Main Course

Main Course, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Duck Confit with fennel risotto and pistachio brown butter. That and
a 300 year old beer recipe.

First Course

First Course, originally uploaded by captainjay.

First course five cheese onion soup and Troubadour Belgian beer.

Sat Night Date Night

Jay and I are going to a dinner event tonight at one of our favorite places so we decided to call it a "date night" :-)  Pie Whole, who normally serves pizza and pasta, is becoming known for their Belgian beers that they carry. Awhile back the decided to do a "Belgian Beer Experience" and it was such a hit, they decided to do it again, so this time Jay and I signed up. They close the restaurant to the public so only tickets holders can come and as of two nights ago they only had one seat left.

It's a five course meal, each course paired with a particular beer. The menu sounds wonderful. I know Jay will love the beers, I hope I do to. Here's the menu:

Beginning
Troubadour Abscura mile stout
Five onion soup topped with crostini and Gruyere

Second
Brugse Zot
Arugula and frisee, proscuitto ham, candied cashews, roasted beets, and blood orange vinaigrette

Third
Wittkerke Belgian White
Wittkerke steamed P.E.I. mussels with celery, onion, shallot, butter and curry

Fourth
Kapittel Watou Pater
Duck leg confit with fennel risotto, and pistachio brown butter

Happy Ending
Popperings Homel Ale
Port poached pear stuffed with mascarpone

Friday Beach Picture

TGIF!! Heres a pic of one of the beaches at Botany Bay taken last weekend while we were out running around on the boat. Hopefully we'll get out for a little while this Sunday. Have a great weekend!

Video of downtown STT

Thought I would share this video posted on FaceBook by Eveything and Anything Virgin Islands. Gives a nice view of driving through downtown Charlotte Amalie.

Video Click Here

Enjoy!

Beautiful Day

Beautiful Day, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Just thought I'd share the view today. It's so nice out, sunny and 79
with a little breeze. There's still a little bit of north swell and
some lite chop, but it still looks good from where I'm standing. :-)
Enjoy!

Dinner with a View

We had dinner at a friends house last night and had a really nice time. Awesome view, great food and good friends, can't beat that. Their house overlooks the Charlotte Amalie harbor and we got there just in time to see a beautiful sunset.

For dinner we had steak and Caribbean Lobster. Yum!  But.....I've never witnessed the actual cooking of a lobster so that was interesting, to say the least. I'm not sure if I could do it but I'm so glad they did because it tasted soooo good! :-)

Second Anniversary Cruise

Here is a little slide show from yesterdays boat trip, our second anniversary of moving to St. Thomas. Can't believe what a difference a day can make in the weather. Yesterday was flat calm and crystal clear. Today is breezy, cloudy and  the north swells are up.

Great Day

We had a great day on the water with friends. It was so flat out, we went to Botany Bay then Magens Bay then back to Water Island. We got to hear Eric Stone play at Honeymoon then to Tickles for dinner. What
an awesome day in STT. :-)

The Best View of Magen's

Flat calm on the North Side this is the view of Magen's from the water.

Two Year Anniversary

So today is our two year anniversary on island. We are out on the boat with friends. We couldn't think of a better way to spend it. Pretty flat out here so we came around to Botany Bay and Mermaids Chair.

Haiti Releif Concert

Haiti Releif Concert, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Off work we are at a Red Cross fund raiser at Yacht Haven. Great
music, cold beer, great cause. Bellows International is donating 100
percent of the beer sales to the Red Cross. They are raffeling off
lots of great prices donated by local businesses.

Haiti Benefit Concert

There will be a fundraiser and free concert at Yacht Haven Grande this Saturday (23rd) to benefit the Haiti relief efforts. The event runs from 3pm to 9pm, with lots of bands, raffle tickets, art, etc. If you're on island this weekend, come out to show your support.

Full article in the St. Thomas Source.

Friday Beach Picture

Here is a borrowed photo from Walker. Walker owns the message board and travel sight BVI Pirate. The photo was taken from his plane its the North Shore of Anegada. He just put up over eleven hundred pictures that he and his wife recently took from the air. It's worth a look it will give you a view of Anegada that you don't normally see.
Jay

Rain is gone!

Rain is gone!, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Finally the rain is gone and the sun is back! Three solid days of rain
and fog is enough. The cisterns are full and the lush green color of
the island has been restored. It feels good to be sitting outside in
the sun, reading, enjoying my last day of a long, restfull weekend.

Haiti Releif

http://www.ifrc.org/what/disasters/response/haiti/

So I am not going to go into huge details about why, I believe the why is obvious, but I am going to list some of the Charities that are trying to help out the situation in Haiti. For those that don't know this is the poorest nation in this hemisphere and frankly needed all the help they could get prior to this earth quake. The most immediate relief will be to contribute cash directly to the charities that already have a presence and frankly the infrastructure to make an immediate difference in the survivors lives.

The Clinto Bush Haiti Fund

The American Red Cross

There has been an outpouring of support from the public. To help, people can make an unrestricted donation to the International Response Fund at www.redcross.org or by calling 1-800-REDCROSS (1-800-733-2767). The public can also help by texting “Haiti” to 90999 to send a $10 donation to the Red Cross, through an effort backed by the U.S. State Department. Funds will go to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

PS This is one of the simplest ways to donate, just text the money it will be added to your phone bill.

Unicef

They have set up a fund for direct support of Haitian releif.

Yele Haiti

Wyclef is about as close to this as you can be.

