BEE-WARE BEES

The rain is letting up. Yesterday was pretty much rain free, with the exception of a few light, short showers.  Last night it started to rain so I closed up the boat, but so far so good for today!

EXCEPT that a bee or wasp (something yellow and buzzy) flew in while I was busy typing away. It went under the salon table and I felt it clench its little legs when it landed on my finger. Eeeew, I can still feel it... I quickly moved out of its way to give our visitor some space. He flew about the table and then climbed into my coffee cup.  We put a saucer on top and no more worries for me.

About a half hour later, the bee's buddy comes in to look for his friend.  He sees Bob's coffee cup (mine still has the saucer on it) and goes inside to get a buzz on.

I've read stuff about bees and beer bottles, but coffee seems to work and we get bees in the morning (no beer)...

So They Go!

More Friday Foolishness... Cat Blogging too!

Wow, just when I thought conditions were improving, we got severely dumped on.  The cats took it in stride and decided to play with their crackling tube. They like the noise it makes.

 Willow went inside...

 and then Buffy pounced on her through the other end :)

Bob found this interesting web page on StormCarib.com which shows hurricane rankings for  Caribbean & Atlantic islands... SEE HERE

The rain has stopped and Buffy is outside meowing for someone to come out and be with her... Bob made some hot chocolate so I'm going to savor that right now and Willow dozing is in her kitty condo. I couldn't resist... I stuck my head out (rain IS still pitter pattering) and talked to Buffy.  Maybe she wants the bees to come back and play... She just came back inside. Oh, her dish is empty and it's 3 hours before their dinner. Poor puss!

I'd like to thank Broadband VI, our internet service provider. We've been having periods of S.L.O.W.N.E.S.S and timing out, etc. I called a technician who I've spoken to in the past and left a voicemail. Can you believe that he RETURNED MY CALL!  How cool is that. Definite Brownie Points.

So much to do... I was hoping to work a bit on my new Amazon store for Pirate Party Supplies. It's fun and I hope will be helpful to some of you. We make a small pittance which we can then use to buy a DVD sometime down the line.

Got some time for a little bit of fun? Halloween is coming up soon. Check out Amazon's Halloween Storenow and avoid the last-minute panic.

They have some marvelous stuff... costumes, of course, but also costumes for your pets!

Lots of neat decorations, lighting (Halloween lava lamps!), crafts (including pumpkin carving), candy, tableware for your festivities, baking accessories (cookie cutters, cake pans, spooky cake decorations), makeup, music, movies, books, even stuff to trick out your ride :)

Enjoy!

BEE-UTIFUL DAY

Today seems like a beautiful day in comparison to those we've had since Tuesday afternoon. So much rain! Yesterday morning we had a squall with 55MPH gusts.

The Virgin Islands' public schools are closed again today and many government employees have the day off (4-day weekend).

Here's an article from Thursday in the St Croix Source. Poor Ms Gaffin of St John...

On St. John, a huge mudslide Wednesday on Centerline Road near Coral Bay has diverted water running downhill from Upper Carolina to the point where it now frequently flows through Pam Gaffin’s house. “I have water hitting my bathroom door up to my knees,” she said Thursday. Additionally, Centerline Road at her house is undermined about two to three feet and to the point where she said it’s unsafe for large trucks to pass. When a utility pole went down around 2 a.m. Wednesday, it also took out Gaffin’s electricity.

I went for a swim late yesterday afternoon. When I was in the water I thought that I really shouldn't be in the water because of all the runoff that's been pouring into the sea. The day before (Wednesday) I noticed that the water was very brown and also that there were long stripes of white soap-like bubbles.

Then I saw this in the Virgin Islands Daily News:
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/storm-pummels-st-croix-1.1045082

Power outages prompted some problems with both the V.I. Waste Management Authority and with HOVENSA.

According to Steve Aubin, Waste Management chief operating officer, power went off Tuesday evening to the LBJ pump station and at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, Waste Management’s generator at the station failed.

