British Virgin Islands

Surfs up Snoopy! We woke up this AM to it pounding across the break between Sandy Spit and Little Jost. Most people would stay away but our intrepid adventurers took it as a reason to go surf it in the kayaks!

Yep, they were tossed a couple times...

We motored up around to Monkey Point afterwards, the swells were fine for that, but the snorkeling there was a bust. Everywhere on the north side is so churned up with the swell, you cannot see too much at all!
Off we went to Marina Cay thinking that we may be able to get a dive in there this afternoon, and they did and they enjoyed it. Silty, but they could see the lobsters etc. Scrub Island is not looking that attractive, but we managed to do some water skiing this afternoon off of there..

Here are a few pictures of the state of the island at the moment. I won't even comment.



They are sure building up a lot of land on the top, must be a house on the peak going up there...

The guests showed up for cocktail hour in their Promenade Tshirt finery tonight! Looks good guys...

Our Thanksgiving dinner was Ham and Roasted Potatoes and Apple Streusel Pie for dessert. I think we are all waddling around the decks, but the fishermen are keen at it tonight. We had three hits at the same time (just when I was getting dinner ready naturally!) and i understand that Bazza is playing with a tarpon on 4 lb line now, he will be in his glory back there if he gets it landed.
I will leave you tonight with this thought. It is moments before we finish getting dinner on the table. this week getting dinner on the table has usually been accompanied by catching fish at the same time. Things get a little hectic. Last night I threw the bbq tongs at Simba along with a fork that said what doneness the steaks were and said "I want them cooked" For some reason I am stuck with two men, one scottish and one australian who do not bbq. Simba almost has an excuse as he was raised vegetarian...but the Australian...I just don't know. He brings down the perfectly cooked steaks (said they all said medium rare which they were but he had forgotten to turn on the doneness fork! so they all said that anyways!) and just at that time I asked him the following. You figure it out what he thought I said and was not quite sure how to answer!!
"Do you want mashed or baked?"

My guests arrived today with...luggage!

They came in on the St Thomas ferry this morning and i am not sure when I have seen a more excited group. They were last on the boat 4 years ago, and have had this week booked for quite a long time.

Always nice to see smiling faces. Blowing really gusty out today, and I know I am always criticizing things on island, but I want you to note that we are just about to compliment someone. There is a guy on the ferry dock (you hear the ferries all the time calling Road Harbor Port. Road Harbour Port) and this is a guy who stands on the dock with a radio and directs ferries and traffic in and out. Bazza says that he has been quite helpful several times, and today he went above and beyond the call of duty coordinating with our guests and us when they arrived by ferry. It was very much appreciated!

Took a pic of the hospital while we were there, it is coming along...

We upped sail and headed over to Little Harbor on Peter Island. I almost caught my guest napping on the way over, but he opened those eyes about the time I snapped the picture.

Most of the rest enjoyed the sail over on the trampoline... We heard a call on the radio, on our way over from a "person" on one of the bulletin boards I frequent, Wild Meridian, hoping to catch up this week and that is always nice to meet people you know on line out on the water.

We pulled into Little Harbor and Simeon is really a nice guy, but he is looking mean here. I think he just wants me to disappear with my camera!!! Probably don't blame him. He asked me if I was Madonna and felt the need to document my entire life, well, yes!

The line was tied so we were stern too and the guests were immediately in the water for hours.

All the toys came out for the afternoon and everyone was pulled around on something.

Little harbor was actually pretty gusty, and filling up pretty full, with it being thanksgiving...Quite a shock on the system really after having the islands to ourselves for months. We upped anchor and made our way up to Great Harbour where we hoped to get some fishing in. The guys had taken the casting nets ashore earlier to get some bait fish. Unfortunately, we had a lot better luck with nets and scooping then we did with fishing tonight. Too windy and gusty we think. I told my guests they looked like crows here lined up on the way up over cocktail hour!

But it was an absolutely beautiful sunset...

The boys were putting out two anchors so we could stay close in for fishing tonight, but it looked weird whatever they were doing pulling things by hand...

The bird life on the point here was incredible. There must be a ton of bait fish in the water as I had never seem so many pelicans having such a good feed.



Dinner was gobbled down by all and it is now bed time!

Well it is a Friday night in Tortola. I have made my daily trip into town to go to the bank and various government offices. At one office waiting for forms instead of telling me to come back next week they are just picking the next day on the calendar I believe and telling me to come then so I just get to go in every day! Today was "still pending, come back Monday" yesterday was..well you get the idea! Still very dusty on island as well. I came the long way home from town today via Brewers, Josiahs etc as I wanted to see what the swell was like. We are supposed to have quite a large one, and yep, here is Brewers Bay

When I drove by there not much beach at all at the moment!

Then I went to look at Josiah's and it looked about the same, and no surfers out...

The swells did not look like they had great shape for surfing either.

Then I got back to the boat to find out my food (partial) order came while I was out and the driver dropped some eggs and mushrooms in the water and then just about kicked a case of beer we had sitting on the dock in as well! My interior cleaner complained all day that she was "seasick" (yes, we are tied up to dock...I told her that maybe she needed to get a cashiers job at One Mart then tongue in cheek)
Today was a bad produce day, what did come had to be mostly stripped down. I took this picture, as I had ordered no more then a dozen or so heads of romaine and lettuce and this is how much I had to take off and throw away to get down to decent bits!

Thought that was a bit excessive. I suppose with it being Thanksgiving week everyone and their dog is going out on the water this week! Anyways it all boiled down to such a little amount to fit in my fridge! I find these vegetable saver bags, although being very expensive and not found on island, really do help my produce make it through the week. I just have to make sure I take anything that is starting to rot off right away at the beginning. This procedure of putting them all in the bags usually lasts for a few charters every season until we get too busy and then I can't be bothered and just shop more often during the week!

