I thought there would already be a thread for this, everyone must be moving slowly this morning. It must be the sake and sushi.

Sue and myself went down late afternoon in time to catch Jake's Bonaire talk. It seemed to go very well and the people seemed very receptive and were starved for more and a majority stayed behind to take in even more Bonaire. We then went across the park to the Kaya restaurant and had a great meal. Here's some pictures.

Table 1



Table 2



Jake's food



Jake feeding freenzy



We had a great time and it was nice to see some of the people again and to meet some new people. One of Jake's slide was very profound, it was how the niceness of Bonaire has rubbed off on Bonaire Talk.

Are the pictures of out great leader eating censored???

Sorry, I think I was too fast... They must have still been loading. Sorry!!

Looks verry nice. Sorry I couldnt make it...

Cecil, thanks for the great pictures of last night!!! I posted earlier under the wrong thread, so here it is again in the right thread!
I just experience going to my first Sea Rovers and it was incredible!!! I was in awe all day long. All the speakers and films were excellent and the day just flew by. Of course we all know that the Bonaire presentation by Jake was one of the best ones!!! Jake integrated a beautiful slide show as he spoke of Bonaire. He also created great interaction with the audience by having a fish id contest though out his presentation and he was giving away a choice of two prizes for the correct answers. One was a Bonaire license plate and can you guess what the other prize was? Yep!! Your right!!! The Bonaire Web Cam t-shirts we have all been waiting for!! I won a license plate but I had the honor of being one of the first to purchase the great new Bonaire Web Cam T's.There is also a Bonaire Talk t-shirt and of course I had to have that one too! Jake said they will be for sale soon on the web for all interested.
There were 23 of us that ended up going to dinner before the film fest and the food was great. Linda, I hope you are full because Jake did order enough for the both of you!! It was great to spend time with old friends and to meet new ones and I am already looking forward to next year's Sea Rovers! Thanks BT for letting me know about it!

HI all, I just finished converting my pics to web format to get them small enough to upload. We had a great time last night and it was so nice to meet so many BTers. We enjoyed Jake's presentation immensely ! Great job Jake! I too won a t shirt, a BT talker shirt... Yipeeee! I hope I'll still be getting one for being a web site tester though (there are two kinds and I like them both soooo much. This was our first tme to this dive clinic and we especially enjoyed the film festival. The people who talked and showed films are living the most awesome lives! Anyways, we enjoyed the night and I'll post the pics I took of our BTer party" :-)

Denise and Cecil, If you could put some names for these faces it would be great!!!! We all know who Jake is ,but the others are just faces now!!Happy Faces none the less!!!

hmmmm, now that I see I accidentally posted three of the same I need to see which two I missed posting :-( Freddie, I am not sure I can put names to all the pics, which is why I posted them without them. I know the names of all at my table, but could not do so well with the other table. Give me a minute and I'll put some names where I can :-)

i can id two of them...the last two...cecil and sue (with their new camera)...and susan and gefforey (sp...sorry geoff) feldman!

OK - one I just posted, my husband Teddy (left to right) John Liddington, Marty, Sharon, and me

It really Helps with the names.
I recognized Cecil with his camera!!!!

Cecil

ohhh He looks like he doesn't want to leave!!!!

the picture of Cecil and his camera was just kidding around because we have the same camera :-) And, Glen is to the right of Jake and Tom to the left of Jake

And the picture I triple posted... is Janet (I think she may have said she is not a BTer,?) and Tracey or Terry (sorry!) and Mike. Mike is going to Mexico with Tom next week !

And I can't remember if the very nice woman holding up the t-shirt is Darlene or Debbie - I am pretty sure Darlene. The t-shirt is awesome. But for some reason our favorite uner water moon picture of Marc is not on it!!! maybe due to copy rights? Ha. Just kidding, maybe it was just too 'over exposed'. The t-shirts are both really great.

And, the young lady in green is Karen - she recently was a room mate in Bonare with the woman with the t-shirt. Jake had arranged the room mate match up as each was looking for someone to share a room for their trip to Bonaire. Reportedly it was a great trip, ofcourse.

Denise, thanks for all the great pictures!!!! That was me holding up the t-shirt and at my table the people were my husband Tom, myself, Dan Sennie and Faith Sennie, Sue and Cicil. On the other side of the table were Karen Marion, my roommate that Jake helped to find me in Sept, Gus and Katherine Winkler (I think that's the right last name)Sue and Geoffrey Feldman. Between the two of us I think we got them all!

Denise, I don't know about that one picture. Let's see, I look fat, old and angry, three things that I spend alot of time avoiding. OK, OK, I'll schedule the gym, plastic surgery and prozac next week. Yes, it was a great time.

I reread what I wrote earlier about the talk that Jake gave. Fortunes of being an ex-toastmaster, I was watching the audience's reaction and I understated it earlier. The Bonairephilles in the audience were ecstatic and the others were very impressed and wanted more.

I agree! It was a great time, and the best part was the Bonaire slide show. Those of us who are already Bonaire-lovers were happy to see Jake and everyone else; the people who were Bonaire-curious I think got an idea about the magic of Bonaire, its people and the people who are addicted to it

Thanks again, Jake!

From Denise's triple post, the woman to the left is indeed Janet, who was staying at Jake's place with friend Jean the first time we went down there. Janet lives out near Springfield. I don't think she's ever been on BT, but she's a great person and a good friend -- it was great to see her there and have her join us.

In general, last night's BT gathering was an absolute blast! Good (and plentiful!) food, good conversation with great people -- can't ask for more. In Cecil's first photo in this thread, I'm the one in the purple sweater to the right next to Cecil's wife, and Dan is in the blue sweater on my right (dark hair, glasses) (Darlene and her husband Tom are the ones beyond Dan). There are BonaireWebCam T-shirts on under my sweater and Dan's -- we were modeling them at Jake's talk, and I was handing out the prize T-shirts and such that we gave away at the talk. All us rowdy BTers sat in the front row or two and heckled Jake...

