Bits and Pieces

In Which our Protagonists get Back Into Island Life.
The Gringos Entertain Guests. Dooley the Dog Does Diddly.
The Usual Tropical Imagery.

It's December already. This is usually a pretty big month for us. For starters, the arrival of December means that Hurricane Season is officially over. Yee Haaa. Hot Diggity Dang. And a Whew. A Big Whew, in fact. And I'll even throw in a Huzzah. We are really happy to get through a year without more storm damage. I just took a moment to knock on some wood for luck after writing that part cheering the end of storm season. I don't want to jinx this. We went through Tropical Storm Olga here in December of '07, after Hurricane Season was "officially over". We've now bumped heads with the concept that cyclones do not feel any legal or moral obligations to follow guidelines published by The Government.

December is also the unofficial start of 'The Season', here. We have already seen an increase in the number of pale refugees from northern climates. Wandering around with silly grins on their faces looking for t-shirts and mispronouncing words like 'conch' and 'cay'. Saw some yesterday sitting at an awkward angle at a road intersection, in a rented car with the steering wheel on the right side and trying to figure out how to drive on the left while giving way to other traffic through a road change in a roundabout. (We don't actually mind that. They're safest when they're not moving and we can easily drive around them.)

The weather is cooler now here, just like up north. Our little weather station says that the temperature got down to 69 degrees F a few days ago. It's only up to 81 deg. right now. We are dragging our warmest stuff out of storage. A pair of socks for La Gringa, and t-shirts with complete sleeves and minimal battery acid holes for me. We typically get better sunrise and sunset photos this time of year, though. This is a sunrise from last week.



We do feel a bit of a relief when we no longer have to keep an eye on the weather between here and Africa on a daily basis. We've learned to respect the elements at a new level. I have also noticed that I 'knock on wood' (or "touch wood" as some of the Brits say) a lot more often since we've moved to this island. I don't think I started out being superstitious about close calls, but hey, it doesn't hurt to cover the bases. There might be some mixed emotions about that, too, come to think of it. I looked up this 'touch wood' thing on the internet. The general story of the origin has to do with old European superstitions. Touching wood seems to be the ancient equivalent of giving a high five to a wood sprite living in a tree. The last 'wood sprites' I touched knuckles with down here were trying to eat part of my workshop at the time. It got ugly. Maybe I got the wood sprite secret handshake wrong or something.

If you've been following this blog you might remember from the last post that we had just returned from three weeks in the U.S. of A. We got pretty busy with getting caught up in chores here. Some processes don't stop in our absence. Leaving the bugs, weeds, and corrosion on their own for three weeks in the tropics is kinda like leaving three teenagers the house and a couple of credit cards while you spend a month in Europe. They all run amok eventually, to some extent.

When we got back to Provo we had a couple of priorities to take care of. We managed to get out to Blue Hills for a badly needed conch fix. (We didn't notice any conch dishes offered anywhere we stopped in Texas, New Mexico or Colorado.) We noticed that the Conch Shack is now cooking up and bottling a local Turks and Caicos hot sauce.



And it's pretty good stuff, in our judgement. We like spicy, though. It might not be for everyone. I wouldn't suggest substituting it in equal quantities for ketchup on your french fried potatoes, for example.

Another thing we really missed during our time off island was the boating. Three weeks without a boat seemed unnatural. We were more than ready to again feel the spray on our faces. The sun on our backs. The wind in our hair. Well, the wind in La Gringa's hair, anyhow. In my case I feel it on my chin. And eyebrows and ears. (What the heck IS it with old men and ear hair, anyway?) The weather's been fairly scruffy due to a series of inconsiderate storms mucking up the middle of the Atlantic. We know that a number of cruising sailors have been waiting in the Bahamas for a weather window before heading across on their yearly trip south. I know that we jumped at the first opportunity to take the Hobie for a sail after our return.

We really didn't have a destination in mind. We just wanted to go sailing around for a few hours. Sailing makes us happier. It's that simple. Feeling that surge of power and acceleration as the wind catches the sail. Listening to the sounds of the water and waves under the hull. Watching for the splash the dog makes when he goes overboard.. We don't get that same connection with power boats, although they do have a feel all their own. It's sort of the difference between driving a motorcycle and skiing. We were sailing along the south coast of Providenciales when we noticed light colored slashes in the rock lining the shore. We decided to sail closer for a look. We found out that these are where ledges undercut by wave action have broken off and fallen into the sea. The freshly exposed rock is the light, unweathered limestone color.



We hadn't noticed this many large pieces broken off earlier in the summer, so are of the opinion that these were precipitated by the heavy waves of Hurricane Irene in late August.

We also were having fun playing in the waves that reflected off of the rock faces when we were close to them in the light kayak. The smallish ocean waves were coming from behind and to our left in this next photo. This little wave was one of those that had bounced off the rock and was coming back, across the regular waves. There are some interesting effects in a boat this small.



That's another broken ledge, by the way. There are a lot of them. We returned to a smaller island!

Here you can see that the waves are just really a light chop, stretching out toward the horizon. But you can also see that when a reflected wave combines with an original wave coming in the opposite direction, their two heights are summed and the result picks the boat up suddenly. Rattles it a bit, too.



