Wednesday, September 24. 2008
ANother day in the islands...
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 23. 2008
Drying out on St John
Well we think we are drying out! We have had every clothesline full and the engine room as well trying to dry out the ten tons of laundry that we soaked on the way back from Puerto Rico! Bazza went shopping again (?) on St Thomas and I tried to find a place to put everything we had already bought! We had lots of rain this morning, but it is drying out this afternoon.
This is my daughter in law Karen, that is our baby granddaughter in there, and she will be making an appearance in about 18 weeks! That is pretty exciting. I think she looks terrific.
And this is my mom with the blackberry picking stick that Bazza made her. Have you ever seen anyone so unhappy looking?? I am not sure whether she did not want to be there or did not like the picture taking person very much!
My husband passed on a couple pictures of boats washed up on the highway and marina in Galveston area. Yeeks! Hope we don't have any such luck here this year.
That is all I know tonight!
This is my daughter in law Karen, that is our baby granddaughter in there, and she will be making an appearance in about 18 weeks! That is pretty exciting. I think she looks terrific.
And this is my mom with the blackberry picking stick that Bazza made her. Have you ever seen anyone so unhappy looking?? I am not sure whether she did not want to be there or did not like the picture taking person very much!
My husband passed on a couple pictures of boats washed up on the highway and marina in Galveston area. Yeeks! Hope we don't have any such luck here this year.
That is all I know tonight!
Richie and Lisa checking in from Belize!
So here we are sitting on the beach, or at least as close as you can be without being sat in the sand! sipping blue margaritas and watching the world go past and checking in on the real world!
So far we have had an amazing time in Belize, the Aggressor live a board was amazing (but not a patch on Promenade!) We dived our little hearts out and saw some amazing stuff! Heres a few of Richies pictures, but not his best he told me to say!
First of all his favorite, a blenny and a type he hasn't seen before a diamond back!
Something we had no idea about, this thing looked black, in the picture it looks red, it was the size of a pin head and it could uncurl its back and swim with wings! any suggestions????
We saw a cute eagle ray who was terrified by Richie and his camera
A rare eel
You see these file fish in BVI, but they were every where here, a slender file fish
Something you don't see in the BVI and my ultimate favorite, a nudibranch
Then there was also big stuff, namely reef sharks, we saw some in the blue hole which was fabulous and a must for any one coming to Belize. We saw 3 reef sharks, about 6 - 7 feet long, these 2 circled for most of the dive though
We also had a 7 foot reef shark for a few dives on the reef, the guys on the boat caught a Bermuda chubb and killed it and put it in a pyramid and lowered it to the bottom to see what it might attract, there were big grouper, moray and in came the shark, he was around and stayed all afternoon, so we got some good pics, when they took the chubb out the pryramid a big old grouper ate him in one swallow, it was then Mr shark came back with 2 buddies, apparently he wasn't too happy about it, he swam straight at Richs camera, so he got some good close ups, but Rich had to bash him on the nose with the housing to get him to back off, so he then decided to look at my fins, I wasn't having any of that, so a quick fin in the nose and we decided it was time to go investigate the beer and hot tub back on board!!!! I certainly wasn't night diving that night!!!!
Anyhow, back to the cuter things, 2 tiny snails
A type of cowrie I had never seen before
and every ones fav a turtle to finish!
We caught colds flying to Belize (typical) but managed to get by with all the diving thankfully, it was a wonderful experience. After all that diving though we decided to head to Caye Caulker, a sand castle 40 mins NE of Belize City, it was a welcome relief, the word laid back doesn't quite describe! We are just out of "town" in a bug hut, so we have hired push bikes, a lot of fun apart from the numb bum!!
We had a day on a sail boat I took pictures to show you our 30 foot mono hull sail experience, there was no ice maker Kerry!!!! The boom was held on with electic tape, but it did the job and we snorkelled!!!!
We snorkelled with a mantee! It was one of the top 3 things I have seen in the water
then on to shark alley, nurse sharks gallore and finally a small reef which was Noahs ark, it had 2 of everything!
So here I am back to my margarita, more to follow (blog that is not margarita, although the blue margarita is like Kerrys blue drink on tequilla, I am liking it!)
So far we have had an amazing time in Belize, the Aggressor live a board was amazing (but not a patch on Promenade!) We dived our little hearts out and saw some amazing stuff! Heres a few of Richies pictures, but not his best he told me to say!
First of all his favorite, a blenny and a type he hasn't seen before a diamond back!
Something we had no idea about, this thing looked black, in the picture it looks red, it was the size of a pin head and it could uncurl its back and swim with wings! any suggestions????
