Mundane day

While waiting for our boat to be finished, I am running thin on fun tropical material today. But to keep the journal current, I thought I would post some photos to show people that it's not all diving and fishing down here. Sometimes we have to deal with the nuts and bolts of the day to day. Literally.

The day started out looking good:



We mail-ordered some accessories for La Gringa's Land Rover, and they arrived finally and I spent the day installing them.

First, we wanted to get rid of this spare "tyre" mounting stuff on the "bonnet". This IS a UK vehicle with right hand steering wheel etc. This hardware was there when we bought the truck. (by the way, the locals here call every 4x4 vehicle here a 'jeep'. The cops even wrote up an expired inspection sticker violation on us as a "Land Rover Jeep". I drive a Suzuki "Jeep".)
This iron hardware was ugly, in the way, and not very practical:



It's not practical because the 'bonnet' flexes like crazy with the weight of a spare on it going down bumpy roads. We have a lot of bumpy roads, and La Gringa drives them like she's in second place in the Baja 500, with a real shot at first.

It also makes raising the hood to check engine fluids etc. a weight lifting exercise with the tire on top of it. It's a 75 lb. hood to lift. And it was rusting. And in a high-salt environment like this, it's just basically a bad idea to bolt ferrous parts (steel) to aluminum. Something's gonna corrode. I got the old hardware off:



After some choice swearing dealing with rusted bolts etc. The dog is used to it.
One of the pieces we bought over the internet is an aluminum 'bonnet' plate, that matches the plates already on the fenders ('wings' in LR parlance). It's like diamond plate, but with a "Euro" pattern we couldn't find here. I wanted to pop-rivet this to the hood because the pop-rivets are aluminum, too. Had to drill 20 holes in the plate, and then so that the rivets would fit flush I used a Dremel tool to grind down the area around the holes:



Twenty of those, all different. A drill press would have been nice, but mine is packed up in storage, still. So, it was mechanical surgery with a little high-rpm tool. Man am I looking forward to having a workshop again.

I didn't want to rivet aluminum to painted aluminum. I tried the local hardware people for some kind of butyl rubber sheeting, but of course no luck in that. So I bought a couple bicycle tubes and split them into strips. I stuck those to the bottom of the plate with some 'Goop' flexible adhesive:



This should shock mount the plate and keep it from rubbing against the aluminum hood.
I think it looks a lot better. It's strong enough to stand on, should we find ourselves needing to lash something to the top, or take photos on safari, or something.



We had given up on buying a ready-made trailer/tow hitch on the internet. The only people who had a 'carrier' type hitch were in the US, and for some reason they refused to sell me a hitch and ship it where I asked them to ship it. That was to an air freight company in Miami, where the rest of the stuff was shipped. They insisted that their "company policy" was to ship only to the billing address on the credit card. Yeah, like we need forty pounds of steel sent to a billing address in the US. So, in the end, we said screw it, and had a local welder come up with a way to attach an off-the-shelf carrier to the LR cross member. Simple, functional, and we probably saved over $ 200.



This is a common hassle down here, finding online vendors whose order pages insist on a US state abbreviation or zip code. Hopefully shipping to the air freight company ( Turks Air, Ltd.) in Miami will help this.

So we got to meet a new local contact who is a welder. That's pretty handy. We intend to add a full roll cage, a new soft top, some steps, grill guard, and light cages over the next couple years. Guess which company we will NOT be buying them from. That's MY "company policy".

Now, the spare itself has been a pain in the glutes. It's been sitting inside the "tub" of the Defender. Takes up a lot of room, blocks the view to the rear, and smells like a rubber tire.

It annoyed the dog when he was driving (and in his mind, he's always driving):

And the little booger acted like a mountain goat and would stand on top of it while were were not looking. One swerve to the side hard ( remember La Gringa is driving) and it could have been "adios, muchacho" straight out the open sides. So after a lot of adjustments and drilling of holes, laying in the dirt outside in the hot tropical sun (it was probably 80 deg.) I have managed to bolt a swing-away tire carrier to the back:



I had to remove one of the lights, which I will relocate about two inches above where that hole is. I will mount it to a rectangular aluminum plate so it looks nice. I will rivet the plate to the body and paint it black to match the other trim. Should be okay. It's a rear fog light, anyhow. This country hasn't seen fog in 10,000 years, I suspect.

