family

Today has been one of those one step forward two steps backwards type of day. In between watching the mess that is the US economy and financial market, everything we touch is breaking or broken it seems! File this definitely under the "wondering and musings" column and not the BVI Tourist Board Brochure!
I cannot believe that the US government is talking a 700 billion dollar bail out and arguing about CEO's golden parachutes!
On another shake my head moment, apparently the BVI government has sent 16 delegates to the Monaco Boat Show. Yes, you heard right, 16 of them. This is one of the premier mega yacht shows that showcases charter yachts (think in the LARGE megayacht field, not my level) to charter brokers. The BVI is hosting parties and showcasing our new class one registry for larger yachts. Cynic that I am I ran down the list of names on the "delegation" and to me it sounds more like "junket" as I really question how much some of these people know about class one registry. (May the government sword strike me down now)
Back to our little world, where we have more mundane things to worry about then the Monaco Yacht Show, we are still anchored off Caneel Bay. I did get my new flat screen TV installed, which looks nice. Bazza is sitting on our nice new computer chair (that was supposed to be for me working), but he seems to like it very much so I think it is a shared chair.

I am always a bit out of sorts when my boat is torn apart, and this is what my galley looks like. The end result will be good, as I am getting new counter tops and the shelves re mactacked, but the picture right now is not that pretty. Now for the two steps backwards. He very carefully heated off all the old countertops to use as a template for the new one. Only to find that his tool situation on the boat, is, lets say, rusty and lacking. I am not sure where they all went besides Brent dropping them in the water, but he cracked the new countertop right in the middle, so it is back to Crown Bay tomorrow to get another sheet.

We also found out that our aft windows were leaking quite badly on the way back from Puerto Rico, or from the rain or such, and there were bucketfuls of water under the back bed and a soaking wet mattress! It will as usual, take up every spare minute we have to get the boat off season maintenance done. Just another day in the islands, some good, some great, some not so good! On the plus side it has stopped raining.
I ended up having to pay thousands of dollars to ATT for roaming charges, even with international packages on my iphone and data roaming card. After all this I still don't think I understand what I have and don't have, but I think my husband does! Be very careful on using roaming data while International, and in the BVI there are NO agreements, so you pay the highest rate. 5 cents a kilobyte. You think about how much advertising one web page has on it when you open it up, and the few little bits of information you want are the last thing that comes up. My husband worked it out and it is $50.00 per megabyte. A megabyte is NOT much!
One more lesson learned anyways. ATT tells us that The BVI is in the most expensive rate card in the world. Also have to laugh that you no longer get unlimited text messages on your IPHONE package. You exchange such little data in a text message, but it must go to show how popular text messaging is as they have decided to charge for them.
Ah well, those are my little words of wisdom, I will close this off with one of Richies nice underwater pictures which I think is appropos for this entry. My perky self will show up again.