charter yacht

Well I have done my utter best to stay away from accounting this weekend, but I fear tomorrow is the day. Accounting is never my favorite thing to do! Instead today I thought I would show you some different pictures of "off season" maintenance!

This is the port side of our saloon. I did well this year and got the nice carpet rolled up BEFORE my husband put a ton of things (maintenance type things) on top of it. See that nice hole in the middle? Well that is where we used to have one of those old fashioned TV's, you know the ones, that weigh a billion tons and noone buys any more since flat screens came along? That area also stored a ton and a half of "Instructors Manuals" for SCUBA...Well, believe it or no, all that stuff is either on Discs or on the internet nowadays, so I THREW IT OUT! THROWING things out will be a common theme now.

I bet some would be able to guess what is going to go in that area! It will be two things, a nice FLAT SCREEN TV (better for me to watch satellite TV on when BAZZA gives in and gets me it for the boat!) and a place to store our coffee supplies for the morning. For the guests and Bazza, not for me! No caffeine for about 3 months now, but it still smells good! Along with our Playstation 3 we brought down with us, our projector screen and our SIRIUS radio that we also brought down out of the RV, it should be a nice little area.

On the starboard side of the salon, well, the table quickly came downstairs for the computers, and I think it is going to stay here this winter, and we will leave the coffee table upstairs in the cocktail area. Once I get some discipline and move all our stuff down to one end, it will give half the table for the guests to store their own computers, or eat, or play cards whatever. I just have to remind them NO WET SWIM SUITS down here at all!
My family will be able to tell (and Richard and Lisa) how much "decluttering" I have done on the shelves behind the couch here, that will open up more storage area for the guests.

This is a view that many have not seen before. These are MORE liquor cabinets underneath the couch cushions. They have all been cleaned out and organized and just waiting now to take on more liquor for the season!


My area is coming along quite nicely...Now lets walk upstairs to the cockpit. It is not looking quite as good as of yet! This is where the inverter is going (and moved and done by the end of the day!) This will get it out of the starboard ama, and allow the heat from it to dissipate somewhere other then inside the boat, which in this day of fuel cost is a very good idea!


And this is the other side of the cockpit, no not looking very "charter friendly" either!


Then I thought about accounting, (just thought about it mind you!) and found the treasures that the women from last week had forgotten on the back deck, so I gave those a clean.


Then I went looking for something else to do, besides accounting, played Wordscraper on Facebook for awhile, Played Scrabulous on line with Lisa for awhile (who was tucked up in a 4 poster bed in Belize at the time!)
Then I went and found some of Bazzas metal detecting treasures from the spring that were just sitting in a bucket and decided that was more important then doing accounting anyways!


After all this I was so tired I went for a nap. A wonderful nap, one of those three hour naps you do not get too often in the afternoon!
We had gotten a new sound system for our IPOD , a Griffin Wireless, so I popped in some music in the saloon for Bazza and just took one of the little speakers along for my nap with me. Cool, very cool. Now we just have to get guests NOT to thrown them overboard or leave them out in the rain!!

After arising there was a ton of bird activity behind the boat in the harbor. Pelicans sitting on every piece of boat and in the water with Booby Birds sitting on their heads! Now for my sage advice for the day...when you break your very expensive long lens on your expensive camera and it is in the shop...DO NOT go into the store and buy the cheapest long lens you can find (maybe a hundred and odd dollars) thinking, "this will be fine until mine gets back" After all, how bad can it be.
It is bad, very bad, and just a complete and utter waste of money! I tooked 50-60 pictures of the birds, these few are the only ones, even with some heavy work in Photoshop that i can even put on the blog!

And not that you will be able to see them, but there is two pelicans on this little boat tied up near the mangroves, but I thought the boat was an OK picture anyways
By this time it is about 6 and Bazza asked me if I wanted to go out and take pictures of the Iron Duke on the cruise ship dock! Bonus, another excuse not to do the accounting today, so off we went. No security up around this puppy, I wondered if I was going to be arrested as I took my pictures, but I figured the fact that I was a female, elderly, with a green lace nightgown on would run in my favor (maybe they had not seen a women for months or something and I was looking alluring!...I know, I can hear you rolling on the floor with mirth now!)




Then it was time to make dinner, time to do the blog and now bed time!

Here is a link to the BVI Beacons full article on the refinancing of Scrub Development. The online versions only has a portion of the story, and you need all the details to understand it! No matter which way you cut it, Scrub Island sounds like a mess, financially and environmentally. (As I look around for the lighting bolt to hit me out of the blue as I type)
The PDF link is here.

My husband sent me these pictures, thought it was appropos since we like to Boat and RV! He had also sent me a link to an article about someone being mauled by a black bear on Vancouver Island! He always says we are nuts to live and go by them in Western Canada. Wussie Australian!
From Craigs List:
Will not separate, sold together
27ft winnebago with Legand cat 24ft fishing boat, motor home need some brake work and little body work. Boat stored partially inside.




