Back to Chalk Sound

We woke up to a fresh tropical mango colored dawn last Saturday. It could be called a papaya colored dawn too, I suppose. I'm not too good with some colors, but I definitely know a mango when I see one. And since our sister-in-law recently brought us a nifty new mango coring tool, we've been going through a few of them. Just shy of a number that would make the rain forest activists nervous.

The sky was clear, the wind was brisk and we decided the time had come to take the new kayak for a sail around Chalk Sound to do some more exploring.



The wind is usually calmest at dawn, with 'calmest' being a relative term. We'd been saving Chalk Sound for a day when the forecast was for more wind than we like on the open ocean. We've had the Hobie Tandem Island out in 22 kts of wind and it's a bit exhilarating to be zipping along at 10 knots with your hip pockets at sea level. Especially when the sea thinks your eyes should be at sea level. We like exhilarating, usually. But it helps to be in the mood for exhilarating. Unplanned exhilaration can be daunting. We like daunting, usually.... well... I need to get off this and on to the subject at hand. Sailing Chalk Sound in a kayak.

Chalk Sound is a shallow, protected and completely enclosed little bay on the south side of Providenciales. It's under the approach for the Provo airport and the planes coming in on short final are directly overhead. It's a great spot for small boats like sailboats and kayaks. There is very little power boat traffic and because of all the little islets and rocks, there is always a place to duck out of the wind and weather.

We had been at the Las Brisas restaurant on the shore of Chalk Sound for dinner the night before and that's when we decided to make our second kayak excursion. If you're ever on Provo looking for a good, out-of-the-mainstream restaurant and have transportation (important) we would highly recommend Las Brisas.

And for the cruisers who anchor in Sapodilla Bay, La Brisas is just a short walk from the beach you are looking at. Do it. You won't be sorry.

The water here in Chalk Sound is the most amazing shade of turquoise when the sun is high overhead. We were hoping for some startlingly good pictures. (Aren't we always? )Well, we didn't get them. We had a series of squalls blow through. Made for great sailing but not so good photography. But we did manage to get enough for a blog post.

Dooley the Diligent assumed his rightful position as master of the ship, waterways and life on this planet in general. And any particular place he happens to be specifically. Striking out for new lands, in unmarked waters teeming with treacherous shoals, uncharted islands,



and as we found out over two years ago when we last kayaked here, even some aircraft wreckage.

Dooley the Disturbed was really interested in that broken rock as we went downwind of it. Since this was primarily a 'checking things out' sort of cruise anyhow, we decided to sail over and take a look. Might have a stranded cat or something interesting. You probably wouldn't believe some of the stories we have heard of things that wash ashore on little islands. (We're planning a future blog post on a place we know as "Trash Beach". It's going to be a fun blog to do.)

Now back to last Saturday, we were in an enclosed sound. We managed to zig zag our way all the way across and back this time. The new Hobie Tandem Island sails circles around the inflatable.



To be fair, though, the Mirage inflatable kayak is probably easier to maneuver around and might be faster under pedal power alone. The Tandem Island shines under sail. The inflatable has its other good points, but sailing is marginal.

We ran by the rock Dooley the Disappointed was so interested in. We suspected it was some odor he found interesting. It may have even been that Little Blue Heron standing there just to the right of the bushes:



Dooley's eyesight is not always reliable. He really believes he can see thunder coming, for example. And he challenges buoys. But his senses of hearing and smell are remarkable. He can hear the crinkle of the cellophane on a block of cheese from over a mile away and his nose would certainly alert to any relative of the fried chicken family standing on a rock.

There are dozens of these cool little islands and rocks scattered in bands down the length of Chalk Sound. Many of them are just literally rocks with vegetation growing on them.



We'd hoped for sunny weather (makes the water so nice) and we got some of that. But we also had a string of squalls and strong gusts of wind blowing through . We took a sailing break behind some of the larger groups of islands to dry off a bit. We saw several islands that we thought would be great spots for a picnic or overnight camp. Lots of places where it would be easy to pull kayaks or kayaks into narrow protected micro-harbours between the islands.



We had a new toy to try out on this trip. We picked up one of the little GoPro Hero HD video/time lapse still cameras on our recent trip to Texas. Our experiences with "waterproof" (how does one make a quotation mark drip sarcasm?) point-and-shoot cameras has led us to the point where we are starting to think underwater housings with 0-ring seals are really the only way to keep a camera long enough to learn the menu structure. We expect some nice new videos from this one. I need to fabricate a mount for the top of the mast though. Three hours of the view from this position just wasn't very good. Like driving through a rain storm with a plastic shower curtain over your head.



