Some Ideas needed...

I was out at the house site yesterday. The crew has been removing scaffolding, etc. cleaning up the site. We are getting ready for them to start moving dirt and rocks...well, actually, it's pretty much all rocks. We need to build two driveways, one on either side of this garage/workshop:



We also would like to come up with some way to soften the visual impact of this blocky garage sticking out from the hillside. We were thinking of having a bunch of native rock boulders placed on both sides, but that still doesn't hide the sheer face of it. It was not originally supposed to look like this, by the way. The whole house got moved to the left, and it put the garage much more downslope than originally planned. Be that as it may, we are stuck with it for now.

I was thinking a couple of murals on that lower "framed" looking section. (It's full of dirt under there, up to the floor level). La Gringa likes the idea of palm trees, etc. Any thoughts appreciated.

We are also looking for ideas on what to put on the top of it, temporarily, with "temporarily" possibly being a few years. La Gringa wants a Tiki Bar. I am thinking something of massive driftwood. Again, any ideas?

Speaking of La Gringa, I thought some of her fellow bad back sufferers would appreciate a photo of what is helping her immensely, the inversion table:



It's her new twice-daily hangout:



I keep trying to make jokes about bats, and sloths...but she just doesn't think those are funny. Maybe a lower back injury does something to your sense of humor...

Oh...we saw an American Kestrel soaring over the new house. I was thinking of the name "Kestrel" for the house, but didn't know if it was appropriate. It now appears that it might be.

Kitchen View Finally Revealed!!

I know people are probably tired of seeing photos of the new house. And eventually we will be settled in and be taking photos from the house instead of taking photos of the house. But please understand it's a pretty big deal to us still. Been a long time in the works.

Yesterday we stopped by and found that the builder has removed the three 20 foot containers that have been on the site since the beginning. For the first time, we are able to see what the views from windows in the front of the house will be. This is what we will see standing at the front door when it's open:



Still needs a lot of landscaping, but it's going to be all right. Eventually.

And this is one of the places I was thinking of putting a web cam, either here but just outside the kitchen window,



or outside La Gringa's office window. The views are pretty much the same, but we had not seen them with those containers in the view.

This will be an excellent place for a video feed, though, for people who want to tap into a link on this blog and see what the sunset is like. There will be people bonefishing there, kite boarders on the far cove, and people on the road in addition to the sunsets. I think it might work.

Standing out on the far corner on the top of the garage, the front of the house looks totally different. You can see where the containers were sitting, right in front of the front door:



although I think the term "front door" might be a little misleading on this particular house.

Now we have a little engineering challenge, the driveway has to swoop down from where the right hand corner of that patch of crushed rock is in the photo above, down to meet up with the left corner of the garage:



The drop on the other side of the garage, from the 10 foot drive-through door, is even bigger. We are thininking of bringing in some boulders to act as a retaining wall, and to soften up the stark silhouette and blend more into the hillside.

Joseph was finishing up the glass blocks for the outside shower yesterday:



Actually we found out his name is Jean-Louis Joseph, but everybody calls him Joseph. We have found that very few people here seem to use their original given names. And we hear a lot of names that are totally new to us, as well. Names we have never heard before. It's pretty diversive down here.

There's another landing to be poured under that utility room door. And I have to install a "doggie door" in the bottom of it. Big enough to allow a panicked Jack Russell Terrier with a big mouth to dive inside to safety, and yet small enough to keep a pack of irate four-legged plaintiffs out.

One of our new neighbors-to-be stopped by to chat with La Gringa, and I took the customary pergola photo while watching a squall approach from 20 miles away across the Caicos Bank:



We found out that our neighbor, Bob, was a professional guitarist for country and blues bands for many years. I guess I better get to practicing on this new fiddle La Gringa gave me for Christmas.

Today I hope to get some wiring work done on the boat, so should have some decent marina photos to post later.

Boat trip for M&M and Haitian Sloop photos

The weather was perfect again yesterday afternoon, and we were looking for an excuse to take the boat out for a short run. We don't usually need much of an excuse, and we had a couple of acceptable goals.

Our new expat friends down here, M&M, just moved into a new home during the New Year's holidays. We thought it would be nice to get them an image of their new place from the water, since they are not boat people ( yet). So La Gringa, Dooley Demento and I took a couple cameras and got out on the water again. We took some photos of their house and a few other things:



Their cottage is easy to spot from the water with that distinctive blue roof. Its a nice two bedroom with a great wraparound porch, steps from the water.