The next couple of weekends the weather was just too wild for our little boats. Oh, we would have gone out if we had a driving reason to do so, but we didn't. One of the benefits of living here full time is the luxury of waiting until the weather is better. No matter how long that takes. Well, within reason, of course. Touching wood again, here.

Then last week we had one of those visits that helps us get through the day to day trials and tribulations of maintaining this indolent tropical lifestyle. We had guests here on their very first experience in the Turks and Caicos Islands. We knew this was going to be fun.

Gina and Joe are friends of La Gringa's from a former life in New Jersey. We had invited them for a visit, and they finally took us up on the offer. We started them with a driving tour of Providenciales, hitting some of the usual spots. Here's a view of their first visit to Grace Bay beach (and you can probably see why we haven't been boating as much as we usually do).



I think I would call that weather borderline snarly, which is a word I just made up for a combination of snotty and gnarly. Our guests had seen the photos of this beach in an earlier blog post, but it looks different with 20 kts. of wind at high tide.



I have a question for some of our readers. You had written me saying that these rock and mesh wire basket erosion control structures are called gabions. I understand the idea of using smaller rocks to equal the mass of a big rock. But I am curious as to whether it is common practice to fill the bottom of the wire baskets with plastic bags of sand?



Looking at the exposed back side of this one, I noticed for the first time that the layer of rock is only a couple of feet thick, at most. I mean, it seems to me that bags of sand could shift and topple the gabion they were supporting, if you know what I mean...

Well, anyhow, we took Gina and Joe to several spots around Providenciales to give them an idea of what sort of place we live on these days. Of course we had to take them to the Conch Shack for lunch. I think that's now obligatory with new guests. They watched the guy knocking and cleaning conch for a while. You know, one of those annoying professionals who make it look easy.



We also took them down to Leeward Going Through to see about the possibilities of finding a ride over to Pine Cay in the next day or so. I was taking one of my semi-regular little surveys of the state of the outboard motor market here. I've learned to pay attention to what the guys who make a living with their boats use for a motor.

In this photo I find one Honda, one Mercury, two Evinrudes, an inboard of unknown manufacture, and twelve Yamahas. It would be fourteen Yamahas if I counted the two 300 HP four strokes on the back of the ferry to the left. But they aren't in the picture so I won't even use them in the statistic that I am not going to pursue any further.



I know that the North Caicos ferry boat to the left previously had two big Suzuki 300's on it, and I noticed that they've changed back to Yamahas. Of course this is of interest to us as new Suzuki owners.

I also know a lot of regular users of Leeward are going to be interested to see what kind of place develops here as a new, long overdue, eagerly awaited, and sorely missed restaurant goes through construction.



I'm pretty sure I speak for a few others when I say that in our opinion the community at Leeward lost a bit of it's soul when Gilley's restaurant was demolished some years ago. This won't exactly replace what the Caicos Islands lost when criminal greed got out of hand here, but it'll sure help. Leeward was a community center for a long time. It's been less than it once was for local boaters since the whole Nikki Beach and Star Island fiascos were allowed to happen. Personally, I wish the Turks and Caicos Islands government would seize the floating docks in Leeward Going Through and turn half of them into a government owned public marina.

I think that the other half should be moved the heck out of the middle of the navigable channel, where they were illegally installed in the first place. Sell them or use them for another marina over on North or Middle Caicos. This shouldn't even be an eminent domain issue, as I understand the term. This area should never have been treated like private property in the first place.

Now, I have to confess I didn't see this next toy first hand, or take these photos. This was last Monday, and we had just launched our little skiff to run our guests over to Pine Cay. I was in the boat when La Gringa came down with a load of groceries and borrowed my camera. She had spotted this contraption in the parking lot of the marina and wanted to get some images of it before the owners left with it.



I have seen videos of these things leaping out of the water like mechanical bottle nose dolphins, sort of. I would post a link to that, but I figure anyone interested in them can certainly find them using the information in these photos. I notice it has what appears to be a snorkel coming out of the top of it and two sets of movable planes that apparently move in opposite directions for extreme pitch control.

The controls look simple enough:



I'm totally guessing here that the big levers are for the diving planes, the pedals are for a rudder or some lateral control, and the throttle is in the left hand grip. La Gringa didn't get into the mechanics of it so we don't know what the drive is, but suspect it has a lot in common with those SeaDoos you can see four photos up from here. Back when I was babbling about Yamahas. There's room in there for the driver and one passenger in a seat behind him. I suppose that sooner or later we might be lucky enough to get some video of this thing in action. It does look like fun.

I have to wonder what practical uses it might have, other than the sheer thrill of it all of course. I have no idea of the range, but it seems to me that if one were to remove the rear seat and replace it with a auxiliary fuel tank and paint the whole thing Flipper Gray...... one might reasonably expect to get to meet some US Coast Guard personnel in one's not too distant future.



I hope I get a chance to take a look at this thing eventually. But as previously reported, I didn't see it myself this time. We took our skiff from Leeward over to Pine Cay and showed Gina and Joe around the island. Here's Dooley the Demented drafting a golf cart down main street.



