bvi captains log blog

Sorry for those who are getting automated feeds show up from my blog on Facebook etc. I have long been pondering a few things, and I am not sure where I want to go with some of them.

My businesses and personal stuff have always been all lumped together in my blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc. I have never minded sharing the personal stuff I do with complete strangers on my blog, although sometimes in the past I have wished I could have left off my Facebook page how drunk I was the night before!
I have also at times felt sorry for the people who read my blog, as lots read it for different reasons, sometimes they ARE family and will read everything, some are just interested in Fish pictures, some only interested in what good gossip I get through the coconut telegraph, some just love the BVI. I have often felt sorry for those who have no interest in my family having to sift through it all. I know, you would think that I would have better things to be concerned about don't you??????? Apparently I don't!

My blog automatically feeds into my Facebook, which is mostly people I know, but not all, as some I have become friends with on line through my blog. I have had friends (not many) complain that they feel like I am constantly advertising my business on Facebook, and I cringe when I hear that, as I truly am not trying to, it is just that they are all tied together, and I truly enjoy seeing what the power of social media does FOR me personally and FOR my businesses. It truly is amazing.

As most of you know, I am sometimes NOT politically correct on my blog, which is sometimes not in keeping with the business end of my life and I have business associates who don't like it when I do that! Yep, feeling like a bit of a rock and a hard place.

I do not think that I have enough patience and organizational skills, knowing my personality, to sift through everything and decide which "on line" persona it is going to go through and keep them separate. I have often felt like part of the reason that our repeat guests like us so much is BECAUSE I am fairly real and don't just put up pretty pictures and do a brochure every single day. I need feedback. (well, something other then what I have received above, you know, the rock and the hard place comments)

Because we own and run small businesses, they don't seem to separate very well in my mind, and they all seem to be part of me.


What got me started on this today?


Well, I have had a group on Facebook for Yacht Promenade for a few years, and it is really not integrated in very well with everything else and the new pages they have are much more easy to work with, so after posting an event in my group (which is here) I went looking for the info on how to turn a group into a page, which does not seem to be possible, so I am in the process of setting up a page (which you can see here) post the events again, add the pictures again, and annoy those who don't want to see the business advertising stuff by having it go through my feed one more time. I guess they could just defriend me!

Yes, I am on twitter here, as well and everything gets lumped together too!


I use Linked in too...

How do others deal with this? And, WHY DO I CARE??
Of course you know if I split things into "personal" and "business" then I get to poke fun at my guests more then I do now that they are all joined!!

wreck week june 12th - june 19th, 2010

british virgin islands

Soar over the 310-foot long wreck of the RMS Rhone with Promenade Sail Dive Charters during Wreck Week 2010!

June 12th- 19th, 2010 in conjunction with The BVI Tourist Board (For BVI Tourism's Facebook group for Wreck Week please click here)

Your week on Promenade will include 6 nights and 7 days (Sunday June 13th through Saturday June 19th) onboard our wide stable air conditioned multi-hull with all buffet meals, cocktails and h'or d'oeuvres, wine with dinner, all diving, and other water sports including fishing, waterskiing, kayaking.

Our style of diving on Promenade is casual. If you are a photographer, please feel free to go at your own pace. If you want a divemaster to lead you, follow our crew member, if you prefer diving by yourself after a thorough briefing on the site, go ahead. IF you want to get up very early in the morning and jump in the water (as we tend to anchor over dive sites because of night dives this week) feel free to (as long as a crew member knows that you are in the water).

This is a sample itienary ONLY. We have two wrecks, the Parametta and the ROCUS on Anegada Reef, that if the weather conditions allow, we will be going out to dive. We do however, guarantee to hit as many wrecks as we can in the time as we can and to do unlimited diving.

Day One: (June 13th Sunday)

Board Promenade 12 noon. Promenade will welcome you with a light lunch before sailing over to the wreck of the FEARLESS outside Great Harbor on Peter Island to do our first wreck dive. We will anchor for the evening at Little Harbor on Peter Island. For those staying overnight on island the evening before, Saturday the 12th, you are welcome to attend WRECK WEEK opening party at Nanny Cay Marina. Details to follow.

