British Virgin Islands

I don't think I talk about my crew enough on here, except of course, when I am taking cheap pot shots at them and ridiculing them in pictures or words! However, I could not do what I do without them, and without a doubt, I could NOT have done this busy season without them.
In the inner workings of a charter boat, there are always crew dynamics, good and bad, especially when you live together 24/7. AND at almost 50, I often mostly feel like i am too old to be living with other people! I don't even live with my grown sons!
These two guys, who drive me crazy at times are as good of crew as you are going to find for charter boats. And I know, I have had lots over the years (mostly who thought I was a bitch and these two may as well... at times!)
Simeon is our dour scotsman, our First Mate and Dive Instructor, who came back to Promenade after working with us for a season back about 7 years ago. It was a busy year, and the only thing I remember about the end of the last season he worked here is that we were fed up with each other. He degreased and painted a compressor at the end of the season that took fffoooorrreveeeerrrr in Bazzas eyes.
The first week he worked for us, he tells me, I told him that I hated PADI Instructors, of which he had proudly just became a card carrying member of. Yeah, I kind of remember, we were in 50 feet and he had resort divers that could only go to 40 feet and I told him to deal with it...so, we may have been on the Rhone or something like that, but as a card carrying PADI member, he should have ALREADY have taught them the skill of swimming at 30 feet into shallower water shouldn't he have??

Simeon is our guy who gets up first thing in the morning. Never fail. Which means that I don't have to get out of bed until 830 or 9. I know he will always be up, quietly taking care of the guests. He is not the life of the party, but his patience with SCUBA and Snorkeling guests is incredible, and they always feel totally secure with him. THis is Simeon (and BRent) but that is another post, patiently giving snorkeling lessons to 10 60 plus year old women in 8 feet of water at White Bay on Jost. Gotta love the guy...I disappear quickly and think I have buns to make!

Simeon can be incredibly stubborn, in a quiet way, and boy we have clashed a couple of times! Underneath it all, we like each other, and I appreciate his reliability, honor, and steadfastness. I truly do think he is honourable.

Our guests truly do like them, if for nothing else then the fact that he is (in their words) eye candy! He has a very quiet voice, (unlike me) which means that they smile and nod at him a LOT!

Today they told him that he had "Brad Pitt" eyes, I am sure that is a compliment!

Simeon has a tattoo on his arm that he refuses to tell any of the guests what it means, and that just makes him more mysterious in their eyes! I think it says something incredibly original like " I am a dour scotsman, leave me alone" Our Scotsman was actually born in Wales and has a few illustrious forbearers, generals in armies and people who discovered important things. Can't remember for the life of me what they are tonight though...

And then there is Brent. Brent is our steward, and all around "bottom of the totem pole guy" He is everyones favorite kid brother and has the sweetest personality you can imagine. He truly cares about taking care of our guests. It is not an act, he is enthusiastic and will go out of his way to be helpful and concerned to crew and guests alike. He loves hugs! And is so secure in his own self worth ( on the outside) that is incredible.
As you can see, he has a problem with being relaxed!

His brother told me that it was almost a game in the family to see who could buy Brent the most obscure weird piece of clothing, and no matter what it was, he would put it on, thank the person and it would go into his normal daily closet. He keeps on saying that he has to learn how to buy his own clothes, but until then, he happily takes whatever Bazza has grown out of or the guests left behind!
Brent is one of the few stewards or stewardesses I know who ACTUALLY goes on the internet to look up napkin folds, as opposed to the rest of us on the boat who throw them in a napkin ring and think they look lovely!

Brent is our after dinner crew member...(so none of the rest of us have to stay up late...are you seeing a pattern here?) Brent sets up the breakfast stuff, put the boat and sometimes the guests to bed, even after happily taking them ashore to play "cougar" one more night...Of course, Brent is only 25....

Brent will happily dance with our women

or probably men if they wanted him too as well!

He is a chatterbox and a first class ham...

He has more energy then I could ever hope to have, as you look at him here doing the stroke it contest last night at Foxy's remember that we had just dropped off guests at 10 AM yesterday morning, turned the boat around, picked up new guests and here he was...

So he only came in second place...we have to forgive him some things!!!

Brent makes us all laugh, guests and crew alike and will do anything asked with a smile.

Both the boys are working towards getting their captains licenses, as they should. They work cheerfully and hard for me, doing extra things that are not even really their job like putting together my SCUBA gear, getting me ice and drinks, etc etc. They have both worked so incredibly hard this winter, with VERY few days off! We tease Brent as he gets ten days off in a couple weeks to go back to Canada for a wedding and baptism, and Simeon and i are already wondering who is going to do everything that Brent does!! Bazza? Perhaps, but probably not!
OK, that is mushy enough. I could go on to Bazza, but as I married him you probably already know that i think he is pretty special. Bazza can fix anything. Not only can he fix it, he will have incredible patience while I whine about it! Gotta love him for that alone!

