bvi captains log blog

The good ship Promenade is out on charter again! The weather is gorgeous with white puffy clouds and gentle winds. Joining us this week are two families, one from North Carolina who has been on Promenade twice before, and a brand new family from Georgia.
We were anchored bright and early by the ferry dock waiting for them to come in...They were smiling and happy to see us from the boat.....

although they said one old couple on there sniffed their noses and said "Promenade, hmmm, that is the boat that ran into us in the middle of the night and a crew member hurt there leg trying to separate the boats" Don't remember that, so I will assume it was not while we were on here!
The first wave arrived...

and then the next wave arrived with more luggage...

They tried to tell us it was because there was so much dive gear in the bags, was the reason there were so many bags! We will see!!

Some were just happy to get their shoesies off!

I loved this decrepit old fishing boat that was anchored by the ferry dock today, it had so much character....

We stowed the gear, and had a light lunch....

Lotion was applied and we were off sailing!

We have people finishing off their dive certifications this week, so Little Harbor seemed like a perfect first stop. We tied in to a rock on the point...

and then I guess it was the muscle man contest, or was it perhaps to see who was whiter???????

and all our divers (not so quickly) got themselves ready to get in the water.

Some with a leap...



Bazza took the certified men down and they saw a gigantic turtle I guess that had been hit on his shell.

After a walk through the buildings on land, it was off for another sunset sail down to Norman Island

We anchored off of Privateer Bay and watched the sunset over St John

And pretty standard for my blog, the first nights dinner picture.

I hear talk and movement with the launch sallying forth to Willy T's in the Bight tonight. Should be a bit of a party there, the Bight was fairly busy when we went by. I also hear that one of the crewed charter yachts saw a Lion Fish at the Indians in the last couple days...No pictures yet!

And just to finish this off, I have heard a bit of gossip about petty thefts in West End, and that has been ongoing the last 6 months or so more then usual, so lock up!
"You should all be aware that we have been reliably told that two youngsters were warned off while they were interfering with a dinghy at Frenchmans Cay,apparently trying to remove it without permission.Also in West End,behind Pussers,a vehicle has been badly damaged by someone who tried to steal the car and as a consequence severly damaged the wiring loom to the point where the vehicle is inoperable.And,last night,there appears to have been an attempt to part us from our dinghy which was tied alongside----fortunately securely locked to a stanchion."

From our Swim Vacation Trip Last week, the professional Photographer, Heather Perry spent a lot of time editing and putting up pictures of the trip. They are truly nice to view!


You can see more by following the links in the email she sent me today! Happy viewing....
I have put up a gallery of my favorite swim vacation images on my website. Please visit by clicking here:

http://www.heatherperryphoto.com

I have also put up the slideshow with music if you'd like to see it:

http://www.heatherperryphoto.com/Heather_Perry_Photography/SwimVacationMovie.html

And me today, well, no internet yet, no starter motor for the vehicle yet by mid afternoon, so it is going to be a busy evening to get ready for charter first thing in the AM

I really want to go back on charter. Sometimes living on the island beats me down. Today is one of those days. Lets continue on about CCT Boatphone. Since I was in town this morning, I went in there, as I had some time and I figured my luck might be better then Bazzas. I saw a customer service rep right away!! Feeling quite full of myself by this time....I explain that we are paying this much for internet a month and I see it advertised everywhere else for cheaper, so what do I have to do to get it cheaper. The conversation roughly goes like this:
HER "The cheapest you can get it for is $69.00 a month"
ME: "That is fine, I pay $99. now"
HER: "You have to sign a contract for 18 months (or whatever number she muttered that I smiled and nodded at as I never understand people) and pay the first two months in advance
ME: "That is fine, I have already had it for years and years"
HER: "Did you bring in your laptop to get a new card?"
ME: "No, I don't need a new card, the one I have works fine and I have already paid for it through CCT, several times, whenever they put out a new card" (I remembered this from the first time my husband went in and he found out the "new faster cards" were faster, if and it is a big IF as the network here does not support it, although it may someday...)
HER: "Well, if you don't get a new card, you are only eligible for the $79.00 a month plan, not the $69.00"
ME: "Well, I have a perfectly good card that works fine so why would I buy a new one"
HER: " This is a corporate account"
ME: " I have no idea whether it is in my name, the company name or both, we have had it so long we just want it changed"

She agreed to do it. I also got our phone plan changed to $40.00 less a month with more features (included unlimited calling to the USA and Canada!) by signing a 12 month contract and "prepaying" something...which I did.
I floated out of there, went home and told Bazza about my trip and how I had gotten it done. We joked and said that the internet probably won't work at all now...You probably know what i am going to say, that the internet does not work at all now...and you would be right!
First of all, the internet immediately stopped working and then I saw this ad in the newspaper which says the internet is $69.00 a month and they give you a FREE card or MODEM!!

I cringed thinking that I had to call in and deluded myself that maybe the internet was just down..... yeah, very delusional...I finally called. Went through the entire story to a customer service rep and spent a half hour on the phone. Finally put my husband on and he went through about a half hour with the end result being "you have to bring everything in" He finally hung up on them after telling them they were archaic I believe! He called back when he regained his composure and went through the entire thing again only to be told "the person who can help him is not in" Stop laughing!!! It is NOT funny!!! Then he gets an inkling and it is sort of confirmed by the person on the phone that because we use a PCMCIA card (sold to us for a lot of money through Boatphone) in the back of a pyramid router (sold to us for a lot of money through boatphone) which allows us to broadcast our signal through the boat, the new plans only work with ONE connection. They are trying to get rid of all the old pyramids so then you have to pay for an extra line........ Net result is, tomorrow he has to take in the laptops, cards, pyramid, the whole kit and cabooble to them. Does not matter that we said, the equipment is fine, it is whatever you did today that messed it up. And, hopefully, we will be able to get it back to the $99.00 a month we used to pay so we can use it throughout the boat. If I did not laugh I would cry. I step forward, 8 steps back....
Moving on, went by the big house on Buck Island, and also noticed this stone structure on the back beach, don't know what it is.