Our friends were staying on Pine Cay for the rest of the week, while we returned to our mundane lifestyle in the thriving metropolis of Provo. We showed them the pathway to the beach, and I noticed that our original 'Christmas Stump'is still where we retired it. It looks like it might be starting it's new career as a sea grape bush.



We left the young lovers on Pine Cay with a place to stay and introductions to the bartender, and La Gringa, Dooley, and I returned to Providenciales

During the first week of December we had several days of beautiful weather, with sunny skies and light winds. We find ourselves awake well before sunrise during the short days this time of the year, which bodes well for sunrise photos over the next few months. You know, until the days get long and we get lazy again. Here are three conch fishermen heading out into a line of squalls, just a few minutes before dawn:



I had to grab whatever camera was available for that shot, and it was the little Pentax point and shoot. Hence the grainy effect of the small lens in low light. (Did you know that we can tell by the wake that this boat is probably not owned by someone from South Caicos?)

Now, when I say we had work to do on Provo, I wasn't kidding. I haven't even bored you guys with posting photos of all the DIY stuff going on around here over the past month since our return. We've replaced screens, fixed window cranks, worked on the boat, and cleaned most of the termite damage out of the garage. I've taken the opportunity to re-arrange my little workshop while working on my theory of tool tectonics. I also started a floor lamp project that I had intended to post a DIY on but sometimes life has a way of resetting priorities. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. I like John Lennon's quote that "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

For example, on the way home pulling the boat with our little Defender 90, I noticed that the hand brake was no longer working correctly. I had a few days before needing the boat again and decided to fix it. This is the third of these handbrake fixes I've gone through so far, so I guess 'fix' isn't really the right word. Nothing ever really gets fixed here, except for certain financial transactions I have only heard rumored, although with several arrests on the books this month, perhaps now 'rumor' isn't really the right word any more than 'fix'. But back to hardware...

While I had the hand brake apart (the Brits call it a transmission or propshaft brake) I couldn't help but notice that the rear universal joint was well on it's way to iron oxide. Sigh. Good thing I bought four extra universal joints, the last time this happened. Last year.

I used an extra socket in close cooperation with a large hammer to drive the old one out:



And yessir, I think even the most creative of shade tree mechanics would agree that this u-joint is toast. There comes a time when repair is no longer a feasible option. Rust and corrosion aside, there are too many big pieces here, and too few little ones:



I held one of the abrasive Dremel cutting discs up against a piece of hard metal (steel file handle 's sharp corner) to give it a square edge, Then I used that to clean out the snap ring grooves on the driveshaft yokes. They were in pretty bad shape.



And when it's all over, voila. A brand new freshly greased universal joint:



They look so cute when they're young. But check back with me in a year. This u-joint, too, shall come to pass.

While we were showing our friends around the island, Joe had quite reasonably stepped onto one of the folding steps of the other Defender to climb up into the truck. It basically collapsed. I decided there on the spot that this was to be the end of the great maintain-the-folding step fiasco.



It's been an ongoing battle, and I've learned a lot about corrosion, but I don't think people should have to worry about tetanus to ride in our vehicles. It took me the better part of an entire day to get all four steps off the truck. But I did. Sixteen corroded, gummed up bolts to undo. They were so bad they were between wrench sizes. I don't even want to know what Land Rover would charge us for four new ones, and it's immaterial, anyway. I might have to come up with some kind of step. A simple stirrup of stainless tubing might work, but I think having a lot of moving steel parts is pretty much a recipe for a limited lifespan in this climate.

On Friday our friends returned from their little holiday on Pine Cay. We picked them up at Leeward and they stayed with us again while awaiting their flight back to the USA. They wanted to take one last look around before leaving the island and decided to just walk around our neighborhood. We grabbed some cameras and tagged along.

These are the rocks surrounding the entrance to Juba Salina. The TC Islanders call this eroded limestone "iron shore'".



The far entrance, marked by two poles with flashing lights, is the entrance to the Caicos Marina and Boatyard. The entrance to the marina is safe, and about seven feet deep at high tide. The entrance to Juba Salina is not safe, and is probably three feet deep. One would not want to get these two entrances mixed up when bringing one's boat into the marina.



Dooley the Distant was off looking for small animals to terrorize. It's almost like he was playing a game of 'Where's Waldo?" Can you spot him in the middle of this photo?



Perhaps we could call his version "¿Dónde está Dooley?" He's actually pretty easy to spot in reality. He's always a moving object for one thing. And he typically doesn't roam too far away from us. He's afraid he might miss something exciting.

We wandered down the shoreline for a while, and it was very interesting to us to see our little section of island through fresh eyes. This is all stuff we started taking for granted years ago, and rarely look at very closely anymore unless something gets our attention. This has become another of our normal background images. It looks so different when someone else is saying "Oh my GOSH, just LOOK at that! Gimme a camera!". I have to stop myself from spinning around and saying "What? What are you looking at?"

Oh. It was just one of the neighbor's houses and some more of that perfectly clear warm ocean water. Ho hum.



We've got some more good photos of that view taken later in the day, by the way. I'll save those until the end of the post.

