family

Today has been one of those one step forward two steps backwards type of day. In between watching the mess that is the US economy and financial market, everything we touch is breaking or broken it seems! File this definitely under the "wondering and musings" column and not the BVI Tourist Board Brochure!
I cannot believe that the US government is talking a 700 billion dollar bail out and arguing about CEO's golden parachutes!
On another shake my head moment, apparently the BVI government has sent 16 delegates to the Monaco Boat Show. Yes, you heard right, 16 of them. This is one of the premier mega yacht shows that showcases charter yachts (think in the LARGE megayacht field, not my level) to charter brokers. The BVI is hosting parties and showcasing our new class one registry for larger yachts. Cynic that I am I ran down the list of names on the "delegation" and to me it sounds more like "junket" as I really question how much some of these people know about class one registry. (May the government sword strike me down now)
Back to our little world, where we have more mundane things to worry about then the Monaco Yacht Show, we are still anchored off Caneel Bay. I did get my new flat screen TV installed, which looks nice. Bazza is sitting on our nice new computer chair (that was supposed to be for me working), but he seems to like it very much so I think it is a shared chair.

I am always a bit out of sorts when my boat is torn apart, and this is what my galley looks like. The end result will be good, as I am getting new counter tops and the shelves re mactacked, but the picture right now is not that pretty. Now for the two steps backwards. He very carefully heated off all the old countertops to use as a template for the new one. Only to find that his tool situation on the boat, is, lets say, rusty and lacking. I am not sure where they all went besides Brent dropping them in the water, but he cracked the new countertop right in the middle, so it is back to Crown Bay tomorrow to get another sheet.

We also found out that our aft windows were leaking quite badly on the way back from Puerto Rico, or from the rain or such, and there were bucketfuls of water under the back bed and a soaking wet mattress! It will as usual, take up every spare minute we have to get the boat off season maintenance done. Just another day in the islands, some good, some great, some not so good! On the plus side it has stopped raining.
I ended up having to pay thousands of dollars to ATT for roaming charges, even with international packages on my iphone and data roaming card. After all this I still don't think I understand what I have and don't have, but I think my husband does! Be very careful on using roaming data while International, and in the BVI there are NO agreements, so you pay the highest rate. 5 cents a kilobyte. You think about how much advertising one web page has on it when you open it up, and the few little bits of information you want are the last thing that comes up. My husband worked it out and it is $50.00 per megabyte. A megabyte is NOT much!
One more lesson learned anyways. ATT tells us that The BVI is in the most expensive rate card in the world. Also have to laugh that you no longer get unlimited text messages on your IPHONE package. You exchange such little data in a text message, but it must go to show how popular text messaging is as they have decided to charge for them.
Ah well, those are my little words of wisdom, I will close this off with one of Richies nice underwater pictures which I think is appropos for this entry. My perky self will show up again.

Well we think we are drying out! We have had every clothesline full and the engine room as well trying to dry out the ten tons of laundry that we soaked on the way back from Puerto Rico! Bazza went shopping again (?) on St Thomas and I tried to find a place to put everything we had already bought! We had lots of rain this morning, but it is drying out this afternoon.
This is my daughter in law Karen, that is our baby granddaughter in there, and she will be making an appearance in about 18 weeks! That is pretty exciting. I think she looks terrific.

And this is my mom with the blackberry picking stick that Bazza made her. Have you ever seen anyone so unhappy looking?? I am not sure whether she did not want to be there or did not like the picture taking person very much!

My husband passed on a couple pictures of boats washed up on the highway and marina in Galveston area. Yeeks! Hope we don't have any such luck here this year.



That is all I know tonight!

We had a good run down to Puerto Rico, we though we would have a sail, but nada for wind... so we had up one sail that flopped around out there for some reason...Bazza and Gina both thought that Coconut Cream Cake was acceptable for breakfast!

We passed sail rock.

and Miss Gina found a nice little spot on the trampoline to have a couple hours nap on!

Gina gave me this marvelous little contraption that you freeze or put cold water in to activate and put it around your neck. It takes away your hot flashes as well does not leak, it laps up the sweat! It is an amazing invention and I want 12 for the boat on charter! Then I can use them in rotation. I have been more impressed with this little gadget then anything!

We made it to Puerto Del Rey in Fajardo about 2. First place we always hit is the diesel dock. DIESEL WAS ONLY $4.19!!!!!!! Compare this to $5.01 at Crown Bay in ST Thomas, $5.76 at Yacht Haven Grande in Charlotte Amalie, $5.69 at Red Hook, and over $6.00 in Roadtown. It paid nicely for the trip down here, but on the other side, they have really bumped up their dockage rates, last time it was $1.50 a foot and now it was $2.78!! No time for those concerns though, we had shopping to do!
We have shopped our little hearts out in between rain drops! They are very large rain drops this Sunday morning. We brought our friend Gina with us here, and we have covered, West Marine, Fuddruckers, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Sams Club, Costco, Plaza Las Americas (the big mall), Walmart Supercenter, Chili's (ok, a couple of these places are food places, but Par for the course for Gina and I) and Office Max! We also managed to drive through old San Juan for Gina, who had not seen it, and for my pregnant daughter in law, she had a special request that I shop and see the African designer bag men, so this picture should tease her! I don't really get this designer stuff, it all looks yucky to me, although the Dolce and Gabana is nice and soft...

