Is it really May??

I just recently had it pointed out to me that we haven't posted any photos in almost a month. Whoops. To all you nice people who actually pay any attention to such things, I apologize. And it's not like we have been totally inert for over three weeks. Not at all. Well, not completely, anyhow. Okay, okay...we've been inert. Or close enough as to be almost indistinguishable from it. But forget all that. I have some new photos! Barely. But better than nothing.


And the weather has finally started moving slowly from winter winds to the random calm days.



Our little multi-year experiment in tropical lifestyle keeps on track. More or less. I'll just say that it keeps relatively near what passes for a track here. And we have a very loose definition of track. People who follow the news from this sunny little micro-country will know some of the turmoil it's been going through politically. It's been a tough year for a lot of people here with the results of widespread political corruption hitting in the same year as the full impact of the global economic troubles. A one-two punch. We still love the country and count many Turks and Caicos Islanders among the best friends we have ever had. We're not giving up on the place. Not even close. Especially as we move into the time of year that produces afternoons like this one, with calm oceans and barely a cloud in the sky:



La Gringa had a momentary setback when her new ruggedized Dell laptop had another hard drive failure. She lost a lot of her recent photos and some other irreplaceable files. Her new laptop is on its third hard drive in a year. Dell keeps sending us more stuff to replace the stuff that fails so I can't fault their customer service at all. It's the quality of this particular laptop I am having some issues with. We've had a lot of good Dell computers, and excellent customer service throughout. But we have to face the fact that this one is a lemon. I would call it a 'dog' but a certain family member would be offended.


But that's no excuse for not posting. La Gringa continues to take better and better photos. Check out this sunset from out among the neighbors houses just a few days ago:



I think we actually may have created a couple of 'monsters' since the last post. I am one of them. Preacher is the other. In my case I have gotten way immersed in teaching myself to arc weld. Also called 'stick' welding. But that's all DIY stuff, so more on that, later. I'll concentrate on the tropical photo section here first so that people who like to look at the ocean photos can get that out of the way without having to wade through "Gringo burns his feet off" and the "gosh ain't I clever" type stuff again.

And in Preacher's case, oh man. If you read this blog on any kind of recent regular basis you will know that I started goading him during the Middle Caicos Regatta model sloop races back in February. I gave him a razzing about us not having any sloops of our own in the race, especially since he had told me that he was a past master at the art of model sloop design. I didn't realize what I was starting. He built the first little sloop for us, and we sailed it. And it was fast. Faster than most of the other model sloops we have seen, just like Preacher remembered from his youth. And Preacher looked upon it, and smiled. And he saw that it was good. Then he went crazy on the danged things. He cut down an entire tree to get wood for more sloops.

And since then he has built two more sloops, and started a fourth. He has started talking up a Provo version of the races, and has challenged and insulted the reigning champ on Middle Caicos on my behalf. Gee, thanks.

Last weekend, he called us and told us to get our boat over to Stubbs Cove to see how it performed against his two newer, bigger boats. So of course we went.

We showed up to find a grown man playing with toy boats in the sand at the beach. No kidding.



While we got our boats trimmed up and ready to sail, Preacher's brother Joe "Hammer" showed up to captain the third one. I am not sure just why he was tying a piece of fishing line around his neck..I think it was to use to tie some fishing weights to the weatherboard of his sloop, or something like that. Knowing Joe, I am sure he had his reasons. I just don't have a clue what they were:


I think I have read somewhere something to the effect that if you give a man enough fishing line...



Well, it was that kind of a day. Eventually we got all three boats rigged up and ready to sail. Can you believe all these idiots are old enough to be grandfathers?



(not counting the kite boarder. I don't know how old he is.)

And sail they do! This photo is in the early part of the afternoon, when the old dudes were still relatively fresh, and striding along after these little sloops like a matched set of salt and pepper Sasquatches on a slow motion mission:



But lemme tell ya, after quick footing it back and forth across a hundred yards of knee deep water for an hour chasing these things..man, I thought my heart was gonna attack me. This is WORK!

Between us sloopid sailors, the kite boarders, and normal Sunday afternoon beach goers, it got busy. Dooley the Destructive was such a pain running up and down the beach he had to be restrained.