While we were snooping around I noticed these little plants that seem to live quite happily with no topsoil or steady fresh water supply. We've had very mixed results with the imported plants that our original landscaping contractor supplied (don't get me started). We are always on the lookout for local flora that looks good, actually likes it here and doesn't require the plant kingdom's version of perpetual intensive care to survive. We found the sea sage by observing the native environment, and it's doing very well at the house. I don't know the name of this little shrub yet. I wonder what it would do if it had regular water. Would it grow large enough to be a hedge between us and the wind? Would it repay our kindness by attacking us with thorns in the manner of bougainvillea and certain relatives? I might just have to find out.



Walking along the shore line we were again reminded of how different things were during the last hurricane. Debris is still scattered along a contour about ten feet above the normal high tide level. We would assume most of this splintered timber was thrown here by Hurricane Irene in August.



The maximum recent high water mark is probably marked by another lost shoe. I wonder if there's any shoreline on earth still unmarked by human footgear.



After dropping Gina and Joe at the airport for their flight home we once again found ourselves walking along the road with cameras in hand. We decided to see if we could get some good sunset photos over the ocean, from a high point with an unobstructed view. See? Our summer laziness is slowly evaporating. It's that time of year.

We were hoping for a good photogenic sunset. The clouds and rain squalls were moving all around us even before we got there. Was there really a time in my life when I believed that this might mean gold and riches just over the hill? Well, for starters, that's the wrong hill. Tropical Leprechauns can't fool ME! Ha. I know there's water on the other side of that hill.



Oh....uh....wait a minute Gringo you dummy. In the tropics, come to think of it, lost gold is usually under water...

Come back, Mr. Leprechaun, please. I didn't mean any disrespect, sir...

In our determination to get a good sunset photo La Gringa brought her DSLR camera and a monopod along, while I carried my trusty pocket point-and-shoot. The difference in the photo quality between the two is rarely more pronounced than when we shoot side by side images of colorful subjects in low light conditions. Just before the rainstorm overtook the afternoon and drove us to seek shelter, La Gringa took this one with her Pentax K-x:



I was a short distance further to the right, toward the middle of the island with my little camera, and taking photos as the rain squalls began to move through. I was hoping for some dramatic lightning photos. Well, not TOO dramatic, of course, but you know what I mean. Boy, the rain in the air between me and the sunset sure wiped out the colorful aspect of it all:



That was probably the last photo we took yesterday before the heavens opened up. I guess I could have finished the post with that one, but I much, much prefer the sunset photo La Gringa took just a few moments earlier:



Gotta give credit where credit is due. Besides, I wouldn't want to annoy a good resource like that.

Whoops.

Too late.

Flotsam, Timbers and Termites

I hope some of you are not yet bored with all our recent West Caicos trips. Because this is another one. Now, we did break it up a little with the previous post about Grace Bay. But right before that, we had taken the skiff back over again. On the previous trip it was windy and we had taken our little sailing kayak over. We've developed a general game plan regarding boats. On windy days the skiff beats us like rented mules if we go fast, and tosses up and down like a cork if we go slow. But the Hobie is a fun scoot when there's between 10 and 20 knots of wind. Traveling at ten to twelve miles per hour in a skiff can be boring. It's not so boring in a plastic kayak when your posterior is at water level. Really.

On flat calm days with no wind the Hobie becomes more of an exer-cycle than a sailboat, while the skiff skips over flat water like a flat stone. We'd been waiting for a calm day to finish our little mission.



We have been looking for what Dr. Don Keith has called "Maravedi Cove" because of the ancient Maravedi coin found just sitting there on the rocks. Like it had fallen out of a pirate's pocket when he went skinny dipping. I know I've already told you about all that. This story piqued our interest in coves. There are other stories about the French pirate hiding in a cove here and ambushing treasure ships. No kidding. This is an interesting place to us. Practically in our back yard, yet only accessible by boat. Perfect place for a couple of old gringos to explore. Well, one old gringo, with a couple of younger assistants.

The kayak limits us as to what we could reach in a day, and still get back to Providenciales before dark. We think that one of the coves we saw on that trip is probably the one where the coin was found..... BUT those coves near the Molasses Reef development are not all the coves on West Caicos. There were a few we didn't get to on the sailing trip. We needed the skiff. So we loaded up some refreshments and the dog and headed toward the appropriate cloud bank. Who needs GPS?

There was one stop we had to make before we continued on to West Caicos. Just a few minutes out of South Side Marina we noticed Dooley getting agitated. He seemed to indicate that he knew where there was a rock shaped exactly like a fire hydrant on one of the little uninhabited cays on the way. We decided to humor him. We encourage him to let us know these things.

We pulled into the lee of the little beach and Dooley swam ashore to conclude his business. He's pretty finicky about location. He then wanted to swim around for a while. Not uncommon for him.

I was playing with the video, and watching his shadow on the sand bottom below him as he swam. I also wanted to show some of his concerned readers that he does, indeed, swim just fine without a life jacket. We make him wear that mostly because it makes it easier to grab him when he falls overboard. And it would make it easier on him all around if he did fall off the boat while we were doing 30 mph.