And here's Dooley the Drenched after being deluged by yet another little squall that had passed a few minutes earlier. I know there are some kayak fans that check this blog from time to time. I had read of people having troubles with breaking rudders on the Tandem Islands. Hobie is coming out with a fix for that. Sailing home goes enormously more smoothly if you have something you can use to replace a broken rudder. The little kayak paddles Hobie supplies with the boat have curved, flexible blades. I replaced one of our paddles with an extensible pole that accepts various fittings on the end. A scrub brush, a gaff and a paddle. The paddle is a lot bigger than the standard Hobie kayak paddle. The blade is straight, meaning it will make a much better rudder in an emergency. And the blade doesn't bend. This is also a good thing.



The pole extends out to about 8 ft. I am hoping this will work as a boat hook to fend off rocks and docks (we have no easily accessible reverse gear) and also as a 'whisker pole' to hold the sail out when running downwind. This was not a day for leisurely downwind experimentation.

After a couple of hours of exploring around, we discovered that if we stayed in the lee of the small island groups the water was much smoother. We tended to use that to our advantage on the trip back to the boat ramp.

We saw even more great picnic spots. We were getting pressed for time, so we didn't go in and explore all of these. We would have had to fold the amas in tight to the boat to do it. We would have to pull the Mirage drives up and use the paddles to get through the shallow spots.

This little area was particularly attractive as a potential picnic site. It's in the group of islands nearest the launch area off of Five Cays Road, making it easy to get to. This area has some water depth, so we did poke our nose in a little to look around.



There's a nice protected cove here. Just right for tying up a boat out of the wind.



Access to the island is fairly easy from this side without much wave action to complicate things.



I was going to explain the name of this cactus, but then I thought it would make more sense to post a link to someone who knows what they are talking about: cactus expert.

If I told you what it's called you might not believe me. I've been known to be unreliable when it comes to humorous names.

Dooley the Distended has a different perspective on plants. Especially when it comes to small trees.



Here's another narrow passage between adjacent islands. The northern edge of Chalk Sound is in the distance:



We did investigate a few of these passages. They are typically shallow with some rocky areas scattered around the soft sand bottom:



If we had gone through far enough, we would see the shallow water deepen again and then turn back into the clear turquoise that the Sound is known for. I took this photo with the zoom cranked up, so it's a bit grainy. I was trying to show you the whitecaps of the breaking waves just a short distance out of the shelter of the rocks.



We heard a roar, and looked up to see the American Airlines flight from Dallas about to land. We know this flight. We were on it ourselves the previous Saturday. If you visit the Turks and Caicos Islands, chances are good that your flight will come right over Chalk Sound right after the wheels come down. It's easy to spot from the air.



Seeing the 2:40 flight landing reminded us that we were running low on time, and still needed to get back to the boat ramp. Dooley was more than happy to call it a day and head for home. So we pointed our little yellow boat east and put the cameras away for a while. We concentrated on sailing. And of course once we were officially done for the day the sun came out and the water was beautiful again.



Back at the ramp I waded ashore to back the trailer up while La Gringa Suprema and Dooley the Distracted kept the boat off the rocks. The ramp experiences are the most worrisome parts of this whole operation. The ramps here..... well.... they vary widely, to the point where some of them are unrecognizable as boat ramps, to the untrained eye. This one is actually pretty good except that its exposed to the wind. There is another more protected ramp just a few hundred feet away but it's a lot steeper, runs over submerged boulders and it was already being used when we returned.



In fact as we were loading our boat we heard a loud noise, and some shouting, and turned to look in time to see a little ramp incident here. Their boats had fallen off their trailer entirely.

There are some big smooth rocks under the water right where the ramp enters the water. That area was where we launched two years ago. It's also where the native sloop Ranger was kept year back. Ranger is the last photo in this post.



We've been really busy since the last post before this one. We've already got enough photos for another two posts at least with more stuff on the horizon. And if I tried to document all the DIY going on right now, that would be several full posts just in itself. So I decided to give everyone a break from the DIY stuff this week. La Gringa is looking into ways we could put the projects on a different site and let people who are interested in the nitty gritty realities of living here have a link. This would let us keep this blog site more uncluttered with photos of greasy axles, busted sat dishes and the never ending maintenance that goes with living in a tropical climate.

The Chalk Sound trip was Saturday. On Sunday we took the new skiff to explore some parts of Provo that we had never seen, including Taylor Bay and Turtle Rock. The weather was a little better and we got some decent photos. We'll most likely be posting that next unless something totally stupendous happens in the meantime.

And while we're in the meantime, here's another one of the La Gringa sunsets:

2nd half of the Underwhelming Post.

I'm still playing catch-up here with yet another minuscule and underachieving post. I've had to leave out a lot of stuff due to the photos lost in the great computer crash of '11. But I do want you to understand that we haven't been just sitting around sipping Pina Coladas down here. Rum, yes definitely, but there's no coconut juice or paper umbrellas in it. Sheesh. We're serious RESIDENTS here by golly. Not vacationers out for a good time.

Kinda scary to realize that this little bitty island is the only place on earth where we are not the tourists now. I better mind my manners.