Day Two: (June 14th Monday)

We will dive Carrot Rock on the outside of Peter Island after breakfast, one of our favorite dive sites, with pinnacles reaching from 70 feet up to the surface. Lunch will be at White Bay at Peter Island, with time for a beach excursion or snorkeling trip before we dive “Brown Pants” on the outside of Norman Island, or Santa Monica Rock, so named for the Santa Monica that hit the pinnacles here on April 29th, 1783 and subsequently sank at Water Creek on St John. We will anchor for the night at Privateer Bay on Norman Island. Also known as the Caves at Treasure Point and the setting of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Day Three: (June 15th, Tuesday)

After a snorkel before breakfast with all the Glassy Eyed Sweepers in the caves, we will take a short hop over to the Indians, so named as they look like an Indians feathered headdress from a distance, where we will do a dive before sailing up for lunch at Salt Island. After hearing the history of the wreck of the Rhone we will dive the Rhone in the afternoon, and then after dinner SCUBA to watch the turtles sleeping underneath the wreck and the lobsters and crabs wandering around. This is bar none, not only the Best Wreck dive in the Caribbean, but also in the top 5 dives of the world. We will anchor overnight on Salt Island.

Day Four: (June 16th, Wednesday)

Up and in the water early for a dive before breakfast before anyone else has a chance to disturb the wreck, this will cap off our SCUBA diving on the RMS Rhone. We have three additional wrecks on our diving agenda today the Beatta, the Inganess and the Marie L and the Pat, as well as a planned Pig Roast and Beach Party on Cooper Island, meeting up with the other divers participating in Wreck Week.

 

Day Five: (June 17th, Thursday) We sai early, weather permitting, out to the wreck of the CHIKUZEN, our second most famous wreck. We will dive the Chikuzen before lunch and again, after lunch before taking a leisurely sunset sail into Muskmelon Bay on Guana Island, one of our favorite deserted anchorages. Or perhaps we will head out to the Rocus and the Parametta? It all depends on the weather! A night dive is planned for those interested.

Day Six: (June 18th, Friday)

After a breakfast of watching the pelicans circling while they feed on the billions of bait fish in this bay, we will go around to the outside to dive Grand Central Station. Grand Central Station is so named for the many fish that converge around here, and it is capped up by a spectacular large cave that goes through the island at about 60 feet. Perhaps this afternoon will be a good time to visit the Baths? Friday night will find Promenade either anchored at Trellis Bay for the closing party on Wreck Week, or docked at our marina 5 minutes away from Trellis Bay and the BVI airport.

Day Seven: (June 19th, Saturday)

Sadly, it is time to sail back to marina, and disembark and leave paradise, with great memories.

 

Goliath Grouper on the wreck of the Chikuzen

PACKAGE:

Accommodation with Yacht Promenade Liveaboard (6 nights Sunday to Saturday)

All food and beverages on the yacht (wine with dinner, cocktail hour, (for those not night diving!) beer and soda)

Unlimited diving featuring the wrecks of the BVI, inc a minimum of 3 dives on the wreck of the RMS Rhone (inc 1 night dive)

Includes all tank fills, BC's and regs are available at an extra rental cost for those who would like

Dive Anegada (weather permitting), inc The Chikuzen and The Rocus

Special souvenir T-shirt

Souvenir Chart to map your week

Dive Book on the Chikuzen or RMS Rhone

Pig Roast Beach Party on Cooper Island (cash bar for alcoholic beverages on land)

Wrap up party at Trellis Bay (cash bar for alcoholic beverages on land)

$4000.00 based on 2 people sharing a cabin.

Discounts are available for a group chartering the entire yacht

We had no internet last evening, it was quite a shock to the system and I decided that sleeping would be a good plan instead!
After mostly an unexciting day doing bookwork (again, today should be the end of it) I decided to go for a swim. Simeon had his boat on dock grinding fiberglass. I bet you that was a hot dusty job! I saw baby pufferfish going underneath the dock, so there may be an explosion of them soon that get sucked into our air conditioning water intakes.

