charter yacht

The nerve of "old crew"!

I promised that i would share the link for the crew profile on the new yacht (Belline) Simeon is working on when I received it...AND I have to let you know that he is sincerely in my bad books!!
Look at this picture I took off of it where HE IS SMILING!! Lisa said he came over to retrieve the hollandaise sauce recipe. After seeing the picture of him smiling I might have left him to figure it out himself! HARRRUUUUUMMMMPPPPPHHHHHH!
Well, actually I will put up 3 of the pictures so you get the full effect.







I think maybe they have more pictures of him on there smiling then I have ever seen! I am not sure what that means...

I don't think I need to repeat this three times on every blog.
We could have headed to Haiti tomorrow

Well, we have a new character added to our ongoing blog roll call now...Meet Bruce!
Bruce is from Texas.
Bruce comes bearing large bazookas cuz apparently fishing is one of the most important things in this world.
Bruce worked in the advertising industry for the last 15 years and has had his own Graphic Design Studio for the last 5 years.
Bruce is a keen BVI Bareboater, who has even honeymooned down here. The sailing in the BVI stuck, the wife didn't.
Bruce is a SCUBA diver, an acrobatic pilot, (sounds scary to me..I did mention to him that Promenade keeps all hulls firmly in the water at all times thank you very much!), a private pilot with an instrument rating, and has had many hours captaining his own bareboats down here.
Bruce is one heck of a gentleman who decided to follow his dream that he has been working toward the last twelve years and swap life in Plano Texas for a chance to live part of his life on a sailboat in the Caribbean, ticking off one more item on his "bucket list"
Bruce was raised in the Military so he is a military brat just like me.

Bruce is also the new owner of Yacht Promenade. Now, before anyone starts panicking, DON'T!! Bazza, Kerry, Richard and Lisa are working together with Bruce. Cuz, after all, you don't think any of the 4 of us will be turning him loose on our baby without making sure he talks nicely to her do you??? Put down the keypad, don't email me in a panic. Not much has changed, but indeed many things have changed. I will still be handling the business end and booking charters and doing website "stuff" (trying to make him see that I am a very valuable member of the time I am! Joking)
Bruce is learning how to be an owner of a yacht, (that was easy, send money) but Bruce also wants to learn the chartering business from the bottom up. Correct, Bruce will be starting as lowly deckhand. We are measuring him up for his cabana boy costume as we speak and buying a bit more material then usual. He will be working with either Richard and Lisa or Bazza and I running charters later on this winter, meaning that he will provide never ending BLOG material and funny pictures for Lisa and I! Sorry girls, the "eye candy" is a bit older this year I know!!!
The house was sold, the accumulated decades of possessions was whittled down to a storage locker, the extra 4 TV's were sold, and this is what we are left with!

I, being the wonderful hostess that I am, made popcorn for the celebration arrival last night. Yes folks, in a green wash tub none the less!

The poor soul was made to sit down this morning and sign lots of papers, basically relieving me of a lot of financial liabilities and him taking it on! Works in my world!! Then we paraded him around town every where, and, since between my husband and lovely wonderful Mr Frett at Trade, Bruce had his name along with mine on a Trade License in record time for the BVI. All I could say was wow. I bow down to both my husband and Mr Frett...

Bruce will not be working for awhile, as the work permit process is still to go, so he just gets to look pretty and we get to go to St Thomas for awhile.
I think that is enough for that tonight. I will have lots more details over the next while, and I will be getting Bruce to introduce himself and say something pithy as well.. Maybe once his head stops spinning!
My good friend Lisa, was not too concerned about this turn of events in her world. Bruce knew exactly how to bribe her as she loves Xmas and brought down silly hats, which she promptly modeled with a smile on her face and declared HERS the Reindeer ears!

I thought the "court jester" would be perfect for Richie but I was firmly informed it was an ELF! Still think it looks like a court jester!

And a Santa Hat..I want to point out that she does not always wear ratty clothes like this, but she has been out on the bow of the yacht painting hatches and kayak racks all day long....

Richard could not join in the fun, after having to cab around the island to fix a broken belt on the car, he had the fun job of changing out the garburator. And believe me it smelt. It must have had potato peals down it when it quit working! Both Lisa and I turned up our noses...

When you have a shortage of pictures what do you turn to? Well, food pictures of course!! We all went out to Red Rock at Penns' Landing tonight. It was good. Besides fighting the inevitable mosquitoes that makes me enjoy take out more every year, the food was pretty decent.
We had many apps, conch fritters (sorry, not as good as ours on Promenade!), Baked Brie, Crab cakes (too much salmon in them, could not really even taste any crab), cappricio, and pork dumplings (to die for! I could have ate about 40 of those myself...)
Bazza had Lamb, which, as he had Lisa sitting beside him he had to protect with his life from the little carnivore marrow sucking Lisa animal herself! He left her the bone and she took it. He pronounced it delicious...

I had a very uninspiring run of the mill alfredo with hardly any taste with dry chicken....

Bruce had jerked pork which he pronounced very good...

Richard had Calzone that I immediately regretted not getting but he was good and did share a couple bites with me!

The carnivore had duck, (and half of Bazzas' lamb!)

Service was friendly and prompt, and with about 5 bushwackers, one glass of wine and two dark and stormies dinner for 5 came to about $260.00 with the obligatory tip that was already tacked onto the bill, but hard to read that was what it was....
We will go back.