We haven't had any more of those spectacular sunrises in the past couple of days. Not that I'm complaining about ANY sunrise I am fortunate enough to witness. This one reminded me of something...



I couldn't figure out what. I looked around the yard and saw one of the diabolical Agave family sneering at me. Now, this might be a bit of a stretch, but perhaps this cactus was what was on my mind when I saw that sunrise.



They're not really diabolical. Well, unless you are bending over to pull some weeds and happen to forget that the tips of these leaves are easily sharp enough to sew leather with. And the backs of my legs are no where near as tough as leather, appearances to the contrary. These things will make you bleed. No fooling. You would NOT want to fall out of a tree into one. Good thing we ain't got any trees to speak of. Or it's a pretty safe bet that sooner or later I would fall out of one.

I got a little off topic there. I've got Agave and Aloe Vera on the brain lately. I've been reading about all the good stuff Aloe does, and it grows wild here. And I already knew a lot about Agave. They make the best tequila out of it, for example. It grows wild here, too. More on agave later.

Back to ocean stuff now. Last week I posted some photos of the first half of our second trip in the new skiff. I have now managed to locate the rest of the photos from that trip. This photo mislocation is somehow tied in with me scrambling my hard drive. But we're working through it.

When we left Dellis Cay we came back to Leeward over the Caicos Bank route. What a lot of people here call going 'inside' as opposed to going out between the islands and the near reef on the 'outside'. There are trade-offs to each route between the island of Providenciales and Pine Cay, Parrot Cay, Dellis Cay, and North Caicos. The deciding factor as to which way to go is usually the wind and waves. It's nice to have a choice with a small boat. Boats that draw more than about four feet of water have no choice, they have to go the outside route.

On the way back from Dellis we went by a long time "aid to navigation". This post, or one it replaced, has been here a long time. I think the dark spots in the water are the remnants of other 'markers' that have been here. A few feet on the other side of that post the water depth goes to about a foot. You can see a channel past the light colored shallow water.



When we got back into Leeward-Going-Through we were not ready to stop yet. After months of pedaling and sailing kayaks, it's a real treat to just push the throttle and go. We decided to make a quick pass through the original Leeward Canals to see if anything had changed. You can see that it was near low tide. I thought someone did a nice job here using natural stone to shore up his slip.



Dooley the Dutiful keeps a sharp eye on the surrounding shoreline. He well knows that the leading cause of boat problems is not water, but land.

At least I think he's given up on that canine haiku stuff he was spouting earlier.



These canals haven't changed much since we first came through here six or seven years ago. Some more homes have been completed, but in general there seem to be fewer large boats here than I remember. And I am noticing more local boats being kept in the canal than the seasonal boats with Florida registrations. Like the rest of the world, the Turks and Caicos economy is still slow to dig out of the financial upheavals of the past few years. Speaking of local boats, this is one of the typical local 'conch boats':



I am beginning to pay more attention to the benefits of simplicity in things. Mechanical things, especially. I point out this local boat, of which there are a couple hundred at least, because of the way boats have evolved here. This boat has a small console, motor, and steering. That's about it. Our own recent choice of a skiff has a lot in common with this design. Oh, the hulls are different shapes and we have a couple gadgets on the back, but basically, the concepts are similar. Small, light, shallow draft, simple systems to maintain. That seems to be what works for a lot of life long, experienced sons of sons of boatmen here. Must be some reasons.

Not that we don't like technology. In fact, I have long admired this kind of setup. It's not nearly as common here as it is up in the USA. There are probably reasons for that, too. But I think it sure looks slick:



Back to simplicity and local boats, this is the Beluga. She's a Wharram design catamaran, and from what we have observed this boat has logged more sailing hours than probably any other commercially operated sailboat in the Turks and Caicos. She's a wooden boat, with an outboard that lowers in the middle as auxiliary power. One of the cool things about these boats is that the cross braces are typically attached to the hulls (amas, remember?) with a flexible joint. This allows the two hulls to move over the waves somewhat independently of each other. Watching them from alongside, you can sometimes see them flexing as one hull rides over a swell and then another. I think it's a good idea. Some of the most common failures on rigid fiberglass catamarans are where the hulls attach to the bridgedeck. (The bridgedeck is the flat floor that connects everything.) Making the attachment flexible removes a lot of stresses.



Leaving the canal we immediately decided we had to scoot over and take a look at this beauty. For the record, this is not simplicity in mechanical design. I don't know if you can read the name in the photo, but it's the Perle Noire out of Georgetown, Caymans. That takes boating to a whole nuther level. Especially with diesel fuel presently at just under $ 6 a US gallon here at the moment.



We putt-putted over to the other side of the floating docks here in Leeward to get another view of the 'Black Pearl'. I was reminded of how under-utilized this entire complex has been since day one. It's all tied up in court now, as people figure out who did what with whom, but in the meantime this fantastic marina sits idle day after day. The Perle Noire was the only boat here.



