Sandcastle Hotel, White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands
The founders of the Soggy Dollar Bar and Sandcastle Hotel are George and Marie Myrick. They first came to the Caribbean and cruised the island- on the Water Lily, a 53-foot motor-sailer, which they ran as a charter operation and for the owners. They then leased Little Thatch and ran a hotel there. They built the Sandcastle in 1970 and ran it for ten years after which they returned to the America and toured the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Belize. The couple, now in their 80s, live in Florida. They wrote a book about their experience called Incredible Virgin Island Adventure (Which I’m having trouble finding.) and have at least one post on their blog.
More Soggy Dollar Bar 40th Anniversary Party videos:
Soggy Dollar Bar, White Bay, Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands
Saturday the owners of the Sandcastle Hotel and Soggy Dollar Bar celebrated the 40th anniversary of the establishment.
Originally built by George Myrick in 1970, the Sandcastle passed through two more hands, before evolving into it’s present incarnation.
The Soggy Dollar Bar is, among other notables, renowned for the drink invented there by George Myrick, the Painkiller
Anatomy of a Pain Killer:
Caribbean Travel and Life [April 2009]
PAINKILLER
4 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
1 ounce orange juice
1 ounce Coco Lopez coconut cream
2 1/2 ounces Pusser’s rum or dark Jamaican rum
Powdered cinnamon
Ground nutmeg
Shake juices, Coco Lopez and rum with plenty of crushed ice.
Pour unstrained into a tall glass.
Dust with cinnamon and nutmeg.
Garnish with a pineapple wedge, cinnamon stick and orange wheel.
by George and Marie Myrick
Soggy Dollar 1971
Trish and Jerry, Owners of the Soggy Dollar Bar and Sandcastle Hotel
Dr. William Thornton, the designer of the US Capitol Building, was born in Great Harbour Jost Van Dyke in 1759. In later years he lived on Little Jost Van Dyke.
The remains of the Thornton residence lie on a ridge on the Western side of the island overlooking Tortola to the south and Lost Van Dyke to the west.
The following photos illustrate the hike I took with Curtney “Ghost” Chinnery to Dr. Thornton’s home.
Ghost and I put in at the old dock that lies on Little Jost Van Dyke across Long Bay from Foxy’s Taboo. It’s a tough approach and you’ll need a shallow draft boat and some creativity to tie up here.
Once we accomplished that we hiked along the coast and picked up a trail of sorts leading to the remains of an old structure once destined to be a bar and restaurant on the western beach south of Dim Don Point. As we approached the old structure, we needed to keep alert for the numerous suckers that seemed to be just about everywhere.
From the old unfinished and crumpling, bar we bushwhacked up the hill to the ridge where we came upon the remains of the old Thornton residence.
Visit to the Home of Dr. William Thornton, Little Jost Van Dyke BVI
I have an uncanny way of being able to find the Ghost. Case in point the “Scotland Yard Incident.”
It all started one day in 2002 when I came home to find a rather unsettling message on my answering machine. It was from a Detective Sergeant Michael Murfin from Scotland Yard asking me to please give him a call. He left a phone number from the BVI.
I immediately ask myself what I possibly might have done to incur the interest of this venerable law enforcement agency.
I rack my brain. What could they want? What did I do? Should I call? I can’t think of anything and so I decide to call.
“Hello, Detective Sergeant Michael Murfin Scotland Yard, who’s calling?”
“Gerald Singer from St. John”
“Oh good, Mr. Singer. I’m glad you called. We’re coming to St. John in a few days and we’d like to talk to you.”
“What’s this about?” I ask.
“We’ll talk about it when we get there,” he answers, “we’ll call,” and he hangs up.
Mystery still not solved.
Three days later the phone rings.
“Detective Sergeant Michael Murfin, we’re at Cap’s Place in Cruz Bay. Can you come down and talk to us?”
“OK,”
So I go down to Cap’s along with my then girlfriend and there sitting at one of the tables are two casually dressed agents along with their wives.
I identify myself, join them and take a seat looking out at the street.
“So what’s the story?” I ask.
Well, the story goes like this:
The two agents are on Tortola investigating a murder, in which the local BVI police department are getting nowhere. The Scotland yard boys, however are pretty sharp and they have a good lead, a witness or a suspect who was in jail and there was this guy sharing a cell with him that they felt had some information. They didn’t want to approach the guy directly or ask too many questions locally, because they were afraid that the guy would be suspicious and hide or run. In their investigation they find that this fellow with the information has a friend on St. John that could act as an intermediary and that friend is me, and the individual they’re looking for is Curtney Chinnery, the Ghost.
“Would you talk to him,” they ask.
Before I can even answer the question I look out onto the street and who is walking by but none other than the Ghost himself.
“Excuse me a moment,” I say to the agents and walk out onto the street.
