors with only a bottle of rum for company. From a distance, Dead Chest Island looks, appropriately, like a giant moss-bearded corpse, mountainous of belly and forever becoffined in foam-laced Caribbean waters.

Like many of the BVI's more than 50 islets, Dead Chest is uninhabited and is only accessible if not by pirate ship, then by boat. Which is how I came to visit the British Virgin Islands this past June, aboard a 39i monohull sailboat, the Second Wind, with Roy, a skipper and lifelong mariner, who moved about with the languor of passing clouds and spoke (rarely and with melting slowness) about windward tacks and luffing sails.

Before boarding the Second Wind (chartered by Sunsail), my experience of the open water extended mostly to viewings of Titanic and wearing nautical stripes. None of which proved terribly useful training for spending a week on the water. (Especially in midsummer, when the air was so dense you needed to untangle it before breathing.)

Sunsail's handsome wood-trimmed vessels, with self-furling jibs, claim four bedrooms – although “room” is a charitable term for the berths, which could make sleeping in a pencil case seem luxurious. And that is to say nothing of the absurdist terms “bathroom” and “shower.” But, mercifully, you'll spend very little time below deck. (Be advised that time spent below deck, a place that could make hell seem balmy, should be spent in the delightful company of Dramamine.)

The sailing experience – camping on the high seas – often is as physically demanding as it can be decadent, pampering you with scenes of sunshine dressing turquoise waters in diamond tiaras, with only the sounds of ruffling waves and sails fighting the winds. One late afternoon, as I enjoyed gin and Ting on deck, Christopher Cross's Sailing playing in the background, our boat plying Tiffany-blue swells, I felt the need to spend the rest of my days asail, wearing breeze-wrinkled linens and a suntan.

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