Personally, I would like to see the government of the Turks and Caicos Islands take this marina over and open it to everyone. There are never going to be enough high end pleasure yachts here to fill all these floating obstructions. We could cut the size of the docks in half, open up the waterway, and still be able to accommodate the few big boats that want to come in. But that's just my 2 cents worth. Nobody ever listens to the...

....guy who lost three wheels off his boat trailer on a recent excursion. It's true. I admit it. I screwed up. Again.

Having admitted that, I thought this would be a good time to just enjoy a little zen moment, and unclench my teeth and watch one of La Gringa's short, relaxing videos. Something mellow, like a little jellyfish she spotted at the dock while we were moving the Contender:


(music is “Swept Away” by Armik)

I know I alluded to a rough day launching the Contender in the previous post. Well, this wheel bearing thing was just a part of that day. Pulling that boat with our little Land Rover has always been a white knuckle experience. Not nearly as much fun as it might sound. We had to hitch up and pull the boat down the driveway one more time, to get it over to the marina. We got down our hill without breaking anything. I was relaxing a bit, and we were just about a half mile from the house when La Gringa said "what's that horrible squealing noise?" Well, I couldn't hear it (too many years of diving, gunfire, and rock and roll music) but I figured out from her description that it was probably a wheel bearing about to go. At this point we were down the hill, and I didn't want to unhook, re-hook to the front of the truck, and shove two tons of boat back up the hill. Especially with wheels coming off. So I decided to just go on down to the ramp. Slowly.

Bad move. When we got to the ramp we noticed that our six wheels had turned to five. While at the ramp, five turned to four. We managed to launch the boat, and with the weight off the trailer we managed to get it home on three wheels. The third one fell off as I got it to the house. We found all the wheels, and over the next few days I replaced 12 wheel bearings. I don't want to dwell on this any more.

This is what we saw when we got to the ramp:



I had greased the hubs before parking the trailer some months back, but anything made of steel that sits still here for a few months is pretty much open game for corrosion. As I keep finding out. Oh well. Now I know a lot more about tapered spindles and wheel bearings than I knew a week ago.

Oops, I slipped into the DIY section without the usual warning. So for those who don't care about this aspect of life on a small island, be warned. Most of the rest of this post is about one of the recent little projects that have kept me away from the computer.

I mentioned some time back that I hacksawed the tongue off our brand new boat trailer. That's totally true:



We were leaving for Texas, and I wanted to store it inside the garage. There is a device called a Fulton swinging hitch that very slickly allows one to fold a trailer tongue over and make it all shorter. I tried for about a week to find someone who would ship me a Fulton Hinge, but ran into problems. So I decided to say 'to heck with it!' (gasp!) and make something happen. I ran out of time, anyhow. So I cut the tongue off, closed the garage door, and left it to deal with when we got back.

This is the section I cut off. It's pretty easy to see that either putting a pipe inside it, or another section of square tubing outside it, would sleeve it pretty well. One would think so, right? It wasn't that simple.



The closest to the right sized piece of square tubing I could find was 4x4", and it was about a half an inch too loose in both directions when I slid it over this piece of 3x3". I couldn't use it as it was. It was too 'sloppy' of a fit. Things would have gotten ugly towing a trailer like that. So, I decided to see if I could make it fit. I cut the piece of tubing in half lengthwise with my grinder.



Then I ground down the edges and made them straight. I chamfered the edges because a welding website I found online said to. I clamped them together and welded them. My welds may be ugly, but they are hideously strong. Well, strong enough, in this case. And I found out it's a whole lot easier to weld thicker steel after learning on really thin stuff.



You can see how this is going to work. I ground off my messy welds until they were smooth, it was starting to fit. I made the other two cuts and ground down those edges, too.



And then by careful application of an intensely precise and complicated system of splints and clamps, I got it all to hang together long enough for me to burn up several welding rods. A shirt. Some arm hair. Part of a Croc. The top of a toe, and a small patch of the underbrush. And no, I didn't document any of that. It gets real busy around here when sparks start flying.



I had figured it would have cost me about $300 to get the hinge I wanted down here and cleared in through customs. I have less than $40 into this one. And I suspect this splice is a lot stronger than the original tubing.



You know my assistant usually has some input on these projects. Dooley the Deep isn't much use on the mechanical side of things but he keeps a constant watch for things he thinks I might be interested in. Lizards, for example. And he's good at trying to translate what distant dogs are barking about. He especially likes the ocean breeze that blows through the garage when the doors are open. His nose starts wrinkling like crazy, and the wind lifts his ears as he faces into it. He gets this far away look in his eyes and sometimes I wonder how that furry little mind of his processes all those exotic smells that the trade winds must waft to that sensitive nose..