I walk over to Ghost and explain the situation and ask him if he wants to talk to the agents. He says, OK and we walk over to Cap’s.
The agents deputize the Ghost on the spot and the information that they gather from him proves to be helpful in the ultimate solving of the case.
Detective Sergeant Michael Murfin and Detective Kenny Allen from Scotland yard, their wives (left), Habiba, the ex girlfriend (between the two agents) and the Ghost (front)
Island Sun August 2, 2002
“Man charged in Bally Murder Case”
On 30 July, Darren Hodge, age 25, a serving prisoner at Balsam Ghut was charged with the murder of Jason Bally. A police sources stated that this case has been unsolved since October 1999. Ag. Commissioner Barry Webb reviewed the case last year and recommended a renewed investigation.
His Excellency Governor Frank Savage agreed to two officers from New Scotland Yard being attached to the investigation team which has been led by Inspector Alexis Charles. The Scotland Yard officers are Detective Sergeant Michael Murfin and Detective Kenny Allen. Experienced RVIPF officers and Attorney General’s office have worked closely with the officers from London for the past six weeks to bring this investigation forward.
Bally, 25, was shot in the street outside the Domino Gas Station in Sea Cows Bay on 15 October 1999. A native of Trinidad, the victim had been employed at Foxy’s Bar on Jost Van Dyke.According to police, investigations revealed that Bally and a male companion were walking along the Sea Cows Bay Public Road in the vicinity of Domino Gas Station when a black male approached them from the gas station area. A loud blast was heard and Bally fell to the ground while his companion escaped unharmed and alerted residents of the area. On examining the gas station police found that an attempted burglary had taken place and recovered items used in that attempt.
While police have gathered enough evidence to bring a murder charge against Darren Hodge, the investigation is still ongoing. There were a number of suspects involved in the attempted break-in of the gas station and efforts continue to collect evidence to prosecute them for burglary and to determine what part, if any, they played in the murder.
The investigation team is still keen to hear from anybody with information about the case. In particular, assistance is sought regarding two gas tanks left at Domino Gas Station by the suspects. It has never been established where these came from, but it is suspected that they were stolen from someone on Tortola. Additionally, the weapon used in the murder is believed to have been a handgun that has not yet been recovered.
Police sources further noted that on 16 December 2001, Darren Hodge who was remanded to H.M. Prison for burglary escaped but later turned himself into police on 17 December. Hodge was due to be released on 19 August 2002, however due to the present matter he will have to reappear in the Magistrate’s Court on 23 October.
Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact the investigation team on a dedicated telephone number: 468-9136. All calls will be treated in the strictest confidence.
the following comes from some notes that I dug up last night:
Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands Notes
In 1980 there was only one vehicle on Jost Van Dyke, a Jeep. There were no paved roads, no electricity, save for a few solar panels and generators, no phone except a radio phone at customs. The ferry, The blue Atlantic, was a hand-made wooden craft capable of handling about 10 people, tops.
Electricity came to Jost Van Dyke in 1990.
My First Automobile Ride In Jost Van Dyke
Saturday, April 15, 1995
It was a beautiful evening. The moon was full, the seas were calm and the sky was clear.
We left Chocolate Hole, on St John just after sunset. The moon rose over the mountains in back of Cruz Bay as we rounded Lind Point on our way to Abe’s in Little Harbour, on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.
Abe's
Abe’s was fairly busy. Bareboaters from Germany, a woman with high heel sneakers and short shorts, a couple from Tortola with a 40 foot Hattaras and some others. Steve, Abe’s son, was tending bar.
We had a big dinner. Lobster, conch, rice and peas, corn and cole slaw.
During dinner I saw a Suzuki Jeep leave from in front of Abe’s house. It got my attention because I never had seen a vehicle on this beach before.
Later, just as we were finishing dinner, the vehicle returned. I saw the driver for the first time. It was Steve. I asked him where he got the jeep, and was it his and where he was going.
It turned out that Kendrick, one of my old friend’s Etien Chinnery’s sons, was now in the business of renting vehicles. Kendrick, who was a former customs officer and bar tender at the Sand Castle in White Harbour had also began Jost Van Dyke’s first ferry business. He had one jeep for rent, this automatic transmission Suzuki Jeep for rent for $35.00 a day. Steve had rented it for three days.
I asked Steve if he’d take us for a ride and being the nice guy that he is, he consented. We went over the mountain to Great Harbour, around the bottom in back of the beach at Great Harbour, passed Rudy’s and then along the waterfront and back to Foxy’s where there was music and dancing.
Foxy had left for the evening and Tessa was closing up the store. Ivan was playing guitar with a local trio. The bar was fairly crowded and everyone was in good spirits. I saw some of the regulars there, Godwin and Nippy and Melvin were dancing with the tourists. My friends, Etien Chinnery and Junie, Abe’s brother from Little Harbour, were over by the band watching the scene.