We put him in charge of random barking and watching the cooler.

We managed to get all the boats running well. Hammer's in particular seemed to track straight and fast. He seemed to spend more time chasing his than either Preacher or I did, chasing our own little boats.




Until finally it got the bit between its teeth on a nice port tack and was headed for West Caicos and points beyond. There was NO way he was going to catch up with it this time. That's Joe on the left..


And his boat on the right.

That's my boat in the foreground coming in on a run with a loose boom. It outran me, too, but at least I had it pointed toward the shore. Hammer's boat is the one under the kite in the photo, booking along like it intended to make Haiti by dawn tomorrow.

And these were actually pretty rough conditions for these little boats. Waves were breaking over the decks by this time.

Fortunately for Hammer, one of the kite boarders spotted his runaway sloop and caught up with it.



In this picture the kite boarder has flipped Hammer's boat over to stop it from sailing away. As you can tell from Joe's double thumbs up, he was pretty happy about getting it back.



That boat was moving!

Well, after a couple of hours of chasing toy boats back and forth, with the frequent diving saves.. we were all ready to call this off for the day. We think we have some real contenders for the next Middle Caicos Regatta. That will be Valentine's Day weekend in February, if Preacher doesn't put together a Provo event before then. I can see an inter-island rivalry developing here. It should make for some fun and competition. And good blog posts!

We were not prepared for how exhausting this can be. We are a little perplexed, because Preacher well remembers chasing these boats all afternoon long, all summer, when he was only 12. He MUST have had shorter legs then, so it doesn't make sense to us. I guess the water must be stickier these days, with the global warming and all.

Other than grown men running and splashing while they played in the water like a bunch of grinning fools, life has been more or less sedate. This time of year is very busy for the cruisers who sail through here on their way south to the Dominican Republic and Caribbean, or north to the Bahamas and beyond. Being very interested in sailing and cruising ourselves, we pay a lot of attention to the boats we can see from the patio. Last week we were amazed when the largest catamaran we have ever seen cruised up and dropped anchor a few hundred yards from the house:



I decided to track this one down, and posted this photo on the Sailnet forum online. Within a day one of the forum members identified the boat as a "Yapulka 72" A little more internet digging and I found out this is a charter boat, available in season in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. The name of the boat is the "Nahema IV". And it is one fine boat. It's available for only $45,000. US dollars a week, with a crew of two. Sleeps 8 guests in relative comfort (I would imagine), if anyone is interested in splitting a couple weeks or so, just to get some sailing in...

While on the subject of boats (and when am I not?) we have offered to assist the Marine Police as a radio call relay when we can. We have been watching these guys leave on patrol and return for over two years now.



We have a Marine VHF radio at the house. This is pretty common here. Until cellular phones came along, telephone service in the TCI was spotty at best, There were a few land lines on the main islands, but capacity was pretty well saturated, and nobody was stringing more wires. People communicated using VHF radios in their homes and other vehicles. The taxicabs here all had marine VHF radios in them, even just five years ago when we moved down. Of course when we moved down here there were two paved roads, no sidewalks, and no streetlights. Things have changed.

When our friends Crystal and Mike left in "Dancing Dolphin" we ran a little range experiment. Our antenna is about 65 feet above sea level, and this makes it one of the taller antenna in the islands. We wanted to see how far we could talk to "Dancing Dolphin" as they left the TCI headed south east for some new adventures. We were able to talk to them with our little unboosted radio until they were abeam of Six Hill Cay.



I plotted that out to be almost 42 miles range.

Now, where the Marine Police come in (remember them, before I started rambling on about radios?) is that we have been listening to a lot of what goes on offshore for quite a while now. We hear the US Coast Guard Miami group from time to time. We think we are hearing their aircraft, since VHF is line-of-sight. We can hear boats reporting that they are near Mayaguana in the Bahamas, which is about 45 miles north of us. We essentially have coverage for almost all of the Turks and Caicos when things are ideal. We have sometimes heard the Police base station attempting to call one of their boats out on patrol, with no response. We can sometimes hear the boat trying to call the base at the boatyard, with the same lack of results. We realized that the boats are sometimes out of range for them. We have offered to relay messages if they really need them to get through and the boat is also out of cell phone range.

