KevinS
Senior Insider
This is my favorite time of day on St Barth. I’m sitting poolside at our villa, enjoying the morning. Sleeping Beauty still has a good hour to go, so I’m playing music on my iPad, rather than using the villa sound system. It’s almost silent, other than the music that I’m playing. The tide is falling, and there’s no Whomp! of the waves on the rocks below the villa. There are a few birds chirping every now and then, and the very occasional whine of a scooter on the road. There’s a mostly cloudy sky, with big patches of blue. The hint of red that I saw a few hours ago is long gone. I’m looking forward to a beautiful day.
I was up with the sun this morning, and spent almost two hours driving around the island, just seeing what I could see, a usual practice on Sunday mornings. The most obvious, and most expected, thing that I see is that there’s a lot of tree damage. There’s also a lot of regrowth, but it will take time. I didn’t see as many FEMA-Blue tarps on roofs as I expected, but there many more roofs that could use one than I expected. There are a very few houses where it doesn’t look like much has been done to address hurricane damage, but they’re a rarity.
There’s still a lot of work which needs to be done to make permanent repairs to the power infrastructure. Temporary support, tieing power lines to whatever is available, still exists in spots, as well as lines hanging lower than they should. Likewise, the landline telephone infrastructure is still down in some areas. I think that I may know why L’Esprit cannot take reservations or process credit cards - the phone lines in that part of Saline appear to be laying in the street. Cell service appears to be good just about everywhere, but I couldn’t get a data connection in a few spots (Saline, for example).
A phenomenal amount of cleanup has been done. In addition to the huge pile of vegetation and wood in Saline, there’s a huge pile of metal in Public. They’ll both be dealt with in time. Both are testaments to the amount of damage done by Irma, and to the amount of hard work that has been done to recover. I’m convinced that St Barth is recovering faster and better than most other islands.
Getting back to today, the Committee Boat for Cata Cup has moved into position, and I see a Mark being towed out. The boats will be along in awhile for their last morning of racing, prior to lunch at L’Esprit.
I think I’ll turn off the music, and just listen to the sounds of the morning until it’s time for breakfast.
I was up with the sun this morning, and spent almost two hours driving around the island, just seeing what I could see, a usual practice on Sunday mornings. The most obvious, and most expected, thing that I see is that there’s a lot of tree damage. There’s also a lot of regrowth, but it will take time. I didn’t see as many FEMA-Blue tarps on roofs as I expected, but there many more roofs that could use one than I expected. There are a very few houses where it doesn’t look like much has been done to address hurricane damage, but they’re a rarity.
There’s still a lot of work which needs to be done to make permanent repairs to the power infrastructure. Temporary support, tieing power lines to whatever is available, still exists in spots, as well as lines hanging lower than they should. Likewise, the landline telephone infrastructure is still down in some areas. I think that I may know why L’Esprit cannot take reservations or process credit cards - the phone lines in that part of Saline appear to be laying in the street. Cell service appears to be good just about everywhere, but I couldn’t get a data connection in a few spots (Saline, for example).
A phenomenal amount of cleanup has been done. In addition to the huge pile of vegetation and wood in Saline, there’s a huge pile of metal in Public. They’ll both be dealt with in time. Both are testaments to the amount of damage done by Irma, and to the amount of hard work that has been done to recover. I’m convinced that St Barth is recovering faster and better than most other islands.
Getting back to today, the Committee Boat for Cata Cup has moved into position, and I see a Mark being towed out. The boats will be along in awhile for their last morning of racing, prior to lunch at L’Esprit.
I think I’ll turn off the music, and just listen to the sounds of the morning until it’s time for breakfast.
