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 ....

Rainy greetings from WV

Rainy greetings from WV, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Well I had to make a trip to WV to deal with our rental property. I thought I was going to be able to post a nice pretty pic of the river and green grass. Yeah right. It hasn't stopped raining since I arrived. It was raining when I left St. Thomas, raining with lightening in Charlotte, and raining when I arrived in Charleston. I guess I brought the rain with me. Sorry guys. The rain has made the river brown and yucky but the level looks ok so that's good.

It's also freezing, so between the weather and working on the rental, it hasn't been a fun trip so far. But it is great to see friends and family, so that makes it all worth it. :-)

Lots of rain

Lots of rain, originally uploaded by captainjay.

It's pretty much been raining for a solid week now. Just about every day since last Tuesday has been overcast, sprinkling, or full on rain. It's good for the island, it needed it. But not good for friends visiting. But at least they had the right attitude. They understood the need and just adjusted their plan. Bars, drinking and naps vs beach and boats lol. You never know what the weather is going to do in the VI so you have to just go with the flow, remember where you are, enjoy the view and relax. That's exactly what Jay and I did all weekend :-)

Friday Beach Pic

TGIF! What a week. We've been busy busy busy. But it was a lot of fun. Between Carnival, forum friends and friends from WV we've been running like crazy. Sorry about the lack of posts. We just totally forgot. Ever since we got on Facebook all our attention got directed there instead of here like it used to be. I'll go through all the pics and try to do a week in review post this weekend, while we are staying home and doing absolutely nothing! Need rest :-)

Pic above is Lindbergh bay in front of Island Beachcomber. Our only beach day on STT with our friends.

 

PS Sorry about the late post, Blogger has been having issues and has been down .

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers out there! We love you even if we don't say it enough. :-)

We're headed back out on the boat today, going over to St. John. Going to try to make it a little bit lower key day, good luck with that lol We had a great time over on Jost Van Dyke yesterday, but we always do so no shocker there.

So all the mothers, enjoy your day, try to relax, let someone else wait on you for a change. :-)

Friday Beach Pic

Friday Beach Pic, originally uploaded by captainjay.

Happy Friday! And happy carnival. Today is the children's parade which is alway a fun time. We won't be making that event since we came over to St. John for a Cinco de Mayo party at a friends house and spent the night. Soon we will be heading back to St. Thomas to pick some really close friends from WV that are visiting for a week. Should be a fun weekend! Enjoy!

J'ouvert

So we finally made it to J'ouvert. This is our fourth Carnival and I've wanted to go every year and I finally talked Jay into it. We met some of my coworkers and Jay's coworkers at Admiralty Dive center's shop at the Winward Passage at 5am for a pre-J'ouvert get together and when the music finally started around 6:30 the dancing began. What a fun time! I love the music and dancing behind the trucks with the huge speakers and base like you can't image. People dressed in all kinds of crazy costumes and dancing like you've never seen. It ends around 11am and the police start clearing the street so that they can open it back up to traffic. Most people continue the party elsewhere but some of us have to head to work, bummer lol.

A friend of mine was on one of the trucks and took the above pic. I took the video from ground level. Crazy crowd :-)  Read more about j'ouvert here.

Cultural Food Fair

Cultural Food Fair, originally uploaded by captainjay.

The Cultural Food Fair is one of my favorite Carnival events. Local food vendors, arts & crafts, music and much more. UVI gives us two hours in addition to our lunch hour to be able to go and enjoy the event. Parking is crazy so I like going with someone else and let them deal with it lol

Beautiful sunset

Beautiful sunset, originally uploaded by captainjay.

We had a beautiful sunset tonight so I thought I would share it. Had a quiet night at home to rest up for this weekend. We had some friends in town last night that stayed with us one night on their way to St. John. But this weekend Friends from WV arrive and both Jay and I are off so I can't wait.

Great Day for UVI

In a press conference held this morning, UVI announced a $5 million gift commitment from investment strategist and entrepreneur Kiril Sokoloff. Mr. Sokoloff, the founder of 13D Research (USVI) LLC (13D), has pledged $1 million annually to UVI over a period of five years. This gift will benefit the students of UVI as well as the US Virgin Islands as the gift promotes entrepreneurship, though student competition, hiring of an expert in the field, seed money for new businesses for winners of the competition, additional courses at UVI, and much, much more. Congratulations UVI and thank you Mr. Sokoloff for your generous donation.

Read more about it on the UVI web site

If you're on FaceBook, check out UVI's new facebook page