We were in for a treat, another first for me. Dean, one of Foxy’s sons, was going to do his famous fire dance. It was a great show. Dean was in costume and made up like an African warrior. The sound of drums from the drum machine. He danced with his fire sticks and blew fire out of his mouth like a fire breathing dragon. Then he broke up some liquor bottles in a cardboard box and placed the broken shards on the floor. He danced on the glass and then he danced holding up the biggest man in the house, a 250 pound Brit, in his arms. Dean was quite the showman and I was duly impressed.
After the Dean Spectacular we got back in our rent-a-car and drove back to Abe’s for the moonlight trip back home to St. John.
Thanks Steve. Thanks Dean. Thanks to all my very special Virgin Islands friends!
Great Thatch Island lies just to the north of St. John. The approximately half-mile passage between Great Thatch and the St. John coast from the rocky cliffs of Mary Point and the steep tyre palm covered hillsides between there and Leinster Bay form “the Narrows,” characterized by gusty winds and strong tidal currents.
I’ve snorkeled there and once camped out on the beach, but I always thought of the interior of the island to be impenetrable bush on cliff-like hillsides, maybe suitable for goats, but not people. I was wrong.
Guided by a good friend and knowledgeable Virgin Islander, I took the opportunity to explore for the first time, the island’s interior.
We began our adventure at the site of an unfinished building on the far eastern corner of the long beach on the southern coast. Rumor has it that this was to be a built as a restaurant. Work started about 1997, but was plagued by misfortune. Supposedly a dump truck full of gravel arriving by barge got stuck in the sand and remained stuck for quite some time. It was eventually removed, but I never heard how. The same sand that the truck got stuck in, made the site look like a desirable beach location, but that was an anomaly, the natural state of that section of beach is gravel, to which it returned and is to this day. So much for rumor.
stone retaining wall on lower side of road
We headed straight up the hill in back of the building through a forest of mostly genip trees growing very close together. The vegetation was thick, but passable and we soon came to an old road bed running gradually up along the hillside. We followed the road until my friend inexplicably decided that we should leave the road and continue straight up again towards the ridge, which we did, and which led us to the first of a series of ruins.
Great Thatch, British Virgin Islands
outbuilding above the road
cook house
animal corral
cistern
cookhouse doorway
view from ruin
Smuggling and Great Thatch
I came across this little tidbit of historical information, which gives, among other things, a little picture of life on this island that I always thought to be either uninhabited or at least sparsely so.
“On being informed on November 24 (1856) that a boat belonging to an inhabitant of (Great) Thatch Island was trading without a license, the sub-treasurer of Tortola proceeded to seize it. He soon had to abandon the seizure, however, when he was assaulted and the crew of his boat badly beaten. Two days later, a force consisting of four constables was dispatched by the stipendiary magistrate to arrest the offenders. On landing they were obstructed by 40 or 50 people, and when the persevered and made their arrest were also severely beaten. On the following day, a larger force comprising 30 men, principally rural constables, 12 of whom were armed, was dispatched to quell the spirit of insubordination and to apprehend the offenders. Despite this show of force, it was only the assistance of the Wesleyan missionaries who were influential among the inhabitants, which enabled 16 arrests to be made without active opposition.” From “A History of the British Virgin islands” by Issac Dookhan
Great Thatch’s connection with smuggling may not be confined to the nineteenth century as rumors abound about bales of illicit drugs being found washed up on the shoreline there.
The name of the island itself suggests something nefarious. It is said that Thatch is a corruption of the name Teach and that the islands given the Thatch name, Thatch Cay in the US Virgins, and Great and Little Thatch in the British were named after the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.
Bottles
On our walk we encountered many old bottles as well as other artifacts. It seems that this might help to date how recently people were still living on the island. Many of the bottles it turns out were manufactured by the Portobello bottle company in Edinburgh, Scotland after 1907.
One More T’ing All during our walk we could hear the bleating of a goat, but we could never see him. Just as I was leaving a spotted him…
But women and water are in short supply
There’s not enough dope for us all to get high
I hear it gets better, that’s what they say
As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay From Mañana by Jimmy Buffet
Callwood Rum Distillery, Cane Garden Bay, Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Getting there is half the fun
The weekend get-off-the-rock excursion brought our little gang, Max, Michelle, Ezius and I to Cane Garden Bay on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. We left Great Cruz Bay in what’s been dubbed by my brother, Mario, “The Volvo,” a 15-foot Carib hard bottom inflatable powered by that trusty product of Japanese technology, a 60 horsepower Yamaha four stroke. I love this boat!
Being out at sea in the Virgin Islands never gets old for me. I’m getting kind of tired of all those adjectives to describe our islands, so let me just say that its unbelievably beautiful.