He gets us everywhere we are going safely, sometimes in spite of me, who is much more of a risk taker then he is...It is usually me going "but why can't we anchor in this exposed anchorage with a hurricane coming and 8 foot seas?" Bazza is going to be an eccentric old man in his future, working on his "projects" of which there is many...

That covers it for the boys tonight. Way too mushy for me so I shall go onto the ladies and our day...Well night anyways.
After dinner last night, I did not think they were going to rally to go to Foxy's

What would you think looking like this?

But, I was wrong and FOXY's, they were a going!

They found handbags and glad rags...

And maybe even a wig or two and off they went escorted By Brent!



Some, were hand picked for the stroking contest...

Some (smartly) refused!

And apparently he made the right choice...

As ours walked away with FOXY's FIRE RUM (and I am sure that is exactly what it tastes like, about the same quality as the Willy T's rum that you could also use for paint thinner and bilge cleaner!)

NOt sure how this one got into this order, but this is the girls arriving yesterday..

And me looking like the grinning cheshire cat in the background (or the grinch)

We told our guests that if they fit they could go in and out of their hatches, although they could not stand on them. These ladies are a bit older, so they had a hard time figuring out which hatch we actually meant...No my dear, you cannot fit through this one!

It was off to White Bay on Jost this morning, bright and early before the entire world showed up...



"to boldly go where no man has gone"



Well, to boldly go straight to the Soggy Dollar Bar at 9 AM for painkillers anyways!!!



And maybe One Loves as well!

We spent the morning and then it was snorkeling lesson time. Now this is more of a complicated mission with women, as they have to make sure to model their masks and make sure they are coordinated with their outfits!

Then what happens if they change outfits the next day???

I went to my old standby, making buns, and left the boys to it!

Some of us looked like we were really going on safari, either that or looking to attract the zebras on the beach!

Do you see how nicely matched the green on the skirt of the mask and the green in the swimsuit is? We were especially pleased with this one!

Yeah, they maybe vamped for the cameras a bit!

Of course being a SUnday of a long weekend with the Puerto Rican Navy in town we KNEW that White Bay was going to get pretty busy...

But we were even amused at how they managed to raft up in a 6 foot area between our boats and damn it! They worked at it for a long time to make it happen too!!

Of course when we went to leave it left us NO room at all to even attempt to get out the channel, which means we actually have to bump over the reef a bit to get out!



We were on our way up to Sandy Spit for our first "real" snorkel with "real" fish. which led to the Titanic moments...

Although they did enjoy the trampolines and the water rushing by...

We found mudslides for cocktail hour...

We practically had to twist their arms to stop them from mooning the customs boat wandering around the anchorage at Cane Garden Bay and the Music Fest...

And then they showered and put on their little black dresses to go in with Brent tonight while the rest of the crew, you guessed it! Got to go to bed! Thanks Brent...

We must be big into learning lessons lately, as we had some more on our plate...Always wonder if I should write this stuff or not, or if I should stick to the tourist brochure where we are perfect and everything is wonderful??? I guess it is all part of life though! nope, we are not perfect. Experienced, but there are still curve balls out there.
Did you think I had run away last night? nope, we might have had one of the most stressful learning experiences we have ever had on charter yesterday and I think I might have had a vodka or two last night! I will tell that story later, but we will start back with a few cute pictures that I snagged off someone's camera while they were at the Baths...You don't think that I would ever be able to take pictures from this angle do you? That would entail going ashore!











These guests really wanted to dive the Chikuzen. The weather forecast was iffy this week and we told them that we did not think it would happen, but if we got up one morning and it looked flat enough, we would try and take a run out there.
We were anchored at Mountain Point and had planned on diving the dogs before going to the Chikuzen. BAZZA (note I capitalized his name!) came down to me in the AM while I was flipping pancakes til they went out of style and said, "it looks pretty good, I am sure it will be marginal, but maybe we should give it a try! Great so off we went, seas were probably 3-5 feet, doable for experienced divers and boat crew!
I had told them about the Goliath Grouper that you have the best chance of seeing when you just get in, so there was another photographer who was following me in and a few more. Simeon was taking in the less experienced ones...
We pulled up to the ball, hooked onto it and I jumped in the water, reached up to grab my camera from Bazza and COULD NOT...I was washed away immediately to the front of the boat where the ball was. Well, I said immediately, but i attempted to swim back to the back for a minute. At the ball, I said to Simeon, "there is a ton of current, I have to go down and check it out" meaning in my mind
1) Don't let anyone else in the water until I come back
2) I knew that no one would believe that I would go anywhere without my camera! So Bazza should know there was a problem.

