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Well folks, it looks like a government shutdown is imminent. I’ve received several emails questioning how this will affect St. John considering that more than two-thirds of the island is National Park. I have reached out to the Virgin Islands National Park twice this week, but have yet to receive a response. Here is what I assume will happen based on the past two government shutdowns.

Let’s start with 2013. This one was somewhat comical here. During this shutdown, they actually did shut down the National Park here, which meant that the majority of our beaches were closed and all of our hiking trails were closed. The playground was closed. Annaberg was closed. It was a mess.

The National Park admitted at the time that it was not happy with being told to shut down so much of the island, but it had to follow federal orders. Residents and visitors, however, refused to follow orders. Many ripped down the yellow tape that cordoned off the beaches and parking lots and continued to enjoy our beautiful beaches despite the threat of being fined. Luckily the government allowed the Virgin Islands National Park to officially reopen a few days later, despite the continued shutdown.

There was another shutdown in 2018. During that time, all beaches, trails, and roads remained open. (Roads remained open during the 2013 shutdown too.) During this shutdown, all National Park visitor services ceased. That meant that they had to close the restrooms, there was no trash pickup at the beaches, road, and facilities and maintenance ceased, and the Visitor Center was closed.

Fortunately, Friends of the National Park stepped in and helped open the restrooms and showers at Trunk Bay while the shutdown continued. Volunteers removed trash from all of the beaches too. Residents pitched in because that’s what we do here. 🙂

So if I were a betting woman, this is exactly what I would think will happen when the government shuts down this weekend. The Virgin Islands National Park will remain open, but some of its services will be limited. And volunteers will, once again, step up and work to keep the National Park clean and its facilities available. There’s a reason we’re called Love City, folks.

I will let you know more when I know more. In the meantime, have a fantastic Friday everyone!

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It’s been 2,211 days since Hurricane Irma destroyed Caneel Bay Resort. The property is supposed to be turned over to the National Park Service in less than a week, per Laurance Rockefeller’s wishes, yet its future continues to remain uncertain. It’s a battle that’s been playing out in federal court over in St. Thomas for the past 14 months, and it’s one that will most likely be decided at a bench trial next month.

Quick Recap (Click Here to Jump to What’s Happening Now)

Laurance Rockefeller opened Caneel Bay Resort on the same day that the Virgin Islands National Park was established in 1956. (Prior to that, the property consisted of a few cottages.) In 1983, the United States entered into an Indenture that gave most of the land on which Caneel Bay Resort sits to the United States while the Jackson Hole Preserve (a nonprofit created by Rockefeller) retained the use of the property and its improvements for a period of 40 years. That 40-year agreement expires this Saturday, and the property is supposed to be under the control of the Virgin Islands National Park beginning this Sunday. But none of this is happening due to a federal court case filed by EHI Acquisitions, LLC, the firm that currently controls the now-defunct hotel.

EHI Acquisitions filed a federal lawsuit against the United States of America in June 2022. In the lawsuit, EHI requested that the court issue a “quiet title in the Property and issue an order declaring the United States has no legal interest in the Property and that Plaintiff EHI Acquisitions, LLC owns all right, title, an interest to the Property.” EHI said it would give the property to the United States for $70 million and an agreement by the United States to absolve EHI from environmental claims related to the property. The United States said absolutely not, and now EHI believes that since it made a “good faith offer” that the United States rejected, the property should be lawfully theirs. The two sides have been battling it out in court ever since.

(A quiet title action is a special legal proceeding to determine ownership of real property.)

What’s Happening Now

The two sides are currently sparring over insurance proceeds, what constitutes a good faith offer, and who should be considered an “expert witness.”

The United States wants to know how much insurance money EHI received from hurricanes Irma and Maria. It also wants to know how those proceeds were used. EHI stated in the court documents that it was “not relevant to any claim” and that it “will not produce any such information.” The judge sided with EHI and ruled that it did not have to disclose this information.

Interesting side note: Gary Engle, a principal for EHI publicly stated in February 2019 that the insurance proceeds “would be more than a fair return for our involvement in Caneel Bay.” He continued, “I could take the money and walk away.”

But he didn’t. He chose to file a federal lawsuit demanding even more money instead.

Regarding the “good faith offer” of $70 million, both sides are arguing whether the offer was “good faith” or “fair market value.” EHI believed its offer was made in good faith while the United States is arguing that there shouldn’t be any “compensation or consideration or payment or fair market value or any value.” Point blank, they believe the property should change hands this weekend.