Leaving Great Cruz Bay we head north past the barge landing and Frank Bay and Gallows Point and out little town of Cruz Bay. Rounding Lind Point we run along St. John’s north shore passing beach after beach of the best beaches in the whole world, Salomon, Caneel, Hawksnest, Trunk, Cinnamon, Maho while on our left dozens of cays and rocks enhance the amazing seascape backdropped by the big island of St. Thomas in the west. Next we pass through the Fungi Passage separating Whistling Cay and Mary Point, the rocky cliff side on St. John where it is rumored that the last holdout of rebellious slaves from the 1733 St. John Slave Rebellion committed suicide rather than surrender.
National Park Service Ranger, Denise George. once told me that Fungi Passage got it’s name because like traditional Virgin Islands Fungi, (a dish made with cornmeal and okra and often served with fish as in “fish ‘n’ fungi”) It’s smooth! Maybe she made up that story, but it’s a good one and the passage is invariably calm.
Next we run up the Narrows with the dramatic cliffs and steep hillsides with their stands of tall elegant tyre palms on the St. John side and the island of Great Thatch, named after Edward Teach, or better known as Blackbeard, on the other. And then we cross the channel to Tortola, passing Belmont Bay, also known as Smugglers Cove, then we continue on Tortola’s north coast passing Long Bay and the surfing Meccas of Apple and Carrot Bays and on to out destination fro the day, Cane Garden Bay.
Cane Garden Bay
I remember sailing into Cane Garden Bay some thirty years ago for the first time. The long stretch of white coral sand beach, protected practically it’s whole length by a reef lying about 50 yards offshore was practically deserted. Two commercial establishments offered amenities to locals, tourists and visiting yachtsmen (or to be politically correct should I say yatchtspersons or perhaps yachts men-and-women?) Towards the center of the bay was Stanley’s Welcome Bar with the iconic tire swing hanging from a palm tree and serving fresh Caribbean lobster nightly and on some nights offering music and dancing. Rhymers on the east also had a restaurant, plus there were showers a general store, and rooms available for rent.
Over the years the beach became more and more developed, but notwithstanding it by and large kept its Virgin Islands’ flavor and ambiance. I always thought that the development there was a good thing. A place where you had the opportunity to experience something more than just the normal beach stuff like swimming, sunning and snorkeling. at Cane Garden Bay you could also find real native restaurants, water sports rentals and live music even big concerts with well known artists every once and a while.
We on St. Thomas and St. John didn’t have anything like it. Development of the beaches on St. Thomas was quite another matter. Big condominium projects and hotels bought up the beach fronts, which became their exclusive property. On St. John, the best beaches had become the property of the Virgin Islands National Park with only carefully controlled park concessions on Trunk and Cinnamon Bays, protected but lacking any semblance of Virgin islands native culture. So the moderately developed beaches on Tortola offered a pleasant change and positive addition to the beach experience.
Now, however, a new dynamic has come to play on Cane Garden Bay, as well as some other popular beaches, namely White Bay on Jost Van Dyke and the Baths on Virgin Gorda. We’re talking cruise ships!
On this visit to Cane Garden Bay, when I saw the line of beach lounges three rows deep from one end of the beach to the other, I guess, for me, the development I had once appreciated had become a bit too much.
Talking to some locals, I was given to understand that there is a certain appreciation for the cruise industry as far as the boost it gives to the BVI economy.
On the other hand, many locals worry about the stress cruise ships have on the infrastructure, the environment, the culture and the people of the British Virgin Islands.
Meanwhile for those of us who care, there is no shortage of undeveloped beaches, forests and mountainsides to enjoy not only on Tortola, but also throughout both the British and American Virgin Islands.
Good friends at he Bubbly Pool on Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands
Christmas Day 2009 – Chin, Boopy, Michelle, Zi and G take off to Jost Van Dyke somewhat crowded into the 15-foot inflatable. Although the morning started off with heavy rains, flash flood warnings and a rain probability of 90%, the seas are calm. We make a straight shot to Jost, leaving two heavy squalls one on the port the other on the starboard. We arrive fairly dry.
Jost Van Dyke, BVI: Bubbly Pool Christmas Day 2009
Michelle, Ezius and I at the bakery on the way to the Bubble Pool offering free ham for Christmas
Clouds lie on top of Sage Mountain, the hight peak in the Virgin Islands, almost qualifying it as a rain forest
Mario, Boopy, Michelle and Ezius watch as a giant wave breaks over the rocks at the entrance to the Bubbly Pool
the broken wave enters the pool
the pool settles, the crew awaits the next swell
Dinner at Abe's by the Sea, Little Harbor, Jost Van Dyke BVI
The photo below came from the book “The Virgin Islands, Pleasure Spots in the Caribbean,” by Bruce G. Lynn. It was published in 1970. The photo below is mine taken a few days ago.
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