Well I have a blog back up finally..

Been down for a few days so I was posting on promenade's blog...not that I had ran away...
guess I will move it over here now..
We are supposed to quite warm weather this week. It has been raining for a couple days now. Better then snow! I love my new IMAC computer. It is so nice to use a desktop after a laptop all the time. My laptop came home from the repair shop yesterday with a new hard drive so i am good to go on the computer front now. The yacht brokering business has been busy the last couple weeks. I have done several bookings and I am now going to go and do up the details for them to the guests and the boat crews!

It has been a good week up here in the chilly lands of Canada. No snow, and the heat works well in the RV, so I am happy. Busy setting up all my "toys"
Baz has learnt the value of a "toque"

He has also learnt that he will be forever fixing boo hoo's on cars for me. It was not really my fault, but he has already had to order a rear light assembly for my nice new car!

He is happy though as long as he gets to play with his projects. This is the top view of a C and C lathe!

I hear it does something interesting that he will be able to play with...He is excited cuz he is about finished working with the wood and can do it inside where it is warmer now.

We have pretty sunsets up here too. Mom and dad are right on the Gorge, and this is one of the sunsets this week. The only thing wrong with this picture is that this was taken at 3:45 PM in the afternoon!! Yeeks!!

Last week or so I was feeling so PIOUS, as I had NOT bought the LCD display I wanted in the apple store. And RESTRAINED. This week instead I bought the whole damn desktop computer thing as I am tired of replacing drives on my macbook pro, and know the desktops don't fail as much. Will just use my laptop when traveling. Justified in my mind! I also was able to hook up the Apple TV, the satellite radio, and on and on, so it is a techno dream in my house at the moment. AND I don't have to unhook everything to drag it to the boat!

My mother is a chocolate fiend, and the chocolate container is going down quite a bit, so I bought more and made a trail to the basket, thinking she could just eat them as she went along!

For those who say I am bah humbug over Xmas, I want you to note that I have put presents under my parents little tree, two weeks before Xmas! Yes, all the same wrapping then people will know who they are from!

And now for my weekly rant/humor episode on officialdom in the BVI that some of you have missed! Although Bazza has always had a class 1 from the VISR, Richard had not gotten that ambitious yet. Rich is well qualified for it though, from not only the MCA but also the fact that he has captained Promenade when we did not for the last few years.
Before Baz left island last week, he took Richard in, introduced him to Captain Pat, who he would have to do his oral with, and said "you will have no problem"
Rich ran around, doing his medicals, and whatever other paperwork they wanted and showed up with everything he needed to do his oral for his class one.
Contrary to Baz's advice, he forgot to take off his hat immediately, which caused him to be looked up and down for a few minutes and then one word was said to him "hat" He apologized and on they went. Richard wanted a class one, in fact needs a class one for helming Promenade. If you remember back a few weeks Bazza went back and forth with Marine Services for a week as they could not get our certificate correct, and one of the things they had done was put the wrong class of license to helm the boat, which basically had us going out to the markers in Road Harbour and god help you if you wanted to stay out over night.
Richard was told that he would be tested for his class two. Richard of course, thought a class two was going to do him fuck all good. Of course. He commented on this and was told " We don't just give out class ones willy nilly you know, you have to earn it" Richard has more then earned it and has every single last qualification and more for it. Richard went home to get his ducks in a row and went back in the next morning (with hat off) saying he had gone over all the paperwork and our certificates and he thought that perhaps a mistake had been made and that we required a class one, and he was qualified. What do you think he was told once again? Yep, the whole "willy nilly" and "earning" it!!
THEN HE TOOK THE BOAT CERTIFICATE AND CROSSED OFF THE CLASS ONE, MADE IT INTO A CLASS TWO FOR OPERATING IT AND INITIALED IT.!! Saying something to the effect "there, you can run Promenade now" Richard picked his jaw off the floor and came and called Bazza.
What is so particularly funny about this is a couple things.
1) we talked to another captain last week who did captain only charters on a 50' monohull who did their class two oral and received the shock of their life when it said on the boat certificate that it needed a class one, and a second to helm it. Which, is our understanding, is true, anything over 36' feet that stays out overnight requires a class one. Of course, unless you are three times that size like Promenade is and then apparently you don't!
2) This is one of the problems that many of us have with the local agency here. You never know where the goal post is going to land that particular day you go in. They seem to interpret the rules and change them with each person, usually to make it harder for you to comply. Without fail, everyone says this. And that there are too many high paid paper pushers in that department. MCA sets the rules, why and how are they getting away with doing this here? It makes a mockery of the system. ESPECIALLY since this is really all petty stuff since there is NO PRACTICAL tests here for these courses. All you do is prove you can memorize a manual.

What is our next step? Well, Bazza is shaking his head glad that it is someone elses turn to deal with this, and we are contacting the MCA in the UK to make sure we have all our correct facts and then going to Captain Sallah (the head) and higher.