Not much going on in Road Harbor today, mostly a gloomy rainy sort of day. Our boat has been off charter for less then a week and it looks like it is in full maintenance mode! I will take some pictures tomorrow and show you... yeah, back to the boring maintenance pictures!

I said in my last post that there were quite a few of the larger cats in Village Cay this year, and here is a picture of Village Cay. They tell me that someone has "dibs" on everyone of the hurricane spots! Which means that if a named storm is called, you have a guaranteed spot to go into.


Here is the Moorings Base docks coming along. it is amazing to me how much larger this area in Inner Harbor looks now.


And the Footloose landfill project is coming along as well...I don't think they have ever heard of compacting the land they make here though!


We made a couple trips to the storage locker today, I am such a throwing out purge that Bazza had to stand guard over some items that would have fallen if he was not there! Nice black clouds over the horizon on the way there.


Just one further note on work permits in the BVI:
The last few years LABOR has been very particular at making "anyone" working on a boat have a STCW95 certificate BEFORE you put in the application, which meant, we paid a lot of money for crew to get this somewhere before we even hired them. We put in a new work permit this week and I send my husband right to Captain Pat at Marine Services to see if we could get a waiver as he was taking the course early October before he came on island.
Captain Pat tells my husband that it was only ever a requirement for CAPTAINS on boats to have it prior to coming in and that was someone in the labor office who was being over zealous! Grrrrr....

Our total accomplishment for the day was going to the lab for blood tests (I had to do a glucose tolerance test that mean I had to hang around the lab for an hour and a half) and going to Banco Popular to get our ATM cards pinned! Yep, and we stopped for two burgers and two cokes that cost us $36.00 all up and were back at the boat at 4:00.
Does not seem like much accomplished does it? But, it is Tortola remember. Banco Popular had one very disinterested customer service agent on (I am pretty sure that is an oxymoron!) and it took a long time to get up to the front of the line to put a PIN # on these cards! We were there twice as the first time, the power went off so no machine working you know. They also had big signs up there that says September 1st they really went to banking hours which was 9 to 3! Funny in North America there is so much more competition you get used to seeing the banks open at all hours but not here. I was into First Caribbean yesterday as well, and they are in the process of really downsizing their space and rearranging.
Bazza renewed his work permit yesterday and that really was one of the better days we have had in Labor, it did not take all day and he did not get yelled at too much for some imagined thing he did or filled out wrong! Yippee!! Done for another year for him. Mine is coming up next month... Took a little drive around Inner Harbor today, this is an old dredge that is up in the mangroves and just a pic of the harbor as I did not find too much else to take a picture of!

"You may already be aware but HMS IRON DUKE is a British Warship that is in the Caribbean area to primarily offer assistance and reassurance to the British Overseas Territories; particularly throughout the Hurricane season.
They have also been in the news recently for their secondary role whilst in the Caribbean which is to work alongside the United States Coastguard in the fight against the trafficking of Contraband throughout the Caribbean AOR and onto the United States and Europe.
During the 4 day stay the sailors will have sufficient time off to recuperate from what has been a busy but successful time in our programme. "
The current Iron Duke is the third RN Ship to bear the name and 5th of the Duke Class Frigates. Launched on 2 March 1991 by the Ship's Sponsor, Lady Jane King, the wife of the then Secretary of State for Defence, she was commissioned on 30 May 1991. Iron Duke enjoys strong affiliations with her home town of Kingston Upon Hull, the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and the Worshipful Company of Founders. Her motto is "Virtutis Fortuna Comes" (Fortune is the companion of valour).

So, I always giggle when they bring these ships in (I am sure on purpose) for R and R when NOONE is around and NOT much is happening! Having said that I wonder if they will even be stopping here now or if they will be helping out with the hurricane efforts around Turks and Caicos...Hmmm..
I finally received a couple pictures from our friends (and of course repeat guests) the Cape Cod Pirates, who have an annual week or two out at Cape Cod in the summer reliving their memories of the yacht, last trip was in February and planning the next, which is apparently April of 2010 and they have another pirate couple to add to the mix!

We always look forward to seeing them, and we had some spectacular sunsets with them in February in Oil Nut Bay...

Hello everyone! Just a quick update tonight, hopefully while the internet is still on. It has been off and on all day long. This is us, we are anchored with the mosquitoes in between Village Cay Marina and the Moorings.

