bvi captains log blog

Great, we go from earthquakes to very strong tropical waves in the same weekend! I was congratulating ourselves this afternoon as I finished sewing our 80 foot high sail, many times (now up to 3 kilometers of seams I understand!) The sewing machine was oiled and I made it go away...

The weather has been semi shitty all day, but just before sunset tonight it really turned ugly! Not a very good picture by the waves were sure rolling down here in Sopers Hole.

We saw over 30 knots and were sitting down below when we heard an awful noise. Ran up to the cockpit with flashlights, too squally to really see anything out there, and could not see what had banged. Bazza was up on deck about the same time I spied a bent stainless steel pole on our awning (you know, the one we just fixed) and it looked like the entire awning was going to be carried away. Turns out our "must be able to float free" liferaft cover on the front of the boat had flown of, hit the pole and then gone overboard.
Bazza first (and probably only) thought was "it will take me two days to remake that!" and when we had a break in the squalls, we were out in the dinghy looking like madman I am sure going up and down the channel onto Little Thatch taking a look for it!
No where in site, we will look on the shores in the morning... This is what i looked like when I came back...

What else did we find in the dinghy? Well the wind was so strong it took our windvane straight off the top of the mast and deposited it our dinghy!!
We must be in "one step forwards three steps back land here" doing maintenance...

Heard a couple Pan Pans on the radio, one was a sailboat with a couple and a child aground by the Puerto Rico lighthouse, (bad place to be aground...) one off of culebra , and they are talking to some one else now but I don't have any details yet. I wonder how other boats fared tonight in these squalls! There seems to be quite a few around this weekend for the first time anyways.

We had a fairly strong earthquake this morning! About 630 or so, my husband woke up knowing something was wrong, but not quite sure whether we were dragging, whether a ferry had gone to close or what. Turned out to be a 6.1 size earthquake about 60 miles north of us. No damage, although I hear through the Virgin Islands that things were shaken off of shelves and houses jiggled on their foundation quite a bit. Always a weird feeling.
Gave my husband a good kick to get up and get the marigolds on! The never ending sewing saga...He is cleaning the curtains for the cockpit here.

Yes, I sewed more today, in fact we sewed all day and it is sunset and he is just finishing stringing back up the awning and curtains. It does look nice. He informed me that I had sewn over a kilometer of seams this week, believe me, I know that! Starting to get grumpy I am...I think he tells me we have a couple patches on our sail bags and then we are done! Yippee!!

Surprisingly, not as much rain and wind as i expected today with this wave coming through, don't feel like going up the channel anyways. The sunset tonight is looking very different then this past week though!

My sister emailed me today and I quote "I saw the picture of you with the sewing machine and laughed! You sure did not look happy, but then, why would a Hucul child be happy sewing?!? I think there should be a rule that we never go near anything to do with sewing."
Yep, agree with that, no sewing, no vacumning, no cleaning cars, shopping...The list could go on. My sister and i agree that we like food shopping. go figure on that one!

Well for those lucky duckies (or is that fishies?) who are going to be attending DEMA (Dive Equipment Manufacturers Association) in Las Vegas this year, a few of our dive operators will be on hand with some great prize give-aways, and a Painkiller Social Event.
We will not be at DEMA this year. For some stupid reason, I always pick the years to go that it is at Orlando, which we have been to a billion times. My husband has never been to Vegas (although in all truth he is much more interested in going to the Hoover Dam then actual Las Vegas!)
DEMA Social Event Join other dive professionals at this fun event.
The British Virgin Islands Tourist Board will be hosting an Appreciation Hour at the 2008 DEMA Show on Thursday, October 23rd from 3 to 5pm at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Attendees are invited to join the British Virgin Islands Tourist Board, Trimarine, Sail Caribbean Divers and Captain Collin Aldridge at Booth # 2621 to enjoy some BVI treats as a token of appreciation for their patronage of the destination over the years.
The destination’s signature drink the BVI Pain killer, a favorite among avid sailing and dive enthusiasts will be served while industry partners and DEMA attendees mingle and enjoy themselves.
DEMA attendees are also invited to take this opportunity to enter into the British Virgin Islands 2008 DEMA show giveaways featuring the following 3 dive packages:

• ONE BVI DELUXE SCUBA DIVING PASSPORT including
• Three days of all inclusive Diving
• 6 dives on 6 World-class BVI Dive sites!!!
• Value: $595.00



and
• BEST OF THE BVI “OUT-ISLANDS” Dive Package includes
• 2 days of Scuba Diving
• 2 Nights accommodations on the beautiful island of Jost Van Dyke!!
• Value: $1295.00



And
• BVI DIVE EXTRAVAGANZA
• 10 dives for 1 person
• Expires Nov 1st 2009
• Value $465



For more information on the British Virgin Islands Appreciation Hour, please contact the General Manager of North American Sales and Operations of the BVI Tourist Board, Ms. Perla George at pgeorge@bvitourism.com.

We enjoy walking around DEMA and seeing what is happening, but after a day or two I quickly become overwhelmed by all the colors, lights, and noise (yep, I do live on a boat, anything above the hum of the generator and I get cranky) I question what DEMA will be like this year with the economy in shambles the way it is. I refuse to put up any more pictures of me sewing! We have finished sewing the awnings and they do look bright and shiny and very clean, the husband is putting a billion grommets in them on land and I cleaned all the stainless frame, so hopefully they will be back on somewhat by tonight. We try and get them down and up as quickly as possible as it quickly ruins all our varnish in the cockpit with them down. Also takes us about 15 minutes to cut the awnings down and about three days to string them back up again. The awning is always the very last thing to be cut down when we are getting ready for a hurricane, in case it is really no necessary.