On my way into Roadtown by dinghy (as the started motor that was supposed to be to us by now has not even gotten a credit card to pay for it yet from us!) there was this helpful boat that was towing two dingies that were all over the place, but made the trip nice and flat!

Took the opportunity to go into the hurricane hole, as I have only been there once before. Found some neat Tortola sloops...

and old small tri and assorted other boats being used...

A few sunken boats here and there....

a fixer upper boat if anyone is looking for one!

And going by Fish Bay we have noticed that the derelict ships have been cleared out and they are busy flattening and "making more land" in the bay, I wonder what is going on there????


I thought, well since I have no internet on the boat, I will go sit in the car with the A/C and pick up the marina connection...HA! No starter motor, no A/C, so I am sitting with the mosquitos uploading this...

Received this AM:
As you know, a couple of months ago we -- the BVICCHA and concerned members of the hospitality industry -- met with the ferry owners/operators to discuss the urgent need for a late ferry schedule. At that time, Mr. Bobby Hodge agreed to provide a daily ferry service at 9:00 p.m. from Red Hook to Road Town. That schedule has now been approved by the Government clearing the way for Mr. Hodge to begin operating that 9:00 p.m. trip tomorrow.

The courtesy dispatch system that was envisaged for St. Thomas has not yet materialized. In the interim, however, Mr. Hodge is making arrangements to have the passengers transported from the St. Thomas airport terminal to Red Hook.

We are hopeful that the entire seamless process will soon be realized.

Made our way back to Marina today as Simeon spent the day in town. Went to dock the boat and I sighed, as that meant I had to help. I took helm, pulled up to the dock and he jumped right off onto the dock with the line in his hand not attached to the boat. So we laughed.
My day looked like this...Trying to nurse it better!

I thought it would be a perfect day then to hook up my Apple TV and hook it to my computer and itunes account. Seemed easy. Well, ten hours later, I am still working on it!

I got the important stuff done, I can pay money to download things on my TV now! First things first in my world, except for somehow I have the Apple TV remote not only synced with the Itv, but also both my mac computers seemed to be synced to it as well! They are not even all shuffling through the same menus, three different option screens come up all over the place! I have no idea what i did. Tomorrow is another day. Also managed to wipe one of my IPODS clean of shows I have not watched yet, and most of them are on the hard drive that it is in the Lion. I offered to go get it!!
Bought a new vehicle and apparently I have to take a cab back and forth to town tomorrow or rent a car as we are waiting for a starter motor to be shipped over from St Thomas. Sigh. But the air conditioning works well!!!
Watched a ton of men and go fast boats go out today, not sure what was going on, but I would think it would get expensive getting these gigantic trucks to haul your boat in and out of the water all the time!

Very calm in here tonight, not much wind at all. No rain. And there is my weather report! Two sighs in one short blog entry means I have to take nachos and sour cream and take the finale of survivor to bed with me!

We have now made about 4 trips into CCT Boatphone attempting to change our packages to one of the newer (of course a lot cheaper!) packages. I mean, Bazza has sat and waited for hours, and the person (apparently the ONLY person on the island who can accomplish this gigantic task) is never in. To tell you the truth, I call this bullshit.
The first time we gave up after being told that we had to apply to have it changed, and go to another place, and we could only change it IF we signed a new contract AND we had had our service for over two years so our last contract had expired. We had had our service for over ten years, so I guess the old service was expired. We put it off until the next time we had a good spread of time off for this process AND the packages they offer new people are just getting cheaper and cheaper so the one we have it almost three times as expensive as the current one!
The second time he waited for well over an hour and still could not get served.
The third time after waiting for about twenty minutes he was told (by the security girl no less as there was noone manning the desk) that the person was not there he had to talk to.
CCT Boatphone are you reading this? This is horrible, despicable service, AND you just put out an article in the newspaper saying that you were "focusing your efforts on KEEPING your current customers instead of getting new ones!" We have given CCT Boatphone SSSOOOO much money over the years and you hear stories like ours all over the place!
Then we went to the banks, yep, lets go on about that for a bit... Just had to make a check deposit at Banco. The ATM was out of order, went in the bank, well they were practically swinging from the rafters there was so many people in line. Went outside to the ATM machine at the drive through, dodging cars, with a few other people trying to do the same. By the time it was my turn the people in the car in front of me walking said it was not working! Went back inside, no line no shorter, went away to spend an hour in the line at the Scotia Bank, and then back to Banco to repeat the entire process I had done an hour ago to finally deposit my one check in the bank. Always fun when you feel like crap!
On another note, diesel was "only" $3.28 a gallon at Delta Dock today. Nice to see that is coming down, I don't have to cringe quite so much when I see our diesel bills every charter.... We took off over to Salt Island afterwards, and Bazza decided that Simeon would do man overboard drills on the way over so he was put on helm..
This is the man...

and Bazza even picked up the mooring balls again!

Speaking of Bazza he came home with pressure cookers today. Either it was a very exotic Xmas present for me or it was for his ROV! Of course it was for his ROV!! He spent the rest of the day threading blue spaghetti through holes for those who are following this procedure...

I am waiting for the day this thing finally hits the water, the man has more patience then I do!

Nice sunset over Peter Island tonight....

and to close off this entry from the sniffly snuffly one, a nice picture of a triggerfish....