bvi captains log blog

So, it is another long weekend in tortola. What does that mean, well, as soon as the stores all suck up and close tight for another few days, something else breaks! That "something" today would be the fridge compressor that has decided that it is done. Finished. And Kaput! And that means that we cannot get another one until Tuesday afternoon. AND that puts something else on Bazzas list that he has to do this week! Lucky man!! At least my icemaker works so I always have ice cubes!!!!

A note on the Beef Island Environmental Court Case. The judge handed down a judgement on a few random technical legal type things on Friday, that were in favor of the VI Environmental Council and against the developer. So, that is good news, and the trial is scheduled for May 14th. I have not seen the judgement yet, just heard this from people, so there should be more details early next week.
My sister sent me a picture of my niece Melissa. She really looks like my sister in this picture (although my sisters face is a tad rounder! Sorry Syd!) I can just hear my niece saying "EEEWWWW how could you put that up on the internet, I am going to die! Like 14 year olds do!!


Read this on crime down in St Vincent and the Grenadines, or had it forwarded to me.
Tongue firmly in cheek here, at least it is only a "mini crime wave". My husband has always said that he never felt safe down there. I know it is everywhere in the world, and it is a concern, even where we live. Who will I make angry now? But, being forewarned is fore armed in knowing what extra precautions you have to take.
A mini-crime-wave has hit St Vincent & the Grenadines, islands popular with yachtsmen in theCaribbean. Men armed with guns, machetes and knives have robbed yachtsmen at anchor in seven incidents in the last six weeks at the anchorage of Chateaubelair alone. Other attacks have taken place in Petit St Vincent, Union Island, Wallilabou and Young Island. In the current issue of YM we tell the story of one yachting couple's frightening experience at the hands of armed pirates. In Chateaubelair. Steve Jones, who suffered cuts to his head from machete blows in the attack, and his wife Katharine were attacked aboard their Dufour 385 charter boat. He told YM: 'We were promised updates on the crime from the police and a free holiday by the Minister of Tourism for St Vincent and the Grenadines, but we've heard nothing since. Since then I read about an attack almost identical to ours, just 24 hours before we arrived. It makes me very angry and surprised that the authorities had not put any extra security operations in place and made no attempt to warn us or the other yacht anchored in the bay, despite a coast guard patrol boat passing within 50m us during the afternoon.' Meanwhile disturbing statistics about the Caribbean have been collated in a joint study by the UN and World Bank. According to the study the Caribbean is the world leader in violent crime: it has a murder rate of 30 per 100,000 inhabitants - four times the North American figure and 15 times the western European average. Jamaica is the world's most murderous country, followed by El Salvador,Guatemala and Venezuela. But some smaller islands are catching up: St Kitts, with only 40,000 inhabitants suffered three murders in four days last November. The Bahamas can be dangerous and in Trinidad and Tobago the murder rate has quadrupled in the last 10 years. The upsurge in violence is mainly due to drug dealing - which has seen an increase for gangs in cash and weapons. Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados are beefing up their coastguard operation to try and stamp out the import of drugs.

So, I have had a shortage of pictures this week, so lets put some up!
This is what the harbor looked like off and on this week. Lots of rain puddles everywhere!

Brent and I went around the island one day, why, I don't remember, I had to go to Nanny Cay to pick something up so we went the long way as I decided to show him some things on the island.
We had a funny experience. We sat down at Sebastians to have lunch. There were a few people in there, the last time we were there we really enjoyed the food. It was 1136 in the morning. After a few minutes a lady came up to us and asked us if we wanted a drink. We said yes, and we would like lunch too! She said that they just finished serving breakfast and weren't serving lunch until 12. 24 minutes away. We ordered our drink, and watched and took pictures of the pelicans and at 1147 came up with the following observations. I used to own a restaurant for 7 lllloooonnnggggg years, and if was my restaurant I would have said one of the following.
"Here let me give you a menu to look at and then we can get it in so you can get your meal as quickly as possible when it opens at noon"
or maybe " take a look over the menu and I will see if the kitchen can get it on for you" after all, we did see people sitting at the bar eating, looked like maybe workers. But none of that happened.
We realized that we were not even going to be given a menu until 12, then it would take awhile before they took our order and then we would have to wait for the grill to warm up, so it was going to be 1230 before se saw food. We paid for our drinks and left, stopping at Crandalls bakery later for patties!

It is such a pretty spot there overlooking the water and watching the birds

Finally made it to Nanny Cay and watched some of the construction going on...

Took a nice picture of Cane Garden Bay and the colors.

I believe there has been an explosion of chickens on the islands since the last time I was on here. THey are everywhere!

This is what a Brent looks like when we are pouring iced coffee down his throat as we are making him work after an exciting evening out at Nanny Cay playing Volleyball! Who ever heard of night volleyball! I asked him what time he returned home and he said he did not know but he had to walk from Roadtown, which tells me there were no cars on the road!

And the piece of land they are building right beside Foot Loose looks like this!

When I wrote that story about the "yacht charter from hell" I knew I would piss off someone. I generally do with putting up anything the least bit controversial. When I released the press release that I was donating the proceeds from a few cabin sails to support the Beef Island Court Case, there were a couple remarks on the web that "us companies should be giving back, all we have been doing is taking money out of here for years" and "our prices are way out of line, poor people can't afford that". Sigh. Anybody who owns a boat knows that we are not stashing a ton of cash in a swiss bank account somewhere, and yes, I do have to admit, that our yacht charters are not priced for the "poor people".