Waste Management then started bypassing sewage into the sea over Long Reef, Aubin said.

At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, the power came back on, and the bypassing was stopped, Aubin said.

Long Reef is the long reef outside of Christiansted where we get some neat looking surf at times... I hope the sewage had washed out of our area before I went swimming at 4pm this afternoon. My goodness!

This morning we are having a bee invasion. Buffy and Willow are very excited watching and chasing them about, while I have always had a bee phobia and cringe or hide when I see bees/wasps. I suppose our visitors have something to do with all the rain. If they are looking for a new home, I hope they realize they are not welcome here.  One bee just drowned himself in my coffee cup.  He went out with a BUZZ :)

Sun is coming through the ports.  Wow!  It hasn't rained since 6am.  Zowie!!!

Time for a new cup of coffee... Have a good one...

TD 17, soon to be Otto?

UPDATE: 12:24 & 3:45 (see photos below)

Good thing we went shopping yesterday as it has been raining almost solidly since our dinghy ride back to the boat. Quite breezy at times, too. We have had 30-50 MPH gusts.

Last night at about midnight we put a washtub outside and at 8:00am we had 3.5" of water in it.

It pretty much stopped raining a half hour ago and the cats have made good use of this time running about the deck playing.  The wind is coming back so I suppose we'll have more rain soon.

According to this map, it looks like the center of this storm system passed very close to us.  Now the center is about 300 miles away, but that is just the center. Barbados is having floods. There are flash flood warnings in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Schools in St Croix are closed today and government workers were told to come to work at noon. People are supposed to stay off the roads this morning because of debris.

One good thing is that our two early morning fishing boats that pass by us with a big wake between 5:00 and 6:00am didn't go out until after I made 7:00am coffee.

Willow just popped back inside and here comes the RAIN...

Lots of clouds so lots of rain, I suppose... It's very dark and gray out. We are very snug and cozy except for the hatches. So It Goes...

12:24PM update:

Our washtub filled up so I poured it into a jerrycan then we got a couple of inches more.  Plenty of "free" water to wash my hair this afternoon :)

Not a pretty day...

But it's not all bad, Bob just made me some hot chocolate... Mmmmmm, thanks!

So It's Going....

UPDATE 3:45 PM

Still an ugly, rainy, gray day... with the occasional bumpy bits...

Bob is bailing the dinghy. He estimates about 10 inches of water since he pumped out yesterday morning.

Not going to get much from the solar panels today!

It's cool...

I just looked at the 2pm forecast for Invest 97L. They say that the center of this disturbance is now past us & about 210 miles to the north of us. It might develop into a tropical depression in the near future but it will be out of our neck of the woods.

Right now it is just dumping rain on a large area of the Caribbean.  We had a few light rain showers last night and we have had a couple of heavy bouts today but not bad... except we were in the dinghy at the time :)  I thought it was going to drizzle all day but nope (hurray!) It is gray and a bit breezy.  Willow was being quite restless as she was upset by the weather but she's sleeping now.

This is how it looked at 2:30pm after we got off the bus to return home.

One nice thing is that it is cool... Only 83°F.  I don't have the fans on! It's a good day for cocoa.

Not complaining... Could be worse... Like something named "Otto"

Huff Season 2 on YouTube

We bought the HUFF DVD of season one several years ago and have been searching ever since for the 2nd season. The first season had quite a cliffhanger.

It appears that Showtime doesn't plan to release it on DVD for some reason.

Last week, I did a search on YouTube and someone has put up the entire 13 episodes of Huff Season 2. Hurray! I would still buy the series if it ever comes out but now we can find out what's happened. Will we ever discover more about the Homeless Hungarian? The episodes are cut up into 10-minute bits but So It Goes... 