One other problem I have to solve is to extend those two little threaded bolts that the tire mounts on. These are the correct length for a steel wheel, but this vehicle has allow wheels which are about an inch thick. So I will be going back to JJ the welder to see if he can cut these out and replace them, or if he has another idea. Glad we met him for the trailer hitch. If anyone has any other ideas, please tell me. I need those two threaded bolts to be about an inch longer.

The inside is now more uncluttered, and has more cargo/seating room in the back. The dog can jump back and forth much easier when he goes from rear passenger to guard dog mode. When we are in a store, etc. he will sit up front and look fierce. He likes to sing along with Sam the Sham's wolf howl in "Little Red Riding Hood", and of course he considers "Who Let the Dogs Out?" a classic.

For those in the US who haven't tried it, it's actually not too hard to get used to driving on the left side of the road. It's also not too difficult to drive sitting on the right side of the truck. Took us a day, and now we are ambidextrious drivers. The tricky part that takes some getting used to, surprisingly, is shifting with the left hand. It just feels strange for a right handed person. I wonder if left handed people would find shifting this stick more natural feeling. I suspect so.

So, this afternoon we plan to run out to the reef to try out the new metal detector. We will probably either go fishing or lobster diving tomorrow. If the weather cooperates we should have some more tropical-style photos from both trips.

Trish's Fish and house stuff

Just as I was getting ready to post a couple house photos, La Gringa got an email from Trish of "Catch the Wave" charters. She attached a photo and since we have had several questions lately regarding fishing here I thought I would post it first for you guys planning to come down here this season:



Now that's a pretty decent little Snapper. And you just KNOW it's a recent photo, because Trish is all decked out in her winter coat. I bet the sea temp is probably down to around 82. It IS winter here, you know. (I just checked, right now its 10:00 PM and the outside temp is down to 74 deg. F. so it was probably near 80 when that photo was taken. Is she a local, or what...)

When it gets down to around 70-75 degrees during the day, the leather jackets and warm hats will come out. I am not joking.

Okay, what I started to post here was just a couple recent photos of the house we are building. I have been playing with taking series of photos and doing that panorama thing. We always seem to do the same parts of the house, so this time I got two areas we have basically ignored. This first one is the inside of the garage/workshop:



There are two standard size 8' wide garage doors on the left, and a single 10' wide door on the right side. This photo distorts it, the ten foot door lines up with the nearest 8 ft. door. The post is in the middle. Here's a close up of the far end without the distortion:



The area from the post to the far side is slated to be mine, all mine!! (insert maniacal laughter here) That's where I plan to put together a decent little workshop. I haven't drawn up the plans yet, but will likely be greasy motor stuff to the right, wood working stuff to the left. That's so that the prevailing wind will blow the sawdust right out the door and down the hill, and not stick it to the greasy metal stuff. Also, there is a utility sink going in on the left side of the shop. Not a bad view. Should be a nice,peaceful place to butcher expensive wood and mumble expletives without offending anyone.

The ceiling is ten feet high. I asked for a center beam strong enough to chain-hoist a V-8 out of truck (or an outboard off a transom) if need be. The ten foot wide door is so that an 8 ft. beam boat on a trailer will fit inside. We will also be able to drive straight through that half of the garage, and of course like everything else here it's meant to capture the constant sea breeze.

Between the garage and the foundation of the house we have this area we don't know what to call. It's essentially just a covered walkway, but it's sort of roomy:



That's La Gringa talking with H. (our architect, and yeah, his name is "H") about what we could be doing with this space. So far, it's up for grabs. Might be a good place for a guest bedroom. Or just put some hammocks in here.

