It has taken some time, but in the process I met the greatest woman in the world, she is now my wife and my very best friend. At the same time, it has been more fun than a barrel of monkeys….and we have an incredible photo collection as well.
Most people who know us wonder what the hell got into us, we sold everything, packed up what was left and moved to an island…several times. I got Norman Paperman beat on a few things, especially frequent flyer miles. For those who don’t know who Norman is, just read the book “Don’t Stop The Carnival” by Herman Wouk…and Jimmy Buffett did a musical based on this book!
Actually, we value this experience and it’s real world, hands on experience, research at it’s best…we had the opportunity to work out the kinks, the unknowns, tune up the business plan and now we got it goin’ on. Our experience has paved the way as you can’t buy this type of research – we spent a lot of money to find out what is real and what is not realistic.
This blog represents our journey, and is the story of how this whole thing started, matured and turned into Skeeterz Rum Bar & Grill. What you are about to read is the truth, the whole truth, and nuthin’ but the truth – honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up! 
I am summarizing our Caribbean adventure below, but at the top you can click on individual pages that detail how I ended up in the Caribbean, met my wife, developed the concept and finally decided to make St. Lucia our home. It’s been fun, entertaining and VERY expensive…but no big deal, I found my wife, a tropical paradise to call home and understand what and how it all needs to be done.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
It all started out by selling everything and moving to “the islands” to start a fruit, vegetable and shipping business with my brothers, we used St. Croix to start the main store and the headquarters of the operation. I decided to stay on St. Croix while one of my brothers stayed on Dominica, I ran the store, he did the purchasing.
After the business finally took off, we owned 2 planes – a Queen Aire Excalibur and a Navajo. We had store locations on St. Croix, Antigua, St. Martin and delivered wholesale to a few other islands. As well, we had a store on Dominica where we shipped in clothing and a lot of custom ordered things.
We started to get very busy after we figured it all out and has 3 flights to each island each week – during their holiday season, we were up to a flight each day and sometimes 2…we became very popular with the islanders who liked our style of business…but then, the impossible happened as we had 2 hurricanes and a plane crash all within 6 weeks. So, I decided to pack it up, I gave up my shares to my brothers, I grabbed the most beautiful woman on St. Croix, and moved back to the USA to “reformat”.
After a few years of saving and planning, my wife and I made the move “back” down to the islands to start a small restaurant type business; think cheeseburgers in paradise…on St. Lucia. Believe it or not, you just can’t find a good cheeseburger on most of the down islands. So we got everything lined up with the bank, sold the house and my beautiful vette, packed up and made our move.
After finding a place to live, settling down, and ready to get going, the banker who was working with us decided to leave and move to the US, Texas to be exact…and she acted like no big deal. But, we were left hanging out to dry as we did not have enough personal money to start a place up in the north end of the island – where a lot of tourist visit. The banking business in St. Lucia is more at a personal level there and when she left, she was the only person who knew and understood our project…so, we decided we were there and had a place, so we started to do our homework and checked out everything, spoke to everyone, found out what they liked, didn’t like, expected and couldn’t figure out. My wifes family is there too, so we were able to get a lot done with a lot of the inside info.
So, after a long, long tropical vacation, we packed up and moved back to the US…basically, we chalked it up to a very expensive vacation. Remember, we shipped all our household things and a new truck down there!
Then, a few years later, (while reformatting and developing our new St. Lucia plan) my brother-in-law on St. Croix wanted us to partner up with him and start a new place on St. Croix, USVI, and run the day to day operations of this new bar & grill – ya know, help build the business and stuff, help him out with with a lil’ of that American style business sense that he liked so much. And just to let you know, he already had a very busy bar and grill, more like a rum shack (or rum shop), but he wanted to do things a little nicer and better. And if anything went wrong with the new place, he assured us that we could invest into his existing business and go from there…so, nuttin’ to worry bout, evryting Irie mon!
So, after we do it all again, ship our stuff down, buy a new truck and ship it down, things changed and the owner of the property we had an agreement to lease…CHANGED. The guy decided he wanted double the rent. This was unacceptable to all of us, so we just sat back a figured we would go with plan B. Ahhhhhh, that is until my brother-in-law changed his mind and decided “not” to do anything “AFTER” we freakin moved down there. Alrighty now, that was fun…more nice pictures for our photo album. So we packed up, sold our stuff and moved back to the US…AGAIN, chalking this up to ANOTHER VERY expensive vacation.
OK, so after more reformatting and planning, we have decided that St. Lucia is THE place to make our project work, not only that, but there is a lot more opportunity there, we just need to do it all based on our experience and research.
The St. Croix thing would have only served as a stepping stone on our way to St. Lucia anyways. So, now it’s back down to St. Lucia, this time, nothing to sell as we new that we would be getting back down there as soon as we could financially afford it. This time, it’s a one-way ticket and permanent!
Our venture has become THE adventure of our lifetime, in a good way. We now have everything in place, have a location, have made some serious purchases and are slowly getting things set up. Can we use a partner, yes, do we have to have a partner, no. A partner with a small investment would save us a year of struggling…but we’ve gotten this far and we will just keep moving along.
Some say we’ve have learned all this the hard way…maybe. But we know exactly what needs to be done to Git’R Done! This blog will let you in on what we are doing…it’s all been good and fun, and the concept and expectations are now fine tuned. So, the line “EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON” …is now understood, and we are not going to say anything stupid like “what the hell else could possibly happen?”…looking back, its been an adventure that I wouldn’t trade for anything!
visit http://www.Skeeterz.com
Notify me of new posts via email.
+1