2014 – another busy year at Nanny Cay. It started with one of those “ahhh” moments when we rescued a baby turtle from the marina.
February/March
We were the production home for Series 2 of Bravo TV’s Below Deck which followed crew life aboard Ohana, a 10 million dollar private luxury yacht. If you did’t catch the show you can get a good taste of it on Bravo’s official Below Deck page, and then download to iTunes for your viewing pleasure!
April
A busy few months in the marina and boatyard built up to the annual BVI Spring Regatta & Sailing festival in April. April 7th saw the conclusion of the 43rd event. Sunshine and 20-plus knot breeze welcomed participants to the final day. Three consecutive days of great racing gave an exciting weekend for competitors and the week-long festival drew more than 3,500 visitors to Nanny Cay.
See all the photos here.
May
It was the kids’ turn next. Sunshine, calm winds, good food and fun entertainment made for an enjoyable 2014 Dinghy Championships hosted by the Royal BVI Yacht Club here in May. We also became an AIS receiving station. The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is intended to help ships avoid collisions, as well as assisting port authorities to better control sea traffic.
Yachts sailing under the flags of 13 different nations set sail from Nanny Cay on Saturday May 3rd for their offshore adventures as part of two World Cruising Club Spring rallies; ARC Europe and ARC USA. Venturing west to east across the Atlantic, 34 boats sailed with ARC Europe; 7 from Portsmouth, Virginia, USA and 25 from Nanny Cay, with one joining in Bermuda.
June
In June we activated a new filtration system for the boatyard manufactured by Encyclon Inc, a leading cyclonic filtration system manufacturer. This new system gave us another level of water filtration on the hundreds of boats that are hauled and pressure-washed in our boatyard every year. Nanny Cay also became home to Sailon BVI, the only provider of Royal Yachting Association (RYA) courses in the BVI.
July
The 16th annual Premier’s Cup took place at Nanny Cay on the weekend of 19 and 20 July. The annual event brings together young people between the ages of 10 and 18 from all over the Caribbean for a weekend of fellowship and competition.
August
On August 21, we announced the sudden and tragic death of friend and colleague, Gary Roy. He is sadly missed. Gary, as manager of Peg Legs Restaurant, was a popular, hard-working, and integral part of the Nanny Cay hospitality team. A celebration of his life, which as a great send-off, was held on the beach October 30th.
September
On September 3rd, Victor Mooney, transatlantic rower, left Nanny Cay on the next stage of his epic self-propelled journey. He was heading for Puerto Rico, then up to the Bahamas and his final destination of New York – 1,800 miles later. The BVI’s new Governor, John Duncan, was here to see him safely on his way. His onward journey was not without incident and he was sadly robbed and wrecked in Haiti. However, Spirit of Malabo has since been recovered, and returned to the US. Miami based Spencer Boat Company is on standby to repair the boat so Victor can complete the final 1,500 mile row to New York. The rower expects to launch the Spirit of Malabo at the Miami International Boat Show in February.
Mike Hirst and Mark Cochran established the benchmark Round Tortola Record for the Nanny Cay Challenge for a Stand Up Paddleboard on a calm weekend in late September. They clocked a surprisingly fast time of 7 hours and 9 minutes. Hirst and Cochrane left Nanny Cay at 5:04am and landed back at 12:13pm. The pair had been waiting for a calm weather window for some time.
October
October saw the hotel and marina receptions merge and relocate together with the Captain’s Lounge and Lending Library, to what was previously just the hotel reception. In the marina, to ease congestion on the main fuel dock, and speed the entire refueling process, we added a mobile fueling cart to K dock. On October 16, five Nanny Cay based businesses collected six Virgin Islands Property & Yacht Readers’ Choice Awards. For the fourth year in a row, Nanny Cay scooped “Best BVI Marina” with 48% of the vote.
At a ceremony held on the lawns of the Nanny Cay Hotel, Premier, Dr. the Honourable D. Orlando Smith, OBE, received his trophy for winning this year’s “Island Sloop Sailing Festival Regatta Annual Festival Races”.
November
November 5-8, ours docks were filled with the great and the good of the BVI crewed yacht industry for the 33rd annual Charter Yacht Show organized by the BVI Charter Yacht Society.
In late November, 10 intrepid yachts set off into the teeth of 25-knot winds and rain in the 45th Peg Legs Round Tortola Race. Just under four hours later, vintage trimaran Triple Jack was first across the finish line off Nanny Cay, followed by Spike, a J/111, 47 minutes and 13 seconds later. Pipe Dream crossed the line just under 22 minutes after Spike.
This was swiftly followed by the arrival of the 2014 Caribbean 1500. After a one-day weather delay, and a long passage at sea for some, the 2014 Caribbean 1500 – a special 25th edition of the annual event – wrapped up in Tortola with the final prizegiving on Saturday, November 15 here at Nanny Cay. Yachts began arriving into Nanny Cay late in the evening on November 10, with the 80′ carbon-fibre Falcon first to finish in just over seven days. We demolished the old lockers and on the last day of November we celebrated the End Of Movember.
