Free Flu Shot

Things have slowed down to such a crawl that the big news is I lined up with the locals at the Fire Station in Coral Bay to get my influenza shot. It was a real community event. I came equipped with my thick health record that the Coast Guard kept for me for 20 years. It was supposed to be sent to the VA and I was told that if I wanted a copy I was more than welcome to make one myself! Oh joy what fun making copies of chest xray's at the office copy machine. Just another one of those irritating issues from my military days. The kind of irritant one tends to forget as time passes. They surely failed to show that scene in "The Guardian." So I swiped my record before it could be shipped off to the VA. When I was standing in line with all the hippies I clearly looked very squared away. It pains me that no one including me had a clue where to log the shot in my phat record, but I did log it in Google's snazzy online health record.

I have now been in St John for a week and still getting a routine down. The wind has really picked up to Christmas trade velocity. For the next three days wind is easterly at 25 knots and with the squall activity, at times the wind hits 35 knots. The mooring field that I am in has developed a small ground swell. So things aboard have become a little bumpy. In fact I have surprised that all of Coral Bay is pretty much exposed to the east and therefore the anchorage is not smooth when the wind is up. I suspect that I am spoiled from my time in Puerto Rico. Salinas really is a top notch place in terms of protection. It is fine though. The mooring that Jeff and Susan have loaned me are on three sand screws. To explain as I just learned what sand screws are. They are three to six feet long and resemble a large drill bit with about a 1 inch shank. It is threaded only at the tip. They are then simply twisted into the sand to the hilt. So Christa is riding on three of them via one line that has been nicely spliced in a seaman like fashion to all three screws. I believe it to be a pretty powerful set up.

Now again I can't claim to be the photographer of this here photo. But it was taken from one of the numerous hiking trails on St. John. I was intending to do some hiking this weekend but the weather is a bit sketchy so I wait it out. But the first trail will be the one that overlooks Coral Bay from a ridge line and then meanders down to the north shore to Haulover Bay. I really haven't had a chance yet to do much exploring but hope to do some soon. Mean while I have been working on my communications program. My cellphone is being relayed from towers in The British Virgin Islands at a rate of 3 dollars a minute. But I can get back on to the Sprint tower in Cruz Bay but have to take the 45 minute bus ride and even then I'm on my day time minutes as the bus runs only during the day. I have found a couple of free wi-fi signals that I can use with my iTouch but it is not feasable to sit on the side of the road with said laptop and Skype. But The Donkey Diner does have very good wi-fi that I can use to skype with but 30 days cost $60 big ones.

That is the way it goes in paradise. This in St John are very expensive and the local people have to work pretty hard to make ends meet. I had a philly cheese steak the other day at a cost of $13 bucks and your average breakfast will set you back 10 to 12 beans. On a positive note the bus is only a buck into Cruz Bay and you get free wi-fi in the park. So that is that.

More later from the Donkey Diner.

Capt Chris