The Margaritaville on Grand Turk in the Turks & Caicos, which opened in 2006, only suffered minimal damage from Hurricane Ike, according to the Caribbean Net News:

According to a Carnival press release, an engineering survey confirmed that no damage was sustained to the cruise ship pier, which can accommodate up to two ships at one time, while minimal damage occurred to the facility’s retail and restaurant complex.

“We believe we can complete repairs to the cruise centre within a 30-day period and bring cruise ships back to Grand Turk,” said Giora Israel, Carnival’s vice president of strategic planning and port development. “We will be able to provide many of the wonderful, beach, snorkeling and water sports experiences that Grand Turk is famous for, along with the oversized pool and food and shopping opportunities at the cruise center, including the extremely popular Margaritaville restaurant.”

Charitybuzz.com has an auction up for two tickets to a Jimmy Buffett concert along with hospitality passes:

Includes: 2 Tickets and hospitality passes (cocktail lounge backstage prior to concert) to any regularly listed Jimmy Buffett concert. Schedule based on availability. Does NOT include a meet and greet with Jimmy Buffett.

The auction benefits the Fifth Annual Chevy Chase Green School Auction.

View the item here.

Last Friday, Jimmy Buffett and Mac McAnally played an intimate show in front of about 200 people in Montauk, New York. Mark Bialczak of Syracuse.com writes on his blog about his friend’s experience at the show:

We went to dinner at this local restaurant that has been around for ages. There was an unusual flurry of activity and my friends said, ‘Some local band must be playing here tonight.’
“After we ate, we decided to walk outside and sit on bales of hay about 8 feet from the stage. Maybe there were 200 people under the tent… My buddy goes and gets me a beer and it’s ‘Landshark Beer.’ Now, I started to get suspicious.

“I look off to the side of the stage and I see Mac McAnally (from the Coral Reefer Band) with Kunkel, and Jimmy Buffett is standing right behind them. Buffett walks out on stage and plays for 2+ hours with no set list, just taking requests from the crowd. After the show there was a flurry of activity and I found myself face-to-face with the king of the Parrotheads for about a 5-minute chat.

“I told him that I was the idiot yelling out ‘Jimmy Dreams’ during the show . … He goes, ‘Man, that’s one of my favorite songs, and I was ready to play it, but I couldn’t remember the words.’ I told him that I asked my son to make sure they play it at my funeral and he said, ‘Wow, I hope they play it at mine too.’

Johnson e-mailed again to add that his good friend, former NHL player Pat LaFontaine, was part of his group of friends who smuggled him to Montauk.

“Pat thanked Buffett for playing the ‘hockey song’ (‘Boat Drinks’). Jimmy told him the story about how it was written in Boston after a particularly squirrely night with former Bruins star – Derek Sanderson. Buffett called Sanderson ‘a great wingman.’

“Pat invited Jimmy to come and skate with us some time on Pat’s backyard rink and Jimmy said, ‘Hell no, but I’d love to show you how to surf.’ Very cool.”

Read the entire blog entry here.

Jimmy Buffett heads to France this week for two shows on Friday and Saturday at the New Morning Club in Paris. The International Herald Tribune (the global edition of the New York Times) will be catching up with Jimmy this week for an interview, and you can submit questions of your own that may be chosen to be asked.

Visit Globespotters and leave your question(s) as a comment underneath the article.

View all tour dates here.

On Wednesday night, Jimmy Buffett was at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC to honor his friend, author Herman Wouk:

Jimmy Buffett showed up at the library’s Coolidge Auditorium last night to sing the praises of his old pal — along with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz, New York Times columnist William Safire and Librarian of Congress James Billington, who announced that the new award would bear Wouk’s name.

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it was the sockless Buffett — bounding onstage, he promptly shed his shoes as well — who offered the evening’s most startling change of pace.

“People have asked me for years, ‘How the hell did you and Herman Wouk get together?’ ” Buffett said. Long story short, he’d somehow gotten the idea of turning Wouk’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival” — in which a New York PR guy plays out midlife fantasies on a tropical isle — into a Broadway musical.

So Buffett wrote Wouk a letter. “Who are you?” the author replied. But he eventually signed on, despite the fact that he didn’t know what reggae was. “Don’t Stop the Carnival” ran for a few weeks in Miami in 1997.

“We never made it to Broadway, but the carnival is still happening,” Buffett said. Then he proved it with a medley of songs from their collaboration. Seated onstage, Wouk smiled and mouthed the lyrics.

Read the entire Washington Post article here. Buy Buffett’s album “Dont Stop The Carnival.”

photo: Gerald Martineau / Washington Post