Salt Island has been calling my name a lot, so I loaded up the dinghy with dive gear and camera and off I went. A late afternoon dive is about my favorite. I had better pictures this afternoon anyways...



This Spotted eel was tucked into a free floating piece of soft coral and he did not want to come out so I could take a picture either!

Hermit crab peaking out at me...

I was surprised how many large hermit crabs there were around, and I did not realize they dug up the bottom as much as they do, but I followed them for a bit around and the path they were digging up was a couple inches deep anyways...

A few little schools of fish darted back and forth by me...

And anemones! Gosh how I love the colors on anemones, so I have many different colors here. One of the best places to get anemone pictures.



The eyes of a crab...

A skittish Triggerfish eyeing me...

A hind peeking over at me (wishing I would go away...)

Anemone # 2

Nice Clean Tulip Shell...Saw a couple VERY large Tritons as well, but did not take pictures as there shells were very dirty...

A little Triggerfish peering at me hoping I would go away...

Anemone #3

The same little Triggerfish, still wishing I would go away!

A not very good picture of a brittle star, he was also trying to get away from me...

I just kind of thought this was an interesting picture. I was using my 60 mm lens today, and I quite enjoy that lens. The pictures are usually good and nice and crisp.

It was finally looking like dusk so I thought I better hightail it out of the water so I could get back into Harbourview before dark, having no chance probably myself of missing the rocks going in the harbour on a pitch black night! The sunset was very clear and nice from every direction and i was wishing for a bigger lens then! This is the silhouette of the house on Buck Island...

And looking down Tortola...

I had to laugh when I received an email yesterday morning from my friend Bruce who is a graphic designer (read, way better with things then me creatively...) I knew my blog pictures were bad last night, but apparently bad enough (or my friend was bored enough on a Friday night!) that he played with my picture! This was my version...

And what came back to me!

LOL: Bruce, I am trying for the "getting the picture right the first time out of the camera" which, yes, is taking me about a hundred thousand snaps and I ain't there yet!!

It appears Richard and LIsa have one more holiday in them before they get back to the BVI toward the end of September, a week in Turkey on Tuesday! They have spanned the globe in the last year and I hope they realize I will have their paint and varnish brushes nicely lined up for them on the back (slippery needs non skid paint) deck ! And I will point out that Bazza managed to ONLY have to do the outside varnish ONCE while they were not here by optimally spacing it out over the season!

OK, enough of babbling here, time to go finish up the accounting.

For me, somehow, instead of vacation, it has been a busy town week and accounting and web sites. No salt island playing for this girl yet!
I did decide to take my camera in the water tonight just off the boat as I FIGURED there had to be something on the undersides of the docks anyways....
As usual, when I have not been using my macro for awhile, I come back with yucky horrible pictures, but since I have not done a proper blog entry for a couple days I will use them anyways! Then everyone will know that there is absolutely nothing to see in the murkiness that is East End! Definitely something we don't have to do twice....
Yes, a bad picture of a yellowtail!

Lots of baby upside down jelly fish. Too bad every picture I took was horrible...

A featherduster...

If you peer closely you can see that this is a little crab.

Yep, that is it. Almost embarrassing to put up! Oh well, not the first time I have embarrassed myself now is it?

I have been bugging my husband to go diving with me for almost a year. No, he has not been SCUBA diving since then. Granted, his knee always gave him problems, but imagine my surprise when I climbed out of the water tonight and ten minutes later he climbed out! Harrummppphhh! Feeling quite put out about him going in after me I was! He said he tried to find me, but I don't know how hard as we were in under 12 feet of water!!!!

I am certainly not sure what these fishermen catch every night sitting here on the dock as it is certainly not any fish that I can see!!!!!!

Bet you don't know what this picture is? It is Bazza being creative zip tying our water hose and our electrical cord together all the way down the dock to the boat! He figures there is less chance of losing either this way! We will see, we will see....

