Sun, Surf, SAIL : Cruising the U.S. and British Virgin Islands

New York was gray and bleak. Unseasonal sleet and snow rattled windows, flipped umbrellas and chilled the winter-weary soul. It was late April.

Enough was enough. I picked up a yachting magazine, then the telephone, and began dialing. An hour later I called my girlfriend: “Cancel everything. We’re going sailing in the Caribbean.”

Five days later, we were. Our hastily chartered 31-foot sloop, appropriately named Surprise, was heeled over in a stiff afternoon breeze off St. John. Spray sparkled off our bow, flying fish skipped across turquoise waves, and a brilliant blue-and-yellow rainbow beckoned over distant green mountains.

That night, anchored off a shining Francis Bay sand beach with waving palms and gentle surf, we celebrated our freedom from winter’s woes with a $2 bottle of the best dark Cruzian rum and with cheeseburgers grilled on the boat’s tiny charcoal barbecue.

Suddenly, as the full moon bathed the bay in a soft glow, the distant, dark skies erupted with the rumble and roar of the fireworks that mark the close of Carnival Week on St. Thomas. We cracked a bottle of cold Champagne to acknowledge the welcome.

Thus did two unseasoned salts and sailing amateurs begin eight days of cruising the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. Neither Maggy nor I had ever attempted a week’s sailing by ourselves.

I had reasons to be reluctant. When I began sailing four years earlier, 11 friends and I sailed for 10 days aboard two large mid-cockpit cutters based in Tortola. By trip’s end, one couple had broken their engagement and, except for the shouting, were barely speaking. Our captain, given to drink and other distractions, had developed a disturbing habit of falling overboard.

More recently, in December, I had helped a friend sail his 60-foot staysail schooner from St. Croix to St. Thomas. After 10 long hours of six-foot seas and wild winds, we had jointly sworn off sailing and agreed to open a bar called “Fools, Felons and Failures” as a warning to other mariners.

This time, I need not have worried. Even a nervous night of dragging anchor (no damage), two days of steady rain (we got wet) and three days with no engine (we sailed without it) didn’t dampen the fun.

First, the sailing. The Virgin Islands are justly famed as prime cruising waters, with steady eastern trade winds and well-marked reefs, and with anchorages in more than 100 islands and cays. Hurricanes are rare and tides are negligible.

Most navigating is done by eye, with islands usually in view. Even the crystal-clear waters are easy to read: Deep water is inky blue; sand gives off an emerald or turquoise tint; coral heads and rocks appear as black or brown blotches.

More than two dozen Virgin Islands sailboat-chartering companies offer everything from simple 28-footers built for two to sleek America’s Cup racing veterans and huge floating palaces complete with VCRs, microwave ovens and air conditioning. For those unwilling or unable to go bareboat, captains and crew are available.

To charter, prospective captains must attest to sufficient sailing experience. Even so, most charter companies offer cram courses for neophyte navigators and provide detailed charts and guidebooks. Displayed in one chart book are aerial photos of 50 anchorages; another contains drawings profiling the horizon as seen from the helm.

Most companies also offer full provisioning by telephone, which enables crews to order their food and drink from shore before their arrival. We didn’t have time for that, so I spent two hours and $140 in a supermarket for a week’s worth of milk, eggs, wine, frozen meats and other staples.

I had chartered with Avery’s Boat-yard, which advertises itself as the oldest chartering company in St. Thomas. At first glance, it looks it. In the old native quarter of Frenchtown, the yard is cluttered with dilapidated dinghies and debris, and several once-proud yachts hug the pier.

The price, however, was right: $790 for eight days. And Surprise was clean, sleek and yare. It had a forward V-berth for sleeping, a well-equipped galley and a comfortable living area and was sloop-rigged with a mainsail and jib.

The next morning, owners Dick and Marty Griffin spent three hours with us explaining the intricacies of the boat’s plumbing, propane stove, diesel engine, icebox, rigging and radio. Over coffee and charts they offered navigating tips and warnings, restaurant recommendations and good luck.

By mid-afternoon we were sailing out past the cruise ships in Charlotte Amalie Harbor, tacking past big Buck Island, Christmas Cove and St. James Island. Our course was around the east of St. Thomas to St. John and on through the archipelago.

Once underway, I explained the law of the sea. I was captain. Maggy was chief crew and coffee mate.

Maggy, a literary type, responded with dark allusions to “The Old Man and the Sea,” “Casabianca” and “Moby Dick.” We would share all cooking and dishwashing, and she would answer to “She walks in beauty like the night,” or not at all. Domestic peace reigned henceforth.

By our second day, after a glorious afternoon with the breeze behind us and the sails billowing wing-on-wing before us, we anchored off Jost Van Dyke. Named for a Dutch pirate, the small, mountainous, British-owned island has no roads, no cars and no electricity.

We rowed ashore in our dinghy the next day and hiked for a mile or so up a muddy path, past tangled mangroves and banana trees, bleating goats and pink frangipani, to Great Harbor. Two dozen sailboats were anchored off a graceful, palm-lined beach with three beachfront bars, a small white church and a customhouse.

