California 2 Puerto Rico

Not much to say about Hurricane Bertha as far as Puerto Rico goes. By the looks of the ‘predicted path’ it is moving North and is going to sweep by Bermuda, hopefully causing minimal damage if any at all and no injuries. The thing with hurricanes is that you can’t write them off until they have completely dissipated over cold water. For that reason, I’ll keep an eye on it for the next few days.

As far as waves go in Puerto Rico, the hurricane didn’t push any swell over to Rincon. Rumor has it that it was head high up North yesterday, but the trade winds were blowing hard all day (makes the wave faces choppy and less desirable). When I woke up at 6:00am this morning, the trades were already pushing a gorgeous sea breeze through our master bedroom. It’s probably really windy up there again today.

Tropical Storm Bertha has become the first hurricane of the 2008 Hurricane season. It is currently over 800 miles east of the Leeward Islands with sustained winds blowing around 75mph. It is moving West North West at about 17mph but the National Hurricane Center says that it’s movement is going to slow down quite a bit over the next two days. This is going to give it time to strengthen and become a more powerful hurricane.

At the moment, all of the forecasts are predicting that it is going to pick up strength and head north of the Leeward Islands and not affect land at all. However, there is a big BUT! Because it is slowing down and gaining strength, there is a chance that it could change its mind and surprise all of the forecasters.

Hurricane Bertha Gaining Strength

The surf in Rincon, PR has been dead flatter then flat for the past 2 months. This is weird for me. I grew up in San Diego where a “flat spell” lasted 3 days at the most and it wasn’t really flat (you could still ride a wave on a surfboard 365 days out of the year). Here in Puerto Rico, when I say it is flat, it is completely flat. NO OLAS, at all.

Stefan and I are sick of being dry docked, and we decided it was time to get back into the ocean, surfboard or no surfboard…So we got kayaks!

We heard a rumor that Sam’s Club had kayaks back in stock (for $499 each), so we picked up a pair.

Here is Stefan kayaking at Tres Palmas. Weird how Tres can go from 40 ft surf to absolutely nothing at all…

After paddling around in the new kayaks for a couple of hours, Stefan and I decided to play a game of (giant) chess at one of the local Rincon resorts.

It was lots of fun, but kayaking and chess (or anything else) are simply diversions for surfers…Donde estas tus olas, Puerto Rico?

As a surfer in New Jersey, I grew up following low pressure systems, predicting wind direction, listening to weather radios and trying to set myself up for good waves at the right spot with the right wind direction. Then, I moved out to California and all that changed. The weather is the same every day, the swells we got were ground swells (generated far away by storm systems over the ocean) and the winds were relatively predictable.

Well, I’m back in the ‘prediction’ mode because it’s that time of the year again on the Eastern Seaboard (and in Rincon PR), it’s Hurricane Season in the Atlantic!

A few days ago, a storm system moved off of the coast of West Africa and the Cape Verde islands and almost immediately formed into a tropical depression. On July 3rd, it was upgraded to a Tropical Storm and named Bertha. The way the high pressure systems and water temperatures are set up combined with the hurricane center prediction, it looks like Tropical Storm Bertha may become a hurricane, but will most likely travel far North of Puerto Rico and dissipate over the Atlantic. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Tropical Storm Bertha

2008 Atlantic Hurricane Storm Names

Did you know that the National Weather service and National Hurricane Center has a list of Hurricane names ready at the beginning of every season? They started a list of names in 1953 to limit the confusion associated with describing hurricanes and storms by their longitude and latitude coordinates. That list, originally all womens names but now includes mens names, is rotated every six years and now maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. The only reason a name won’t be rotated is if it was a storm that was so devastating, it shouldn’t be used again (Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Felix, Hurricane Dean, Hurricane Katrina).

Here is the list of storm names for 2008:

• Arthur
• Bertha
• Cristobal
• Dolly
• Edouard
• Fay
• Gustav
• Hanna
• Ike
• Josephine
• Kyle
• Laura
• Marco
• Nana
• Omar
• Paloma
• Rene
• Sally
• Teddy
• Vicky
• Wilfred

Hurricane Info Source

Jerry and I have been doing some rock work around the house (more on that later) and some other work so we have been hanging out quite a bit. Last week, we took a break to walk up and check out some property that may be going on the market in the next couple of weeks. I am always open to an investment property and I have a bunch of friends that have requested that I be on the look out for a house in Rincon for them. The real deals down here are going directly through the owners. Once some of these houses hit the open market place, the price sky rockets.