We saw a cute eagle ray who was terrified by Richie and his camera
A rare eel
You see these file fish in BVI, but they were every where here, a slender file fish
Something you don't see in the BVI and my ultimate favorite, a nudibranch
Then there was also big stuff, namely reef sharks, we saw some in the blue hole which was fabulous and a must for any one coming to Belize. We saw 3 reef sharks, about 6 - 7 feet long, these 2 circled for most of the dive though
We also had a 7 foot reef shark for a few dives on the reef, the guys on the boat caught a Bermuda chubb and killed it and put it in a pyramid and lowered it to the bottom to see what it might attract, there were big grouper, moray and in came the shark, he was around and stayed all afternoon, so we got some good pics, when they took the chubb out the pryramid a big old grouper ate him in one swallow, it was then Mr shark came back with 2 buddies, apparently he wasn't too happy about it, he swam straight at Richs camera, so he got some good close ups, but Rich had to bash him on the nose with the housing to get him to back off, so he then decided to look at my fins, I wasn't having any of that, so a quick fin in the nose and we decided it was time to go investigate the beer and hot tub back on board!!!! I certainly wasn't night diving that night!!!!
Anyhow, back to the cuter things, 2 tiny snails
A type of cowrie I had never seen before
and every ones fav a turtle to finish!
We caught colds flying to Belize (typical) but managed to get by with all the diving thankfully, it was a wonderful experience. After all that diving though we decided to head to Caye Caulker, a sand castle 40 mins NE of Belize City, it was a welcome relief, the word laid back doesn't quite describe! We are just out of "town" in a bug hut, so we have hired push bikes, a lot of fun apart from the numb bum!!
We had a day on a sail boat I took pictures to show you our 30 foot mono hull sail experience, there was no ice maker Kerry!!!! The boom was held on with electic tape, but it did the job and we snorkelled!!!!
We snorkelled with a mantee! It was one of the top 3 things I have seen in the water
then on to shark alley, nurse sharks gallore and finally a small reef which was Noahs ark, it had 2 of everything!
So here I am back to my margarita, more to follow (blog that is not margarita, although the blue margarita is like Kerrys blue drink on tequilla, I am liking it!)
Monday, September 22. 2008
From Puerto Rico to Caneel Bay
We have had an interesting 36 hours. We had to be out of the Marina first thing Monday morning as they were doing work. We were not as sure as our anchoring ground around there, especially with a slow moving system with winds from different points and tons of rain. We decided to poke our nose out and see what happened about 1 PM Sunday afternoon.
We came back to the USVI at 2 knots the entire night and still managed to break a damn trampoline!
I don't believe I have ever seen quite so much rain. It was definitely torrential all night long!
Gina and I thought we had only put in enough quarters for the hour ride, not the 17 hour ride. It was an adventure and we were WET
Gina was a trooper though and lasted longer then me outside
We alternated napping in the salon, and getting every single towel on the boat wet, but pulled up to Caneel Bay about 6 this morning. AND IT STILL CONTINUED TO RAIN!
I understand Puerto Rico has the worse flooding that it has seen in memory.
Now, I have a ton of emails from the weekend to answer, but that can wait until tomorrow.
We came back to the USVI at 2 knots the entire night and still managed to break a damn trampoline!
I don't believe I have ever seen quite so much rain. It was definitely torrential all night long!
Gina and I thought we had only put in enough quarters for the hour ride, not the 17 hour ride. It was an adventure and we were WET
Gina was a trooper though and lasted longer then me outside
We alternated napping in the salon, and getting every single towel on the boat wet, but pulled up to Caneel Bay about 6 this morning. AND IT STILL CONTINUED TO RAIN!
I understand Puerto Rico has the worse flooding that it has seen in memory.
Now, I have a ton of emails from the weekend to answer, but that can wait until tomorrow.
Sunday, September 21. 2008
Pouring with rain in puerto rico
We had a good run down to Puerto Rico, we though we would have a sail, but nada for wind... so we had up one sail that flopped around out there for some reason...Bazza and Gina both thought that Coconut Cream Cake was acceptable for breakfast!
We passed sail rock.
and Miss Gina found a nice little spot on the trampoline to have a couple hours nap on!
Gina gave me this marvelous little contraption that you freeze or put cold water in to activate and put it around your neck. It takes away your hot flashes as well does not leak, it laps up the sweat! It is an amazing invention and I want 12 for the boat on charter! Then I can use them in rotation. I have been more impressed with this little gadget then anything!
We made it to Puerto Del Rey in Fajardo about 2. First place we always hit is the diesel dock. DIESEL WAS ONLY $4.19!!!!!!! Compare this to $5.01 at Crown Bay in ST Thomas, $5.76 at Yacht Haven Grande in Charlotte Amalie, $5.69 at Red Hook, and over $6.00 in Roadtown. It paid nicely for the trip down here, but on the other side, they have really bumped up their dockage rates, last time it was $1.50 a foot and now it was $2.78!! No time for those concerns though, we had shopping to do!