That apparently meant in Simeon's mind, "she is fine and going down" which he relayed to Bazza and he read it as "ok, she is going down to spot the wreck, then come back up and get her camera and point to everyone the direction to go"
Meanwhile, as I am pulling myself hand over hand down the mooring line, imagine my surprise when I found the end of the line attached to nothing in my hands! I am by this time going for a great tow. I quickly come to the surface, while on one side of the Boat B is throwing divers in the water, quick, quick, quick...Now there is 3 divers in the water, plus me, and at least I am hanging onto the mooring ball and line. I wave it madly in the air...I attempt to inflate my safety sausage (which failed miserably) and them I watched the throw the other end of the mooring ball over the boat. Gulp. About this time I am yelling at the boat trying to figure out what in the world is going on and why divers were in the water (not that they could hear me, it was getting smaller by the minute, and there were divers spread out between me and them!)
It seemed to take forever to see the boat turn around and find the divers one by one. I was just happily floating around on my mooring ball.. which you can see here as they pulled it up on the boat so it did not foul our props and we could see the condition.

There is supposed to be three shackles and pins at the bottom of the mooring lines. They are all in pretty rough shape. The last few times there has only been one strand left of the three. Bazza has griped for years as they use stainless steel and it causes something called crevice corrosion. It is the wrong material. This pin was being held on by just a couple millimeters still because of this. And it snapped. Now this is not the first time that this has happened with dive balls, and the Dive Operators mostly the first thing they do is go down to attach another line to the bottom. Don't think this is the first time that this has happened to a dive boat here!
This is what the corrosion looks like on the pin...

Believe me the story does not end there. It goes on...some of the back end of the story is that, as usual, even with 4 crew members, communication was crap here. Bazza says that he knew as soon as I went in the water that the mooring ball line had snapped, as I was not going the right way for surface currents (how does he know this stuff??) Plus he also could see all his down lines and float lines getting all tangled up under the boat in the rudder and props. He quickly sent Simeon up to check the ball, and says his first mistake was trusting Simeon for a minute and a half that the mooring was actually fine, when he knew immediately it could not be.
Simeon had to quickly get on gear and go after the two who were at 35 feet and bring them back, my other photographer was on the surface.. Then Bazza could not move the boat that quickly, as he had to tie up and unwind the line around the bottom of the boat as best he could before moving. We could not have put down the dinghy, the seas were too big, although we could have and would have cut it down if it would have gotten to that point and threw over a life raft. but it did not get to the point.
Everyone was now safely on board and we anchored just off the Chikuzen (remember this sentence for later) and went for our dive. It was fine under water!

The wreck coming into view...



John is trying to read the instruction manual on how to use his new housing underwater I believe!

The photographer and I took pictures of each other...as we are usually the ones taking the pictures!

Inside the wreck..

The wonderful large Goliath Grouper swam right by me! Most of our divers saw him today...

Jennifer peaking in the hold...

And a lot of frigging big barracuda!!



I want to point out that for the first time in history Simeon does not have a wetsuit on!!

Janice gazing off into the distance (yes we saw Cobia and Turtles!)

Pretty little fish looking for food scraps...

Looking up at one of the masts. Notice the chain under there? Remember that picture as well as there will be a story there afterwards...

HOrse Eyed Jacks...

All the schools of fish at the stern...

My beautiful turtle!



We did two dives on there, and they were both wonderful, although the sea conditions kept picking up...A couple of our girls decided head down not looking at the seas was the best place to be! Catherine and Lynn looked like bookends!



Now we get to the next episode of the story..This day just does not end! We anchored well off the wreck, but by a fluke, if you remember the pic above of the anchor chain under the mast, yep, it has hooked under the mast, and the boat was surging too much for us to safely get enough slack to manually get it under. We had a clear shot getting it out if we went to port, had some slack and caught the waves the right way to bounce it under. Seemed like a plan. Yeah right. Did not work. We decided then to send down a diver to unshackle the anchor, put float bags on the anchor and we would just pull up the chain. Down Simeon went tools and lift bags in hand. And that is what happened, anchor was taken off and eventually lifted up with the bags, however that is jumping ahead in the story!

