Back in the BVI
A bead of sweat trickles down my temple as I hunch over the RIB’s bow, extending the painter just enough to take a wrap around the dinghy mooring line off Salt Island’s Black Rock Point. In the gin-clear water, about 30 feet beneath me, await the remains of the Royal Mail Service steamer Rhone that splintered on the rocks during a hurricane in 1867 and that today stands among the British Virgin Islands’ must-do dive sites.
As with any dive, the lead-up included an adrenaline rush and a bit of uncertainty. Once the dinghy was secured and the dive flag was deployed, I spit in my mask, swirled the saliva and rinsed before suctioning the mask to my face. I scanned behind me for jellyfish, and then casually rolled backwards off the side of the dink into the bathtub-temperature water.
A week prior, I was dealing with uncertainties of a different kind: those surrounding the current state of charter in the BVI after years’ worth of hurricanes and a pandemic that refuses to let go its hold of the world’s travel industry. Getting our crew of eight guests to Tortola for a