Oh, I got the little boat jack loosely installed, and the tire, and just about this time discovered that the winch handle hit the spare tire. This would never do. Winch handles need to be able to go all the way around to work right. I realized that it had all been set up for a driver getting out of his tow vehicle on the left side, and walking back to the cranking handles. I suspect most winches in the USA are like this when delivered. I had already figured out that it made more sense for me to put the jack on the right side here, since that's the driver's side in British countries. I never thought about the winch.



But now, after just a few hours of enriching the vocabulary of a certain small dog, I know a lot more about boat winches, too. All the hardware is reversible on this one. You just remove those three shafts and all that hardware and then try to remember what piece goes where after you turn it all around. There are more little pieces there than it appears. I've discovered that a handful of galvanized parts all look similar. If I ever do this again, I am going to remove and reverse the shafts one at a time.

Here's the completed sleeve, with the jack and spare mounted to the heavy wall tubing. It's stronger than before. And it's not difficult to make the change over. The manufacturer sets up the clamps to fit on either 3" or 4" tubing. I just had to buy some longer bolts.



That worked out fairly well. Now I can park the boat in the garage, remove one bolt, remove the tongue and close the garage door.



Next I plan to find a way to lift the Hobie kayak on its trailer, dangle it from the ceiling, and park the skiff underneath it. Then I want to lower the Hobie onto the skiff. I will build a couple of wooden cradles to distribute the weight. It's not much. About 300 lbs. So far I have come up with this simple approach:



This is self supporting wooden beams, so I don't have to make too many ugly holes in the concrete. It uses a standard boat winch and two pulleys. I have recently completed an associate degree in boat winch. I know I'm going to have some balancing issues with that hanging frame arrangement. The four hooks are for the ends of two crossbars on the Hobie trailer. You get the idea. Suggestions are welcome.

This will let me put both boats in one stall of the garage, and still have the workshop area and room for a vehicle on the other half. You know, just in case we ever get another hurricane. Do you think Hurricanes Hanna and Ike made me paranoid? Well, yes ma'am. A little bit, sure.

It looks different around here with the little skiff parked where the Contender has been for all those months. If I turned 90 degrees to my right, I could see the Contender sitting on it's trailer right next to a boat ramp. Things are getting better. This is allowing us to get back to boating as opposed to boat repairing.



Oh, you might notice there are several more of those sharp agaves growing here, too. We're actually encouraging them. They think it's because they grow well in these conditions and are a nice low maintenance plant. They don't yet realize that on this recent trip to the USA I discovered that they are good for something besides low maintenance yard decoration. Yep...... you can eat 'em.



That's going to be it for this catch-up post. Things should start getting a little more colorful again with the next one. Friday night we went to dinner at the (excellent) Las Brisas restaurant over on Chalk Sound. It reminded us that we never really finished our exploration of that area with the inflatable kayak. So on Saturday we spent the day sailing around Chalk sound and got some decent photos. And Sunday we took the skiff out to check out Taylor Bay and a section of Providenciales coastline that we had never seen before. Some more nice photos.

And we may have some interesting news (to us, at least) about one of our neighbors here that I want to verify before passing it on. It's a real hoot, if it's true. And finally, there are a bunch of cruising sailboats in town this week and I suspect that at some point we might be back down at the marina saying hello. Please, stay tuned. We're almost up-to-date.

Underwhelming Post

I'll warn you up front that this is not a real blog post. It's a temporary post to fill in this increasing blank spot until I can put together a real one. You know how life sometimes sneaks up behind you and gooses you when you least expect it? We've been feeling like we were just a half step ahead of the gaggle for weeks now. But enough of my whining and excuses. I'll give you a brief rundown of what we've been up to. But first here's one of my favorite 'La Gringa sunrise' photos in a long time. This was yesterday morning:



Looks almost biblical or something, doesn't it? I was standing there in nervous awe waiting for some kind of cosmic announcement. You just never know.

And let's face it, we're long overdue.

Looking at that photo reminds me of how much a part of our lives this stretch of ocean has become. It's our local stretch of ocean, for a while anyhow. Just a few hundred feet away. It's constantly changing. We see it every day but I know sometimes I don't even glance at it unless something is moving out there that catches my eye. And stuff does move across it almost all day long. We get to see a lot of boats. Power and sail. Big and little. Local and foreign. This is the only boatyard with a travel lift that I know of between Florida and Puerto Rico. Maybe there's some in the DR. Probably. Oh, and we see lots of aircraft here. And birds. We have raptors here. Osprey and the zippy little American Kestrels. Those are like a cross between a seagull and a fighter plane. And we also get to see a whole lot of weather. There has never been snow or ice here in the history of geology,  of course, but we get  sun and wind. And those two elements alone make for some massive effects on the sea.   Frozen water is a lot more stable.