While we were looking around inside, H pointed out a large Erebus moth. They are common here, and we've heard the locals call them "money moths":



The story is that if one of them touches your head, you are in for some money. When we heard this, La Gringa said, "Hey! What room was that moth touching?"

And sure enough...it was in our little "water closet" or as us nautical types call it"the head"!! I know it's a technicality, but hey, a money moth DID touch my 'head'...

Conch Festival

Yesterday we went to the 4th Annual Turks and Caicos Conch Festival in Blue Hills here on Providenciales. The Conch Festival is becoming one of the major events of the year here. We missed it the first year we were here.  We had just moved down to the islands in September of 2005, and the Conch Festivals are traditionally in November.  We just didn't quite have it together those first few months so we missed out on the '05 festival entirely. but caught it last year and had a great time.   We made some new friends at the '06 festival, and we could see a lot of changes in the year since 2006. We got there earlier this year, and many people were still setting up. The DJ's were setting up the sound system right next to the beach:

and once they got everything hooked up, between the recorded music and live bands we had plenty of decibels for everyone. I know this is going to surprise a few people, but there was a fair amount of reggae music played.   Bob Marley lives on in the hearts of many.

Last year we waited until late afternoon to head over to the festival.  We had a bad case of procrastination, but finally decided to check it out.  We had a hard time parking anywhere near the Blue Hills festival site.  So we knew it was likely to become a mob scene later in the day this year.   We must have made a decision to go earlier, and being there before the mob thickened  let us spend some time talking to the conch cooking contestants in a relaxed atmosphere.   It got much less relaxed as the afternoon progressed.  We got to try all the conch dishes before the place got jammed.  Fresh off the stove.  Or out of the pot, or steamer, or crock pot, as the case may be.  It also was a clever ruse on our part, for our $ 15 conch tasting fee we got both lunch AND dinner. We also ate enough conch to knock down any serious craving for more. For a few days, at least. Of course La Gringa immediately made friends with the bartenders.   She's good at getting people to pose for her.   I'm terrible at it.  Here are the bartenders while they were setting up the bar, before things got busy:

I don't drink, but they let me hold the tickets.    Made me feel like I was participating, in a way.

Looking at those toes, it occurs to me that running around this place barefooted all the time isn't doing my nails much good.  I seem to be kicking a lot of rocks and boat cleats.


I knew that if we were going to get any good people photos it was going to have to be Polly taking them.  She's definitely the "people person" of the two of us.    I'm  the mechanical person.  Good at still life photos and macros of little bitty bits of shiny gears and such.  I get bashful and standoffish around other humans.  She, on the other hand,  has no trouble going up to perfect strangers and getting them to smile and pose. There were a dozen or more local restaurants competing with various recipes for conch dishes. It also helped that we were early in getting these photos. A few hours later and there would have been twenty people between her and the bar. That photo would not have been possible.

There were piles of live conch on the beach ready for the conch cleaning contest and as fresh meat for the cooks.  Conch can live a long time out of the ocean. Especially if you keep them wet with a seawater washdown from time to time:

The Caicos sloop anchored in the background is one of the Turks and Caicos Maritime Heritage Federation boats, was there for the races.   The organizer of the race portion of the program, Ross, told us at 2:15 that the races were scheduled for 2:00. I think they finally got them going around 3:30 after rounding up the rest of the sailors from the bar at Smokeys on the Beach.

We saw our old friend Omar, formerly of Gilley's Restaurant in Leeward. He was here with the team of Iguana's restaurant. He started us off with samples of conch chowder and conch fricasse. These were the first samples of the day. I lost count of how many different things we tried. I do know that there wasn't a bad dish in the group.

Omar is the one in the shades and white shirt. He is originally from Cayman, but prefers it here. He says Grand Cayman is too built up, too much like Cancun. I hope we have a few years left before the TCI gets to that point.

(La Gringa: but he says the golf courses are better on Cayman!)

One of the newer restaurants in Blue Hills, Horse Eye Jacks, had a team there this year. This is a nice restaurant right on the beach in Blue Hills, just a few hundred yards from the Conch Shack. We have only been there once, but I can say that they served me the best cheeseburger that I have had in a restaurant since we moved here in '05.