This is a very convenient spot for us, as we have no Peter Island Ferry going by, and we are in the midst of the yearly clean out of the boat! Yes, that means everything that looks grubby or we have not used in the last ten years is going away. It is more of a thorough cleaning out this year, as we are tired of just painting the antifoul line higher on the boat every year.
To anchor in this Inner Harbor in about 10 feet of water we have about 250 feet of chain out as well we have a mooring ball tied to our stern. That is because it is just soup in here, no holding at all. You can put your entire arm right up to your armpit in the muck. It is yuck!
All the things we have taken off the boat have come in very handy though for some local Hondurans, they love seeing us come with the bags and throw away what they don't want! It works all the way around. I imagine we will sitting here for about a week, but who knows. Bazza is going through everything seeing what is on his summer maintenance list, and we all know once that gets started the time "off" disappears.
The crew themselves managed to raise the waterline a lot today with just their bags, 5 of them and they were heavy as well. Better them then me! They should be safely in Miami by now, Lisa emailed and told me the ride into Puerto Rico was bumpy and there was quite a bit of weather there.

We were wandering around Peter Island, going from one hot humid spot to another yesterday, and the hottest being tied on the dock at Little Harbor on peter so they could walk around there. I was glad to get off of there! Then to Peter Island Resort so the women (and Rich) could go shopping (Rich wondered how many times women could circle the little room there looking at things...apparently quite a few!) The men smartly stayed back and took the opportunity for a nap while I had the A/C on cooking.
Dan had a special request to go back to Salt Island for the last snorkel and night, so off we went. Did not have to twist our arms to much with it being our favorite place! A couple of us went in for a snorkel, this is Dan...

and I took this wonderful picture of the Promenade in the sunset tonight. I really liked this.

The last nights dinner! Always a sad time, but maybe not tonight as I was making beef and broccoli for dinner and when it got down to the nitty gritty of stir frying, I found out that we had NOT ONE drop of Soy sauce on board! So, I attempted to make up for it with other things, like chicken broth, the little spice packages out of RAMEN noodles ( I figured they had to have soya sauce in them, after all they were chinese!) Lets just say that i overcompensated well and it was a tad salty! But, very good, the meat was tender and it was about perfect for the last night we had stuffed so much food down their gullets all week!

It was an enjoyable week, Dan and Nancy, who have been on here 6 times, (and already have the 7th trip booked!) , Ed and Emily, newlyweds and Emily figured out she did not need all her make up bags she brought once she discovered the joy of fishing and the most memorable photo of the week was her hugging her Tarpon to her chest! Holly and Bill, Bill did not move to far, but enjoyed his day immensely marking it by the different beverages, beer at breakfast, onto Rum, cognac after dinner and whatever else was put in his way, Holly looks so demure but wait until she opens her mouth! and Dick and Barb, Dick who has gained 40 lbs over the last ten years as opposed to my 50 over the last ten, so we bonded over that. Barb weighed about a 103 lbs only! We found out once again, that politics, religion and abortion are not good subjects to bring up in close quarters! We enjoyed each and every one of you and are so happy that we avoided the hurricanes and had such a fun week!
They left us some great comments in the guest book...
We would be happy to do it again & again & again. Thanks. Dick and Barb
Superb! Thanks to the crew for their cunning plans and anticipation of all our needs. Holly and Bill
Thank you for such a great trip. We avoided the hurricanes but started a new frenzy with Emily's fishing prowess!!! See you on another trip! Ed and Emily
Dan and Nancy did not leave a comment! I guess they figured that they were running out of things to say after 6 trips!! However, the group, with Nancy as a ringleader in 3 of the 4 ladies managed to drink a case and a half of chardonnay! (OK, only 17 so we could not say that they drank the boat dry of chardonnay!)
To all our guests, thank you until next time!
My mother must be teasing me today. I look at my email but what do I see but a picture of my Lioness!!! They took a ride out to visit her today. Somehow that is strangely comforting that someone is keeping an eye on our baby for the winter!

My brother from Alberta is visiting them, he showed up about the time we left so they went down to see the Harbor Seals...



And, since we have decided that we are purchasing a vehicle on island, that brings up a lot of back and forth between Bazza and I "No we don't want a island car, but we don't need brand new"
"We need 4 wheel drive" I want A/C and 4 doors so it is a bit bigger for getting in and out. He wants either a ute or a van so he can carry at least a piece of plywood around, but maybe ok with the seats folding down...and on it goes! You can probably believe that whether it carried plywood or not was not real high on my had to have list!! What is the point of this story? Well, my brother found a truck that he thought we could ship down and it would be perfect for us here! I imagine that would be cheap from the west coast of Canada!

We are now done charters until Nov 2nd. Richard and Lisa are trying to figure out how to fit almost three years worth of stuff into a very few suitcases! Quite amusing to watch. I mentioned that they may want to have lots of garbage bags ready, as we do for the rest of the boat as well. It is that time every year, where we go through it, throw out all the stuff that has not been used for years, or looks horrible, and then get onto the billion little jobs that have to be done to get it into fall chartering shape again. Yes, more pictures of us sewing and painting on the blog I am sure!