The Marine Police seemed happy to know we could do that for them. They haven't taken us up on the offer yet. But we just made the offer last week when we ran into their Captain in the produce aisle at the super market. Maybe we can help. I don't normally get into police business if I can help it, but where these guys are concerned it could easily be serious. These are the guys who intercept the overloaded Haitian boats, and smugglers, and poachers. We'll give them all the help we can. Heck, I figure that if I ever run across a good deal on a used boat radar that I can salvage, I'd probably install one of those up here too, if it would help these guys.

In the meantime, we get stopped for a chat by the police now when we see them off duty shopping for groceries. These are the good kinds of police chats. Talking about big catamarans, and fishing, and the weather.

Okay, here's the warning for all you DIY indifferent people out there. You might want to skip to the sunset photo at the end now. This next part is only going to be interesting to other tool, gadget, and handyman geeks like me.

As previously mentioned, I bought a welding machine. I have no training or instruction, so have been beating my way through a learning curve. After sticking together every loose piece of steel in the garage and fixing an exhaust pipe and a wheelbarrow, I figured I was ready for a small project. I wanted to use junk stuff I had lying around, since I also was pretty sure I would mess it up.

Well, the problem with this is that most of what I have lying around are the cut up remnants of that 8 ft. diameter steel framed, aluminum dish sat antenna that Hurricane Hanna turned into a piece of modern art for us.



I also had the middle seat I removed from one of the Land Rovers and replaced with a 'cuddy'. (Their word. not mine. It's a Brit thing.) So anyhow, since I have been unable to find a decent shop stool for my little shop in over two years of looking, I thought I would see if I could build one. I mean, nobody but me is going to see it, so if it's ugly and rattles and falls down from time to time...who cares?

I didn't want to try to weld the frame of the seat to the other steel. I was pretty sure I would set it on fire as a minimum. Melt it all over my crocs and burn the shop down. That kind of thing. So I took one of the receiver support struts from the demolished sat dish..



and cut it into four pieces. I then went through a whole bunch of welding rods and sparks and came up with a frame that the Land Rover seat will fit:



and got it more or less square and stuck together pretty good.



Now, you experienced welders out there will groan and laugh, but please remember I just bought this thing last month, have no training, and the manual for the machine was written in China by people concerned with the on/off switch and not with welding. Not much help. It's not pretty. And I have a whole new respect for welders that can turn out consistently perfect works of art. It's not as easy as some guys make it look.

But back to my kindergarten attempt, I had a frame to bolt the seat to, but needed legs. tall ones. Because the counter tops in our home are 2" higher than 'standard'. Including my work benches. And all I had left to work with were these curved pieces of box stock that had been the oval frame around the sat dish antenna:



I had enough to make four of those, and went through all kinds of mental images of how to make stable legs out of them. The problem was that no matter which way I bowed them, they came back to either a very narrow, or exceptionally wide base on the floor. So I crossed them, and traced where they crossed..



and notched them out:



Brought out the handy but on-its-last-legs Dremel tool to cut the lateral ones:



See those sparks? That disk was turning about 6,000 RPM. I was amazed the little Pentax point and shoot camera got a photo that clear with a flash.

Anyhow, after making all those cuts the pieces looked like this:



and fit together, thusly:



(I always wanted to use that word! And "whilst" is still on my list, too.)

I made two of those 'X' shaped things and tack welded those to the seat frame:



You can see where I am going with this, can't you? And that was basically it. I welded it up and got plenty of practice patching holes I burned in this 3/32" wall steel. I figue if I can learn to weld this thin stuff, when I get to some real metal it should be a lot more forgiving.

I wanted to brace it in the other direction, and besides my feet just barely reached the floor at this height, so I made a foot rest to take care of all that. I put some flat pieces across the open bottoms, and some tabs on top for the seat frame:



And after some grinding, priming and painting I ended up with an adequate stool for the workshop, from satellite dish scraps and a useless Land Rover seat.



It's cushy, but doesn't swivel. I think it looks like it needs a pair of wings attached to it, doesn't it? Hey...there's an idea. Airplanes come in kits. I know they do.