Aiming for the proper cloud mass got us to the part of West Caicos that we were most interested in exploring on this trip.



After our last little sailing trip to West Caicos searching for Marevedi Cove, we felt we had found the spot where that old coin was found after sitting there for a few hundred years. BUT we had also seen several coves on the Google Earth satellite image down around the southernmost end of West Caicos. If you look at this image below, you can see some indentations down there at the bottom right corner. The ones on the south eastern shore of the island face that very shallow reef just a loong swim off the island. Not a lot of bathymetry data, is it.



See where the little shipwreck symbol is up there on the beach, right in the middle of the chart? We decided to start there, of course, and work our way south down the beach at least as far as the tip of the island.

In the years we've been here there have been at least two incidents where wooden sloops full of Haitian refugees have hit this reef and come to grief. People and debris from a boat hitting here would naturally head for West Caicos. The wind and current are in that direction. It's the only land in sight. It's the only chance. West Caicos is famous locally for the native shark population. We think these conditions have always existed here, so of course we wanted to look at what this part of the island was like. We wanted to see what shipwrecked people would be forced to try to swim or float to. Not only in 2012, but in 1600. So we went to take a quick look.

We intersected the beach right about at the middle of the top edge of that chart photo. Looked like great beachcombing right from the start.



We went into putt putt mode, with the motor raised six inches straight up on the jackplate and tilted until the skeg was just about the level of the bottom of the boat. We can move around in about a foot and a half of water like that. We can plane in less, but we like to look in the shallows.


It's nice to have a broad band of this water to drive the boat over. When the bottom is rocky or reefy, it becomes nerve wracking trying to determine how shallow something is because of the exceptional water clarity. And it is almost always deeper than it looks. That doesn't stop the heart palpitations when you suddenly see a coral head going below you at 40 mph when it's too late to do anything about it. Smooth sand under a boat is relaxing.

Except to Dooley the Diligent, of course. He doesn't do mellow relaxing very well. He's either asleep, or he's not and he runs full scale from one extreme to the other. Not a contemplative dog. Terriers like action.

This works out okay, because he's definitely another set of eyes on board. And he's particularly interested in fish, of any size, shape, or temperament. He likes to bite barracudas and talk with dolphins. So he really gets alert when he spots a fish.



...and in this case he had spotted what we think were a couple of small sharks basking in the sandy shallows. Took a few seconds to shift the camera from still shot to video, because I knew a still shot would just show another blur in the water. We needed motion..



I'm not 100% sure what kind of fish they were. They were about the size of a decent barracuda but they swam more like sharks, I think. Barracuda don't put so much body motion into it. They're more short tail flip. Quick acceleration. Sharks kinda sashay along with a more sinuous motion. At least, in my observation. Did you know what us east Texans call a 'sashay' is actually from the verb (or noun) chassé, which is a gliding dance step? Blame it on the Two Step.

We continued on down the beach to the south to where that wreck is marked on the chart. You can see what that refers to off in the middle distance here:



This was such a nice day, I thought we'd try to give you an idea of what it's like to just be slowly motoring along, looking at the beach. Looking for anything interesting. Does this help visualize what's shown on the chart?



We dropped our anchor right next to the wreck and gave the crew shore leave. Except for a few birds distantly wondering about our lunch plans, it felt like we had the whole island to ourselves. Nice view of our 'home cloud', too.



The wreck itself appears to be an old grounded freighter or barge. It's pretty hard to tell without doing some digging. Whatever it was, it was big enough to have a truck on board.



I just now noticed the large fish in the water out past the wreck. I wonder if it followed us.

The entire beach in both directions looks like some version of this:



It's a huge mass of debris stretching for miles. Seaweed cushions and displays everything from enough bamboo to build a substantial shelter to big hunks of timber and entire tree trunks from some river on some continent. Somewhere.

This could have come from a lot of places. Honduras. Mexico. Bahamas. Africa. Guyana. I wish I knew more about tropical wood. The Haitians use a lot of these 'knees' in building their sloops. Maybe this was a reject. Or an escapee, that ended up its days on a distant, deserted beach instead of as a structural element in a sloop full of desperate people. A hull designed to last only long enough to sail 130 miles into the trade winds. They would both sure have some sea stories to tell, though.



And of course there's plastic. And metal objects. And shiny things and dead things, and this is just the stuff you can see on top of the piles. Some is easier to get to than others. This fishing net float is now on my desk.



There is a lot of interesting "stuff" here. This is the stretch of sand that Preacher refers to as "Flea Market Beach". The prevailing winds and currents sweep in from the open Atlantic to the east, and the Caribbean immediately to the south. Things that float pile up. Every tide makes some changes. Storms make major deposits and completely rearrange all the display.

I always tend to start trying to think like Robinson Crusoe when I find myself on a beach like this. We saw enough bamboo alone to build a three bedroom home and detached garage/workshop. I was actually looking at this potential barbeque grill ...



When I noticed the size of the knot under the gas valve.

Easily distracted at my age, I totally relegated the BBQ pit to my faulty short term memory and followed the new and exciting Big Rope. Sometimes I feel like a crow who just spied a handful of shiny broken bits of discarded Christmas decorations.