The next photo is pretty much the same view on one of our few cloudy days. The sea goes from crystal clear blues and turquoise to slate gray. In this photo, a squall is coming right at us. It's about six miles away and will be here in about half an hour. We have gotten pretty good at estimating which ones will hit us. Of course it helps when you can see them coming from fifty miles away.



This is the same general view at another time. The sky is clear, as it usually is, but the light source is the full moon. This photo was taken at night, with almost no wind.



I know we've posted photos of that ocean when the waves were crashing way up onto the rocks, and the spray was blowing hundreds of yards inland, too. It's always changing. Every dawn is different in some way. This is a real good spot for people who like the ocean. And don't get too nervous about water spouts. Or hurricanes.

Now, back to some of the mundane stuff that's been occupying our time recently. If you read the previous couple of posts you know we just imported another boat. This one is a small, easily trailerable skiff. Anyone who has been following our story knows some of the hassles we have had to deal with in hauling our other power boat, the Contender, up and down this hill and on these dirt roads. We like the ability to trailer the boat to the ramp nearest where we want to go. We also like keeping the boat out of the water. It's incredibly convenient to keep a boat in the water, but it adds a lot of complications when you can't keep it close enough to get to in a hurry. Ask us how we know about that.

Anyway, a lot of people have written to ask about this one and since I need some 'content' for this post anyhow, here it is:



This is just about a 'bare-bones' skiff, although not completely. A truly basic skiff would have a tiller outboard and just a gas tank and hose in it. A place to sit would be an option. This boat has a little more than that of course, but compared to the Contender and the Andros, this one is simplicity itself. All the options are in that one photo. We have a console, hydraulic steering, a jackplate, and trim tabs. That's it. Oh, and the bimini. I forgot we added that for some shade. The motor is a four stroke, which is a new experience for us. Just when I was learning all I could about two stroke HPDIs. Oh well. I have already bought the manual for this one, and four strokes are very familiar to me already.

You probably can't really see it clearly in that image, but the trailer hubs are the new oil bath type instead of the old grease glob approach. I like them so far. Trailer hubs have been a big impact on my life lately. (I had to replace all six of them to get the Contender to the water) I can lift the tongue of this little XO rig and walk it around a little. This is very useful when hooking up to the truck. And no, not just for the exercise.

We've had the new boat out twice so far. We did the quick shakedown cruise out to look at the Lionfish. I wrote about that in the last post we did before this one. Since then I have made two hand spears for the Lionfish, but we haven't had the chance to test them yet.

After the first shakedown we made another longer trip up along the reef, through Pine Cay channel and back around to the Dellis Cut. We needed to put a few hours on the motor to complete the break-in period. Like we needed an excuse to go boating. One thing I have noticed is that the gas mileage for this outboard is so good I am suspicious and want to check it again, more carefully. It couldn't have come at a better time. Fuel just hit $ 5.70 per US Gallon here.

Dooley the Drowsy was trying out various snoozing-in-the-sun spots. He likes this boat. He can see over the gunnels from anywhere on it. He's wearing his life jacket because there's nothing to keep him from going right off the back of the boat when I hit the throttle and he's up strolling around. He doesn't mind the jacket, and it has a great handle for snagging the little booger when he falls overboard.



My little camera was not at its best on this day. There was moisture inside the lens, which makes the photos blurry and uncrisp. I picked out a few of the clearer ones to show you and I apologize in advance that they are not up to our usual efforts. We normally take two cameras.

This is where the half billion dollar Dellis Cay five star resort seems to have coasted to a halt. We don't know the details, other than what's been published. The charges filed are that the developers spent several million putting up these concrete shells, while taking deposits and payments for these and future condos. Lots of money is involved. Meanwhile what was once a hive of construction and fast talking activity is now largely silent. We did see some workers there in one small boat and what appeared to be a couple of security guards.



I wonder how these open shells will fare should they still be incomplete when the eventual hurricane comes through here. The concrete is good, the roofs look solid and well designed, but I doubt that it was intended that the wind could ever get under them. Those roofs sure do look a lot like potential wings to me.

The government here would dearly love for someone to take over this massive project and complete it. I'm sure they would be very easy to work with on permits and taxes. Anything to get this project completed so it can start generating income. So if you have any friends with deep pockets who always wanted to own an exclusive resort on a privately owned island an hour south of Miami, here's a chance. Building permits all approved by a former Minister. With the blessing of a previous Governor.

This is where the previous developers had their real estate office. As I recall, there were some floating docks here, and that framework was covered with some pretty fancy canvas. Well, hopefully, someday it will again be moving forward. Great location. We would like to see it either finished, or returned to its former, natural state. Since that's going to take more than one hurricane, it would be better to just finish it so that people can enjoy this water.



After anchoring off Dellis Cay for lunch, we boogied on back to Leeward over the Caicos Bank. We wanted to establish a good route for the new boat. This is pretty easy navigation on a clear calm day. The area is riddled with sand bars, coral heads, submerged rocks. And some of the rocks are not so submerged. At least this one has a pole and light to mark the edge of one of several shallow channels.