Chocolate & Boats... Interesting Combo

Two of my favorite things... Chocolate and Boats! I think I'll stick to plywood/epoxy method of boatbuilding though :)

From the BBC News (26 Sept 2010):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11413103

A French chocolatier, Georges Larnicol who owns a dozen shops across western France, launched a 3.5-meter chocolate and sugar boat in front of a crowd of hundreds of onlookers in the port of Concarneau, thus winning a bet by successfully building a seaworthy boat from chocolate.

Click the BBC link to watch the video.

Invest 97

We're keeping an eye on Invest 97.  The weatherman on the radio this morning told us we'd have a system passing by the south of us in a couple of days... What? The 8am forecast still shows north.  It has a low chance of development before it drops in on us but we might get some rain and wind too, I suppose.

We'll check out what Dr Jeff Master's Wonderblog says later this morning.

Should probably get some gas and water today while it is still relatively calm and dry.

So, once again, let's get together and push this system away from the islands.  You know that Jamaica and Haiti do not need more rain... and I need to do laundry.

Red Sky at Night

UPDATE: Saturday morning, Oct 2 2010:
I just looked at the St Croix Source and there wasn't anything mentioned. Maybe it was lights from the Fireburn commemoration. Was probably just one of those things... I'll try to remember to look tonight and see what's up.

A few minutes ago, just before 11pm, I looked out the companionway because the sky was red like a sunset.  I thought that it must be the moonrise but unless something really bizarre has happened, the moon doesn't rise in the south...

The clouds were pink and their light was flickering a bit like maybe there's a fire on the other side of the island. Hope not... Probably nothing, but it sure looked strange.

Of course, there's no news on the radio.  In fact, they rarely change the weather forecast over the weekend.  If Sunday's sounds familiar, it's probably because you heard the same forecast on Friday and Saturday. This is really bad when you're worried about an approaching storm.

Anyway, these fuzzy pictures are not a good representation of what I saw... Sort of take the two photos and average them out :)

Without flash - Should be more pink

Some sort of flash setting but I'm not sure what (too red)

Hope it's something simple like stadium lights or something... Maybe it will be in Saturday's paper.

12 Volt Power Cord for MacBook

We recently purchased a 12-volt power cord for our 13-inch MacBooks through Amazon.  Works great so we will definitely be buying a second one.

This way, we don't have to use our inverter to use our 110V power cords. Seems like a waste to convert 12 volts to 110 volts and then back down.

There are two versions (16.5V & 18.5V) according to what Mac you have:

• Our magsafe cord has specs of DC-Output : 16.5V-3.65A-60W - Input : DC 12V
• The other is DC-Output : 18.5V-4.6A-85W - Input : DC 12V

I'd also like to mention that we are very pleased with a few of our recent purchases...

The mattress from Cabelas and also our Coleman French Press stainless steel coffee maker : Click here for PREVIOUS post. We've been using these items every day for the last 6-8 weeks and we are very happy campers.

My next bit of shopping research will be for a 12-volt router solution.

Might do a bit of sewing today after lunch, etc... Although, it is Sunday and I just started a new book, and the bay has calmed down so perhaps a swim, but then there's a bit of work I want to do for our barging site, perhaps a bit of video editing... So It Goes...
:)

International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010, it be

Me hearties arrr.
Talk Like a Pirate Day, today be. 
Rise to the occasion, we must. 
To the fullest in the pirate spirit celebrate this holiday portentous.
Yeesssssss.

Talk Like Yoda Day is May 21st !!!

"What's the problem with the way a pirate speaks? - Arrrrticulation!"
(from http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html)


Arr, me hearty, whar be th' bountiful festivities upon the glorious isle of St Croix then? Shiver me timbers, the gentlemen of fortune need to be knowin' whar be the grog found to raise a mug or three t' honour Cap'n Slappy & Ol' Chumbucket on this momentous day and make merry.

Faire winds, me bucko!

---

---

Saturday & Hurricane Igor Leftovers...