We have shopped our little hearts out in between rain drops! They are very large rain drops this Sunday morning. We brought our friend Gina with us here, and we have covered, West Marine, Fuddruckers, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sams Club, Costco, Plaza Las Americas (the big mall), Walmart Supercenter, Chili's (ok, a couple of these places are food places, but Par for the course for Gina and I) and Office Max! We also managed to drive through old San Juan for Gina, who had not seen it, and for my pregnant daughter in law, she had a special request that I shop and see the African designer bag men, so this picture should tease her! I don't really get this designer stuff, it all looks yucky to me, although the Dolce and Gabana is nice and soft...
Miss gina insisted on having her picture taken outside of Condom World (these and the amount of these stores impresses all of us when we first come here!)
I had a special request, of some more of Kenny Chesney the other night. Not nearly as exciting as our varnishing ones though! Not sure why you girls want to see more pictures of the scrubby island boy!
Apparently he brought a large group down with him, numbers variate between 50 and 150 and they were staying at the Westin. he played for several hours Thursday night. In fact, Woody's closed early at 10 that night so they could go party as well I believe!
This is the scene outside.
And just a couple more that my husband had taken from inside.
Yes mom, it was quite a birthday, cameras, chocolate cakes, Kenny Chesney and a new car! (Oh, I did not tell you about that, but we find broke down after living here for over ten years and bought a SUV!! I will tell you about that when I have pictures. My friend Sheila tells me that she has birthday months, well, since I also came back this weekend with a 32" HD LCD TV for the Saloon and a fancy comfortable desk chair for the table when I am working on the computer, I could say that I have quite successfully managed to turn it into quite a birthday this year. All this despite the irritating noise in the background which is my husband who is 57 days younger then me now calling himself a "toy boy" Roll on Nov 15th so he can quit gloating!
We saw a couple lovely geckos on a nice color wall, they look like paintings to me, so I had to take about oh, a billion pictures of them!
Hope to head back towards at least Culebra this afternoon, but it depends on weather. It is looking crappy out there! The boat is very quiet and it has been bucketing down rain for hours. I think that the "blob" is going to turn into something over our heads here!
We passed sail rock.
and Miss Gina found a nice little spot on the trampoline to have a couple hours nap on!
Gina gave me this marvelous little contraption that you freeze or put cold water in to activate and put it around your neck. It takes away your hot flashes as well does not leak, it laps up the sweat! It is an amazing invention and I want 12 for the boat on charter! Then I can use them in rotation. I have been more impressed with this little gadget then anything!
We made it to Puerto Del Rey in Fajardo about 2. First place we always hit is the diesel dock. DIESEL WAS ONLY $4.19!!!!!!! Compare this to $5.01 at Crown Bay in ST Thomas, $5.76 at Yacht Haven Grande in Charlotte Amalie, $5.69 at Red Hook, and over $6.00 in Roadtown. It paid nicely for the trip down here, but on the other side, they have really bumped up their dockage rates, last time it was $1.50 a foot and now it was $2.78!! No time for those concerns though, we had shopping to do!
We have shopped our little hearts out in between rain drops! They are very large rain drops this Sunday morning. We brought our friend Gina with us here, and we have covered, West Marine, Fuddruckers, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sams Club, Costco, Plaza Las Americas (the big mall), Walmart Supercenter, Chili's (ok, a couple of these places are food places, but Par for the course for Gina and I) and Office Max! We also managed to drive through old San Juan for Gina, who had not seen it, and for my pregnant daughter in law, she had a special request that I shop and see the African designer bag men, so this picture should tease her! I don't really get this designer stuff, it all looks yucky to me, although the Dolce and Gabana is nice and soft...
Miss gina insisted on having her picture taken outside of Condom World (these and the amount of these stores impresses all of us when we first come here!)
I had a special request, of some more of Kenny Chesney the other night. Not nearly as exciting as our varnishing ones though! Not sure why you girls want to see more pictures of the scrubby island boy!
Apparently he brought a large group down with him, numbers variate between 50 and 150 and they were staying at the Westin. he played for several hours Thursday night. In fact, Woody's closed early at 10 that night so they could go party as well I believe!
This is the scene outside.
And just a couple more that my husband had taken from inside.
Yes mom, it was quite a birthday, cameras, chocolate cakes, Kenny Chesney and a new car! (Oh, I did not tell you about that, but we find broke down after living here for over ten years and bought a SUV!! I will tell you about that when I have pictures. My friend Sheila tells me that she has birthday months, well, since I also came back this weekend with a 32" HD LCD TV for the Saloon and a fancy comfortable desk chair for the table when I am working on the computer, I could say that I have quite successfully managed to turn it into quite a birthday this year. All this despite the irritating noise in the background which is my husband who is 57 days younger then me now calling himself a "toy boy" Roll on Nov 15th so he can quit gloating!