There are far more unmarked rocks than there are rocks with lights here. I'm not sure at what point a rock gets promoted to island. Or in this case, a cay. What I do know is that it could be downright unpleasant to run into one of these unmarked ones at night.



It would be almost as unpleasant to run into one in broad daylight, too. Now that I think about it. I guess it would be a lot more colorful in the daylight...

Since this is a 'hit-and-run" kind of post I am going to just briefly touch on some of the other stuff we have been getting involved in over the past month. We still drop by the Southside Marina from time to time for happy hour. Usually when there are a lot of sailing cruisers in town. A couple weeks ago we got to meet Debbie and Ed from Ontario. They had read about the place in this blog and emailed us when they were in town. They decided to change their normal routine of taking their boat, Ariel, back up to a shipyard in Georgia for the summer. This year they are going to leave it stored here in Provo. This should give them a real jump start on heading further south into the Caribbean when they come back in November.

We got to wish them farewell as we were exploring the canals in our Hobie and saw them at the Caicos Marina and Boatyard. We can see Ariel from our patio, as I type.



We've managed to fit in probably another half a dozen sails in the Hobie since our last post. Of course we've taken photos of Dooley the Deranged nervously trying to stay on the trampolines, and movies. But until we make some changes in the way we take photos from the Hobie, they all start looking the same, don't they? I figured you guys had seen enough of the standard Hobie sailing kayak images from us by now. So I am not going to post up another dozen of them here.

I did want to show you this one, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that this photo of my GPS is showing that we have been sailing for 2.20 nautical miles since I turned it on. The top number is showing that when I took the photo, we were sailing along at a brisk but comfy 4.6 knots (5.3 mph). And that other number says that at one point since I turned the GPS on during this trip we hit 10 knots. That's a lot more 'brisk' and 'comfy' and then becomes a topic for discussion. There are different types of 'comfy'. Ten knots is about 11.5 mph. Most typical sailboats sail in the 7-8 knot range on their best day. To do 11.5 mph with your rear pockets at sea level is quite exhilarating. And wet.

Oh, the second reason I wanted to show you that photo is that it's the last known image of my beloved Garmin GPS 60CSx. I don't know where I lost it, but it was at the end of this sail. I think at the ramp. Hopefully, someone somewhere is benefitting from it.



Now, I am almost out of nice colorful tropical scenes for this post. And we think you can hopefully look forward to some new video capabilities from us. We recently picked up one of these little Hero HD video cameras. You know the ones, look like a little camera in a clear plastic cube that people stick onto their helmets and jump out of airplanes and off mountains with? (Was that a run on sentence? Ending in a preposition? Forgive me Mrs. Rizzo and LiteracyLady. I'm trying to illustrate by example. Yeah, they may be bad examples.) But this camera shoots good video and reasonable stills and can be stuck onto boats, Land Rovers, foreheads, and maybe even small dogs if they can be coerced into cooperating. We'll see.

In addition to those boat trips, in the past month we have had a lot of other things going on. I somehow crashed my computer big time. La Gringa got online with Dell Customer support, and they sent a new CD with drivers to a US address, who sent it to us. She got it running again, but I lost a lot of information. My last backup was in July. Ouch. I also have found that I have to learn new versions of software for programs I had stubbornly refused to update over the years. Oh, and I lost a lot of my photos.

We also decided that it made sense for us to move the Contender from our driveway to someplace next to a boat ramp. The obvious choice was the marina where we can see it from our house. You would probably not believe the string of DIY projects I went through to get this rig from this driveway to the boatyard 900 yards away. That's over ten miles by road, by the way.

I've just decided that I am not going to bore you with all the DIY stuff that it took to get this boat running and in the water again. We went through an incredibly stressful day-before-April-Fool's-Day. That was the day I discovered I lost my GPS. And we got the Contender to the water, but three wheels came off the trailer while doing it. And with water in the fuel it took me a long time to get to the boatyard with the engine dying every few feet. And I had to jump in the water and swim to the back of the Contender to climb aboard the ladder, forgetting that I had my cell phone in my pocket. Does your cell phone battery make crackling noises when you dunk it in the ocean? And the oil filter on one of the Land Rovers rusted through where a stone had dented it, and it sprayed all the oil out. That was March 31.

In the last month we also had a house guest. And we spent last week in Texas visiting family. And I'm leaving out some parts, no doubt. But you get the idea.

But we DID manage to move this rig from this driveway.....



...down to a ramp, and over to the marina, and back on the trailer 900 yards away. Looks pretty out-of-proportion to the little Defender 90, doesn't it? Well, we didn't tow the boat over on the trailer. Our limited tow vehicles are another reason we wanted to move the boat over to the yard.