It's Saturday!  We thought about walking up to Pueblo and visiting PC Paradise next door to Golden Rock Shopping Center. PC Paradise is the local Authorized Apple Repair Center and we need to take the headphones from our new 4GB iPod Shuffle to be exchanged as they didn't work out of the box. But it's probably best to go on a weekday, and it might be kind of rough over at the dinghy dock.

Our Shuffle is a tiny unit and at a good price. The following week, Apple came out with the new iPod Shuffles but only in a 2GB version. The new ones have the controls on the unit and not on the headphones.  The headphone controls probably seemed like a good idea but didn't work out in actual use.

Last night I turned on the radio while reading in bed and they had an announcement by the Lt Gov and a few other officials warning people to stay away from the shoreline as there were 25-foot seas and that water was breaking over the Boardwalk. The swell has reduced during the night and the waves breaking out on the reef aren't as spectacular as yesterday but still kind of cool from a distance.  The upside is that we don't have many powerboats zipping around and causing big wakes in the anchorage :)

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day !

Talk Like a Pirate Day - Phrases & Swagger

Get ready... Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Slappy's Random Phrases



Swagger

Friday BOAT Cat Blogging - Tubular cats - Igor slop

Today I have some photos of Buffy & Willow.  Cat toys come in and out of favor.  This week they have really enjoyed playing with their tube.  It is about 4 feet long and it crackles when they walk in it.

The swell has been steadily building since last night.  The surf on the reef has been pretty amazing at times, but we are quite sheltered where we are.  We definitely have a bit of a storm surge as the water at the dock is about 2 feet higher than normal.

Not going to complain because conditions could have been much worse if we had a close call with Igor as a Category 5 minus 1-MPH hurricane :)

Talk Like a Pirate Day - PSA - Neuter Your Pets, Phone etiquette

Here's a brief Public Service Announcement from the originators of International Talk Like a Pirate Day...



And now, phone etiquette, pirate style



Only a few more days!

Hurricane IGOR takes a turn away from Virgin Islands

Hurray! Hurricane Igor has turned northwards a bit. His path is now WNW.

I was very happy to see this bit from the 5:00am advisory:

The 5:00am position was 17.9N 51.7W and we are 17.7N 64.4W. We'll see how it goes with the 11:00am.

He's supposed to start on a NW track sometime soon, so don't let up... Keep pushing Igor to the north.

We appreciate your help :)

We should be getting some swell in the anchorage so it would be good to go shopping today before it gets too choppy.

HAPPY DANCE TIME: 5pm Update... 

Igor's position is 18.8N 53.1W

which is about 770 miles to the northeast of us...

Yippee!

-

Talk Like a Pirate Day - Instructional Videos

Next Sunday (Sept 19, 2010) is International Talk Like a Pirate Day so we thought we'd post a couple of Ol' Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy's instructional YouTube videos.

You can find some books on our previous post.



Here's another...



Go practice with your dog, cat, or in front of a mirror :)

Hurricane IGOR is getting too big for his britches!

Hurricane IGOR is now a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 135 MPH and he's still 1200-ish miles away (thank goodness!)

 Click to enlarge - (image from www.stormpulse.com)

BUT... the 2:30pm forecast puts the center at our latitude of 17.7 N and he's still flying west.  The 8:00pm forecast in a few hours from now predicts the center will be at 17.8N and 47.5W which is a tad higher, but not ENOUGH.

"They" seem to be confident that Igor will turn more northerly with the Friday 8:00am position at 24.5N 62.5W (we are at 64.4W) but come on guys, help Igor on his way...

THINK NORTH...

Picture Igor as a volleyball and lob him back over the net to the north :)

Hope you are having a nice weekend. It's a beautiful day in St Croix.

So It Goes...

Friday BOAT Cat Blogging - Buffy in a Box - Hurricane Igor coming

Ever since Hurricane Earl blew by us in St Croix, we've had a bit of rolliness out here in Gallows Bay. At least it is caused by natural sea conditions and not by the powerboats.  Most of the motorboats were hauled out for the storm and have been on the hard for two weeks. Yesterday it has started back up though...  The worst are the huge wakes from the sportfisherman boats.  By the time their wake hits (and rockets the waffle mix accross the cabin) they are a mile away.  Our 6am waker is also back in business :) So It Goes...