After the talk, one of my co-workers who had also attended it started asking me questions about what it would take to move to Bonaire. I think we have another addict on our hands...

Faith

Oh, and Rusty, several of us commented that we missed having you there! I was hoping to get a chance to meet you -- I'm a big fan of your graphic art...

Faith

One comment above mentioned people hanging around after my official presentation was over to see more of Bonaire - after I put together all the parts of my PowerPoint presentation/slide show, I found I had over 250 pages (mostly pictures) - a wee bit too many for a 45 minute talk, so I took about 120 of those and put them at the end, inviting folks who wanted to stay and see some more to view these images. My presentation, that way, ran another 40 minutes. Oops. Still had quite a crowd at the end though!

Dan's got those photos from my slide show now and will be making screen savers them which we'll be selling on the Bonaire WebCams site to help raise funds for some new techie toys which will hopefully make the site even more interesting :-)

I too had a real blast last night. Outside of Faith heckling me, the audience was great ;-) and dinner was very enjoyable too - great company and conversation.

Denise - Sorry about the tester t-shirt mix-up! You should have said something and we would have taken care of it right then and there! Anyhow, we'll be sending those out soon.

BTW, at my table, for the record: on my right, Tom Tremblay (a fellow United Divers of NH (UDNH) member), me, Glen Reem (to my left, a fellow Boston Sea Rover and BonaireTalker), Teddy, John Lidington, Marty Klein (a fellow Boston Sea Rover), his partner Sharon Magnuson (a Bonaire addict), Denise, Janet McCausland (a friend who visited us on Bonaire several years ago), Tracy Tebo (UDNH member and recent Bonaire visitor and new addict), her fiance-to-be Mike Griffin (UDNH member, Bonaire visitor, and UW cave explorer).

Okay, bed time for me...

Jake

I'm the one opposite Dan, and my husband Gus Campbell is opposite Darlene. (Oh - Darlene - you do have my last name right.)

What a GREAT weekend! We went to the show with few expectations, and a determination to meet Jake, or at least attend his session. Within minutes of arriving, we discovered that Jake was chairing the session we were attending, and in short order we'd met Darlene & Tom, then Karen, then Dan & Faith, and so it went throughout the day and into dinner.

The show was really good in and of itself. Hooking up with all you folks was an amazing bonus.

Jake - terrific presentation! You know, it made me wonder why there aren't more sessions on fish & critter ID and behavior. We saw a lot of slide shows over two days, but not one other where the speaker really knew his marine life or spent any time explaining it. Yet it was clear from the audience reaction that people were really into it (and none more so than that noisy front row!).

I, too, had a fabulous time! It was wonderful meeting some more folks who love Bonaire! I am, indeed, the woman in green with all the hair. And it was great to see Jake again, to visit with Darlene and Tom, to meet all of you new folks, and to enjoy the wonderful food at that restaurant!

Sea Rovers, I thought, was very good this year. This is my third year attending (for the entire weekend) and this was a great show.

Cheers, and I hope we have excuses to get together again!

Karen.

Kathrin, welcome to Bonaire Talk and I am happy to see your posting. I am sure you will soon be addicted just like the rest of us!
I am also glad that we had the opportunity to meet early in the day and look forward to seeing you again. When Jake was doing the fish ID contest, Kathrin and I were having a little contest of our own to see who could ID more fish and I had to consede to her. She really knows her stuff!!
My only regret from yesterday was that the day wasn't long enough to talk to everyone as much as I would have liked!

Thank you all for the photos...

Cecil - you still look COLD, that's all!

Hi Faith! You know, the weekend snuck up on me before I realized what the Sea Rovers was all about. I thought it was a members only sort of shindig. Was tempted to come down for chow, tho. And to see faces to put with the names and laughs we've shared.

If they'd had MOONFISH T-shirts I'd a been there! LOL

Did the rubber chicken show up?

What ARE the pix on the T-shirts?

I didn't get to see all of the pictures, but this is the underwater picture on the back of the teeshirt.

Thanks Cecil - all I can think:

(Rolling Stone) Wanna see our pictures on the cover
(Stone) Wanna buy five copies for our mothers (yeah)
(Stone) Wanna see my smilin' face
On the cover of the Rolling Stone

(Hey, I know how, rock and roll!!)

(Man, I don't know why we ain't on the cover, Baby)
(We're beautiful people)
(I ain't kiddin', why, we would make a beautiful cover
(Fresh shot, right up front, man)
(I can see it now, we'll be up on the front)
(Smilin', man ...... ahh, beautiful!)

Sorry - you'll have to hum it. The PC froze during the midi upload.

Rusty, I didn't see a single rubber chicken anywhere! Bummer you didn't realize this was a public thing (er, at least if the public buys tickets!). But there's always next year! This is an annual thing...

Faith

Darlene, Thanks for the welcome. As for getting addicted - too late! I am already a long-time addict. I've got a drive full of captured photos (but usually get beaten to the punch when it comes to posting).

While I don't do a good job of keeping up my end of the conversation - I'm very grateful to all of you who do!

The T-shirt pics are:

Front


Back

linda, can barry and i buy these t-shirts when we get to bonaire in may? do you have them in stock or do we need to order them in advance? they are great.

Email me the sizes and I'll put some aside for you when we get them in.

Ts are adult Beefy Ts
M, L, XL, and XXL

Oh they are Wonderful!
Let us know how to get some.

Denise K, look what's on the front of the T-shirt! :-)

I know I know!!!! When I saw them at the Sea Rovers I looked right away to see if she made it!! :-)