British Virgin Islands

A bit of a different view for me, I had gone for a swim....


















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Decided to go get a different view of all the sunken tugs and barges in Baughers Bay... took pictures from land. I don't believe these will ever get towed away, but if they sink a lot we can use them as landfill and build more land!













Some of them might have been salvageable soon after Early, but as each day goes by they are less and less...

I understand the cottages on Anegada crumbling into the sea were up for sale and have potentially been sold, although not sure how much land will be left of that half a million dollar price tag once the sea finishes reclaiming that point..

There is an interesting thread and more pictures on it here, for those who we have taken to visit...

These pictures are all Walkers (BVI Pirate)







this picture I don't even recall what forum it came from, but apparently another one of the car ferries found the reef in between St John and St thomas, and it was quite the process getting every one off and the barge pulled off and over to St John.....


And finally, I found this blurb interesting from Kim Kavin on the state of the Med versus the Caribbean charter market. It kind of dovetails in with the post I did on my yacht promenade blog yesterday and indeed, there is more availability then I have ever seen for Xmas and New Years yachts. Also thought it was funny as a lot of the central agents are sending around emails yesterday saying which boats are waiving their holiday premium to secure bookings later on this month.

I think if you wanted to get a Holiday booking you should have dropped the premium a long time ago, and be offering a lot more off then the 10% upcharge. I think most who would be interested in that could not afford the air fare to get here at this point in time.

I have also seen some crazy things in the last few years of more and more boats putting on CRAZY greedy upcharges for New Years week, up to 45% from the typical 10%!! I understand the reasoning but I cannot help but think it is wrong.

I also had an email from a charter broker who was thinking about the same thing.... to quote "I was just thinking about that as well and the conclusion that I came up with is that it's the wishful thinking formula as they all have the misguided thought that the economy is going to magically turn around in the next week or so (or that they may win the lottery). Off hand I'd say the lottery option is a lot more likely!

Sadly all of the various Nobel prize winning economic gurus I read are of the opinion that at best recovery is years away (spell that a decade or so) and far too many for my taste say that it will never recover to what it was and will morph into something entirely different."

I am not trying to be doom and gloom here, but I do think that there is a large shift occurring in our industry. Every since I got into this industry the debate has been about the two different ends of the scale in yacht prices, those who charge a ton of money and those who give it away which is equally unsustainable.

Anyways, here is the link.