With us trying to get it out we had actually made it worse and we now had chain wrapped around two masts, in figure 8's with about 4 turns in it... We were not going anywhere unless the Chikuzen was coming with us!
It was now a two person job, Janice is giving Brent encouragement as he hides his farmers tan under a wet suit and prepares to be commercial diver as well...

The guests thought it was a perfect time to nap...

And Bazza, well he just handled it like Bazza does, with our limited help. The boys came up and we thought they were finally done, but no, one more wrap, and they needed more air! Down again. They were not touching anything but the end of the chain and throwing it over where they had to so there fingers were clear of the danger... About this time while filling tanks on board an O ring burst which just about capped it off... Finally we were free.

Things we did wrong, right and after thoughts? Well that will have to wait until next entry I believe, this has already taken long enough! We had many options for getting the anchor, we could have dumped it from the boat end, but that idea did not thrill us. We were reminded once again how you have to be prepared for the one in a million accident, that you stop bothering to prepare for cuz it so seldom happens..We should have anchored in the first place, as we knew what shape that mooring was in....we always have to send someone in to check out the conditions and balls first (although, since the shackle broke so quickly, we would not have had time to get a line on the bottom first, but at least I would have been the only one in the water. I know there is more. But, everyone was back safely, we had a great two dives so all does end well.
It was time to sail in to Marina Cay for the group could go to Michael Beans for dinner. Then we decided to catch Tuna, after Tuna, after Tuna...

The vegetarian in our group thought this was a horrible site, but it did taste good!

Beans second last show, and the guests all enjoyed it very muchly...

I think Janice had her share of rum shots as well!!!

She had brought down a present for me, which is a nightgown in towel material! How wonderful!! BUT she wears a size small and I wear big girls!



The guests loved the Chikuzen, the crew wished we would have defaulted and dove the Dogs!

I will start off this blog entry by saying HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to my mother! I mean to call you tonight mom, but if not, it is because i finished this blog entry and crashed! As usual the 24 hours of turnaround, did not go as smooth and was way busier and shorted then I longed for it to be!!!
B, had a turnaround like that as well, he tried to fix many little things, but I don't believe many of them worked! By the end of the day he was ecstatic as he had all the wireless speakers working though!! One thing to be glad of.

After all the fun and games of cleaning, we had to go do battle in the grocery stores as well. Sigh. We will leave it at that!
A girl who knows how to make Bazza happy is Janice, she arrived with her dive group today bearing GIFTS! Bazza got sweets. Go figure. You will see a picture of my present later on in the week!

Finally starting to get charters picking up on our dock, and it is FAR easier to pick up on our dock! Especially for this group, who were 11 divers strong, so we could unload the dive bags one by one and take them to the storage locker for the week and then we can repeat the process at the end of the week. It is a winner! They started arriving shortly after 11 and by 12 we had everything stowed away and lunch on the table!

We appear to have a few laughing gulls (who apparently followed us from Yacht Haven Grande!) keeping us company and laughing at us today. Really I think they are doing a mating dance though!

It was off to Beef Bluff for the first easy dive. there are three divers achieving their open water certification this week!



I wondered if Janice did one of those "mystery tour" trips with her group as to me it looks like they are diving in the arctic with all the gear they have on!

Need I say more??? How does he dive with that mustache!!!

Brent took a very glamorous picture of me in my hat...

and a lot of bobbing divers...

Janice getting ready to go in...

The brand new divers (still smiling!)

Simeon looking as cool as only Simeon can!

Entry!



The viz is better then last week. Not good yet, but it was better! Nice little crab in his shell...

I saw hundreds of starfish, which were not here last week...

The little wreck that is done there...

THe wreck had several Tulip Shells on it!

A couple southern sting rays came by...

More tulip shells...

Although these are really crappy pictures, it does prove that an Eagle Ray swam by as well! (complete with remora)



I met up with Janice, so we explored a bit...

This is exactly the color and the viz of the water, so it will give you an idea that it is clearing up somewhat..



After our dive it was time to go for a sail over to Hallsover Bay on Cooper Island, the guests just enjoyed the sail...



When we arrived at Hallsover, Cuan Law was already anchored where we were going to go, so we picked up a ball for the second dive, and I think this photo is captioned "how many men does it take to pick up one mooring ball??"

After the dive we moved to anchor off of Cistern Point on Cooper Island, although we had no takers for the night dive, they are saying that they will be diving before breaky...
Great sunset tonight, Brent Capturing Janice in it!

Oh WAIT, that is wrong, I think the picture B was really going for was Janice shaving her legs!! Naughty B!!

With a lot of guests and a lot of different food requests, this week is buffet for all meals...Seared Tuna tonight!

Everyone had dinner, a mudslide or two and it is bed time...