bvi captains log blog

I have had a crap couple days here...life always seems to be easier when I am out circling the waters and taking my camera for a dive. Having said that, I just rolled on the floor laughing...
If anyone ever watches the ABC news from St. Croix here, it may be the news but it is often the comedy half hour. Lets just say there is lots of local colour in the news!
Tonight they were talking about a guy who said he was kidnapped, put in his trunk and shot on St Croix at one gas station. No, that is not funny, what is humorous is that he was not even at that gas station (at 130 in the morning) he was somewhere by Salt River in one of the local Lovers Lanes cheating on his wife. "bad guys" (direct quote from the reporter) came along, pistol whipped them, threw him in the trunk, shot him, told the girl to jump in the ocean and swim...Which she did and apparently was rescued by a dinghy in the middle of the night, which prompted the reporter to ask what a dinghy was dong out there in the middle of the night and so the stories go. He repeated over and over again that this guy was not putting air in his tires at 130 AM at the gas station where he was kidnapped, but was at lovers lane. Then, and I am paraphrasing here, the reporter states something to the effect of, "remember the old stories that white people always tell in the states, well, not always, but a lot of the time, that black people are getting sick of, that 2 black guys stole your baby or car or whatever" well on St Croix apparently the new story is that you are were kidnapped at a gas station...the gentlemen who was put in the trunk is off island getting medical treatment, although when he gets back the wife may finish off the job.... :)
Glad to finish off my day with a smile...Here also is a turtle picture, which also makes me smile...

Town days on the other hand, do not make me smile. I was sad to hear of the passing this past weekend of Dr Jana Downing at Peebles Hospital. We had been going to see her since we moved here, and she always did a lot for the island, and the local Diabetes association. She will be missed.
Since we needed prescription refills we went to another clinic and I was sitting waiting in the room with all the people coughing and sneezing and thinking that it was probably the worst place in the world for a sick person to go!
On the plus side, I needed a mammeogram, since I had not had one since my operation a couple years ago, and I could get in immediately. On the down side, I am not sure how effective of a mammeogram it was...I don't believe that they had half my breast ON the damn thing! We had a very expensive day in town. We left our car across from Bobby's to get washed while we were doing our running around, and when we get back in, I put my phones in the middle catch all as I normally do, only to find out that the washers had left a large puddle of water in there, and I had two phones in there splashing around in the water for half an hour. One is ok, one we are not sure yet, it is still doing funny things...
Gosh it was warm in town! I have been chasing a couple checks that were supposed to have been sent over for me a few days ago and it took about 4 trips back and forth and more phone calls to finally find one of them! I mean, we are not talking small checks, they were both over $8000.!
We were down at Nanny Cay and there was a multihull that we knew was in the boatyard with quite a bit of damage on it. This was a crewed charter yacht, that fetched up on the rocks by breaking anchor line on St Thomas in the middle of the night a month or so ago. The name is not important (it is not Promenade though!) as I understand they are hoping to rebuild. It was a sad sight to see, as this boat has been around a long time! Really drives it home on how flimsy our boats are against rocks! Thought people would be interested in the pictures though....











We hit the banks, Marine Services, Conservation and Fisheries, Customs, Labour Board, mail, post office and pharmacies. How do you think our day was? Only to get home last night and find out that my brand new laptop pro, that had JUST been replaced 6 weeks ago or so, was frozen. And I do mean frozen. Nothing you did to this baby was going to get it unfrozen. Sigh. You say "well of course Kerry has everything backed up, she has time machine, and a external drives etc etc" yep, things are backed up until I got my new laptop, then I thought, "well, I will just wait until I get up west this summer and have my fast networking connection as with a new laptop it should be fine for a couple months" Yep, Laugh now...It is winging it's way back to my sister in California as we speak and I have her an appointment at the Genius Bar at Apple tomorrow night!
Back to the old cheapo baby Mac...While on my way into town today to ship said computer, I ran across an accident at Riteway/Domino Corner.
The little blue taxi on the right was really banged up on the right side and the gold car on the left was banged up on the left...They have that whole corner and area so messed up it is always an accident waiting to happen!

Richard goes back to the doctor on Friday about his knee, so then we should know more on how he is doing which I will pass on.... That is the end of my gossip and news for the day, I will leave off with an article from the Beacon last week on Trish from Yacht Serendipity and Ann from Sand Castle doing reef check...



I have to agree that fish counts are way down, but they are obviously diving somewhere different then I, as I am not seeing a lot of healthy coral myself...