The Horse-Eye Jack chef had his daughter with him for the competition.There were kids everywhere, of course. This is a real family event, with conch horn blowing contests, sack races, all that fun kid stuff while everybody wandered around sampling conch dishes, drinking, watching the contests, dancing, watching the boat races, and just enjoying a perfect late November day.

The Somerset on Grace Bay sent a whole team of chefs:

The Aqua Grill's conch wontons were excellent, and I think those were actually my personal favorites out of the couple dozen dishes I sampled. Went back for s seconds. And thirds.

I think I might have gone back for fourths, but by then the crowd in general had discovered the wontons and that was quickly the end of that.

Several groups had conch salad, and they were all good as well. I think you really have to have a fine set of taste buds to tell the difference between one conch salad and another. But my taste buds were fried by jalapenos years ago. They all tasted great to me.

Hemingway's on the Beach had another of our favorite recipes at the Festival. Their conch and sweet potato quiche would have probably tied the conch wontons as my favorite:

There was a professional film crew setting up to get some pro-quality video of the events, and of one of the locals actually cleaning conch.    The film crew are all the serious looking guys with expensive video cameras squatting down looking at that pile of conch. You can also see that the crowd on the beach was growing, and that the sloop crews were getting their boats ready for the races.

After the crew got set up, this very nervous TCIslander got to stand there in front of several hundred spectators demonstrating the fine art of conch knocking. I think the poor guy took something like three tries to get the first one out. Here is a video clip of him. Now, keep in mind that what you can't see is all the people watching him, that film crew focusing on him with a big serious looking camera, and his boss ( Bugaloo) yelling instructions at him from the sideline. There were probably fifty cameras pointed at him. I have seen some of these guys crack and clean a conch in 25 seconds, if that gives you any idea how nervous this young man was:

That little video should also give you an idea of the wind. It was close to a perfect day. The wind was great for the sailors, it kept the bugs away at dusk, and it kept things cool and comfortable all afternoon.

As the day moved on, there were boat races and a couple go-fast boats coming completely out of the water back and forth in front of the beach. I didn't have the right camera with me to get the long shots, but here's one of the sloops hauling butt   by the beach:

These guys were having fun with the inflatable trampoline thing, until someone pulled the plug on the inflation fan. It didn't stop them. They kept jumping on it even as it collapsed:

When the sun went down, the music got louder, the crowd got bigger, and it was a people watching day for sure. A lot of people brought their kids. This young man knows it's never too early to start working on your moves:

He had a pretty good set of moves going, too.   In retrospect I wish I had thought to shoot some  video of him.   I suspect that when the drums start drumming and that bass line starts thumping, some people just can't help themselves.  They just gotta dance.   Know what I mean?

By dark the street was crowded, the beach was crowded, and the music was really getting cranked up. My little pocket digital is no good for the night shots, so things started going downhill right about sunset ( with the camera, I mean)

We had been there for five or six hours at this point, and we left early to go visit with some new friends we met for the first time at the Conch Festival the previous year. That was totally by chance. They were seated next to us, watching the boat race, and we were all laughing at the guy with the microphone talking about various ways to blow a conch horn. ( I won't elaborate on that here). We discovered that they are expats, too, and building a home on Provo. THEN we discovered that they are building a home on the same road that we are, and we know the house. We have been driving by it each time we run out to check on the progress of our own. SO, it just made perfect sense to buy more drink tickets and get to know our new neighbors-to-be. Funny way to meet. Their names are Michelle and Malcolm, and they moved here from England. We found we have a lot in common. But then we have found a lot of that here. Basically, the kind of expats we meet in these islands are the kind of people who decided to pack up and try life on a tropical island. So we know we have some attitudes in common immediately. Michelle and Malcolm are not 'boat people' yet, but I suspect we can help them change that.

It was time to get out of the wind and noise. My ears were ringing from an afternoon of full tilt reggae. Before we left, we watched a Junkanoo group working it's way through the crowd, with drums and these other percussion thingums I don't even know the name for.