I have tons more to write over the next while, mainly maybe funny stories leading up to all this that I, to my dismay, could not blog about until it was finalized....
I thought about giving this post the proper solemnness that it and Bruce deserved, but thought that sounded boring and very unlike me. AND Bruce, falls into my sphere of the humor world very well (which really means he smiles while Lisa and I pick on him and use sarcasm quite a bit....)

Swim Vacationers on the yacht today swam from Dead Chest to Peter Island (recreating the 14 men stranded on Dead Chest by Blackbeard routine) It appears though that OUR swimmers managed to make it all alive though. Heather, one of the guides on Swim Vacation is keeping a great blog of the week which you can see here.

Now us, up in Orlando are just managing to waddle from one shopping store to another! Since my car was not brand new we had to put our own Navigator and Satellite Radio in it, so Bazza made me happy (I think he is trying to get lucky personally!)

And, since the last time I blogged..I can pretty much let the pictures speak for themselves here. I have decided the new Iphone still takes crappy pictures, which I will not do anymore unless I am totally desperate for a picture.
We enjoyed, oh, about 3 lbs of meat each at Texas De Brazil.... Bazza thought I was nuts for eating potatoes with the meat as he pretty much sat back and just waited for the lamb to come around and around.....



We always enjoy our meal here and I KNOW that these pictures will make Rich and Lisa jealous as it is about their favorite restaurant I think! She told me that they fried fish on the boat and I would have liked it as she even breaded it, but I am sorry, I would not have traded...

This is my plate...with the potatoes and bread on it!

Today's lunch was at Fuddruckers. Does anyone ever EAT these gigantic desserts?? I have never made it yet!

Yes, we did enjoy our burgers though....

LOVED the thousands of birds that were around this Walmart (although was afraid to walk under them all). The store even had moving owls on the roof, which the birds totally ignored and mainly sat on their head too!

It was a big day in the Australian's life, with spending time with my parents in Canada over winter, I bought him his first winter hat and pair of gloves. He kind of looked at me as if I was nuts, especially when I told him that these were NOT thick enough for "really" cold weather, just "medium" cold weather....


That is it for my food tour today, let us see what tomorrow brings.

Remember all the kerfuffle we have gone through for like, FOREVER, to keep our commercial licenses current and with the correct information here on Promenade?

Well, I just spotted an email in my inbox from the Chief Surveyor at Marine Services here saying the following..

"It has been noted that the Blue Code 'SCV 2', Compliance Examination and Declaration report form, which should have been completed at the initial inspection, is not held in our files. We require that one be completed this time.

Would you kindly advise when would be a convenient time to revisit the vessel so that we may complete the document. "

What did I do?? Burst out laughing and sent it to Bazza, deleting it from my inbox!!!!!

AND, by the way, it is not like one or two items it is LONG EXTENSIVE FORM that WAS completed over the years. We will ask them to look in their files closer.

In the last 24 hours we have been down to Charlotte Amalie and back to get parcels and mail parcels. Always a fun filled trip that took us an hour to check in at CA this morning and then an hour in the post office line, then the llloooonnnngggg sail (motor) back up here.

Moved off the boat this afternoon into a hotel so Rich and Lisa could actually get the boat cleaned up before THEIR charter on Sunday...We go up to Florida then! It was either I had to get out of their way or I was going to have to help clean for charter and that did not seem like such a good idea to me! We are here until this weekend so we can attend the Charter Yacht Society Boat Show this weekend.


This is a really interesting animated picture that shows the spread of the lionfish since 1992. It really brings it home.
The link for it is here.

and the email that went with it is talking about spotting them in Bonaire in the last week.

"You may already have heard this from other sources, but here are some details.
Early this week Lionfish were found on both Bonaire and Curaçao.
The first one was sighted and subsequently caught and killed at Nucove on Bonaire on Monday Oct 26. It was 3 cm long, so a small juvenile. The next day, Tue 27, also on Bonaire, a second lionfish was sighted and caught at Something Special. This one was slightly bigger, about 5 cm long. That same day, Tue 28, a lionfish was caught by dive shop Ocean Encounters West at Watamula on Curaçao, it was also a small juvenile, about 4 cm long (see photos by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson).

It would appear that a cloud of larvae carried by the ocean currents passed by the windward islands recently, out of which the larvae settled when they found the sea bottom within reach. It is likely then that hundreds of juvenile Lionfish are now living around the islands. Because they can live down to depths of 150 m (500 ft) or more we will never see most of them, only those that end up relatively shallow, like the three that have now been reported.

Tissue samples of these lionfish will be sent to the REEF foundation which has set up a lionfish research program for the whole region to compare their DNA and track their dispersion all over the region. The US Geological Service USGS has set up a database of all lionfish sightings as part of their Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database, The ABC island have now been added to their Lionfish distribution map: http://nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/fish/lionfishdistribution.asp"
This is the Lionfish captured in Bonaire.


We have had probably 4-6 sightings in the BVI over the last 12-18 months, but they have just been one offs. No one has been able to find them once they go back. There have been reported off the cruise ship dock in Roadtown, at the Bight in Norman, at the Indians, Angelfish Reef on Norman, and off of the North side of Guana Island.

In other coconut telegraph news, we received report from a crewed charter yacht at Young Island Cut on St Vincent that was boarded and robbed less then a week ago. They apparently also had death threats and told to leave the country. Additionally, there was another boat there that was robbed of $10,000. the next night I understand. Young Island Cut was/is generally a safe are of St Vincent, I guess you never know do you??

The USVI Tourist Board put out their bi monthly newsletter today, and here is a PDF of it, for those who are interested.

I think that is about it for the night, not too much exciting just some bits and pieces. I hear rumor that my husband is actually going to get his metal detector out tomorrow and go play!