Well, it ends up that the owner has changed their mind, and there isn’t a house for sale in Sector Vargas after all. While we were walking around the hills, Jerry and I stopped at his uncles house for a quick hello and glass of water. He took us up to his roof to show us the views the second floor will have once he builds an addition. His view really is going to be great, especially of our house!

Here is picture of our place from above. If you click on the picture, a larger one will open in a new window.

Here is the same picture with our property line. Anyone want to help me get this under control? You can click on this picture to make it bigger as well.

Cheech has been very very busy working around the property when he isn’t sleeping. Apparently, he has one job: Killer

Cheech has been bringing home (he stashes all of his prizes in the guest bed and bath) frogs, geckos, lizards and birds on the regular basis. A few of the lizards he brought back were pretty big, maybe 8 or 10 inches long. I prefer to remove the big lizards with a bucket when I find them alive, they creep me out.

Last week, a mother bird was dive bombing us when we walked across the driveway by our African Violet tree. She had a nest on one of the branches. It started dive bombing cheech on the regular and cheech started getting little cuts on the back of his head from where the birds were sticking him. Cheech probably never would have known they were even up there if they weren’t protecting their territory so diligently. As of today, the bird is no longer dive bombing us AND we found a cleaned up a bunch of feathers three days ago. My guess is Cheech turned around and got the bird doing some sort of Judo flying 360 attack move. Poor little guy. Cheech is a killer.

There is always a new crew in the bathroom each day…This guy escaped the cat of death with a little less tail.

This guy was resting up behind the trashcan, waiting to make his break.

Yes, we clean blood off of the floor everyday. Thanks Cheech…

I am a killer because I use gas powered yard tools. Apparently, my weapon of choice is our Weed Wacker. I mean well, but I haven’t been doing so good. After mowing the entire yard (a lot of areas are still more rock than grass) I go around and weed eat around the driveway rocks and plants. The areas that usually become very overgrown always create problems for me. I don’t see a plant deep down in the Elephant Grass or I am trimming around the plant and the plastic cords catch a rock, root or branch and pull the machine right up to the plant and it gets chopped in half.

Weed Eater Attributed Deaths: 5
Vehicle Related Deaths: 1

I am going to be scary with a chainsaw.

Some of our ginger and heliconia plants have started to flower! It’s nice to see more colors coming out in the yard.

We have planted several different types of tropical flowers, but we did not know what colors were planted where, so it’s a surprise when we finally get to see the plants flower.

Stefan and I sort of gave up on the watermelon plants that Eddie planted for us 5 months ago. They sprouted and shriveled enough times that we gave up watering them and let them do their own thing (like get overgrown with weeds…). Lo and behold, a watermelon (sandia) has appeared!

I wonder if it’s because we have more bees pollinating our plants now? Or do watermelons take a while to establish themselves?

The edamame (soy beans) that I planted are doing really well! Lots of pods are hanging off of the little bushes now and they are extremely low maintenance.

Conclusion: Edamame (soy) beans are easy to grow in Puerto Rico!

I am still patiently waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to give us some treats, but they seem healthy and happy.

Just like the Kruses, our watermelon (sandia) plant never really did much and it has finally started to flourish. Today we saw the first tiny little watermelons forming on the vine.

The birds and the bees are enjoying all of our new trees and plants and are busy pollinating for us :). It’s nice to see the animals flocking to our yard since it used to be a big dry dust bowl.

Stefan and I decided to tackle a new project and have started making our front pathway. Originally we bought a cement stamp/mold thing that would form some fake rock-looking pathway, but comeon…That would be too easy!! Stefan and I decided that why make fake rocks when we know where to get real rocks that would match our steps and front planters. So, Stefan and Jerry took a trip to the quarry and filled up the back of the truck with the biggest, flattest rocks they could find.

The blue rock is only $13 per meter, so it’s pretty cost effective but the labor is pretty intensive :).