2016 test

Test....     11/4/16

Vacation Time is only a week away!

Fly to St. Louis on April 18th then on up to Seattle!

Blogging for the New Year

Well I'm probably the only person reading this cause I can't see why anybody would come here when I haven't been updating. Well even if it's just for me, I'm going to try and make it a habit to write more often. I started the Power90 Fitness plan yesterday and running and swimming workouts going well. Got to get back on the bike. 8 Tuff Miles is only 5 weeks away and St. Croix Half Ironman is May 1st!

Beautiful Sunny Sunday!

The sun has come out after several days of rain and gloom..... I took several weeks off of training after the "Nifty Fifty" "52" mile bike ride... So I am going to try and "slowly" ramp up the miles. Ran from the house today instead of driving and starting from Magens. It's a lot harder starting from here. The hills just to get from here up to the gate are a killer....But it was a good 5 miles.....Supposed to take the villa guests upstairs out on Happy Hour tomorrow. Hopefully the weather holds and stays nice...... Then it's time to haul Happy Hour out of the water and get ready for Coast Guard inspection!

St. Croix Triathlon!

Great but hot day in St. Croix. Completed my first ever triathlon. I entered in the short course.... Sprint distance of half mile swim, 8 mile bike, and 4 mile run. finished 5 male and 7th overall...... 96 people entered the race.

Next up is the Florida International Triathlon in Sarasota on May 15th....

Working on the side of the hill...... building some wall to help terrace the hill for a nice path to our back stairs and also some landscape areas.....pictures to follow tomorrow. I head to St. Croix on Thursday afternoon......I'm very excited about my first ever triathlon.......!!!!!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

A beautiful morning!!! We got a group check into Aqua Vista yesterday and I have to deal with a few small issues over there today. We have a "floor buffer" rented for the weekend so I am going to be spending my day up in the villa cleaning the floors in the living and dinning room.

Update - 4/23/10

Training is going well for my first ever triathlon. I'll be doing the sprint distance at the St. Croix International Triathlon on May 2nd. I have a few friends doing the Half Iron Man distance which I hope to compete in next year. Biking has been going well with my new bike that I purchased at the beginning of the year. I'v ridden with the "Fortress Bike Crew" a few times now.... It has helped me stay motivated......

This mornings workout:

biked 9 miles and ran 6.3 miles

Rain, Rain Go Away!

5 days of rain here in the VI. Feel bad for the guests upstairs..... Oh well. I will do a full 8 Tuff Miles review with video and pictures here soon. I am in full Triathlon training now.! Less than 8 till weeks till the St. Croix Triathlon.!!! I am only doing the Sprint version. Hopefully next year I will be up for the Half Ironman 70.3 and "The Beast".

Less than a Week till the "8 Tuff Miles"

Today is Monday and the 8 Tuff Miles is this Saturday (Feb. 27, 2010). I ran the full course yesterday and didn't give everything I had in me and finished in 1 hr. 12 min. Last year was my best time at 1hr. 8min. 10 sec. We'll see what happens on race day and what the weather conditions will be like. Yesterday was beautiful .....just stopped raining before we started and stayed overcast and cool the whole way. We were even in the clouds at the top. Rob, Victoria and I will be taking the car ferry over to St. John on Friday and staying at Maho Bay the night before the race and after... Should make the whole experience a little more relaxing..........

Magens Bay Today

Swim Against the Tide swim for Breast Cancer at Magens Bay today and then fun beach day with the family.

Happy Holidays

Hello to all and Happy Holidays......

It's been a crazy rushed time here at the villa. We had a few weeks without guest so I've been doing some minor projects which always comes down to the wire.....