Next project is underway now, and that is a kayak/lumber rack for the little Defender 90. Since I am down to the remainder of the sat dish pieces and they are all curved, this should get pretty strange looking, too. Even more weird than the shop stool. I am thinking I will use the straight T-shaped rail sections from the three electric garage door openers that have never been used in over two years.



Anyone know of anything useful to build from the motors and photo-cells? I've taken one to the dump already but still have two more to dismantle.

Oh, speaking of dismantling..(clever change of subject, eh wot?) I thought you might get a kick out of guessing what this is:



Yep, you got it! That's an Olympus Stylus 770$W and a Stylus 1030$W waterproof digital cameras, and a Kodak Easy$hare camera thown in for good measure. That was too easy.

I took them apart to see how they worked, where they failed, and also to save all the dozens of minerature screws. Those are impossible to buy here and when you need a little bitty screw, nothing else just seems to work.

Well I have other similar totally useless photos I could upload and talk about, but I better save those to plump out the next time I have a post that's thin on material. I'd say this has gone on quite long enough to qualify as a post by now, anyhow. We'll try to go find something fun to do for the next one.

And thanks to La Gringa, the photographer of the team, I have another pretty neat sunset to finish up with:

"La Famille Express" revisted

Winter has been showing those signs of moving off to where Winter goes when it leaves here. Drifting South, on its ancient yearly mission to climatically re-polarize our friends in New Zealand, Brasil and South Africa. Isn't it fun to think of them pulling their favorite winter clothing out of storage, and stoking their fireplaces while we are kicking our shoes off and getting ready for summer? I have been lucky enough to have travelled extensively in the southern hemisphere and I always got a kick out of kids going surfing over the summer Christmas holiday. Our snowy Northern hemisphere Santa-and-snow Christmas cards just don't seem very appropriate to people who associate Christmas and New Years with sunburns. Just kinda gives one a perspective on how the rest of the planet sees things. At least a little bit. Sometimes.

But here, for now, days are getting longer, and warmer, and every sunrise seems to be full of the potential promise of good stuff yet to come. How's that for an optimistic outlook?



Enough of that, I'll get to the main subject of this little post. And compared to some of the wordy things I've been posting lately this one will be pretty short. I am not sure which way works better... to save up enough new photos over a few weeks for a long post or to put up a short one every week or whenever we have something new. It's only been a little over a week since the last one, so we'll see how this goes.

We've been pretty busy lately. A couple of our sons came down for a spring break visit, and one of them brought a friend along this time. This kind of situation usually generates some outside activities on our part since our visitors are always geared up for some 'fun stuff'. And around here 'fun stuff' usually involves boats and the ocean. At least it does where this family is involved. So, on a nice sunny day we loaded up the visitors, boated over to the boatyard to pick up our new friends Crystal and Mike, and headed out to just enjoy a boating day. We got sidetracked almost immediately with an unplanned detour but it resulted in some photos we thought some of you might enjoy.

Just a little over two miles south of Leeward Going Through, out on the Caicos Bank, sits a rusting hulk of a freighter. On our way from our home up to Pine Cay we pass right next to this local landmark. Which of course means we have seen it literally hundreds of times. We have even been known to duck behind it and let a squall blow by from time to time.



Doesn't look too bad from a distance, does it. I know we have posted photos of this boat from time to time over the past few years. We first got up close to it in 2005 and have also noticed how parts of it seem to be steadily disappearing as people salvage the bits they think they want. As we get closer the sorry state of the wreck becomes more apparent:



The painted name "La Famille Express" is still clearly visible on both the stern and the bow of the little freighter. What is also clearly visible from up close is the welded metal spelling out the original name in the Cyrillic script used in Russia and some other Slavic nations in Northern Europe. We have been told that this boat was originally named the "Fort Shevenko", and that it was originally a Soviet Navy vessel.



With the former Soviet Union's activities and presence in Cuba, just a few miles from us, this would make some sense. I did try some internet searches for both names of the boat. But I really was not very successful in getting any additional information on it, other than other people's vacation photos. I did read that it got run aground here at its present position during Hurricane Frances. Frances made a direct hit on the Turks and Caicos Islands as a category 4 hurricane on September 1, 2004. So this boat has been sitting here falling apart for five and a half years now. It has also managed to hold together, for the most part, through the other two hurricanes that came through here since then.

