One of the most famous beach bars in the Caribbean is Foxy's. They are consistently voted in the top 10 places around the world to bring in the New Year by Time Magazine. If you haven't already heard about it, click here to read my previous blog post.
One of the first Caribbean buyers who bought my little collection back when I got started was Tessa at Foxy's. I remember being very excited when Tessa visited my booth. Tessa doesn't mince her words, and had been a successful buyer for many years, so it was a little daunting have her comment of all my works of "art". Now I look back on that and laugh as all these years have gone by and I now seek Tessa's feedback before, during and after designing a new collection. I know she will be truthful and always spot-on.
The day before I left home to travel to Florida for Surf Expo I got an email from Tessa, she had already booked her appointment for the show, but just let me know that with Hurricane Irma 2 days out, it was looking decidedly "dicey". Is that an Australian term? Tessa is a fellow Aussie.
Well now you all know that Hurricane Irma impacted her island of Jost Van Dyke BADLY. They were off the grid for days.... I knew there are very few concrete roofs on JVD, I felt sick waiting for news - checking and re-checking all of their personal or business FB pages, every couple of hours.
The waiting game is awful....3 days later, finally a video was posted on their page, showing that although most buildings on JVD had no roofs, miraculously Foxy's still had some roof. The caption reads "Amazingly it appears that the roofs are still in tact on main building at Foxy's... so we have something to start with." Another few days pass and we read how the food supplies from Soggy Dollar Bar and other bars have been salvaged and meals are being cooked in Foxy's partly intact kitchen for all of the people on the tiny island. Love this sign they have hung up.... this has Tessa written all over it.
In a few short hours Foxy's went from this....
To this...
Click here to see updates of Foxy's on their Facebook page.
I saw a video here about how the people of JVD are doing, Foxy's was mentioned several times about how they had set up a food service for the people. In the video I see Tessa and her daughter Justine, loading food aid onto the back of a truck. You go girls !
Click here to find information of how you can donate to Jost Van Dyke's Preservation Society which is a registered Not-For-Profit organisation. Funds are going directly to getting basic supplies to the island.
This morning I received an email from Tessa....
One Love to Jost Van Dyke and all our friends at Foxy's xx