This is how Buffy deals with the roll.

She gets a good night's sleep with this close-fitting box. It holds her solid and keeps her from rocking back and forth.  Smart kitten...

Last night we watched a couple of episodes of Mad Men and now Telstar is running through my head... Do you know which song I mean?  Click here and play sample at your own risk
:)

Oh, I almost forgot.... Start pushing soon-to-be Hurricane Igor to the North. He's heading dead west and they keep postponing his curve to the northwest so we need to give him a little PUSH!  He's forecast to be at 17.5N / 52.5W at 0600GMT on Tuesday morning which is pretty much still straight across from us (17.45N / 64.42W) although 800 miles due east as a category 3 storm. They say he's going to be a large one, but with a name like Igor, that's pretty much expected.

I think I'll listen to Telstar again to get thoughts of Igor out of my head... Must close hatches.... it's raining.

10 days before Talk Like a Pirate Day

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is Sunday, September 19th. I'm so happy to be giving y'all a bit of advance warning this year!

Here's a few books (caution, one is Kindle) from Amazon that you might find helpful...

The Pirate Life [Paperback] Authors: John "Chumbucket" Baur, Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers Click to go to Amazon

Pirattitude!: So you Wannna Be a Pirate?: Here's How! [Kindle Edition] Authors: Dave Barry, John "Chumbucket" Baur, Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers *** KINDLE VERSION *** Click to go to Amazon

The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues [Hardcover] Author: George Choundas Click to go to Amazon

Pirate Dictionary, The [Paperback] Author: Terry Breverton Click to go to Amazon

Legend has it that John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur and Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers came up with the idea for Talk Like a Pirate Day during an ill-fated game of racquetball way back in 1995, making it the first holiday that ever originated as a sports injury. They adamantly deny that there was any grog-swilling involved, though they both admit to swilling more than their fair share of grog at other times.

So, as in the immortal words of the Temptations: Get ready

Enjoy!

Remnants of TS Gaston

Gaston, or the bits and pieces that are left of this Tropical Depression/Storm, have finally arrived today.

Image from Stormpulse.com

Looks like we'll be getting some rain and squalls. I don't like it, but it is much better than what it could have been :)

Hope everyone had an excellent Labor Day Weekend

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous UPDATE

YIPPEE !!!!! We just checked NOAA's 5pm update for TS Gaston and their Public Advisory #6 says...

GASTON BECOMES A REMNANT LOW OVER THE EAST-CENTRAL TROPICAL ATLANTIC... THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON GASTON UNLESS REGENERATION OCCURS.

This is wonderful news...

We did a big shop today but that we needed to anyways. Never hurts to have an extra sack of cat food or a big bag of Snickers :)

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous

Wonderful... TS Gaston is approximately 1790 miles away from St Croix. Too far for accurate predictions but I want to know NOW.

This is the 5am Stormpulse.com forecast for Gaston.

I still like the orange one the best... Come on, ORANGE! yeah!!!

The ditzy lady on the radio yesterday told everyone that 2 of the models for Fiona had the track circling back so we might get hit twice (never came close to us and there were no curlicues on the models we saw). Today she was going on about Gaston and how there were so many tracks focussing on St Croix & St Thomas. I think she would like to be a Fox News reporter and just wants to sound important regardless of facts that just get in the way :)

We didn't make it to the store yesterday as we had water in the outboard's fuel tank. That took a bit of time to sort out but it's done.  It's something that just kind of normally accumulates but we had lots of water in the dinghy from Hurricane Earl's rain which probably added to it.