M&M are from the UK, and we met them quite by chance at the Conch Festival back in November. We found out they were building a home not far from ours. Since then we have become friends. They are now living in the house with the blue roof. In their long term plan, this is actually the future guest house of the home they have planned for that property to the left of it in the photo.

Nice plan, build the guest house first and then you have a rent-free place to live while you build the main house. Since we are near-neighbors, we will probably be seeing a lot of M&M in the future. At least we hope to, they are the kind of Brits that give Englishmen a good name.

We cruised down the coast from M&M's and came upon another Haitian sloop, this is very freshly arrived in the TCI:



I read that over the holidays at least five of these sloops made it over from Haiti, each one carrying a hundred and more refugees. One boat made it ashore on Grand Turk, one was intercepted offshore and towed into detention, and three made it to Provo where the passengers "disembarked" at the first opportunity. Too soon for some..as at least one of them drowned.

This boat is still in good shape, for the most part. Mast still standing, the boom is on the rocks, still rigged.



The rudder is even still attached:



The weather was calm, and we brought our boat right up alongside to see what was on the deck.



We found that in their scramble to get off the boat in the dark, and into the bushes to hide from the Immigration police, people left a collection of personal articles on the boat. There are clothes, luggage, a lot of shoes, even burnt charcoal dumped out on the deck.



(We got pretty close to this one.)

The burnt charcoal puzzled me, until I realized someone probably had a small hibachi or similar to cook fish on the trip over. Perhaps they saved the charcoal until the last minute, and then grabbed the stove on their way into hiding.

With two of us taking photos, we were bound to get some usable shots, and we took a lot of pictures. La Gringa took this one of the mast head on the sloop.



I was thinking how these 120 or so desperate people put to sea in mid winter winds to make the trip to the TCI. It's dangerous. People die on this trip, quite often. They have to sail about 150 miles upwind, and we get some nasty waves here in the winter. There were 14 foot swells just a week ago. Looking at that mast head, I realized that the total cost of all the rigging on this boat is probably less than one decent stainless steel snap shackle for a modern cruising sailboat.

Here is a photo of the view as we left the S/V "Philomise # 2", sitting in what I am pretty sure will be her final destination. In truth, it was her only destination. Getting a boat load of people from Haiti to the TCI one time was the whole purpose of this boat. It was built for that one trip. And it made it, and is now finished.



We have heard that the Haitians pay $ 1,000. each to gamble their lives on these trips. We commonly read about these boats having 150 people on them. Would you build one of these boats and run it 150 miles, full of people, for $ 150,000? The safety equipment on board is some cellular phones.

Then you fly back to Haiti and do it again. How many boats can you build in a year...because there are about 8.5 million Haitians, and a large number of them want out. I think if you could knock together one of these boats every couple of months or so, it would be a pretty good living by most standards.

Leaving the sloop we just cruised around the area. We looked at some of the sea caves the ocean has carved into the limstone here:



Most of the small cays here have names. This is a tiny one, and it's called Cooper Jack Rock:



Since it was a beautiful day, we wandered around investigating anything we could see on the way back to the marina. We took a close look at some coral heads, for example. These are easy to spot on a nice sunny day, they first show up as dark patches in the water:



Then when you get close, you can see the bright coral growing on the tops:



And from directly overhead, the structure is pretty clear:



We drifted the boat over one to just get a feel for how close to the surface the coral head came. In this case, we were in 11 feet of water, and the depth reading over the top of the coral head was 3.8 ft, just after high tide. We have seen others within 3 feet of the surface. And they are uncharted.

On the way back into Leeward we stopped to take a look at "Bird Rock". This little cay also is full of sea caves:



I wouldn't be surprised if it's not essentially hollow, from what I have seen around here.

"Bird Rock" is a navigational landmark. It stands by itself just off the southern entrance to Leeward-Going-Through. It has a solar-powered navigational light on the top of it. And, of course, it usually has a bird.



Usually an Osprey, like this one.

Back on the Boat....finally...