And lastly, they’re squabbling over an “expert witness” funded by EHI acquisitions. This “expert witness” is the man who was hired to do an appraisal of the property’s improvements to determine their fair market value. That appraisal led to EHI’s “good faith offer” of $70 million.

This is sooooo messy!

The next response deadline is this Thursday, and the bench trial is scheduled for October 16th at 9 a.m. The clock is ticking! You know I’ll keep you all posted. 🙂

Want to know more about Caneel Bay, the history of the resort, and its future should the National Park take ownership? Please check out my previous posts below:

• National Park Service Announces Plan to Rebuild Caneel Bay
• Caneel Bay: The Messy Legal Battle for Ownership
• The Future of Caneel Bay Resort is Down to Two Options: All or Nothing

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Hello everyone, and happy Monday! I read a post on one of the tourist-focused Facebook pages recently that asked what it’s really like to live on St. John. After the second sleepless night due to another WAPA outage, I thought today would be the perfect day to let you in on a few island-living secrets.

Let’s start with WAPA. This is our power company, which stands for the Virgin Islands Water & Power Authority. It is unbelievably unreliable, yet we pay some of the highest electricity costs in the world. How fun is that? Our power plant is located by the airport in St. Thomas. The power crosses the island and then goes under the water from Red Hook to Frank Bay, which is in Cruz Bay. The power plant in St. Thomas is antiquated and goes offline more than I wish it would. We had a stretch last season when we didn’t lose power for months, which was amazing. Well, that amazingness has ended.

Something’s happening over at the power plant on St. Thomas, which is prompting “scheduled” blackouts. But does anything really stick to a schedule in the islands? Nope. So neither are these outages.

We first lost power on Saturday night around 8 p.m. There are two feeders in St. John. I lost my power at 8 p.m. and it came back on at 10 p.m. The second feeder lost power at 10 p.m. and it came on at midnight, I think. We lost power a second time that evening sometime around 2-4 a.m.

The power went out again yesterday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and again from 11 p.m. until about 2 a.m. It went off again while I was sleeping and then just came back on at 7:15 a.m. as I am writing this. I think Nate Fletcher said it best a few minutes ago…

For those of you who are vacationing on St. John today, give everyone you run into some slack. We’re all very tired.

You’re probably thinking, well get a generator. We do have a generator, but the extension cord that we use with it is over at our construction site in Fish Bay. Island life! 🙂

Here are a few other island life moments from over the years…

I woke up one morning to a frog launching off of my head and onto a nearby window. I’m still not sure how he even got into our bedroom.

About a year or so back, Dalton asked me to come outside to check out the beautiful flower he found in the front yard. It was a very large and fuzzy tarantula, not a flower at all. We put a bucket over it, and daddy relocated it when he got home from work.

You know the bug that killed the Baobob tree here on St. John? It’s called a mango borer beetle. Well, one walked by my front door one day, and it was the size of a small kitten!

I was chatting with friends who purchased a home here a few years ago. When I started complaining about the state of the shower in our new house, they informed me that their house didn’t even have a working bathroom when they moved in, which meant they had to number two in a bucket outside for the first few months of living there. But we’re living in paradise, right?!

Oh and then there was the time that a family of bats moved into my house when I was in the States giving birth to Dalton. They made a home in the wall right behind my bed, so I would hear them squeaking every time I fed Dalton in the middle of the night. We finally were able to get them out of the wall (safely and without hurting any of them), but one of them didn’t get the memo. I was washing my hands in the bathroom that was attached to our room a few mornings later when the water splashed back into my face. I looked down and there was a little baby bat in the sink. He, too, was removed from our house safely. 🙂

Random fact: The bat is the only mammal that is native to St. John. 

All of this being said, I still love it here. But life on St. John isn’t always easy. You’re going to sweat at night, have frogs on your head, bats in your wall, and who knows what else, but it’s worth it for many of us, because this place really is paradise. Not to mention it’s fun to commiserate with your friends and other residents on social media at all hours of the night when we’re having sleepless nights due to WAPA. We’re in this together, folks!

And for those of you who are planning a vacation here, there is no reason to second guess visiting us. Most vacation rentals have generators, so you’re good. And I’m fairly certain that they do not have frogs in the bedrooms or bats in the walls.

That’s it for today, folks! I am going to charge everything under the sun in this house now, because I’m losing power again at 11 a.m. Yay WAPA!