Our visiting cruisers were interested in a closer look at the wreck, and of course the younger members of the group had wanted a real close look at it, so in my capacity as Captain-for-the-day, and with the blessing of La-Gringa-Suprema-the-Mother-in-charge, we decided to let them go for it. We pulled "Off Cay" up to the section of cargo netting draped over the side and our Colorado rock climbers were up over the side of that thing like a couple of rescued sailors.



Or maybe they thought there was a men's room on there...

We let them take our cameras aboard for some photos, and I confess I had long been curious about what this boat looked like from topside. Our little Contender looks even smaller from up there, doesn't it.



And as the boys climbed up higher on the freighter it because obvious that the cargo hold was flooded with seawater. This is no surprise as the entire hull is almost rusted through completely around the waterline. There are a lot of floating timbers still in the hold:



Here's a better view looking down into the cargo hold from the main deck area:



I confess that I had often wondered what went through the Captain's mind as he tried to make it to Providenciales in this little ship during a Category 4 hurricane. I was sure there must have been a heck of a story to tell, if we could just find out what it was. Because there was absolutely no way a boat this big would ever make it into Leeward from this direction. Our little boat draws just under three feet of water and we barely have enough clearance to get through here. So I had basically assumed that the crew had intentionally grounded the freighter.

We had these heroic stories in mind, how this move into shallow water would have guaranteed the survival of the crew even though it was almost certain death for the vessel. Yes, my over-active imagination had all these heroic scenarios playing over the years... and then today I thought to myself "I'll ask our friend Preacher if he knows any more details about this, as I am sure he would have been here during that storm." And as luck would have it, Preacher was just here this morning. He brought another one of his model sloop project hulls by. (I have been cutting the keels and rudders for him in my little shop.) And his model boats seem to be getting bigger...



That's #1, which I have, and #2, which we just cut the keel for, and now # 3 is taking form and it's even bigger. But I digress.... I'll get back to "La Famille Express"...

Turns out, it was a locally-owned and operated freighter belonging to a Carl Been of Five Cays here on Provo. Preacher says Carl used the boat to haul crap and whatever cargo jobs he could get. It was normally anchored off South Dock where all the other commercial freighters anchor. There is really no other area near here with enough water for a boat this size. And during Hurricane Frances this boat broke free and lost its anchor. The storm washed it all the way from South Dock to where it now sits.

It started at the anchorage, and ended up where it has sat hard aground for the past six years.




There was nobody on board the boat during the storm, so it was driven around a number of little cays, and over the shoals. That's about 12 miles. The original anchor was lost and Preacher is not exactly sure when they put this one out, but at the time the owner had some plans and ideas about how to re float and salvage the boat. Of course, that obviously never happened. And now it never will.

So, that pretty much puts an end to a lot of my speculation... at least all the ideas of heroic captains fighting mountainous seas during howling hurricane winds and driving rain....

Nope. The boat was inadequately anchored and broke loose in a storm. And that's the story.

This is what the view of this end of the island of Providenciales looks like from this direction:



And yeah our intrepid explorers had to do some climbing to get that view:



This is the bow of the boat:



I notice the chain stopper was not tightened, but let's face it.....this boat wasn't going anywhere at that point.

This is looking down at the stern of the boat from up high:



Not a whole lot left there to salvage without bringing a cutting torch aboard.

We didn't want the boys to get down inside the boat on this trip. We wouldn't rule out further exploration at some future date if they were a little better equipped for climbing around lots of rusty iron steps and collapsing walkways. They did look down toward the engine room access:



You can see that the deck plating down near the water line is in pretty bad shape. Certainly not the best footing for tender bare feet.

Some of the control boxes and switches are still on the bridge deck, and still with the original labelling:



And although the vessel is most definitely totally dead, it's not totally lifeless:



So finally we managed to corral our crew back onto our own little freighter and headed out to enjoy the rest of the day.




