How is Yacht Charter Turnaround almost come and gone again already?

A few random thoughts for a Sunday afternoon...I am working on a long story for the blog, and it is not coming as quickly as I would like to be transcribing it... We put our New Years guests safe and sound on the ferry yesterday morning back to St Thomas. It looked like their was a few charter boats doing the same thing.

We had an enjoyable week with them all and my bread making skills have been tested to no end!

Thanks so much for an amazing week! Everything was just lovely and the food was fabulous. You are all such wonderful hosts, thanks so much for making our vacation so great. JOEY AND MELISSA, NYC

Thank you once again for exceeding our expectations! Kerry you are a wonderful cook and hostess. Bazza we enjoy your stories and feel confident in your "care" Simeon, you are a very effective yet quiet complement. Thank you for taking such good care of our daughters and son in laws. We had a great time! GLEN AND DEBBIE, NORTH CAROLINA

Thank you for an amazing vacation and keeping Nick busy and happy the whole time. NICK AND KATIE, CORNELIUS, NORTH CAROLINA

We were all over the moon with our unheard of 48 hours in between charters this weekend. We had visions of luxuriously lounging on the back deck drinking pina coladas or something on Sunday. You probably won't be surprised that that is not quite how it turned out after all...

We have a large charter starting this Monday. One we have done for many years. 30 different men, give or take a man or two over 9 days. Go on, imagine it...The preference sheets look different then most of our preference sheets do. Noone is asking for fruity drinks with umbrellas in them! They are looking for beer, whiskey and Bourbon. Ok, throw in some vodka (for vegetables) and energy drinks (self explanatory) and jagermeifter as well (don't ask)
I can forget buying any fresh fruit, except for the odd piece (like maybe limes for beer...) and go light on the vegetables (does creamed corn still count as a vegetable?) My provisioning list included ribs, steaks, meatballs, cheese, nuts, and many many potatoes and eggs! I did warn Simeon that we had a fair bit of liquor coming, as I have learnt over the years it is a hassle to run out and we need to keep that beer cold as well.
"A fair bit of liquor" may be an understatement. I am hoping the rest of the years guests will understand that THEY will no longer be getting fruity umbrella drinks now, but will be drinking Makers Mark, Johny Walked and Wild Turkey and every variation thereof, as I seem to have bought out the entire store. I believe it was about 7 loads down the dock that arrived.

Simeon, being no fool, quickly realized that since I had ordered virtually no fresh produce, that he could probably score a shelf or two in the galley fridge for extra beer and that is exactly what happened!

Between the cooking sherry and the beer i now keep in the galley I should be content in there anyways...
I skipped out to town to do the weekly round of Cash and Carry/Riteway/OneMart/Bobbys. I don't think it was my imagination but Riteway was more crowded then usual, and I still cannot figure out why they insist on stocking the shelves Saturday morning. in the busiest period. Blocking all the aisles. so you are forced to do a relay race leaving your cart in an obscure part of the store. with all the other "left in obscure parts of the store" shopping carts. and ferry everything back to your cart.
Maybe this is Riteways idea of helping us all stay healthy???? We get to walk ten miles to buy one cart full this way! I won't even start about the current batch of some of the cashiers they have in there working at this time. Lets just say that if I understood the local patois (or I think it is the local patois, but it could be from any island...) I would know everything about everyones boyfriend, work mates, bosses, etc in there. I only catch a few words now and I know enough.
My heart also sunk upon going to get a shopping cart outside, as they were all brand new. You may think that this would be a selling feature, as believe me, there is no smart little "wipe your cart" stands at the doors, in fact shopping in Tortola means you empty all the garbage out of your cart first. My heart had sank as the carts were LARGER then the previous ones, and these aisles are already very small. A few years ago some shopping engineer from England reconfigured the store and to expand it, they just put in double the amount of aisles!
OK, that is enough of that story. I am sure you are bored by now. Yes I shopped at all the stores and then I went back today to most of them once I had been back to the boat and seen what Supa Valu did not send me in my order.
On my way into town I passed Gram's catering in East End, which always has a white board outside with the daily specials. This is definitely a local restaurant, with the attendent interesting non canadian friendly dishes listed. I noticed their first special was "Goats Head Soup" (appropriate as the goats do wander outside there a lot!) and I thought to myself "bet they are not selling out of that like hot cakes" the next item on the list was chicken feet, another non canadian friendly food group in my books. Imagine my surprise on the way home when I was that the goats head soup was OUT! Shows where my taste buds are I imagine...

