TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands The craziest thing(s) you pack...

I have been threatening to pack our panini press (mostly as a joke with my wife), but it made me think that it would be fun for us all to post the craziest thing(s) we throw in our bags for these trips. I recognize that many of you are minimalists, but we are not.

There are too many things to list, but my biggest vice is a Mantus dinghy anchor with 4' of chain - but man, it's nice to not have to pull the dinghy up on the beach!

Brake shoes for a Series 3 Rover.

Parts for a 73 VW Thing..and, in the old days, parts for Bomba's Cadillac..

It’ll be tough to compete with those!!!

A car ice-scraper - for novelty effect and to ask islanders what they think it might be used for...

Long Zipper for a bimini (plus a ttolers help to replace lost zippers and clasps and thingamijiggers to go with said bimini).

Aaannnd, the dreaded oversized snorkelling gear that i never use.

Owning a boat, I've bought some odd things down. With American Airlines status we get oversize and overweight 70-pound luggage free. I've checked a Honda generator new in box; I brought the airlines hazardous materials policy and showed up early. Another was a 150-foot spare anchor rode with 25-feet of chain in it's shipping box. Less exciting was a whole dry cured Virginia country ham as a carry on. The TSA agent hand inspected that and told me a story about how his Grandmother would cure her own hams. I took the bus from Cruz Bay St. John to Coral Bay with the ham. A guy I know was on with a duffel bag of live lobsters. He laughed pretty hard when I showed him my ham. Life is funny.

Cheers, RickG

Fire hoses and related tools for testing a fire pump in T&C (it was a work trip)

Not terribly exciting - a chefs knife, Yeti tumblers, ziplock bags, non stick frying pan

A battery-powered carbon monoxide detector. Why? Well, one time we were docked at the Bitter End right next to a 120-foot yacht that kept a diesel engine running all night. We were not too happy with the exhaust coming our way, and considered sleeping on the beach.

The detector weighs very little and is easy to bring. Of course, that situation will never happen again.

Dan

I actually brought brake springs for the ting many moons ago

One of our scuba diving newbies, didn't know you could rent lead diving weights > he brought 20 lbs of lead in his suitcase.

We brought an electric ice-cream maker one time (more than once) with a few interesting stories there.

My high-school daughter and her high-school girlfriends brought a four-person, nylon tubing, water-balloon, sling shot > everyone in the mooring field was "fair game"

Nothing..NOTHING..beats the legendary "Professor" Glenn Ashrmore who brought a metal smelter and bags of lead weights collected from Macon, Georgia tire shops to build the keel for the sloop students were working on behind Foxy's on JVD. Glenn got the stuff thro customs and worked in 90 degree heat melting lead for the keel til it was finished.Now that is amazing..and typically Glen!!!

I brought a Bernina sewing machine as a carry-on from Geneva Switzerland to Madrid, Santo Domingo, San Juan to Tortola. The TSA lady in Puerto Rico quizzed me. Silver tried to put it in the hold, but I convinced them that would harm the electronics, so they gave it its own seat! That machine survived Irma in a Rubbermaid box, when the roof blew off! The walking foot was in another box, never found. My trusty machine sews through Sunbrella Marine and everything else.

Flew Air Sunshine a few times. Once, another passenger checked-in with several boxes of roosters.
They were placed as cabin baggage behind the passenger seats. We listened to those cocks holler for the entire flight.
We spent the night in SJU and walked by the [censored] fighting ring. I suspected that our fellow passengers were staring that night!

Glenn told me that he got the lead by going around to gas stations and tire shops in Macon and asking them to put aside the wheel weights from the tires that they changed. Once a week he’d drive around to pick them up. The professor is one of a kind!

-Although it is not too unique, I always bring a small roll of fluorescent orange masking tape and hang a length of it on those banger sites on the boat. Normally shortening it as everyone learns the correct paths. Can also be used on dinghy, etc.
-A bit more unique may be the bright yellow crime scene tape, which normally serves to memorialize a crew faux pas that shouldn't have occurred. This is applied only at the captain's discretion, as some crew may have a tendency to overuse it, and there would soon be no heads available... YMMV

My trombone mouthpiece..