Soggy kind of day

Soggy kind of day, originally uploaded by captainjay.

We took off on the boat today and headed to Jost Van Dyke. We have a newbie with us, first time our of the USA. And several other friends. It's a beautiful day, flat water, all around perfect day.

We were sitting at the bar at Soggy Dollar and someone approached us and asked "are you the couple that does the St Thomas blog thats from WV?" Why yes we are. :-). They read the blog regularly and recognized us from our pics. That's so cool! Thanks for reading the blog :-)

Friday beach pic

Friday beach pic, originally uploaded by captainjay.

I meant to post this yesterday. We ran the boat over to water island and had lunch at Heidi's Honeymoon Grill. Then walked down to Joes Beach Bar for a beverage. It was a great afternoon. Followed by steaks on the grill, sitting out on the patio under the stars. Can't beat that.

Friday Beach Picture, I mean Video

Just good old fun. :-)

Local Boater Option Card

So for those of you that don't know, there is a program called a local boater option run by US Customs. This is set up to "enhance legitimate travel specifically for boaters who are enrolled in the Local Boater Option (LBO) program and perspective participants, CBP has implemented the Small Vessel Reporting System (SVRS); available to all U.S. citizens, nationals and lawful permanent residents."

Now Deb and I have used this program for some time, and we usually have visiting friends, that are lawful US Citizens get there card as well. The abridged version of how it works is you get the highly secure hand written card with yet another number for the Government to assign to you, when you call in to customs they plug it in and it gives them all the data on your passport etc. The difference is you can do this on the phone within twenty four hours of returning from a foreign port on a private vessel and most days this is good enough to get you back in the county legally. Mind you that in addition to my passport and drivers license I also hold a Merchant Mariners Document (captains license), a TWIC card this is a Transportation Workers Identification Card, both of these required an FBI background check and the highly secure handwritten local boaters option card.

The process used to be fairly simple, but with all things having to do with homeland security, simple simply doesn't make sense, nor does it generate money from the Federal Budget. What you used to do to get your card was to walk into the customs office either on St Thomas or St John, ask for a local boaters option card. If they were in the mood or weren't to busy clearing in a Ferry from the BVI they would fill out the form, look at your Id's and if you were real lucky they would give you the highly secure hand written local boaters card. Most days they would take the paperwork, tell you that they couldn't process it until tomorrow afternoon and tell you to come back then to pick it up. Sometimes you would come back the next day and the person that processed it would be off and no one would know were the highly secure card was, so you would come back the next day. Well alas no more, now there is a web page, https://svrs.cbp.dhs.gov/ at this Web Page you have to pre enter all the information for your card, then you have to pick an appointment time, at your local customs office.

The reason I am writing all this is we have a friend in from the states that doesn't have a local boaters card, we were going to try to get her one yesterday when she got here, but alas the next available "appointment" is the day she leaves on the 31st. So I guess it's back to customs for us. I will not be surprised if the local customs office keeps this five to seven day window for "appointments" to discourage people from actually coming in and making them fill out the highly secure hand written cards. I will give them the benefit of the doubt it might just be the holiday weekend, but that seems like a lame excuse as they are open 365 days a year.
Jay

Back on the rock

Back on the rock, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Made it back safely to St. Thomas. It was a long day and US Air almost made me miss a connection in Charlotte, but I ran through the airport (thank goodness it's not too big) and made it. Whew.

The island is back to a pretty green after all the rain and the cisterns are full so that is a major plus. We really needed it. Probably got more than needed but isn't that how it usually goes.
:-)

Back to de Islands

Back to de Islands, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Had a successful but exhausting trip back to WV to work on our house. Got a lot done and found a wonderful tenant. They seem to really love our house so I feel really good about renting to them. I spent the whole trip working, no fun stuff, only one night out with friends and there were so many people there I didn't get to visit with everyone. But I still had a great trip, glad I went to check on things.

Jay didn't do a very good job keeping up with the blog while I was away so shame on him :-)

Friday Beach Pic

Friday Beach Pic, originally uploaded by captainjay.

I wish this was my view today but I'm still in WV working my booty off at our house. I hope to be done by tomorrow so I can have a little fun Saturday night and Sunday before heading back home.

I've heard it's still raining in St. Thomas so I haven't missed much there. I got flood warning emails this morning from weather.com for Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands so I hope it stops soon or it could be a real mess. The weather in WV is supposed to get better starting today thru the weekend. I sure hope so. I was hoping to get out on the river some but it doesn't look like that's going to happen with the river condition and my list at the house growing vs shrinking
:-)

But I found this pic of my favorite place and it always puts a smile on my face. As Kenny would say: oh I wish I was there tonight, on Jost Van Dyke ....