So Williams family of 4 gets in around 4pm and lets us know that Dollar rent a car does not have a car for them, even though they have a "confirmation" number.... Dollar hooks them with some other no name rental car company and finally gets them a car and I meet them at the dairy around 6 pm..... Get them checked into the villa and they decide to head up to "Kokopeli" for some pizza and then do some shopping at Cost-U-Less. Well we get a call about 9:30 pm and they have had a flat tire. Car is packed with groceries and it's dark out, they didn't take one of the 4 flash lights that we supply them with in the villa either... So I jump in the car with a can of fix a flat and go to the rescue. I find them in the dark on the side of the road over by Mahogany Run Golf Course. Fix a flat runs out all over the pavement. Whole inside of the tire's sidewall is gone. We transfer all the groceries to my car and find the spare tire but no lug wrench or jack..... We then unload all the groceries from my truck so we can get to the lug wrench which in under the groceries and then it turns out that it doesn't fit their car anyways.... So I take 2 of them with the groceries back to the villa, grab 2 other lug wrenches from other vehicles but guess what? ......they don't fit this tire either.... So I put the other two in the car and we leave the rental car on the side of the road and head back to the villa...I then pour a very large rum and egg nog!. It is now next day at 10:20 am so I am hoping to drop them off at the car where the rental car company will be there to help......To be continued....

Tis the Season.....

Well the Christmas season is upon us. Hopefully I can get some last minute internet shopping done today so the stuff gets here by Christmas. My injuries are not as bad. The lower ab pain is almost non-existant. I've put myself on a half marathon 13 week schedule to get ready for the 8 Tuff Miles Feb. 27th. I'm incorporating yoga and swimming as cross training. I hope that Santa brings me a bike for Christmas so I can start training for a Triathlon this next year.

Well todays workout was an easy one. 2 mile run @ 9:00 min mile and 500 meter swim both down at Magens Bay. It is a nice place to be able to train.......compared to the "northerners"

OOPPS...... forgot about my blog.

Well not like anybody is actually reading this....but yes I let my blog slip a little after returning from the Irishman delivery. It seems like everything is about Facebook now. And don't get me wrong, I love Facebook and think it's great. But I think the blog is still needed. So I hope to get back to it and keep this and Facebook updated.....

Back Home in St. Thomas

Hello All:
I have made it back to St. Thomas. 22 hours of travel from Europe. Palma de Mallorca to Barcelona, Spain to Atlanta, GA and finally back in St. Thomas, VI. I'm beat and we have guests checking into the villa today. I have put another video up in my gallery from the voyage between the Azores and Palma de Mallorca. You can see all my videos at http://gallery.me.com/threepalmsvilla. Unfortunatley, I had to come back before we completed the voyage. After "stranded" almost 2 weeks in Palma it was time for me to come home. Palma was great and i'm going to post more pictures and videos soon. We had several mechanical problems and everything is fixed now. Irishman with Harold and the rest of the crew have finally left and now heading towards Trieste, Italy instead of Croatia. I had to look on the map but it's actually really close to Croatia. It's right up there by Venice. Not sure why the owner changed his mind, just got a quick email from Harold yesterday. That's it for now. More later.....

Update From Palma, Mallorca.

Greetings All.

We arrived here in Palma last Tuesday, June 23rd. We have had no or very poor internet here at the Marina, so I apologize about not getting an update out. We had a mechanical problem with our engine exhaust that had to be taken care of and of course it has taken must longer than we thought. We are finally getting ready to leave here on the last leg of our journey. This island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain is beautiful. We rented a couple of cars and toured part of the western coastline. I have posted a few picutres of some our hot spots.

Harold surprised us with tickets to a musical last night. "Come Fly with Me" It was described as "combining the legendary music of Frank Sinatra with the visual spectacle of Cirque du Soliel. It was really great. http://www.comeflywithme.com/eng/show/thetheatre.html.


I should have a video posted tomorrow highlighting our sail from the Azores to Palma.

Our trip from here on to Croatia should only take us about 6 days....

Spencer

Delivery Map

View Croatia Delivery in a larger map

Spencer Update 6/20 ...

Saturday 6/20/09  5:00 pm

 

Position:

36 degrees 09 minutes North

07 degrees 39 minutes West

Approx. 100 west of The Strait of Gibraltar

Hello All:

All is well here on Irishman...The smells coming out of the galley have us all waiting in  anticipation for dinner. It's crazy how fast things can change out here.  Less than 48 hours ago we had our foul weather gear on and Tropical storm force winds.  Today we are laying out on the deck sun tanning.