In all this, I do think more carefully before I write, and try and make sure that I am not being too prejudice, but invariably, MY OPINION, is my opinion only and is going to fall down somewhere (usually where some one else do not want it to fall) and I am going to refer back to what one of my readers Mark reminded me of before, my blog is called "wonderings and musings" it is not a tourism brochure. If I was never going to write anything controversial or interesting, I would not bother doing this. Who would read it?
Following along in that vein, the other day, I said that we had a leak in our stern tube for the shaft that wore through the fiberglass and we were not sure if we could fix in water. Well we have, but if I was just a tourist brochure, I would NEVER write anything like that, I would just say that this 30 year old boat is in pristine condition and nothing has ever broken on it, or ever will. I thought it was funny when I got an email from a guest coming on at the end of march who said, "just don't sink it before I get there"

Back to the main story, I understand that the crew of this boat who had this bad charter are upset. I also said that what I had was the guests story. The crew has now provided some of their story, which is good. I have taken out identifying factors again...
"Dear Kerry,
I have been shown a blog which is said to have come from you.
Below is what we have sent to most of the brokers.
The charterers version you refer to in the blog is a clever web of lies, distortions and libels which we will in due course settle. These are not innocent naive charterers and there is alot more to this than meets the eye but for obvious legal reasons much of this cannot be publicly aired at this stage.
Should you like to personally contact us we would be more than pleased to address any issues we are free so to do at this moment in time.
It is very upsetting when fellow professionals rush to public judgement.
We have already had numerous e-mails in unanimous and great support and understanding from Brokers and fellow crews.
It would be good to hear from you."

How could I give total support or condemnation? I was not there. How did I rush to publlc judgement? My personal opinion is that it is going to be hard to recover from having a police report filed against you, whether it was right or wrong. I would say the same thing if it happened to us. In fact, many years ago when I ran this boat with an old boyfriend, and the relationship went south, I indeed, had several years before some brokers would even talk to me again, never mind book me! For some reason, the guests did not seem to like being in the middle of a couple breaking up, and since my ex was bi polar, when he got down, he would go to his cabin for the ENTIRE week, yep, you heard me right, he would not come out at all. How many days do you think I could use the excuse "oh he has the flu??" at least with new guests every week I could reuse it every week! Off on a tangent again I am...

"Contrary to what you may hear or read on the internet or by emails, we would like you to know that **** are continuing to happily charter **** successfully. We hope you know and remember us as a professional crew and realise we have many successful charters and delighted charter guests who bear testament to this.
Are you intrigued enough to read further? There is a **** sending libellous emails around the world to everyone he can think of complaining about his recent charter aboard ****. As you will soon realise this could be a very long story but to satisfy your curiosity the brief true details are:-
**** recent charter ended prematurely as a direct result of his own wholly unacceptable behaviour. He had been drinking on the yacht at lunch time and in the afternoon and went to a beach bar for a further 3 hours drinking. When ***(the capt) brought him and the other guests back to the yacht in the dingy at 7.30pm he struggled to get out of the dingy and as ***(the chef) tried to help him he fell heavily on top of her hurting her foot. By his own admissions he had "3 cocktails too many".
He then began an incomprehensible foul and abusive rant and rave aimed predominantly at ***(the chef). When (the capt) sent (the chef) out of the cockpit to take care of her injured foot, he turned his abuse on ***(the capt) and began struggling with him. He was stumbling drunkenly around the aft deck and eventually fell off into the water. ***(the capt) watched him carefully and he was out of the water in a very short time. At this point he increased his verbal and physical abuse aimed at ***(the capt), saying things including " You're dead, I'll take all your money, I'll have your boat, You'll never work again" I have deliberately missed out a lot of words beginning with F. He said "the charter is over and we'll be leaving the boat in the morning".
At this point, I decided that for the safety of all persons onboard my best option was to motor to Road Town and get them safely ashore and into accommodation at Village Cay Hotel.
**** behaviour had every indication of possible escalation so I am personally proud that I handled the situation professionally and prevented any harm to an individual.
However, **** having lost his battle and dignity is now spreading his malicious and wholly untrue version of events. Our only regret is that we didn't call the BVI Marine Police who could have come and taken ****off the yacht.
We immediately informed the broker involved who has gone to great lengths to try and resolve the situation but it has now become a matter solely between the Charterer and **** as per the contract.
We are doing our best to retain our confidence and self belief amongst these hideous allegations. We trust that you will retain your belief in us as a hardworking, decent and honest crew and see ***** vendetta for what it is, wholly untrue.

The law suits will wind as they do, the truth will be somewhere in the middle, and we will still be left pondering how we guarantee a charterer and a boat is a good mix. There are definitely guests out there who are "known" between brokers as "don't sell them anything, they are just out to get what they can". The longer I have been in this business the more I want everything in writing when I don't know someone or they don't know me. One former guests sent me a contract back with no witness signed and said "god is my witness" with a smile. I then had to admit to her on that contract I just signed my husbands name as witness! I had a guest tell me last week that she has signed her husbands checks at the bank etc for 25 years! Now that is impressive!

Still feeling horrible from colds, and Bazza has been working on the new list of things that break never mind the list he had when he got here. Richard and Lisa come back home tonight, and we were hoping to have it all pristine for them, but....at least we don't pick up charter for another week, so all will get sorted by then!