Of course once Dooley the Detective figured out that I was interested in taking photos of the rope he had to come confiscate it. Or guard it. Or whatever it is that makes him want to be right in the middle of whatever I am looking at. Is there a psychology term for that? I've always thought of it, mentally, as more or less some 'obnoxious dog syndrome' But hey, I'm a total layman in these things.

Anyhow, while he was deciding what to do with HIS new rope, I thought that at least he could provide some photographic perspective.



He left when I told him it was his new leash. Something about going for a swim to wash the sand out of his hair. And eyes. And nose. And ears. This dog really gets into beach combing.

We saw a lot of driftwood type things of course. This is really the kind of thing I am interested in. I see something like this, for example, and start thinking about standing it upright, bringing out the wood with tung oil, and bolting it through the bottom of a piece of limestone and calling it.... something. Not sure what. A piece of driftwood on a rock. Now I feel silly, having told you that but hey I still think it would look cool on a patio or something. There is a lot of texture here. The grain would look pretty cool with the wet look tung oil would give it. It's a good idea to get a coating of some kind on wood here. More on this later. Trust me.



We walked down maybe two hundred meters of beach, and saw enough stuff to keep someone busy picking through debris and flotsam and jetsam and junk for years. There is a lot of just trash, of course. Mostly trash.

When one of us saw something deemed interesting from that individual's perspective we would stop and do some digging.



Or poking or grabbing and yanking. These are all highly developed techniques, of course. Next time, we need to bring a.) sensible shoes or boots and gloves, b.) something to dig with. Perhaps a few basic demolition tools.

I did grab a couple pieces of salvageable mahogany, there on the seaweed. I thought I would take those home and see if something came to mind.



And of course, plastic shoes. I don't know what the half-life of these things is. They are everywhere. Along with empty plastic water bottles. I know, I know.... same old rant.



When the sun hits a treasure and it glints just right, I go right back from badger to crow mode. Shiny metal! Must have it! Well, 316 stainless steel isn't quite the same as gold. Until you really, really need a piece of good reliable hardware. These stainless bolts weren't the cause of this little disaster. They held firm.

But I wouldn't bet against gold being involved as well.

It's when lead comes into the story that things start going downhill fast. Heavy metals are problematic. Especially at high velocities.



We were pressed for time, as we wanted to see the rest of this shoreline before we had to skedaddle back to Providenciales before dark. No lights on the skiff but that's not the issue. The issue is running into things in the dark. I'd do it on a full moon and calm night, though. Might be a lot of fun, come to think of it.

As luck would have it, we spotted a fairly freshly gutted sloop up on the beach well above the high tide mark. I'd be willing to bet that this was a parting gift from Hurricane Irene. We really had spent more time than we planned playing in the garbage, so we just had to mark this as a destination, and excuse, for our next trip over. We'll plan to get some close up and inside photos of how a Haitian sloop is put together. Future post in the making. But for now we just kept motoring. Sadly, these leaky escape pods are not all that uncommon here. Nobody knows how many never make it across the deep ocean between here and Hispaniola. They don't file float plans or fill in visa applications.



This is the point where the beach stops and the rocks begin. You can see that fairly well on the chart up above. On the chart, it looks like this is open water allowing what's called Lake Catherine on the maps to be open to the ocean. It doesn't really look like that these days. What it does look like is an excellent spot for a boat ramp, when the wind is right.



And there are several mysterious and interesting looking structures just through the trees in that photo. There is also a pile of rusting machinery. Heavy machinery. We have asked around about the origin and history of these five armed, arched, space-age (circa 1970-ish) looking buildings. We've heard some stories, but don't yet know the correct set. We've heard both sides of the drug war were involved, that Trujillo from the Dominican Republic tried to buy the island, that this was just a construction camp for the people who built the landing strip. We don't know, yet. This is a long way from the new Molasses Reef development on the other end of the island. But it might warrant some exploration on a future trip, too. Maybe on the same trip when we come back to check out the construction of that sloop. If we keep it to two objectives and keep Dooley and I from digging on the beach, we have a chance of fitting it all into one day.



I realized about here that maybe a Google Earth image would be a good idea. This is better than the chart to show you some things, but both the chart and this image are years old. This shows you the reef, the beach, the rocks, the "ramp" where that photo above it was taken.

Oh, and the little coves that caught my attention. These might have been the nearest sheltered spots to take a boat and keep it off the beach if the winds were right. That wouldn't be often, but who knows. We thought it worth a look. Or maybe to be precise, it was good enough excuse to go look.

We put a lookout on the bow as we nudged up into that area I marked "cove" on the satellite image.



I didn't get the impression that this was a likely spot to choose to go ashore. Just too steep, and the beach isn't that far away. I wondered if Dooley might see some reason to pull a boat close to the rocks here.



We were keeping an eye on the time and weather, as usual. We still had time to head down to what is almost certainly the southwestern most point of land in the entire nation. Sounds grandiose, doesn't it? This is like the equivalent of Land's End in England. South East West Caicos. Wonder if Oliver North was ever here...