Today all the pieces fell together for us to get the boat away from the slip for the first time in three weeks. The weather has turned just about perfect, we had some reasons to vacate the house for a few hours, and most importantly, La Gringa's lower back issues made a major turn in a good direction. I stopped by the marina to check on the boat late yesterday, and the first thing I saw was this scary apparition approaching the slip:



Yep, Preacher got the catamaran launched. Keddie, Preacher, and Dwayne had spent the entire day fishing out near French Cay. No radio, some gauges still don't work, the bilge pump is still an unknown, but it runs. So these three packed up a case of Heineken and some bait and went fishing....20 miles offshore. And they filled that large cooler on the bow plus a five gallon bucket with fish.

So now, with Preacher's ride in the slip next door, we think we know the final configuration of our new slip at Walkin's Marina for a while:



Makes it a little bit trickier getting out of the slip, but nothing drastic. We sure could use another section of floating dock between the boats, though.

This is a view across the tops of the fences at the conch farm, right before sunset:



Thats the view standing on our bow at the slip and looking straight ahead.

So this morning, La Gringa and I decided to grab the best weather in weeks and take the boat out. While fueling up, we watched some Filipino guys catching (what we would consider) bait with a castnet off the fuel dock. The guy knew what he was doing with that net:



Dwayne was yelling at them that there is no fishing allowed in the marina, and they would just nod and smile and agree with that, and then throw the net again. A mechanic we were talking to, Derek, told us they don't use the pilchards as bait. According to him, they fry them up and eat them whole as is. I guess that cuts out a lot of time and expense in how you get your protein.

There's a simplicity to it. No boat, fuel, lures, braided line, rod, reels, hooks, bait....just a man with a castnet that can feed himself and his family with no other tools whatsoever. That's basic.

We scooted on out of Leeward and trolled for about two hours outside the reef. Despite switching lures several times, and seeing bait jumping on the surface, we didn't get so much as a nibble. The dog essentially gave up on us as fishermen and worked on his tan, catnapping on the stern when he usually keeps an eye on the rods:



I would say he is pretty comfortable on a boat, for a breed famous for being hyper. (We don't use the term "cat napping" in front of him. He's real sensitive about that c-a-t word.. We can't even say "See-Ay-Tee" either. He knows that one, too.) And he might look comatose in the photo, but don't be fooled. If one of those lures gets hit there will be daylight under that dog before we even hear the clicker go off.

Other than it being a glorious day on the water, we didn't see much. Passed close by a large Hawksbill turtle:



He seemed to be just dozing on the surface. He didn't dive when we went by. Sometimes when we see turtles we have noticed the fishing is good. Not today. So much for that optimistic superstition.

After two hours we had enough sun, and with no fish we headed back to Leeward. Two hours of sun down here at mid-day in January will fry you if you haven't been in it recently. Every time we go through Leeward these days, it seems like there have been huge changes. There is a dredge pumping sand ashore while deepening the channel. Only a few weeks ago this beach was about three or four feet above sea level:



And now its a huge mound of sand maybe ten feet high and growing by the day. I cannot help but wonder what kinds of things lost overboard in the last five hundred years are now buried under all that sand.

This is what the progress looks like as of today on the thing that is replacing all the businesses that were formerly Leeward Marina:



Here's a slightly better view of the Hon. Dr. Michael Misick' house at Leeward-Going-Through. He is the Premier of the TCI.



Once back ashore, we had some more time to kill so decided to grab lunch at the Tiki Hut over at Turtle Cove. It's one of the few places I could think of where we could park the Land Rover with the dog in it, and keep an eye on him while we selfishly snacked on Lobster Quesedillas without offering him any. He hates it when we do that. He was in there in the truck, parked next to the "Undersea Explorer":



We noticed this poster at the Tiki Hut, a sure sign that the season is picking up down here now:



I wish we were consistent enough at fishing to enter a tournament, but we are a long way from being willing to bet $ 500 entry fee on it. Heck, today we couldn't even catch a barracuda. And we ALWAYS catch barracuda.

We noticed a couple cool benches out front of the restaurant that I had not seen before. They are made out of wake boards. Probably common up in some places, but new to us. Gave me some ideas:



The dog behaved himself, surprisingly. Except for a few anxious moments when a woman walked by with a dog that looked a lot like a cross between a hyena and a dingo. Dooley went nuts. I think he was just barking at it because he thought it was ugly. It's hard to tell what he's thinking when he has to sit in a truck and watch us eat lunch. He broods. He gets moody. He mumbles vague threats, And he is more than capable of taking it out on ugly dogs, if he can't find a cat to insult.