I haven't told them yet the real story on this boat maybe I will let them wonder for awhile. I know their imaginations were going wild there for a while. It sure looks the part.



Meantime, I am wondering how this boat from the U.S.S.R. even ended up in the Turks and Caicos Islands.... now there must be a story in THAT somehow, at least... did it all start with a renegade Russian Cossack and a shipment of Soviet vodka and Cuban Rum... during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the US blockade??

I really gotta do something about this runaway imagination. One of these days maybe I will.

And we also have heard rumor of a sunken airplane out on the Bank that we have not seen yet..... we'll try to track that one down if we can get Preacher focused on something besides his model sloop project for a few hours one of these fine days.

Still on the subject of presently non-functioning boats, last week when we were over at the boatyard picking up the crew of the "Dancing Dolphin" we took a look at the fishing boat from the Dominican Republic that I wrote about a few weeks back.



This boat was apprehended off of Ambergris Cay, well within the TCI's territorial waters, and illegally fishing. We posted some photos of it sitting outside the entrance to the boatyard waiting for high tide.

Well the story is that it was definitely seized by the TCI government and the catch was sold at public auction. The captain and mate were heavily fined and the crew were deported back to the D.R. This boat, and six or seven smaller fishing pangas, and all their equipment, remains here.



Can you believe there were over 40 fishermen living and working on this little boat? Talk about your basic 'tight-knit crew'.

And while I am sure this boat has its own stories to tell, I am going to limit my imagination to what I read in the papers on this one. Except that now we know where it was fishing five years ago...





(Hmm... did I do the welding on that boat? Or the painting?)

Oh, before I forget, I wanted to mention one more tidbit on the subject of non-functioning boats. People who follow this blog might remember that we had a heck of a time sorting out fuel issues this past summer. This outboard motor is very susceptible to dirty fuel. After a lot of work getting the system cleaned out and working correctly I installed a couple of filter/separators to catch water and debris in the fuel, before it gets to the motor. And I have been buying gasoline at an automotive service station, transporting it to the boat, and siphoning it from jerry cans into Off Cay's tank. I run it through a filtering funnel to make sure I don't introduce water or dirt into the tank.

Well, last week for the first time since last July we decided to buy fuel at the local marina instead of ferrying gas in plastic jugs. I thought that surely by now any fuel issues with the marina gas would have been worked out and they would have had several new batches of gasoline by now. It should be safe. And I am basically lazy. It's a real pain to drive down to a gas station, fill two jugs, drive them back, climb up onto the boat, on the trailer, and siphon fuel through a filter. I was hoping not to have to do that, forever. So I trusted the marina gas.

Yesterday we took "Off Cay" for another excursion (2nd one this week!) and right after launching it we drained off some fuel from the Racor filter. Just to be sure everything was still good. After all, we had bought our last 20 gallons from the marina. It was worth checking.... and I am glad I did. This is what was in those 20 gallons other than gasoline:



The cloudy stuff on top is gasoline with particles, that the filter trapped. The thick stuff on the bottom is something other than gasoline. I suspect water, and dirty water at that. I also checked the second Racor, and lo and behold the fuel in that one was clear as.... well..... as clean gasoline. I am SO glad this gunk didn't get into the Yamaha fuel system on this fuel injected motor. We would have been shut down again, until I got it all cleaned out once more. Five internal fuel pumps. Seven internal fuel filters.

And people actually wonder why we are moving to sail...

And kayaks. We really like our sail and people-powered kayak. We only have fuel issues when we forget to bring lunch. We did take the little Hobie (which we informally call "Low Cay") up the Long Bay canal to look around a couple weeks ago. We didn't see much that we haven't seen before except that this time we were there on a falling tide. When the tide runs out the canal empties much quicker than the salina behind it. So all along the canal there are these miniature waterfalls as the sea water continues to drain slowly into the dropping sea level of the canal.