This is a close up of the clanging, rattling thingamabobs that these guys were shaking to beat the band:

I'm a little bit embarassed to admit I don't know what these are, other than a modified cowbell.    I did notice that all the junkanooers shaking them were wearing work gloves, though.  A night of this must be tough on the hands.

The junkanoo wove it's cacophonic way back and forth amongst the increasingly lubricated crowd.   I noticed that the drum players didn't need gloves.   I guess the trade-off there is that some of these drums must weigh a lot more during a long evening than those little cowbell clangers.

The beat was very contagious, and it was still building when we made our way out. We tried to take a brief video, but of course the low-light conditions meant the quality was not the best. But the audio might give you an idea of what this all was sounding like at that point:

And this is still early for many. I am sure La Gringa wasn't the only hangover on the island Sunday morning. The gentleman with the cigar was only a couple beers away from joining the Junkanoo I believe:

He  actually IS a musician. We bought a local band CD from him earlier in the day.  It's what's called Ripsaw music.  This is traditional TCI music.  This is a variant of Rake and Scrape music of the Bahamas to the north.   (Don't you just love the names of these genre's?) We'll give the CD a listen and maybe post some audio of it later in the blog.

I should point out that La Gringa took these photos, so she wasn't too far behind the gentleman with a cigar when it came to getting into the music and spirit of the whole thing.

By the time we left, I think there must have been at least a couple thousand people there with a steady stream of new arrivals we passed on the way out. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but to put it in perspective, just 2,000 would be 10% of the entire population of the island. I know the crowd grew later as the party animals started showing up. We were talking with an elderly local gentleman about it all (after he told me I looked like Castro! I am not sure who should be offended there, me or Fidel) and one of the things about this little country that he and I agreed on, it's one of the most racially harmonious places either of us has ever been. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian...it just doesn't seem to matter here. It's a shame the rest of the world couldn't be more like the TCI in that regard. I can honestly say we have not seen nor even heard of any racially oriented problems since we got here, and we are going into our third year now.

Hanging around the boatyard

We were down at the Caicos Marina and Boatyard checking on the progress of our fuel tank repair. While we were there we wandered around checking out the boats in the yard. There are plenty of them. Many of these were hauled for hurricane season and will be going back in the water soon, but not all of them:



I am pretty sure someone is living on Island Diver full time. The windows are covered over, there are ac units sticking out, solar panels in strange places that would never survive at sea, and a ladder going up the back. It's for sale, though. Might be a cool way to get a vacation home in the islands cheap.

I think La Gringa just liked the name on this one:



I would imagine the Jolly Turk is good for shallow water stuff on the Caicos Bank, but I am not so sure I would want to ride out a storm on it. I get real interested in looking at all the different hull designs, and imagining how the boats will ride in different conditions. They really are all compromises, aren't they.

I have been wondering what our boat would be like with a nice flying bridge on it. I wonder how this rides in the trough outside the reef on a big swell:

I know the inboard will help, keeping the weight down low in the hull. And I wonder how the tabs work close together like that. Still, I bet theres some Dramamine on this boat when he has guests.

Now, this one really caught my eye. I had seen some of these Landing Craft in the water around here, but this is the first one I had been able to see on dry land. Various versions of this boat have been the backbone of remote construction projects here in the islands.

These are the seagoing pickup trucks of little island nations like this. Able to drive right up to the beach to offload vehicles, fuel, bricks, mortar, anything you can fit into it.

 What other kind of vessel would you use over shallow coral reefs and into totally remote areas? The keel extends past the prop and rudder to protect them when grounding the boat:

That drop-down door in the bow has been modified in this one. Originally it had a steel mesh extension sticking up several feet higher.

Here's another view of the keel and rudder setup.   This design was developed to protect the propeller in shallow water situations.  Which basically describes most of the water around here.

We've been told that a landing craft similar to this one brought the very first motor vehicle to Provo. It was a Jeep CJ, and it came ashore at Heaving Down Rock in Leeward.