We saw a couple lovely geckos on a nice color wall, they look like paintings to me, so I had to take about oh, a billion pictures of them!
Hope to head back towards at least Culebra this afternoon, but it depends on weather. It is looking crappy out there! The boat is very quiet and it has been bucketing down rain for hours. I think that the "blob" is going to turn into something over our heads here!
Thursday, September 18. 2008
Hate to gloat but Kenny Chesney was playing tonight at Woody's..
Ho hum, yeah, what can I say, Kenny Chesney was playing tonight at Woodys on St John... I think the big floppy hat was supposed to be a disguise, but it did not work! Lots of people there! The coconut telegraph works quickly on the island!
He looks like he is enjoying himself in the sun anyways! Poor guy, can't go anywhere without people everywhere! My friend gina, took the cake though (or is that gave the cake?) She had just finished making chocolate fudge cake, key lime pie and coconut pie and took him an ENTIRE key lime pie to entice him into autographing a hat!
We had a big day maintenance wise today, I watched Bazza work! We have a sexy new inverter panel on the boat...
And for some reason all the boxes he received only carried these little toys in them. I thought they were for the BOAT, but apparently they are for the ROV! (That is somewhere on the Atlantic Sea)
Then it was off to St John tonight for a barbecue at Lavender Hill, where my friend Gina has her condo.
Flat seas again...calling for rain but nothing here yet. Of course we put Bazza to work, he managed to look at the fan and the garburetor spewed everywhere as well while we were here.
gina made me a chocolate fudge cake (double layer with lots of icing and haagen dayz ice cream! It was wonderful!
I received presents...very nice ones.
And then I had to blow out those silly candles that stay lit so everyone gets cake and saliva!
We had a barbecue down by the pool and i just happened to take another picture (I seem to do this often!) of Gina putting food in her face!
But it is no worse then the picture of me with cake in one hand, whipping cream and icing in the other! I refuse to put up the picture my husband took of me with the largest piece of cake he had ever seen though! A girl has to have some pride!!
My husband sent me this photo with a caption something along the lines of "Must have been a ferry driver at the helm!" Which, a ferry this afternoon I swore went out of his way to go as close to me as he could (he actually switched from being on my port in the middle of the channel to my starboard...who knows why!) and of course everything crashed every where. Yes, I cursed him!
It is well past the witching hour, so off to bed I go, early start tomorrow for Puerto Rico we think.
He looks like he is enjoying himself in the sun anyways! Poor guy, can't go anywhere without people everywhere! My friend gina, took the cake though (or is that gave the cake?) She had just finished making chocolate fudge cake, key lime pie and coconut pie and took him an ENTIRE key lime pie to entice him into autographing a hat!
We had a big day maintenance wise today, I watched Bazza work! We have a sexy new inverter panel on the boat...
And for some reason all the boxes he received only carried these little toys in them. I thought they were for the BOAT, but apparently they are for the ROV! (That is somewhere on the Atlantic Sea)
Then it was off to St John tonight for a barbecue at Lavender Hill, where my friend Gina has her condo.
Flat seas again...calling for rain but nothing here yet. Of course we put Bazza to work, he managed to look at the fan and the garburetor spewed everywhere as well while we were here.
gina made me a chocolate fudge cake (double layer with lots of icing and haagen dayz ice cream! It was wonderful!
I received presents...very nice ones.
And then I had to blow out those silly candles that stay lit so everyone gets cake and saliva!
We had a barbecue down by the pool and i just happened to take another picture (I seem to do this often!) of Gina putting food in her face!
But it is no worse then the picture of me with cake in one hand, whipping cream and icing in the other! I refuse to put up the picture my husband took of me with the largest piece of cake he had ever seen though! A girl has to have some pride!!
My husband sent me this photo with a caption something along the lines of "Must have been a ferry driver at the helm!" Which, a ferry this afternoon I swore went out of his way to go as close to me as he could (he actually switched from being on my port in the middle of the channel to my starboard...who knows why!) and of course everything crashed every where. Yes, I cursed him!
It is well past the witching hour, so off to bed I go, early start tomorrow for Puerto Rico we think.
Sail-Dive-BVI-helping you get off the beaten path in the British Virgin Islands!
Click on the logo to go to our online cruising guide, with dive sites, dive wrecks, beachcombing, shell collecting, maps, charts, sailing, snorkeling, anchoring on the British Virgin Islands
Calendar
Quicksearch
Syndicate This Blog
Powered by