And it seems that anytime flowing water gets restricted like this, something shows up to do some fishing:



And we have our own little 'something' who is only too happy to jump into the water
and scare the fish away...Dooley the Diverter:



Now for some minor DIY stuff:

As reported last week, I bought a DC welding machine and have been trying to teach myself to arc weld. I have managed to stick together all the loose metal scraps I could find in my garage. I even hacksawed some perfectly good metal bits apart just to have pieces to weld. Well, I've finally gotten to the point where I think I am just about ready to tackle the Land Rover exhaust pipe. But first I wanted to try a small project of some kind, just to see if I could make it all work. But what to practice on...hmmm

Last week while our young guests were here we put them to work jackhammering rock in the driveway.



And No of course it's not all shipwreck adventure and drinking beer! The little story here behind that photo is that these two had been out late the night before cruising the bar scene on Grace Bay. I still don't know how they made it home, but they did. They were not driving, that's all I know about that. And the next morning, I just knew they would be all refreshed and rested after a late night of sampling various libations from the rum family. You know, those deceptively sweet tasting things with little paper umbrellas stuck through bits of embalmed fruit and cute names like "Bahama Mama" and "Goombay Smash".... The usual pyrites of the Caribbean. Being the thoughtful stepdad and host that I am, I thought I might liven things up by coming up with a new way of welcoming the day. So I went out soon as the jackhammer rental store opened....and I rented the biggest jackhammer I could find. I got it started up bright and early. Man them suckers are noisy, aren't they? Sure enough, after about half an hour of me running this bad boy full bore, they stumbled out and took over...heh heh heh... Still here to help..

To haul some of the loose dirt away we borrowed a wheelbarrow from our friends down the road, M&M. The front piece of their wheelbarrow, the metal strip that holds these two wooden pieces together....



...was bent into a contorted shape. I warned the guys to keep an eye on it, as it was bent like a pretzel. This little metal piece acts like a fulcrum when you tip the wheelbarrow forward to dump the contents out. After we were finished with it I thought I would be a good 'tool-borrower' ( if there IS such a thing) and return it in better condition than it was in when I borrowed it. So I removed the metal piece and hammered it back into it's intended original condition. I wish I had thought to take a photo of it when it was bent, but at the time I only intended to hammer it straight, repair the wheelbarrow, and return it. This is what it looked like hammered straight again:



And it was at this point that I thought..."Oh HO! I bet I could improve upon this piece of metal strapping!" Well, actually what I thought was more along the lines of " I bet I could use a welder on this little project". And so I did.

I still have quite a bit of curved metal pieces that were the frame of our expensive HD satellite dish right up until Hurricane Hanna made landfall. So I hacksawed one of those off to fit..



And after adding yet another hammer to my collection... I welded this to the flimsy metal strap. And after grinding down the ugly part of the weld...it looked like this:





And although it's never going to be exhibited in the Welder's Museum or Hall of Fame.... I judged it suitable for the underside of a wheelbarrow. Especially after a few coats of paint.



I just put another coat of paint on it, and then reassembled M&M's now-improved wheelbarrow. I have to believe that beefing up this part is an improvement. Of course what I really needed was an excuse and opportunity to try my hand at an actual welding project. Hey, it's a start. I wonder if they will notice any difference in it..



As an aside, I showed my welding practice piece to Preacher when he stopped by this morning. He laughed, and told me that back when the first arc welding machine came to Provo ( some time after they brought electricity to Provo) all the first welds on the entire island looked like that until people had time to practice. I bet a whole lot of loose scrap metal got cleaned up in those days. I know it's getting hard to find a loose piece of steel in my garage. My 'practice piece' just keeps getting bigger. Starting in the middle, (which is where I started) my earliest welding efforts are to the left.



And after I totally ruined a lot of perfectly good, collectable, scrap steel pieces that I had been saving for years in some cases, the stuff to the right side shows some slight improvement. I started practicing on thinner metal, as my next project was to weld two places on the Land Rover exhaust system. I found out that buy using thinner welding rods ( 3/32" 6013 for you experts out there) and less amperage, it worked okay. Still not pretty, but I can't break it with a hammer. And you KNOW how I am about my hammers...



Okay, that's it for this week's installment. Except I wanted to mention that this blog is now linked to a nice online travel service called Trip Advisor. Check it out next time you are planning a vacation!

We have a link to them there on the right side of this blog along with the other links we think you guys might be interested in.

And thank goodness La Gringa is finally getting some good sunsets to photograph again!