Miss gina insisted on having her picture taken outside of Condom World (these and the amount of these stores impresses all of us when we first come here!)

I had a special request, of some more of Kenny Chesney the other night. Not nearly as exciting as our varnishing ones though! Not sure why you girls want to see more pictures of the scrubby island boy!
Apparently he brought a large group down with him, numbers variate between 50 and 150 and they were staying at the Westin. he played for several hours Thursday night. In fact, Woody's closed early at 10 that night so they could go party as well I believe!
This is the scene outside.

And just a couple more that my husband had taken from inside.

Yes mom, it was quite a birthday, cameras, chocolate cakes, Kenny Chesney and a new car! (Oh, I did not tell you about that, but we find broke down after living here for over ten years and bought a SUV!! I will tell you about that when I have pictures. My friend Sheila tells me that she has birthday months, well, since I also came back this weekend with a 32" HD LCD TV for the Saloon and a fancy comfortable desk chair for the table when I am working on the computer, I could say that I have quite successfully managed to turn it into quite a birthday this year. All this despite the irritating noise in the background which is my husband who is 57 days younger then me now calling himself a "toy boy" Roll on Nov 15th so he can quit gloating!

We saw a couple lovely geckos on a nice color wall, they look like paintings to me, so I had to take about oh, a billion pictures of them!



Hope to head back towards at least Culebra this afternoon, but it depends on weather. It is looking crappy out there! The boat is very quiet and it has been bucketing down rain for hours. I think that the "blob" is going to turn into something over our heads here!

Ho hum, yeah, what can I say, Kenny Chesney was playing tonight at Woodys on St John... I think the big floppy hat was supposed to be a disguise, but it did not work! Lots of people there! The coconut telegraph works quickly on the island!

He looks like he is enjoying himself in the sun anyways! Poor guy, can't go anywhere without people everywhere! My friend gina, took the cake though (or is that gave the cake?) She had just finished making chocolate fudge cake, key lime pie and coconut pie and took him an ENTIRE key lime pie to entice him into autographing a hat!

We had a big day maintenance wise today, I watched Bazza work! We have a sexy new inverter panel on the boat...

And for some reason all the boxes he received only carried these little toys in them. I thought they were for the BOAT, but apparently they are for the ROV! (That is somewhere on the Atlantic Sea)

Then it was off to St John tonight for a barbecue at Lavender Hill, where my friend Gina has her condo.



Flat seas again...calling for rain but nothing here yet. Of course we put Bazza to work, he managed to look at the fan and the garburetor spewed everywhere as well while we were here.

gina made me a chocolate fudge cake (double layer with lots of icing and haagen dayz ice cream! It was wonderful!

I received presents...very nice ones.

And then I had to blow out those silly candles that stay lit so everyone gets cake and saliva!

We had a barbecue down by the pool and i just happened to take another picture (I seem to do this often!) of Gina putting food in her face!

But it is no worse then the picture of me with cake in one hand, whipping cream and icing in the other! I refuse to put up the picture my husband took of me with the largest piece of cake he had ever seen though! A girl has to have some pride!!

My husband sent me this photo with a caption something along the lines of "Must have been a ferry driver at the helm!" Which, a ferry this afternoon I swore went out of his way to go as close to me as he could (he actually switched from being on my port in the middle of the channel to my starboard...who knows why!) and of course everything crashed every where. Yes, I cursed him!

It is well past the witching hour, so off to bed I go, early start tomorrow for Puerto Rico we think.

Yes, all the projects are coming together with breakneck speed now that we just have a day or two left....
The table is resined and looking good...



Dad has painted all the gates and Bazza has put all the pickets back on...



The never ending ROV project is about completed....

All its parts are together...

We looked like chinese coolies carrying it out to the driveway. I think I was just posing for the picture and letting them do the work! In my normal best going out wear of pajamas...

Now, the fun and games comes where EVERYTHING has to fit in the shipping crate. It is like a jigsaw puzzle.

And this is my favorite view. The lid is on, it looks neat and tidy and the last screw is going in. It may show up in Tortola in a few months, we have to get it picked up and taken over to Vancouver by delivery truck. Then it goes on a train down to the east coast. Then it goes by boat down to Tropical in Miami, it is unloaded and repacked into a container for Tortola. So, a few months may be optimistic! Not like we can do much any ways until after the upcoming charter season. Still amazes me how we spend so much time doing "projects" I have not even finished everything I wanted to do this summer with web sites yet and next Sunday at this time we will be on charter again.