The stretch of beach heading up to the left (west side) in that photo is supposedly the site of a fossil reef. Lots of fossilized, stone sea life. I bet you know what I am going to say next, right? yep. Future Blog Post!! hey it isn't always easy to come up with something new here. And remain wholesome, cheerful, sane, and un-incarcerated. Oh, and I left out educational and with redeeming qualities. Fossils will be more fun than "how sand is made" or "clouds 101". Not as much fun as the care and feeding of planetary gears, though.

Another of the nice things we like about running over to West Caicos is that on the way back the sun is not in our eyes. When we head up to the east as we often do, it's very difficult to see coming back late in the day into the blinding sun. Coming this way, of course, it's behind us and no problem at all. It even makes for some decent photos sometimes.



This was a peaceful trip back, just the way we like it. I mean, exciting trips have their place in life, for sure, but there is exciting and then there is exciting, you know? We've learned to be the kind of people who really hope not to have interesting flights. Peaceful is good.

We thought you might like to see that scene in motion:



It really wasn't as late as the light in this photo would appear. The sun was behind a thick cloud and the auto exposure on the camera did this. I liked it, anyhow.



I thought of a bunch of captions for this photo of Dooley, but in the end just decided to show you what he is doing about thirty seconds after insisting to be allowed ashore. Yep, he sits here and keeps one eye on me and the boat, and the other eye on La Gringa backing a Land Rover and boat trailer down to the 'ramp'. He is officially on guard duty here:



Now, before I go into the next part of this post, I wanted to show you those two pieces of mahogany I picked up on the beach. Been soaked for eons in salt water. Should be pretty pickled, right? I thought so, too. And then over the past month my education in these matters got a little upgrade.



Here's what happened. We took a vacation. We went to the USA for three weeks, and did a camping trip from Dallas to northern Colorado. Had a heck of a good time. We took scads of photos but I'm not sure why. They have no place on a tropical blog. None of you guys want to look at photos of snow. Yes, snow, in October. We were all quite surprised, and that leads into another story in itself. But enough about that. Of all those photos I'll just put one quick one up to let you know how very very much contrast we experienced. And to be sure there's no misunderstanding, NO this is not in the Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies.



Okay to be fair here, I should say that this next section is ugly. It's not exactly DIY, but it leads into a DIY. For those other handyman wanna-be's out there, you might check the photos here because I got into a DIY that I am pretty proud of. It might be something you can use.

For everyone not interested in DIY, I hope you enjoyed the tropical island stuff. This next bit is also tropical island stuff, too. It's some of that which goes along with living here.

First off, remember the mahogany? I stuck that next to a pile of miscellaneous junk piling up in the corner of my garage. An area where I put pieces of wood, pipe, pvc, that I think I might need in the ongoing performance of life here. It's a mess, and I fully intended to re-organize this whole area. I left the mahogany leaning there, and we took off to the USA.

Three weeks later I opened up the garage to find all these termite tunnels everywhere. Across the floor, up the wall, around and under. I started tearing into it before I remembered to grab a camera, so the photographic record of all this isn't that good. This is that 2x3" timber:



All those trails on the floor were to the part of this that contacted the concrete. And they spread out from there in several other directions.

This is where they came off the top of the mahogany and over into some of my other wood supplies. To call them 'little buggers' at this point... well... let's just pretend that was the worst I said about them. I do confess to some evil thoughts, though. Who am I kidding.
I went on a killing rampage.



They crossed the floor, went up the back of my workbench, even set up camp on pieces of wood I had trimmed off the corners of La Gringa's Tortilla Mashing T'ingum!!



I discovered some things. They will cross anything, but won't eat treated wood or through paint or stain. Just raw, untreated stuff. In this case they went for the light wood I used inside the tortilla making whatchamacallit. I think it might be poplar. Some smooth white wood. They ignored the red oak, and seemed to prefer mahogany over casuarinas.

This is a one inch diameter "hardwood dowel", whatever wood that is. Beech, or birch perhaps? They had just started on it when we got home. Sheesh.



I'm going to shorten this up a little and get to the point here. I pulled everything out of that corner of the workshop and started to clean it up and reorganize it. I took the workbench and scrap rack I built outside and decided to paint them white, so I could see any future sneaky termite tunnels easier. It's something I've been wanting to do, anyhow.

I had some white exterior deck paint left over from the construction of the house. And stashed up under my workbench, a nice airless paint sprayer that was totally unused. Still in the original box. La Gringa had bought this about ten or twelve years ago for a planned project long ago and far away. It never even got opened. I was the first person to touch this paint sprayer since the day it was purchased. It got brought down here with our household stuff in 2005. It has been tucked away for six years here, completely out of the elements. You must wonder why I am setting this up like this. You'll see in a second.

I unpacked my new old paint sprayer, read the destruction manual even though I know real men don't read manuals. I filled it with paint, ran the power cord and started painting the underside of the workbench. First thing I noticed was that this thing made a LOT of noise. I didn't remember them being that noisy. The second thing I noticed was the sudden and total lack of noise. Yep, it stopped dead after about twenty seconds. I got exactly this far along:



I had to believe that this was something simple. A clogged thingamabob. A de-convoluted whatchamacallit. I mean, this was untouched, inside a plastic hard case, which was inside a cardboard outer package, which was tucked under a workbench, inside a garage. I kinda figured the whole issue of warranty wouldn't come into it, and opened it up.