Did I mention that moving that boat from the trailer in the driveway to the same trailer less than 2 km away took us four days? I won't go into the details of replacing six sets of bearings on tapered spindles. It wasn't much fun.

I know I keep saying I am going to spare you all the trials and tribulations of the ongoing Contender and Yamaha HPDI saga, and I will. If I let it get out of hand, I could find myself posting very long DIY blogs every three or four days. I know that not everybody reads the DIY stuff. It's boring to those who are not into it.

Heck, I would avoid it too, if I could. But I can't. It calls to me every morning. Like some sadistic rooster screaming 'Fix ME! Fix ME! It's a crock of doodle, toooooo!'

Well, for y'all who avoid DIY stuff, this is a warning. The next few photos are involved in just ONE of the little projects it took to get this boat floating again.

The motor wouldn't crank. That's the sole symptom I had of something being wrong. Everything else on the electrical circuit worked. I spent months puttering around with various ideas, concentrating on something within the Yamaha, or the ignition switch. Of course I kept taking things apart, a few things here. A couple circuits there. Removed two of the four pumps and fixed them. I ended up fixing everything on the boat.

I also found the starting problem. The direct lead from the battery to the starter had a splice in it. Still does, come to think of it. Battery cables are as thick as one of your fingers (no, I don't know which one of your fingers. Heck, it's probably two of your fingers now that I think about it. Or a toe. 2 toes.)

The cables are too thick for me to solder with what I have here. I'm actually not sure what it would take to solder these cables. I think mechanical connections seem to be the norm when it comes to heavy wire.

So, I determined that this break was indeed the demon that had haunted my Contender DIY nightmares for the past few months. A few notes here. This was NOT a Yamaha HPDI problem. It was a five year old crimp lug that had completely corroded. And rumors that chasing this down made me want to turn in my McGyver card are not true. Well, not entirely.

But back to defending the HPDI, I jumpered the battery directly around the break and turned the key and the HPDI fired up within seconds. After sitting outside unstarted for almost a year. On old, but by-golly some finely filtered gasoline.

Okay, now just the one DIY project for this post... I could NOT find a crimp lug big enough for this cable on this island. And I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried.....

Nope. Although everyone I spoke with agreed that it would be a great idea to have them in stock on an island where electricity returns to the earth via many paths. Maybe some day someone will stock them. But for now, nada.

So I bought about a three inch section of copper plumbing pipe and made a crimp lug. First, I just hacksawed out the piece that looked the most like a crimp lug.



After I cut out that little section, I turned it and sliced it lengthwise, so that I could spread it slightly and get the cable ends into it. I have a hand swage tool from another project that worked great to crimp it once I got the cables in.

Speaking of the cables, I learned something in this DIY that might be useful to someone, someday. You other boaters out there will likely know what the wiring in your bilge looks like after it's been exposed to salt water. All the wire surfaces develop an oxidation. I'm not exactly sure what it is, probably cupric oxide. I read that cuprous oxide is red, while cupric oxide and this corrosion are both black. Anyhow, normally one would replace all the wiring in a boat once you discovered that the wires inside are covered with this black coating. And if you are a realist, you will also recognize that the temptation is there to make do with the wiring on hand.

I couldn't replace the wiring in this boat with what is available on this island even if I felt like dedicating the next six months of my life to it. I decided that in this case, an easily identifiable (yeah, NOW it's 'easily identifiable') mechanical splice would be acceptable with clean wires to make the contact. I thought of using my Dremel tool and a little wire brush to clean it, but then I decided to take the lazy approach and try to dredge up some memories of chemistry classes of days gone by.

I figured with something this simple, copper and oxygen, I could find something in the house with something in it that would eat cupric oxide. First I tried the green stuff in the bottle in the photo. The teeth in that one are phosphoric acid. It didn't do diddly. Except to make a spot on my arm turn bright red. And the top of my feet.



Now, here's the part you can use. I found out that toilet bowl cleaner works great to remove the corrosion from the copper wire. The one I used has hydrochloric acid in it, but I suspect that any brand would probably work. The blue stuff in the bowl in the photo above is "Sno Bol" cleaner.

This is what a formerly blackened cable end and a former piece of copper plumbing pipe can look like with some tender loving care. If the definition of TLC includes acids and hacksaws, that is.



Anyhow, I put it all back together, turned the key and fired that puppy up.
There's a lot more to the Contender story, but since it's now running great and located just a few feet away from a paved ramp at the boatyard, I am not going to dwell on it all again. That's old history now.

Did I tell you I hacksawed the entire tongue off our new trailer to fit it into the garage? Well, I will save that one for the next post, too. I gotta stop this one somewhere so that I can get it posted. Or to be more precise, so that La Gringa can get it posted. She will have already taken all my major screw ups out by the time you read this!! (thanks, honey)

Speaking of La Gringa Suprema.....what do you think of this sunset photo she took?



Not too shabby, for a girl.