I talked about tropical weather a bit last week, but this weekend we had our first Caribbean weather “incident”. Tropical Storm Bertha was slated to pass by the USVI on Saturday, so of course Friday evening was spent at a preparatory event: cocktails with A & M. They have a super sweet deck overlooking Magen’s Bay, and have DIY’ed themselves a bar made of pallets and cement pavers. It turned out awesome, and the yummy spread was even better. The cocktail was a Dark & Stormy, very appropriate for the oncoming weather, and was delicious. M will have to tell me if I got the recipe right, but it goes something like this:

Dark & Stormy (AKA The Big Bertha)

1. Put ice in a glass
2. Pour in an ounce or two of rum
3. Fill the remainder of the glass with ginger beer
4. Add a slice of lime
5. Enjoy

Magen’s Bay

The Pallet Bar, by A&M

After we got home later that night, we did a little storm prepping. Well, Dan did some storm prepping. He put a tarp over Rhonda (our open-air Jeep) so that it wouldn’t get completely soaked. We didn’t know what to expect, so we went to sleep wondering how Bertha would arrive. Around 3:30 am on Saturday I woke up because the wind outside had really picked up. I could tell there was some weather coming. At 3:45 am I realized we had left all the plastic chairs up at the pool and that they could potentially blow all over the island if we didn’t bring them in. I went up to the pool, stacked the chairs and brought them onto our covered deck. I also brought  my pool raft inside, since I didn’t really want to see some iguanas living on it halfway down the road the next day because it had blown away. Safely inside after that, I slept until it really started raining about 7:45 am.

Bertha brought heavy wind and rain, but nothing terribly serious. We liked being forced to stay inside, as running around being active every weekend can wear an islander out!

Bertha moving over the island

Bertha turned our little watering hole into an infinity pool

Instagrammed Bertha

Bertha in all her glory

One of the best things about Bertha is that she kept the temperature way down for the day. We enjoyed a very comfortable 77 degrees most of the day, and by 5 pm were getting ready for dinner at the Mahogany Run Golf Course.

Sunday brought a typically beautiful island day, full of heat and sun. We didn’t lose power all day during Bertha, and the generator came on for most of Sunday afternoon. We call that island logic.

We headed to Home Depot to pick up a patio set, so that our first guests (my parents, arriving in two weeks!) and we could enjoy time on the patio eating, drinking and playing cards. After A saved us with the van (Rhonda doesn’t have much cargo space), we set it up and feel very settled and happy with our  purchase. A few tiki torches later, and the patio at Chez Sherman is open for business!

Welcome to Chez Sherman, your table is ready