The first thing I noticed was that what I suspect must have once been something like thick red rubber O-ring shock mounts had turned to a dry paste. "Aha! (thinks I) That explains the excruciating buzzing noise.

I then worked my way through the circuits in a very general manner and discovered that the electricity wasn't getting past the trigger switch. I wired past that, and discovered that while power was getting to the speed control board, nothing was coming out of that to run the electromagnet that drives the piston that pumps the paint that Jack built. Whoops, sorry, wrong fable.

So in a nutshell the size of a medium coconut, this is what I found:



We weren't too happy about getting about 20 seconds use from a 'new' Wagner sprayer, but hey what can ya do. We went to the local store that sells these kinds of things. Thinking to just buy a new one. Well.... no, come to find out, that wasn't an option. Nothing like that in stock. Not for less than about $ 150 anyhow. Hey I haven't needed one for six years. I don't want a new one.

Now it became a challenge. And this is the part I wanted to show you. Finally. I took the little problems on one at a time. First, the shock mounts. I noticed that there were little pegs molded into the sprayer case, that held the vibrating pump assembly in suspension between these shock mounts. I found a stainless 1/4-20 bolt was just about the same general size as the peg. A little smaller, which I figured was a good thing.



I filled the cup for the former shock mount with a high temperature black RTV silicone. I coated the bolt with silicon grease and sank it into the RTV filled shock mount cup:



Did you know RTV stands for "Room Temperature Vulcanization"? It means that it sets up and turns to silicone rubber in ambient conditions. I've been using this stuff for thirty years and never bothered to look it up. I just thought RTV must be French for 'makes your eyes water' or something.

I let the silicone set up and then just easily unscrewed the bolt. It left a greasy threaded hole in the now vulcanized silicone, which just fit tightly on the mounting peg. While that was setting up I clipped the leads off the useless control board. This thing just gave me five different pump speeds. I figure these things always end up getting run at full blast anyhow, in the end, so I just wired it up permanently on the full power position. I didn't plan to use this for any fine detail work. I have an airbrush for that, but have come to terms with the fact that I'm not the kind of artist that needs a fine brush of any kind. In fact, people that know me normally take paint brushes away from me if they see me in possession of one. As a painter, I'm a decent mechanic.

I flipped the motor over and poured another shock mount on the other side. After that cured and I soldered or crimped or shrink tubed all the places that needed any of that done, I put it back together. I wired a toggle switch to where the trigger used to be, and here we have it. Something that was headed for the dump a couple hours earlier is now Island-ized.



I now use my thumb to flip it on and off, until I can find some kind of push button switch to replace this with.



And does it work?

Heck yeah. The bench is done and the bottom shelves and the little pipe/scrap rack are next.



And that's the end of the DIY section! Hurrah! I know some of you will appreciate that one. And I was just so... so inordinately pleased with myself on the shock mounts that I just had to tell SOME body. I showed Dooley and he yawned. La Gringa expects this kind of behavior from me and isn't that easy to impress anymore..... so I told you.

Why is this relevant to living in the tropics? Well, this started when I was opening the door to the garage to start trying to figure out why the clutch on the Land Rover didn't work after sitting for three weeks. Opening the door revealed the termite damage. Fixing the termite damage included painting the workbench. Painting the workbench needed fixing the paint sprayer. No place to buy parts for that here, and well, you know the rest.

I had to fix the Land Rover before I could drive it to the store to look for another paint sprayer. I replaced the clutch master cylinder and slave. I am sparing you that one. Out of a number of unplanned projects dropped on me after our absence, I thought this DIY was the best.

And there has been more, but this post is way, way too long. I thought about breaking it up into smaller posts. Termites tell me smaller posts are easier to digest. But finally I decided to cram as much of it as I could into one post and get caught up.

I will post one other little DIY that is working surprisingly well. I took a piece of the steel rail that used to be part of the electric garage door openers that never worked. I ground a hook on it, and epoxied it into a piece of dowel that is glued into a piece of bamboo. You wouldn't believe how good this little sucker is for digging weeds from between our concrete patio pavers. I no longer have to bend over to yank each weed by hand. This sped it up by a factor of four.



And to our reader who told us about their friend's new house on Juba Salina, is this the one?



We love that design. I have been looking at several versions of that one, in fact. If we ever built another house here, it would incorporate a lot of what we have learned building ours. And it would be a lot like a bigger version of this with some modifications.

Well, that's about it for this post. I hope we are essentially caught up. We don't have any plans to leave again for the winter, so should be here to watch the cruising sailboats come and go. And meantime, I've discovered that with proper fine tuning I can cut limestone with a pressure washer!!


La Gringa took one look at me and instead of wanting to hear what I had discovered about pressure washers and limestone, she insisted on me testing the outside shower. Personally. Immediately. In the middle of the afternoon. Go figure.

Oh yes, we have lots of posts planned going forward.

And by the time the next post rolls around, the sunset will be in the ocean again. Right where it looks best in the winter.