Last night we were invited to dinner by our neighbor on the next mooring over. He's not a liveaboard and we finally met because of Hurricane Earl.  That was a good thing because now we have each other's phone numbers and email addresses so we can communicate in case of a problem with the boats.  We went to Angry Nate's on the Christiansted Boardwalk and had their Wendesday night Prime Rib special. The food was great (salad or New England clam chowder, big steak that was actually rare, baked potato with all the trimmings, perfectly cooked crisp green beans with almonds, and a fruit cobbler for $22) and so was the service!  The waitress started off by bringing us water glasses... how unusual. She stopped by several times to see how we were doing, plus she replenished our water and ice teas before the levels hit the bottom. This might seem like a small thing to you, but I haven't had this type of service in many, many years. We've had dinner there twice and both times were excellent.

We are going shopping today (everything willing) and do a bit of a megashop.  This is a 3-day weekend before a potential storm, so we have to get food, water, gas, and hit the ATM before the machine's money runs out...  I'd love (love is not the right word)... I could really do with hitting the laundromat but it's such a drag.

The amount of rain we had yesterday was amazing.  I'm looking forward to making a rain catcher but that has to wait until other things are in place.

So It Goes...

Tropical Storm Fiona - St Croix US Virgin Islands

Tropical Storm Fiona is about 200 miles to the northeast of St Croix.  She has passed us by but we just had about an hour of rain.  Some of it was pretty hard, too.  Bob & I went for a swim while it was raining. It was very nice.

Now we see that we now have Tropical Depression #9.  Whoopee.

It has quite a wide swath for its cone of death.  Here is the current (11am) forecast from the Stormpulse website.

Click image to enlarge

I put on the Forecast Models option.  I prefer the orange one. It shows that it is currently 1966 (that was a good year) miles from St Croix. It's still early days for TD9 so we'll just patiently wait and see what happens.

Look at the Hurricane Weather Widget over in the right hand column... You might have to scroll down a bit or maybe up a tad... It is very colorful right now with all of the various storm paths. 

So It Goes...

Hurricane Earl tidbits

I've been looking around the great world wide web for information on boats in St Martin and the Virgin Islands in regards to how we fared against Hurricane Earl. I haven't seen too much so far but maybe that's because a lot of people still don't have power and/or internet service.

Here's a post on the Cruisers Forum from St Martin that has a short video and two photos of boats in Simpson Bay Lagoon. If they can't remove the wrecks, they really need to secure them so they will not move in future storms and cause further havoc.

According to Hans Meevis' Jewelry Blog, Dutch Sint-Maarten experienced 165 power failures last year. That adds up to 3 weeks of total downtime. Good old GEBE... He has a few good photos of hurricane damage.

I mentioned the photos from The BVI Beacon yesterday that has various photos from Tortola BVI.

I was surprised to see video and photos from Frederiksted. Much nastier over there than here in Gallows Bay, Christiansted.

• St Croix Source Photo Gallery
• St Croix Source Video

Here's a video taken at 6pm from the Holiday Inn on the Charlotte Amalie waterfront. He says a few things that are inaccurate such as it is a category 4 and could even be a 5.  Also, the brown water is crap that comes out of the "guts" or drainage ditches that empties into Long Bay. Quite often this trash is blamed on the boaters but just look at the ditch behind MacDonalds in Frenchtown that is waiting for a good rain to be washed out into the sea. (This is one of my pet peeves... can't you tell?) this part of Long Bay is especially bad when the swell comes in because they are reflected off of the wall.

Here's a video of a plane landing at the St Maarten Airport. It is a great tourist attraction.

Here's a 5-minute video of Hurricane Earl and St Croix USVI. I haven't been able to watch it because my connection just got really S..L..O..W...

NEW (SEPT 2): Here's a story on Latitude 38 'Lectronic Latitude with pictures from Tortola

See my previous Hurricane Earl posts.

I have a bit of a rant to do but don't have time right now as we have to get ready catch the 10:30 bus to go shopping.  But first, we have to drag that catamaran's mooring away so we won't get tangled in it.

So It Goes...