A Pirate’s Life

A couple charters a boat and plunders for pleasure for an adventurous week in the British Virgin Isles

I've always had a thing for Johnny Depp. As an elderly Japanese friend of mine used to say while watching old samurai movies, "That one, he can put his shoes under my bed any time."

Johnny, leaping rakishly from the rigging into Caribbean waters, dreadlocks flying, is a sight to make my mermaid spirit soar and my middle-age heart pound. So when my brother Ian called with a last-minute invitation to join him for a week's cruising aboard a sailboat in the British Virgin Islands, my imagination went wild. We would spend a week cruising (without the kids!) island to island, across the very same waters where Capt. Jack Sparrow gave merry chase to the sinister Lord Beckett.

Nikolai, my longtime sweetie and father to our 7- and 8-year-old boys, Max and Leo, might be no Johnny Depp, but for 18 years he's been the best mate a girl could ask for. Yet, truth be told, the heart-pounding moments &emdash; well, let's just say no one's needed a defibrillator in our house for a while.

The decision was made; we would set off looking to plunder the riches of the turquoise seas, my man and I. Not having been away from our children for longer than 24 hours in more than eight years, we weren't sure what riches we'd unearth. I actually wondered if we'd have anything to talk about without the kids around.

A last-minute mileage booking from Honolulu to San Juan, Puerto Rico, put us in line to catch the puddle jumper to Beef Island. I caught my first glimpse of our destination from my spot in the co-pilot's seat. We were flying through enormous pillars of white clouds shot through with the deepening light of a purple and flame-colored sunset.

The cluster of lush green islands faded gradually from view as the sun sank behind the horizon and our pilot set us down on Beef Island, adjacent to the island of Tortola, where a company, the Moorings, runs one of the largest charter boat fleets in the world.

Beef Island joins a long list of decidedly pedestrian names in the British Virgin Islands &emdash; monikers like Road Town, Fat Hogs Bay, Pockwood Pond and Sea Cows Bay. Fortunately, what these places lack in romantic nomenclature they make up for with real romance and a history of real, as well as cinematic, piracy.

WHEN CHRISTOPHER Columbus first encountered this corner of the Caribbean in 1493, the sight of dozens of lusciously green, pristine islands led him to name them Las Once Mil las Virgenes (11,000 Virgins) after the legendary St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins. The islands' place names reflect a 500-year history of European maritime presence, with ships stocking up on beef at Beef Island, pork at Fat Hogs Bay, salt at Salt Island and so forth.

Early settlers built cotton and sugar plantations and before long were exporting enormous quantities of rum and molasses back to England. Any time you have valuable cargo afloat in isolated seas, there will be unsavory characters ready to make a grab for it.

Edward Teach, the notorious brigand otherwise known as Blackbeard, terrorized these waters, albeit in his distinctively gentlemanly way. And just a few days' sail to the south, in the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the studly Johnny Depp and his intrepid crew made cinematic history with this summer's "The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

Half an hour after our plane touched down on Beef Island, my heart was already racing, though not yet from romance. The driver of our careening airport jitney kept repeating, "I don't like to drive slowly," in a relaxed Caribbean lilt as he tore past slower vehicles on blind hairpin turns and raced, hell bent for leather, down the steep single-lane road to the harbor.

We'd be spending the night aboard our 40-foot Beneteau monohull sloop and setting sail in the morning. As we staggered down the dock, laden with scuba gear and somewhat diminished by nearly 24 hours of air travel, I heard my brother Ian shout from the cockpit of what would be our floating home for the next seven days, "Ready for a rum punch?" Aye, aye, captain!

Northern Lights, our bareboat, was cozy and pristine, all teak veneer and deep blue fabric, with a serviceable galley. The staterooms had a distinctly cozy and romantic appeal, with far more creature comforts than Capt. Sparrow's brigantine, the Black Pearl. After drinks on board and dinner in Road Town, an aptly named industrial little burg, we collapsed into our berths and were rocked gently to sleep like infants in Mother Ocean's cradle.

MORNING DAWNED fair and clear, with just enough breeze to refresh our sleepy crew. We cast off the lines and set sail for Norman Island.

A bareboat charter, as opposed to a crewed charter, means you sail the boat yourself. I'm not much of a sailor, but fortunately we had three more-than-capable sailors on board: Ian, our fearless captain; his wife, Bonny Jean; and Courtney Wilson, all veterans of several Caribbean sailing trips.

Clearing the harbor, Ian gave the signal to raise the main, and, as the wind filled our sail, Northern Lights surged forward eagerly. Bonny and Courtney worked to unfurl the jib, and I jumped around uselessly, jitterbugging with excitement. We were on our way!

Norman Island lies directly across the Sir Francis Drake Channel and is guarded by he Indians, four jagged rock pinnacles rising 50 feet from the ocean floor. The Indians seemed to watch impassively as we dropped the sails on the way into the sheltered cove ringed with low, green hills where we would spend the night: the Bight at Norman Island.

