THE RUM PUNCHES BACK

They put-putted to and fro through the anchorage, sometimes eight to a boat, butts on identical gray Hypalon tubes, feet planted on identical white fiberglass soles, their delighted movements testimony to the inflatable RIB’s notable buoyancy. As it happened, the RIB riders were nearly all charter boat customers, who, like us, had chosen Anegada for the night. The location itself was incidental, however; the same scene was being echoed in a dozen anchorages throughout the British Virgin Islands.

My mission was to gauge how well the BVI marine infrastructure had recovered since September 6, 2017, the day Hurricane Irma (followed by her handmaiden, Maria) rolled through the islands, causing utter devastation.

“In the days after Irma, apocalyptic images of the boats in Paraquita Bay circulated on social media and in international press reports,” Conor King Devitt wrote for The BVI, about the hurricane hole that BVI charter fleets share at Tortola. “The photos—displaying wrecked yachts stacked like the Anegada conch shell piles—gave many owners and charter operators little hope for the future of their businesses.”