We are about 100 miles west of the Strait of Gibraltar.  Wind and seas have almost totally died and we are motor sailing at around 9 knots.  During our rough conditions on Thursday our engine starting making some strange noises. Kind of like it was struggling. Yesterday it actually did die on us a couple of times.  We have figured out that we obtained some very dirty fuel in the Azores.  We have filters that trap anything so it won't get into the engine but these filters are becoming clogged much faster than normal causing fuel not to flow to the engine.  The rough conditions have probably stirred up all the junk that usually settles to the bottom of the tanks. Hopefully as long as we keep these filters clean we should be fine.  

We are eating very well out here with our Italian chef Stefano.  Last night was had roasted chicken and potatoes.  Lunch today was stuffed portbello mushrooms and a nice salad.  Of course Harold and I have plenty of hot sauce on board that we put on almost everything.... usually without insulting the chef.  

The ship traffic has increased tremendously as we approach the Strait of Gibraltar. Tonight is going to be a busy night watching the radar and avoiding these hudge cargo ships.

For our Trivia question on 6/17/09,  the winner is Michael Roach in Arizona that correctly defined the "Horse Lattitudes".  Rob in St. Thomas was disqualified for being way smarter than anybody else I know.....  Just kidding ... Rob, you win a T-shirt as well.  As for Michael Roach, I think I still have a St. Louis Cardinals World Series Championship shirt in my closet for you!!!

Trivia Question #2:

The northern county of Prekmura in Croatia is famous or kown for what?

That's all for now on Irishman.......

Spencer

Spencer Update 6/18 ... Three Sheets to the Wind!

Thursday, 6/18/09

6:00pm position:  

36 deg. 56 min. North,  

15 deg. 27 min. west

Is was nice to get some emails out here.  Thank you very much.

10:00am

This morning wind and seas started increasing.   Mid day we had gusts at around 30 mph and seas at 6 to 8 feet.  Last night before dark we had reefed or shortened our mainsail down about 20%.  Just now we took down the forwad most sail, the  big jib and and put up the smaller "stay sail" so we wouldn't be over powered.

1:45pm

Winds gusting to 36 mph.  We're plowijng thru the seas which are building- 8 to 10 feet.  It's getting pretty difficult to move around

the boat.

3:00pm

We have reefed the mainsail down to about 50% and dropped the mizzen sail (one in the back).  Wind and seas continuing to build.

4:00pm

Winds are up to 42 knots or over 50 mph.  We have dropped the forward staysail and are sailing with double reefed mainsail alone.

4:30

It can't get too much worse than this....  We have lightning and winds up to 60 mph.   Crazy how it can go from beautiful to tropical storm force winds in less than 24 hours.

5:00 pm

Looks like the worst is over... Everybody is a little wet an cold but in a smaller more exposed boat it could of been muuch worse.

What a crazy day.....

Stefano made some butternut squash soup for dinner with fresh baked bread. We are all a little cold and wet.   It was very good. (not quite as good as Victoria's though!)

Then to Victoria on Friday 6/19/09:  

It was a crazy day yesterday.....  And then on top of all that in the middle of the night our engine died as the winds were heading us and dying.   We lost several hours with the engine down and trying to figure things out.   Looks like we probably got bad fuel in the Azores and it's clogging up the filters.  All is well this morning as I write this (Friday, 6/19/09).

Horse Latitudes

(Victoria posting for Spencer)  To answer Spencer's question, our friend Rob writes, according to Wikipedia ...

The term horse latitudes supposedly originates from the days when Spanish sailing vessels transported horses to the West Indies. Ships would often become becalmed in mid-ocean in this latitude, thus severely prolonging the voyage; the resulting water shortages would make it necessary for crews to throw their horses overboard.

On the other hand, the term might be derived from the "dead horse"ritual, a practice in which the seaman would parade a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse around the deck before throwing it overboard. Seamen were often paid partly in advance before a long voyage (see Beating a dead horse),and the "dead horse" was this period of time (usually a month or two).  The ceremony was to celebrate having worked off the "dead horse" debt.  As European west bound shipping would reach the subtropics at about the time the "dead horse" was worked off, the region became associated with the ceremony.

I've also edited the Hurricane Spencer Tracking Chart ...

Click Here to access the Tracking Chart