After tying up to one of many permanent mooring balls, we readied the inflatable dinghy to go snorkeling at Norman Island Caves at the west end of the island. We moored the dinghy in front of sheer cliffs pierced with deep vertical crevices and plunged into the clear, 85-degree water.

Swimming into the cooler, dimly illuminated, room-size caves, we spied a juvenile spiny lobster peek shyly from its hiding place. Enormous schools of silvery baitfish surrounded us as though we were just one of the finned family, and gentle currents rocked us back and forth as we watched a cleaner wrasse peck delicately around a grouper's gills.

Norman Island is widely known as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's book "Treasure Island," and it's not hard to see why: The mysterious caves, hidden cove and forbidding cliffs would tempt anyone's imagination.

That night, we dinghied ashore to the Pirates Bight Bar and Grill for dinner. The primitive, open-air shack topped by a rusting metal roof didn't look promising, but boy, were we surprised by the sophistication of the food.

OUR SECOND DAY at sea found us approaching the wreck of the RMS Rhone. Once the pride of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., she went down hard in a storm in 1867, breaking in two in the shallows off Salt Island. The 300-foot Rhone is now a marine park managed under the British Virgin Islands National Parks Trust, and with good reason. I've dived wrecks in two hemispheres, and the Rhone is the oldest and best preserved I've encountered. The array of marine life that has made her its home is astounding.

Nikolai, Ian and I donned our gear and followed a buoy line, hand over hand, attached to the Rhone's bow section, which lies at 80 feet. All popular dive sites in the BVIs have buoys provided by the National Parks Trust to protect the fragile reefs from anchor damage.

Brandishing our dive lights, we swam into the largely intact steel hull and came face to face with a spiny lobster the size of a cocker spaniel. This arthropod had no fear. Waving its 3-foot antennae, it nonchalantly scuttled away to join other huge lobsters, seemingly aware that it lived in a national park, forever protected from hungry human hunters.

As we emerged from the ghostly shadow of the cargo hold into the sunlight of the surrounding reef, the specter of long-dead seamen was replaced by brilliantly illuminated Caribbean reef diversity.

We finned our way to the shallower stern section of the wreck, past the enormous prop, enchanted by a Dr. Seuss landscape of crenellated color &emdash; soft corals, sea fans, barrel sponges and crinoids. This range of invertebrate species, not found in isolated Hawaii, provided a Technicolor backdrop to the multitudinous fish, flitting like birds among the coral "trees."

We were hooting and hollering with glee as we surfaced and snorkeled back to the boat. Nikolai, an avid lobster diver, said, "Even if I could have tried for that lobster, it would have been impossible. It would have taken me for a ride!"

That night, we grilled mahimahi on the boat's barbecue and served it with fresh vegetables, red potatoes and Ian's famous rum punch.

One of the beauties of a bareboat charter from a well-established company like the Moorings is that provisioning has been refined to a science. Capt. Ian, soon to be known as Capt. Cocktayle, had simply ordered all the food and drinks from the master list online. It was delivered dockside the day of our arrival.

Our most pristine destination was White Bay, Guana Island. The only portion of the island on which we were allowed to set foot allowed us a glimpse of manicured croquet fields bordered by antique cannons and a tiny, luxury hotel perched on the steep hills above.

The island is privately owned, painfully exclusive and available to rent for a mere $21,500 a day. But the young sea turtle that circled our boat all morning, popping up as though to say "hi" every few minutes, could not have cared less. Neither could the schools of blue-lined baitfish or the black-headed boobies circling our mast in the achingly blue sky. And, walking hand in hand across the sugary white sand that edged the bay, neither could we.

Each mooring brought new delights. The Baths at Virgin Gorda have been called the "Stonehenge of the Caribbean" &emdash; gorgeous granite monoliths sheltering a labyrinth of shady pools and hidden grottoes. We scrambled across the granite flanks of three-story boulders, picked mangoes in the shade and snorkeled in gin-clear waters.

Sandy Cay is an uninhabited tropical island planted in exotic species by scions of the Rockefeller family. We hiked to its highest point overlooking the island of Jost van Dyke, and Ian reminisced that the last time he and Bonny were here, they were naked as jaybirds. Though we kept our bathing suits on, we did loll like lazy manatees in the turquoise waters surrounding the island.

The week flew by in a hedonistic haze. We were pirates plundering for pleasure, and we were getting rich. I worked on my sailing chops with short, easy sails in the channels between the islands. We'd get the main and jib up, heel over, put Jimmy Buffet or Bob Marley on the CD player and grin wildly at each other with the utter joy of flying across the blue Caribbean, the wind filling our sails and setting our spirits soaring.

As we nestled together on the 10-hour flight home, I looked over at Nikolai, sleeping next to me, and my mermaid spirit was blissful. We'd ravaged the Caribbean with a pirate's delight and made off with the finest treasure of all: renewed delight in each other's company, long-absent friskiness in our relationship and deepened love &emdash; the most valuable swag to be found upon the briny deep.

Ar be dar, matey, and eat your heart out, Johnny.

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