So, instead of silly sewing pictures I will put up a few of my favorite pictures of fish for the weekend. This is a nice little Golden Eel..

And my favorite, TURTLES!

Not a great picture, but I have a hard time getting good pictures of Barracudas...

And this is a picture I took a few years ago, it was at Watermelon Cay on St John and it just ended up looking very "surreal". One of my favorite sunset pictures and a nice changes from the every night shot of the sunset over West End this week!


Last but not least, we received the first "beach warnings" we have had for awhile for this week, we are expected to have a fairly strong tropical wave come through.
Beach Safety Flags Friday 10th October 2008
Due to N Swell, tracking NE through Saturday and Sunday (expected to pick up slightly by tomorrow and decrease by Sunday).
Red Flags are flying at Lambert Beach & Long Bay (Tortola).
Yellow Flags are flying at The Baths NPT & Smuggler's Cove.
Purple Flags are flying at The Baths NPT.
Lifeguards are on duty at Josiah's Bay 9.30am to 5.30pm

This is what my face looked like today. Bazza told me the seagulls were going to land on the lip and poop! Maybe that would get me out of sewing....

When we bought our vehicle at Caribbean Auto Mart in St Thomas a few weeks ago, part of the deal was to fix the A/C and the ABS light. Neither was done. We contacted them, a few times and basically they said that the mechanics "forgot" about the A/C and the ABS light was fixed but came back on when they were taking it to the dock. We found them good to deal with, and they were going to work it out. We were impressed as it was not like we were going to bring the vehicle back to St Thomas. They decided they would send someone over on the ferry to fix this early this week.
We called Monday and they told us they save up a few things for the mechanic and since he has family here, he would be here Tuesday until Thursday and would call us to arrange it. This did not happen. They told us not to worry, it would happen. About noon today Bazza called to see what was going on, as we had not heard anything. After a couple phone calls, the guy was supposed to call us back with the mechanics phone number so we could contact him ourselves. I thought "great, all of a sudden it will be OUR problem to track this guy down, not theres"
I kept the phone by me all day, and guess what, I know you will be surprised here in the Caribbean that we did not even get a phone call back with the guys number, never mind see a mechanic. We have now spent weeks trying to get this straightened out, and I think they are just putting us off and hoping we will give up. Funny thing was the couple things I said to Bazza was it had to have A/C and I did not in any shape or form an island car that was a piece of junk. So we bought fairly new, and we still seem to have an island car!
This is by Pockwood Pond where I had told you about the intakes for the electricity were full of holes. They are digging up a lot of dirt... and the incinerator plant is smoldering again (or I believe still! It has been for years, the "excess pile" I am sorry, I just don't agree with the school of thought nowadays that we should not throw our food scraps over board on the boat but instead take it to land to the dump. We are overwhelmed by garbage here like most Caribbean Islands.

Had a dive ops meeting at VISAR today, so I snapped a picture of the inside of where the VISAR boat is kept, just to put something different on the blog tonight!

Then I went over to Baughers Bay to take a couple pictures of a 240 foot ship that is available potentially to the BVISO for a dive site...if we clean it! It is nice and big, but it does look like a lot of work to clean it.



There are workers cutting back the bushes all over the island, with all the rain we are very green and overgrown. I wish that we would get on top of the garbage that is horrendous in some spots though! I took a walk to the locals marina in between Baughers Bay and the Fishing Complex to take a look at the boats in there, as i had never been in and I was absolutely astonished how much garbage there was in there.

It was in piles everywhere, and obviously a lot of these wrecks (which is all a lot of them were) are being lived on...

This boat we used to see around a lot but have not seen it out on the water for a few years and don't think it could go anywhere now. It also has people living on it and it looks like it is going to sink at its spot anytime!

I found it pretty depressing. I guess I have taken off my tourism hat here, but I think we could do so much more for our tourism if we only PICKED up the garbage. God it is so thick in some piles that all these backhoes that they have cutting back the undergrowth could easily be scooping them up. I understand, that on Jost van Dyke, some people took it on themselves to clean up the garbage (expats) and the locals got mad at them for touching "their" garbage, so obviously there is things below the surface on this topic.

As I was driving back to West End I was wondering WHY I lived so long here without a vehicle!!! Awfully convenient! Took a picture of the boat on the way back out just for something different. The boat looks very funny without the awning on, and as usual, when it is off, it is very HOT in the cockpit. I cannot imagine how the boat used to not have one in its infancy.

Tonights sunset is a bit different...

Time to go to bed so I can be fresh for tomorrows sewing now!

Mainly I think we have mosquito's the last few days everywhere here on Tortola. I have even been spraying the boat twice a day to get rid of them. It is so still and we had so much rain...
I am quite excited as I am about finished sewing the trampoline, unfortunately he has the awnings down and I am sewing those now! He did lift my little heart though when he said the trampolines could wait to go back on the boat until Simeon got here later on this month! The boat looks very bare..

I took our new car into town today, it was so nice to have a vehicle. and not give it a second thought where I went. Went into Labour again this week to check on my work permit renewal. Not ready. Same story as last week. I asked how long the renewals were taking nowadays and she said, "3-4 weeks" and then looked at when I had put it in, and laughed and said "well, they are still behind, try next week" Some years I get it in a week, some years it takes months...
Tonights sunset over West End, looking eerily similar to the other sunsets here I know!

Not much has changed since yesterday! I am still sewing and my hands are hurting quite a bit. I think tomorrow morning I am on the home stretch on the sewing as we are both heartily sick of trampolines!

One thing I have noticed, is the amount of building and work that has gone down here on Frenchmans Cay right on the waterfront of villas. Every time I turn around there seems to be another Villa with a dock built!

The sunset is very pretty tonight though here in Sopers, this is looking down the channel

and this is looking over at Steele Point!