At Foxy’s, an open-air bar built of ships’ timbers and thatch, a barefoot troubadour named Foxy Tamarind held court with a worn guitar, a barnacle-encrusted voice and calypso tunes with bawdy modern lyrics. Wonderfully rude songs about “King Reagan” and “Grenada” wafted over the harbor.

By late afternoon, we had followed a winding cow path over the next hill to the Sandcastle at White Bay, one of the loveliest coves in the islands. Four small bungalows, a tiny French restaurant and the Soggy Dollar Bar are hidden in purple bougainvillea, pink hibiscus and towering coconut palms along an empty sugar-sand beach.

Except for waves crashing on the reef and ungainly brown pelicans divebombing the aquamarine bay, little disturbs the tranquillity.

In Little Harbor that night, we found thumping disco and fresh langouste and shrimp at Sidney’s Peace and Love Bar, a ramshackle outdoor emporium made of thatch palm.

We were sailing in the off-season, after April 15, when prices and crowds are down. We soon discovered why. By 2 a.m. we were on deck untying our cockpit canopy from gusting winds and torrential rains and fending off another boat that had swung too close.”It never rains in the Caribbean,” I reassured my crew several hours later as we struggled to untangle our dinghy from someone’s anchor in sheets of drenching rain.

When the storm broke two days later, we ran. The morning mists draped Great Thatch and St. John in a chiaroscuro wash, fading and reappearing in the steel-gray clouds like a Chinese landscape painting; wet clothes draped Surprise like a Chinese laundry.

We headed happily east for Drake’s Anchorage on Moskito Island, about 25 miles away, off Virgin Gorda. Beating upwind at six knots, we passed the green northern coast of Tortola under a welcome sun and cloudless skies.

The small, exclusive resort island of Moskito has oyster flats, pristine beaches and cottages for 24 guests. We hiked along the shore to Long Beach, famed for its dazzling reef.

For two hours we wandered in wonder, snorkeling over underwater forests of pronged staghorn and elkhorn coral, mountains of bulbous brain and green star coral, gardens of orange and white flower coral. Giant fans waved in the surge.

Many crews combine scuba diving with sailing, cruising from reef to wreck to reef again. More than 130 ships have been wrecked on the reefs off Anegada alone, where one historical account from the 1830s noted that “the indolence of the inhabitants is only thoroughly aroused by the cry ‘A vessel on the reef!’ ”

Several diving companies can be contacted by ship’s radio and will send a launch to anchorages to pick up divers for the day. Most popular is the wreck of the Rhone, a British mail ship that sank in 1867 in a hurricane off Salt Island. Now covered with fans, sponges and gorgonians, the ship was used for the movie “The Deep.”

On Virgin Gorda we taxied to the Baths, where hundreds of house-size granite rocks and boulders are jumbled together along the southwestern shore. Climbing over and among them, we found tiny translucent pools in hidden grottoes, aglow with soft sunlight filtering between the giant gray boulders.

Underwater, blue tangs, yellow angelfish and red cardinal fish darted between the rocks, playing in the shadows. Checkered groupers and angelfish fed on the coral, and schools of striped minnows suddenly shimmered like sapphires in the dappled morning light.

Down in Sir Francis Drake Channel, we snorkeled into four caves on secluded Norman Island, one of the reputed models for Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” We saw a silver barracuda and stalagmites and stalactites cast in green, pink and gold. It seemed treasure enough.

Nearby was Deadman’s Chest Island of yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum fame. Legend has it that Blackbeard, the pirate, marooned several men here with a cutlass and a bottle of rum to teach them about survival. What they learned remains unclear, because the legend doesn’t indicate that they survived.

And at Manchioneel Bay on Cooper Island, where only four people live on a triple-humped speck in the ocean, we watched a golden sunset through waving palms while dining on delicate, delicate, grilled triggerfish caught on the reef where we’d spent the afternoon searching for sea turtles.

Thus we settled into a routine: Get up, eat a mango or papaya for breakfast, snorkel to the nearest reef, and later set sail for the next tropical paradise. At night, eat aboard or party ashore. Then do it again the next day.

Sailing usually means learning from your mistakes. As captain, I burned my knee, dropped a hatch on my fingers, slammed my head on the boom, twice had to untangle the dinghy line from the propeller, slipped on a jib sheet and almost fell overboard. “She walks etc.” found all this somehow amusing.

Dozens of companies offer sailboats for bareboat and crewed charters in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. Early reservations are advised, particularly for the Dec. 15-April 15 season. Prices vary depending on company, boat and season. A week for six aboard a luxurious 43-foot sloop from the Moorings, P.O. Box. 139, Road Town, Tortola, B.V.I., telephone (800) 535-7289, the area’s largest charter company, ranges from $1,477 in summer to $2,786 over Christmas. We chartered through Avery’s Boathouse, P.O. Box 3693S, St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., 00801, telephone (809) 776-0113, the area’s oldest charterer. Rates usually include linens, crockery, initial fuel and ice, snorkel gear and dinghy with motor. Scuba gear and windsurfers are usually extra. Most companies offer provisioning, costing about $14 to $25 a person a day. Many can provide a captain and crew, or sailing lessons. Discount air fares are often available with package tours.