When I returned to the boat I had to find a spot for all these bottles of liquor. And about 5 cases of various energy drinks....I knew they were mine to find a place for as Simeon has a warm drink locker on the top deck (which is very large) and they were placed conspicuously in the middle of the salon along with the bottles of liquor. This, i did, although they are stuffed all over the boat, so I am not sure if anyone but me (who am I kidding I am the worst at remembering) will be able to find them again. I comforted myself with the fact that at the end of season we could give them away to the commercial divers!

Simeone went to Emiles for Mexican and picked us up Chinese and then I realized that I had 30 racks of ribs that I had to get ready, pressure cook and portion out for the next days. Sigh. We watched Dark Knight during this process on our new HDTV wide screen that I had downloaded from Itunes onto my new Apple TV! It worked flawlessly...

Funny story, no word of a lie here and he may kill me for putting this up on the blog, but I have to. Crew and guests often think that they are being more environmentally conscious by going down to the bathrooms on land to go to the washroom. Personally I don't get it, as I know what/where the sewage goes on land here in a lot of places and it is no different then being on the boat, but at least ours is maserated! We had one guest who we still affectionately call "Dump Boy" as he held everything daily until he could get to a toilet on land! Not sure how that worked on the days we did not get off the boat...
Anyways, the marina apparently has two stalls in the washroom. One has had a sign up on it that says "out of order" for weeks now. Simeon goes in, sits down, and realizes there is no toilet paper in his stall. Being a clever lad, he thinks he knows how to fix this and jumps up to look over into the other stall to see if there is any toilet paper in there. Only to be shocked by the site of one of the dock boys sitting with his pants around his ankles somewhere. I believe Simeon just about fell back into the toilet bowl on his side stammering, stuttering and apologizing, and then decided he had lost his urge to be there and made a hasty exit! I rolled on the floor laughing. Of course. But, it does make one ask the question "Is it really out of order or have they just found a clever way to have their own private stall?"

Bazza had spent the entire day in the engine room as port engine needed something done to fuel injectors or something that involved pumps, parts and vices... and diesel leaking into the oil...That is about I can tell you! Today was our day off. Simeon scraped the bottom of the boat and then (smart lads, doing this AFTER the boat cleaners had been here..) changed the oil on the dinghy engine and assorted other chores. I cleaned the galley and made our saloon into a bedroom for two... Also realized that I have 2000 coffee filters. That made me shake my head...If you use one a day every day of the year, I have 5 years worth at least. On a big day on charter I may use 3, so even at that expanded number, I am good for about 3 years at a minimum for coffee filters! I guess they can always be used for toilet paper if need be! Or, if any other charter boat (or all charter boats) run out, feel free to run over and borrow some....

I am a mechanical Klutz, and a Bull...No secret there. BUT this morning, I was on a roll. We have had a fan in the galley for about ten years. It is rusted like crazy (the cover) and coated in a decades worth of grease, but the damn thing never quits! In my cleaning spree I found a nice new cage for a fan in the pantry and thought I would replace the old one. How hard could it be, a few screws and I would be on my way. I barely touched the damn thing and the base broke off! Then I stripped the screws trying to get it out of the ceiling, or the screwdriver, one of the two. Then I left it dangling and just told Bazza I made more work for him...

Now we have gone down to the West End to pick up my oldest son Chad who is coming in this evening (son has been co-opted into working this large charter whether he wanted to or not, after all, like children everywhere, he is in debt to parents for like, forever)
My mom sent me this, with the caption "Redneck Seafood" I don't get it? Is it supposed to be a joke ? Looks perfectly fine to me with mac and cheese and the hot dogs artistically arranged to look like octopus! They could be a charter chef!!!!


One other observation and then I will go here and stop rambling (all this effort into this post and I could have finished the long story I was working on)

Some of you know that I have an Amazon Kindle, the E book reader that I have had since it came out. I really like my Kindle, as it downloads books and magazines and newspapers in under a minute, and i always have something to read. One of the selling features of Jeff Bezos and Amazon on this is that "no book would cost over $9.99" Makes sense, as it cannot be as expensive as printing and distributing written books can it? The kindle is pricy, listing around $400.00 or so before you buy anything to read on it...

Apparently nowadays, you cannot trust Wall Street, Banks or Amazon...recently the price of some books on Kindle have been MORE then what it costs to go to a Brick and Mortar Store and buy the hardback! And these are not always complete books, pictures, the ones that you do get, are black and white and grainy, some stuff is condensed, although you would not know what unless you had also read the book and then compared.

Amazon is getting a lot of complaints and people are boycotting the high priced electronic books. Amazon is telling people to complain to the publisher, not them. Tsk Tsk, now we cannot trust Amazon either, no surprise he was lying about these $9.99 books when a lot of other companies have lied about everything (I know, it is actually called "creative marketing") May be a small rant and grievance, but since I was on a roll here, I figured I would not stop!