Doctors Without Borders

There is also a link here to a much more complete list of Charities on CNN's web page.

Also for those of you locally. There is supposed to be a fundraiser concert on the 23rd at Yacht Haven. I don't know the details yet but when I do we will post them.

Friday Beach Picture

So this one is a little out of the ordinary for us it's actually on St Croix. Unfortunately I didn't take it. For those of you on Face Book I found an interesting fan page this morning and borrowed it from there. The page is Eveything and anything Virgin Islands it is an interesting page. It's a mix of tourist and local with lots of interesting pictures and stories, definitely worth checking out.

Jay

Slow Week

We haven't' posted anything since Sunday because there really hasn't been much going on. We did get our boat back out of the boat yard yesterday. We had to have it hauled out and bottom painted. It looks good now we just have to make time to use it. I do need to give it a good cleaning as the decks are dusty from a week in the yard.

The photo shoot went well and was fun but I am dragging a bit. With the rain delay I ended up missing my days of this week so I am getting ready to start my thirteenth work day in a row.  Deb and I have some time off together coming up so hopefully we can get caught up on some rest and our errands and maybe even squeeze in some fun.

Jay

That's a wrap

Well, the photo shoot was a success. Lots of great shots. Weather was beautiful except for about an hour this morning, other than that, gorgeous. Everyone involved worked really hard which will show in the
end result. I'm so glad I got to be involved, plus getting a weekend on the water wasn't bad either. :-)

Great ending to a perfect day

Today was super fun playing paparazzi during the CYOA photo shoot. Took tons of pictures with everyone elses cameras because they were sooo much nicer than mine so hopefully I can get some copies. Full day
tomorrow scheduled, breakfast shot, snorkeling, lunch, girls afternoon... And the weather forecast looks great!

Hard day at work

Jay working hard sailing Flying Moose for the CYOA photo shoot. It's a beautiful day and the shots are turning out great. I can't wait to see the results. Who knew Jay would some day be a male model. :-)

Friday Beach Picture

First off have to give Vicki H credit for the photo. For those of you that don't recognize the beach it is White Bay on Jost VanDyke. If you haven't had the opportunity to read her trip report form a recent charter with CYOA then check it out here. It is full of equally wonderful pictures and some of the funniest writing you will ever read.

Deb and I are heading over to St John this evening on a boat, it's for work I swear. I have to help with a photo shoot that we are doing for CYOA. I was actually over there the night before last and all day yesterday but the weather just wouldn't play nice so we are going to try again in the morning. So stay tuned I am sure that Deb will be doing a little iPhone reporting.

Jay

Three Kings Day

Three Kings Day, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Today is Three Kings Day and is a celebrated holiday in the Virgin Islands. It is the twelfth day after Christmas (which is historically the 12 days of Christmas, not the usual twelve days before Christmas)
which marks the end the Christmas holiday and is celebrated by festive meals and taking down all Christmas decorations.

To learn more, go to: three-kings-day.123holiday.net/

Today, Jay and I are celebrating by taking one of CYOA's boats over to St. John to get it ready for the photo shoot they are doing for their new brochures. Sounds like a good way to celebrate to me. :-)

Recession? What Recession?

Deb and I noticed the other day what looked like an unusually large number of private planes at the airport. Well here is the article in the paper to prove it. Over 80 private planes, a large number of which were jets including Air Force 2 with the Biden family aboard, visited St Thomas for the holidays.

Jay

Bill and Carole's last supper

Beautiful sunset tonight. The view from Oceana is spectacular. Tonight is Bill and Carole's last night on St. Thomas and my last night of my holiday break so we're having a nice dinner and taking it all in.

Update - I meant to add this last night. Although Oceana is a nice restaurant, it wasn't our first pick for the last supper. We wanted to take them somewhere that they hadn't been before. Not thinking about it being Sunday and how many restaurants are actually closed on Sunday, our first three picks were closed, Thirteen, Northside Bistro and Bella Blue. So make sure to keep that in mind when planning your restaurant choices.

The dinner started out really great. Nice view, good service, excellent food. But as the evening went on, the restaurant really started filling up and our waiter disappeared. No drink refills for you! Oh well, it was still a nice night and nice ending to our visit with our friends. Sad to see them go.

Sunday, Sunday

Sunday, Sunday, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Last day of my holiday break and last full day on St. Thomas for Bill
and Carole....boooo! I don't want it to be over.

We're spending the day at Magens Bay, waiting for Jay to get off work.
Not sure what the plan is for tonight. Maybe head over to Honeymoon
Beach on Water Island to hear Eric Stone play and participate in the
Sunday night pot luck, or cook out at the house, or go out to eat at
one of the wonderful St. Thomas restaurants. Hmmmm, decisions,
decisions. :-)

St. John Day

St. John Day, originally uploaded by captainjay.

We took the car barge over to St. John today. Jay had to work so it
was just Bill, Carole and I. It took forever at the St. Thomas dock,
but coming back was a breeze. I made Bill back up on the barge coming
over but I got brave and did it myself coming back. Not too bad if I
say so myself. :-)

We drove over to Coral Bay to Skinny Legs for lunch, then back to Cruz
Bay for shopping. It was a great day, too bad Jay wasn't here with us.

Can't believe my break is almost over. I don't want it to end. :-(

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Finally got some nice weather so we headed to the boat with Bill and
Carole. It's a beautiful day! They say how you spend new years day
will determine how you spend the rest of the year. So be positive and
enjoy!!