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12/12/2017 8:08 am  #1


Off to the USVI

We leave tomorrow for St. Croix, USVI to help out friends of ours on the island. We will be there for a month. Hope we can brighten up their holiday season after the devastation of Maria.

 

12/12/2017 8:23 am  #2


Re: Off to the USVI

"Fair winds and following seas,"


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

12/12/2017 9:09 am  #3


Re: Off to the USVI

Enjoy the warmth !! 


"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
 
 

12/16/2017 7:44 am  #4


Re: Off to the USVI

Arrived on St. Croix Wednesday evening. Had a couple problems in San Juan with our connecting flight on Seaborne Airlines. What we saw of San Juan by air and talking to people on the ground was a lot of blue FEMA tarps on rooftops, a lot of street lights and traffic signals still out, and people told uspotable water is still a big problem and much of the island still has no power/sporadic outages.

St. Croix has a lot of debris including downed wires and telephone poles lying alongside roads pushed off to the side. The roads are riddled with large potholes. About 50% of the island has power, but there are still sporadic outages. I talked to a couple of electrical grid workers yesterday who are here from New York helping to restore power. They and about 100 other stateside workers are living on a ship docked in Fredriksted at the cruise ship dock. The said they are making progress in sometimes difficult situations, like up in the hills and the rain forest, but feel the lines will be in better shape than before the storm when they are done.

The private school where my wife used to teach is open, but a lot of families that had children attending have left the island since the storm so their enrollment is way down.

Most businesses in downtown Christiansted are open. Some restaurants, dive shops, and bars around the shoreline were destroyed or damaged and are not open.

The two major resorts on the island, the Buccaneer and Carambola, are open and begging for customers.

Grocery stores are open and have a decent selection. Home Depot and other hardware stores and equipment supply businesses are doing their best to keep up with demand. Potable water is not a problem if you can get to the places that distribute it.

Finally, Cruzan Rum is doing what it has been doing on the island for over 7 generations. Rum is plentiful on island.

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12/22/2017 4:07 pm  #5


Re: Off to the USVI

We drove out the north shore road today. Again, lots of debris pushed off to the side of the road, downed lines and poles, and passed several groups of crews repairing electric and phone lines. We went past the home we lived in for 8 years in the 1990’s to find that the roof had been blown off of it and many of the hurricane shutters were just hanging on the building. The House was located at Salt River inlet, also known as Columbus landing. Further out the north shore we went past cane bay. The Cane Bay dive shop and the restaurant were closed due to hurricane damage. However, a couple of the little beach bars in the area made it through and were open - one of our favorites, Off The Wall, was still there and open. We went all the way to the Carambola resort to find that it was still closed and under repair despite the fact that we had previously been told it was open for business. It turns out that the beach resort is closed, but the golf resort, more in the center of the island, is open. On the way back to the east end of the island we stopped in Christiansted for lunch and a drink at one of the restaurants along the waterfront.

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