Went back into Riteway tonight and waited in line for the cashier to finish fighting with some kind of supervisor as she was hungry and the doctor said she had to eat! Another one yelling at her to "serve the customer first"...and so ends another week on island and time to go back on the water tomorrow!

Where do the days go? The island has been quite dry for November, all the cars are looking very dusty (I notice these things since I have a vehicle!) We went to town this afternoon for the daily run to the banks to try and cross more things off our to do list. Today was a stellar day though, we managed to get business checks out of two banks!! Which was wonderful as we were down to Zilch...Of course, neither called me and when I was in Scotia to pick them up at 10 to three they told me I may had ordered them their but i had to go over to Fleming House to commercial banking to pick them up...which closed at 3! I question why they did not tell me that when I ordered them, but hey, it is the islands. At least I got some! My supplier can stop fearing now, I will be able to pay the provisioning bills for charter this weekend.
Noticed a lot of birds by the Dolphin Discovery Pen at Prospect Reef, so we stopped so I could take pictures.

It was feeding time for the poor dolphins, they appear to have quite a few in there at the moment.



This is a common pose for my husband when I have my camera out, sitting on the sidelines waiting for me to take pictures.

Then just to stop somewhere else that we have not stopped for awhile, we pulled into the new in the last couple years area at Brandywine Bay. There was an interesting tree there.

Don't know the type, but I liked taking pictures. There was lots of garbage cans there, but other then that it was quite a bit of broken beach furniture and condom wrappers and small drug bags, so I get the picture what it is mostly used for!

This is looking down the channel from the point there at sunset.

This is what my salon looks like. I did not know it was possible for us to store so much laundry on the boat and I am not sure where I am supposed to put it before we go on charter Saturday, considering since not really working that end of the boat for a couple years I have no idea which sheets go on which beds! Hopefully Dora, who cleans the inside of the boat tomorrow will have a better idea then me!


Noticed one other thing in town (to my husbands delight as he usually stays away from at least Bobbys from now to the New Years!) NO Xmas decorations and hoards of bicycles and blaring music outside Bolos and Bobby's yet! Maybe the economic downturn will take a hit on the Xmas decorations that Bobbys spends freely on every year and I keep on saying I will take the discount on the food instead...

It appears that Bitter End Yacht Club is actually laying off 36 of their staff by the end of the year, which is 17% of its work force. The front page of the BVI Beacon today had a quote from the Acting Tourist Board Director Hadassah Ward saying " The prognosis is very, very negative at the moment, and that is an international prognosis for tourism everywhere"

We had an island special wedding today at the Soggy Dollar Bay!
We had a ring bearer... (rings nicely pinned on one of our deck cushions) although the ring bearer looks a little old for the position!

We had a flower girl who had on less clothes then the bride! Her flower bucket was a pot of sand that was spread out on the beach aisle. We also had a half naked wedding videographer, who also had on less clothes then the bride....

We had a bride with a long train and volunteers to hold up the train...

We had a nautical groom with a tuxedo...

We had someone to give away the bride, as her parents were not here.... We had the wedding song playing in the background...

We had a father who was I believe got his papers on line somewhere. The scroll with the wedding vows seemed to be very long, and include items like Sandy promising to always clean up after Dietz...I believe our father actually looked more like count dracula! I think she also had to promise to keep her head under the covers when he farts

I believe our blushing bride was almost in tears when she saw her sparkling ring and could not believe that they had the right size. We did not know that this was the day she got married the first time on!

A lovely ceremony was held water side, with about 70 onlookers on the beach watching them all...

Then it was time for the group photo to cherish for ever and show all their grandkids! Then we had the first dance song which was "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC!

After the ceremony the groom bought mango daiquiris all the way around!
Who says you have to spend a lot of money to get married in the islands!!!

Once again, firmly taking off my tourism hat here, but it is necessary. Our rule of dealing with anchorages and areas of the BVI that we do not think are that safe, is we just do not go there. Cane Garden Bay has been on that list for many years.
I don't want to hear "just keep a sharp eye out" "there are many more dangerous places (insert whatever)" Our reasons that we had chosen the BVI for chartering are many. One of these reasons was safety.
I am not going to repeat the entire story leading up to this, but we had guests who wanted to go to the full moon party last night at Bombas. Us anchoring at Cane Garden Bay made the most sense. Simba thought he would go along with them, and we told him that we would drop him off then as we will not leave the dinghy on dock there. When he heard our reasons, he decided to stay behind.

Our standard operating procedure here is No dinghy on the dinghy dock at night, locked or not. Someone must remain on the boat at all times with all security lights and cockpit lights blazing brightly. In addition, Simba napped in the cockpit last night. May seem extreme, but it appears to be a place that boats are often boarded in the evening while people are out enjoying the festivities, and rifled through. We did not have our motion sensors on as we had a crew member in the cockpit, otherwise, they would have been on.

When he went in to dock to pick up the guests around midnight, he found people from a couple catamarans jumping up and down as they had been robbed. Proved our point once again on why we either do not come here overnight, or take the precautions we do. I do not know any more details then that, but I am sure they will come out in the coconut telegraph soon.

I know the businesses in Cane Garden Bay are quite cognizant of what is going on and have banded together to hire a security guard at least on Friday and Saturday nights near the dinghy dock. But, this was a Thursday and a Full Moon Party and a security guard is not going to be out patrolling the anchorages, where there seems to be a lot of the thieving action.

We need to do MORE as a community, land and water based here to clean this up. It is in all our best interests. The above is what we do, I suggest boats anchoring here overnight implement some of these measures.