And for those who are wondering about the RV project: Here is an update on it from the horse's mouth:

Ummm, Well, I remade a processor board that I was having trouble with and I made a new pressure housing to house all the electronics as the first one was cylinderical and I was struggling for room since day one. I have finished my two video camera housings, and I would imagine in the next three days it will go for a swim. This will check out all the systems, and then it will be pretty close to all systems go! The only thing I have not started on is the communications processors for the information to go back up to the controller on things like depth and compass and pressure sensors and moisture sensors. Most of the manufacturing for each end is done, it is just writing some programs for it.
The design is fully pressure compensated, so it should be capable of up to about 5000 feet. The electronics have all been designed to talk to 4 miles of wire. It has a pneumatic hand, two video cameras, (one for general viewing at the top that will have pan and tilt on it and the other will be able to view the close up of what the manipulator is doing) Getting very close to being able to play!

That is all he told me, he says once it is in the water and running he will put up some specs for it. All for under $5000.00!! This leads into the next few pictures, as there is bits of this ROV scattered ALL over the place as you can see! Barely room for a puppette on the boat!!

Nope, no table in the salon for me either...

Lost this spot too...


AND he has an electronic room! I am not sure how there is ever room to do charters on this boat in between ROV's and camera equipment! Now when Richard brings his back it will be even worse, however, Rich will be glad to find out that I figured the saloon needed a camera cupboard MUCH more then it needed a games cupboard!!!!!

Not sure I mentioned this blogging this week, but Promenade is British Registered, here in the BVI. We were in Marine Services one day this week and they looked up something for us. Then they told us we owed $700.00! We were floored as we always pay the fees and licenses as they come up. Apparently it costs us a hundred dollars a year for the boat registry and they don't send out invoices, they just figure you will pay up sometime.. We must have paid it at some point though as we only owed for 7 years not the 12 we have been here!

It is akin to the Telecommunications. We pay for a boat VHF license and individual operators yearly. This one is REALLY a joke. THey don't hunt you down though once a year, again, so the first time we wondered about renewing them we found out we owed for about 5 years.....

I think I am just rambling now, probably time for Friday night Nacho's and bed with the last couple episodes of Grey's Anatomy from this season!

This is Wade, Karen, and the cutest granddaughter Ella in Australia this past weekend....aw, how cute!


I started going through the work I have to do off season and one thing led to another and after working all day I realized that I have about 2 months of computer work, you know, all the "stuff" I put off the other ten months of the year?????

Was at the Tourist Board tonight for a meeting with the BVI SCUBA Operators and them over WRECK WEEK 2010! I think a lot of plans are coming together and it is going to be exciting next June 12th through 17th in the British Virgin Islands.
More details later, time to make an exciting dinner of hotdogs (with cheese slices on them, thank you very much!) probably have not had these for a year, as they are not usually charter fare, then off to bed with movies...

It was a big afternoon yesterday as we went exploring! We went to BAR BAY POINT by Hodges Creek, Buck Island where we had seen the ruin of the house on top of the hill from the water the other day.
We found a road, and then an overgrown track to it first try...passing many coconut trees...

You can just see the ruins in the distance here, and yes, we had to put the car in 4 wheel drive to get there. Good thing we don't worry about tree scratches!

As far as the vehicle would go! Then it was off to fight the prickles with my TEVA's on for me, Bazza had on much more sensible walking shoes.

This is looking out at Beef Island from the spot...



And looking at Buck Island as well...

And looking back at our yacht in Harbourview!

There were many cacti....

And very large aloe vera plants everywhere...This is looking out from the balcony

We can only surmise that perhaps the place was damaged in a hurricane and then subsequently dismantles, as it looks like someone deliberately took windows out etc. It is also very clean. It would have been a lovely property! Here are some random shots of the foundations. I think this one is my favorite...







We did find someone's American Express card from 1986, last name of Johnson I believe just in case you lost one!

My very attractive husband in among the cactus! With a smile on his face...This is almost like a vacation!

We went wandering around down the beach there then, quite a bit of garbage around...



And came across the sewer pipes for East End! This is all behind where they are building the sewage plant, and it surprised me how much mangrove and water there actually is in that little spot.

My oldest son Chad was obviously fooling around on Photoshop! Quite cute!!