Oh pirates, yes there here… Exploring past the painkiller – Consider a day beyond anchoring out in the beautiful Cane Garden Bay on Tortola’s North Shore. Hills funnel cool breezes across a pristine white sandy beach tease you ashore to explore the beauty of the Northern Shore. If by definition the southern shore of Tortola holds the Islands financial and administrative hub, then the Northern Shore rests in opposition. It remains untouched, serene, less developed and a different outlook. Why not take a Dinghy ashore and relax on the beach, enjoy cocktails and soak up the sun. However, let us tease you a little further. The road you can see winding up the hill at 40 degrees travels through Sage Mountain and down again onto the southern shore hides more attractions. In the hills you will find the tropical rain forest on Sage Mountain, from its lookouts enjoy some of the best views of the island chain and a feeling that you are somewhere else completely, light filters through lush greenery.
If you take a road trip up the right hand track of Cane through windy Hill you would arrive at Carrot Bay. This is a quiet community that hosts the gem Carrot Bay Shell Museum and restaurant, littered with shells and other artefacts from the sea, it has a museum holding wooden signage documenting the old way of communication on the island, paint a sign and leave it up as if it were a telegraph. A bulletin board of yesteryear and you will marvel and add colour and imagination to the signs of old which have timeless humour.
Another hill finds you at Capoons Bay and then Apple Bay, home of the Bomba Shack and its infamous full moon parties. In the water here you will see the majestic northern Atlantic swells lifting surfers onto waves to carve patterns on this, the oceans canvass. Take a stroll through the mile long white sands beach of Long Bay to the serene quiet bay of Smugglers Cove for one of the most beautiful beaches in the islands. Snorkelling is fantastic but beware it’s going to be hard to leave. Above you lies Belmont Estates where many have sought property and beautiful homes in the BVI. To be this far west is at a point of the island, continue around the corner you are on the southern west point into Sopers Hole and the Thatch Island, that was once the old stomping ground of Blackbeard.
Left track out of Cane Garden leads you through a winding pass blown open many years ago by sticks of dynamite to create the current roads. Let the views draw you in as you look over the Butterfly Reef of Andersons Point and Shark Bay. Carry on east till you drop into Josiah’s Bay, a spectacular beach at the end of a valley which was once a thriving plantation. Lush green backdrops on this cove give an ocean view of a beach that never quite looks the same through the winter. From, calm and crystal clear one day the water is transformed by Northern swells to peeling waves over naturally formed sand bars creating a surfers paradise, energy surging day and night. On the beach the mounds of sand on its shores hide turtle eggs, natures little secret at this beach.
The first thing you will notice about tripping on the Northern Shore is its lack of built up areas surpassed by its natural beauty and sense of discovery. The rest will be your adventure should you choose to seek it, and if you are out here chartering or vacationing in the British Virgin Islands, you are welcome, we know you are hear for far more than sailing or soaking up the sun shine , so enjoy, as we do that live and work here.