That was pretty much our day, nothing really momentous except La Gringa was feeling well enough to give the boat a try. It went well, and we might try a bit more tomorrow. We got her an inversion table, and it's made the difference to her back problems. Yippee! We got our sea legs back. Now we need to go find some fun stuff to do and photograph.

Turtle Cove, second part

I had intended to post some more photos of the boats in Turtle Cove Marina this weekend,and then got sidetracked by our house visit. I hope it's understandable that we are somewhat preoccupied by the prospect of finally moving in after over two years of planning and watching every single step of the process from the first bulldozer day to applying the paint. even before the bulldozer, we spent six months in the planning, design, and contractor bidding processes. It's been a long haul. And it's not over yet but it's getting real close.

Now,back to our Friday visit to Turtle Cove, here is an image of the dining area and bar of the Tiki Hut restaurant:



The Tiki Hut is a local favorite, and is just one of the restaurants at the marina. I have already mentioned SharkBite, and there are several others. I think we have tried all of them that are directly on the water, except the Banana Boat. We just haven't gotten around to it, yet.

The boats at the marina this week include this beauty, the M/Y "Patience":



The home port for "Patience" is Bikini. That must have been a fun trip, from the far Pacific to the TCI. I think I can honestly say that I have never seen the Bikini, or Marshall Island flag before. At least not that I know of. I am curious about the boat, of course. I did a Google search on "Bikini Atoll" and read this:

"Today, while the people of Bikini have yet to resettle their homeland, the island is populated by Bikini Atoll Divers employees (some of whom are Bikinians), Bikini Project Department construction workers, and some U.S. Department of Energy staff. There is, however, a large population of Bikinians living elsewhere in the Marshall Islands and overseas who hope to have the ability to return to their homeland someday soon. "

So I tried looking up info for the "Patience" and found nothing. I had noted the pennant on the bow said "Marlow Explorer", and searching that brought up an excellent website for the yacht manufacturer, but no info on "Patience" herself. Oh well. Another of life's little mysteries, for now.

Here's a stern view:



showing that great looking flag. I also noticed the outboard on that RIB tender. Man, that little thing must fly!!

One of the largest boats in Turtle Cove at the moment is the 134 foot "Bossy Boots":



I read online that this boat did a stint as a dive boat in the Galapagos. Man, that must be some comfy dive boat.

Another of the larger boats here at the moment is the "SeaQuest":



All I know about it is that it is an 130 ft. Westport,owned by an American. Beautiful boat, and it's pretty humbling to realize that we would have a hard time carrying their forward fender in our little Andros panga. Then again, we don't see their fuel bills, either.

I could not find any info on the American flagged "Nazmar":



But it looks to me like a boat set up to cruise cold waters.

Not all the boats at the marina are the big luxury yachts. There are plenty of smaller sportfishermen and special purpose boats. Many of the smaller ones tie up near the Tiki Hut. I like the attitude on this Mako center console, "Buzz Off":



Here's one of the local fishing charter power catamarans. I believe this is the boat used by "Bite Me" fishing excursions.



The cruising sailboats don't seem to be down here in any abundance yet this season. I am assuming the ones that started heading south from North America are still in the Bahamas, and the boats that spent hurricane season down in Trinidad haven't made it up yet, either. But in another month we would expect to see a few more 40 foot. catamarans tied up next to this local trimaran "Minx":



And of all the boats presently at Turtle Cove, this is the one that caught my imagination more than any other, the motorsailor "Lily May":



The only info I could find online was a reference to a boat of this name as a 38 foot monohull out of Maryland, USA. But there's something about this boat that speaks to me. It's got that whole "Adventures in Paradise" or "Tales of the South Pacific" thing going on. I like the idea of a boat that is comfortable enough to live on, can run under it's own power at a reasonable speed, and can put the sails up when you want some peace and quiet, or to save fuel, or because you are waiting on parts. This would be the type of boat I think we would be most likely to look at if we were not totally enamored of sailing catamarans. It strikes me as the kind of boat someone who likes Land Rovers would appreciate.