For some odd reason my parents decided that I should play the accordion last night. Now, I have not played the accordion for about 38 years or so...It just tells you how much my parents made me practice when I was a child that i could still read the music! Had to puzzle it out a bit. It was kind of fun, although I do not remember my breasts getting caught in the bellows the last time I played it as it did last night!

My great aunt and uncle came down from Gabriola Island to spend the night and dinner. My mother made a really great Prime Rib Dinner to celebrate our last week here and we even ate in the dining room (no, I did not get out of my pajamas! That would have been pushing it)


And just in the interesting tidbits section, Government Information Services put this out....
"A meeting to discuss a proposed Road Town development will be Sept. 11. Water’s Edge at Wickham’s Cay II would be built at the current location of the Tortola Yacht Services boat yard, according to Government Information Services. It would include commercial offices; retail, luxury and middle-income residential facilities; and hotel space, encompassing a total area of 289,000 square feet. A 135,000-square-foot parking garage large enough to accommodate 400 vehicles also is proposed. The development is designed to "provide a mixed-use commercial community," according to GIS"

I shall have to remember to head to that and check out what is going on. I think we need public transportation more then we need a 400 car parking garage and high towers that will cut off the view of the ocean more.

I cannot believe how clear the water is in the BVI! A lot of times in summer when the water gets warm, the visibility goes down...Looks like they fit a lot into their 24 hours!
I received an interesting email yesterday adding some information about the old ruins in Little Harbor on Peter Island. We always call them the old Chubb House. We have a photo gallery up here on it at Little Harbor pictures
"Brunai Bruce sounds alot like Brudenell-Bruce so I thought that was the mix up. My mother and her family built the house in the 40's and she has many wonderful photographs of them as children there in a little classroom etc...although her memories of the time are not so happy as it was isolated even with 3 brothers her own age and 2 younger sisters. My Grandfather wanted to escape the war in Europe and as he was not the oldest Brudenell-Bruce son he did not inherit Deene Park the family estate in England or the title so he came to Peter Island to make a fortune growing tobacco, although it didn't work out that way, he ended up moving to Tortola and become a politician, they made a stamp for him in the BVI recently."
I have a bit of editing to do on that page!
Also heard from someone today that there are now TWO docks at Money Bay at Norman Island. I am not sure whether I want to go see it, I might cry!! One of the crew off the yacht Stenella took these great pictures again, I understand in Little Harbor on Peter Island. They are great pictures! She is a good photographer!!





And one more picture, i don't know if I put this up a couple months ago or not, (my filing system on what i have put up on the blog is not always that organized believe me, so forgive me when I repeat myself! This is a picture that i took off Bert Kilbrides site about the time he passed on, and it kind of goes along with the pictures Lisa put up on the last blog entry about the wreck of the RMS Rhone, as this was taken back in the late 60's (before it was a National Park!) of Bert Kilbride and crew anchored on the wreck salvaging MANY MANY bottles! I am jealous!!

Putting those up made me feel better about getting the news about two docks now in Money Bay!!! I see that Tropical Storm Fay is pouring rain on some of our favorite guests from St Marys Georgia, right on the border! Hopefully the couple that will be on the boat next week will make it. They always worry about us down here in the summer and hurricanes, now we are watching their area instead.
Now on to the boring family stuff that most people will be bored with! It is raining on Vancouver Island. It has rained it seems for a few days. We are almost getting out the winter coats! The work projects still go on though! It is no different up here then it is when Bazza is on the boat. Always have fixing projects going on no matter what! We have now moved on to fixing steps and railings

First things looked like this around the house, as I think my parents felt guilty watching Bazza work so they figured they would sit and watch him and keep him company!

Well he soon fixed their little red wagon, and as he hates painting put them to work!

Now to say that my fathers tools (that my mother keeps on buying him for Xmas thinking he really likes, and he has about as much interest as me) are not that well used would be an understatement. We keep on teasing him as the sander here you still have to feed the paper in the ends! Even I know that sanders come with velcro on the pads in the last decade or two! He has picked up the paint brush though, and it is a man in action. Apparently he paints like me though and there is more paint on the parts there is not supposed to be on...

While all this excitement is going on, my mothers table project is coming along as well....



I think she has made up her mind for the billionth time where all these shells etc are going and the next step is to get the resin on. On his head if he messes it up! She spent hours hairspraying all those sand particles so they would stay down.

Another case here below of pictures I have maybe put on the blog, but they are in the "to do" folder, so.... up they go again! Both taken by our friend Janice on her trip to South Carolina. I think I will just use everyone else's pictures they do such a great job instead of mine!



I really have to stop using exclamation marks in my posts. I believe we have shipped just about another continent of "things" down to the boat for the new season, I am not sure how we can always be replacing so much.