There's no name attached to this old workhorse. I get the feeling that it's just not that kind of boat.   I became interested in it, and could see a number embossed deeply into the old stern plating.

I would imagine there have been a lot of things painted on this part of the boat, but there's nothing there now except this original designation.   It was more than enough to be able to easily read the numbers.

A search of the internet actually led me to some information about this boat.

 This appears to be a 36 ft. LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) built in 1968 for the US Government. Boy, that year rings some bells. I was still in high school, but several of my friends were already on their way to Viet Nam, the year of the Tet Offensive. Some of you may remember tales of the Imperial City of Hue. A rough time for the USA. The worst year ever in the Viet Nam war.

This LCVP was one of 32 built by a contractor for the government. All 32 of them are listed as being "scrapped". I bet this boat has some tales to tell over the past 40 years, from the US to SE Asia, and ending up in the Turks and Caicos Islands hauling freight. This boat was almost three years old by the time I first saw that part of the world, I wonder if we crossed paths back in the bad old days. Funny we both started and ended in the same places. And it makes me feel about as old as this boat looks.

It looks to me like there is plenty of life left in that boat. Some welding and paint, a little TLC, and it would be good to go.

We had to wonder what the inside accommodations of this vessel looked like, after seeing the way their tastes in bottom paint ran.  And that stairway is a work of art in itself.

Some bottom paint works by using a copper compound as a poison to keep marine growth from attaching itself to the hull.   But attacking the optic nerves, well, I have to admit that's  new one to me.  Some fish undoubtedly will abhor it, but I wouldn't be surprised if some others were actually attracted to the motif.   There's just no accounting for taste.

We love to hang around boatyards.  And some marinas.   And small airports, too, come to think of it.    There will be more about the airports later in the program.

But eventually  dusk comes, or as we refer to it, "0 bug:30"   So this time we snapped one last photo through the boatyards travel lift, looking at both the distant sunset, and our house under construction on the far hillside.
As you might imagine, we love this view

Back to Five Cays

Guess what this is?



Yeah, yeah, I know it looks like a rock with a rope on it..., but not just any rock. It's a mooring device. It's the official government rope tying rock that keeps this high-tech go-fast Coastal Patrol panga from being bashed up against the dock:



It looks to be about a 30 or 32 footer, and its basically nothing but outboards and gas tanks. I think they use it mostly for keeping tabs on the lobster fishermen. And there were plenty of lobster divers here this afternoon, unloading their catch to the local fresh fish market and hanging around shooting the breeze on a frigid late November day....



See, one guy even has long sleeves on. It was so cold, I wore my flip flops. It must have been down to something like 82 degrees today, but I am sure the wind-chill factor took it down to "feels like" 80. Brrrrr. If it gets much colder, we may have to cut back on ice cubes.

Looking at that photo, I was again reminded of how much more popular Yamaha outboard motors are here over all other brands combined. There must be some good reasons. These guys make their living with their boats. And they build their own boats, for the most part. The only factory boat in this lineup is the little Boston Whaler at the end, the one with the red bimini.

Speaking of Boston Whalers, here's a photo of one of many, many local copies popped out of a mold made off a Whaler hull:



These are called 'conch boats', and they get a lot of hard use. The design is pretty much standardized. A Whaler hull form, with a short solid deck in the bow. A short raised spray shield is across the bow divert spray and splash out of the boat. They typically have a small, simple center console aft of where you would normally see one. The middle of the boat is kept fairly open, and we have seen them loaded up with conch or household goods to the point where you would swear its going to sink. And unlike the famous unsinkable Whaler, these DO sink from time to time. Despite having the right logo on the side:



The local fishermen go out mostly for conch, which they can just about always get. But there is more money in spearing grouper or lobster. Today most of the catch was the Spiney Lobster:



These are different from the Maine Lobster. They don't have the large claws of the Northern version. They also have a bunch of small, sharp spines on the tops of their heads. They wedge them in when you try to pull them out from under rocks. They stick in your fingers and palms if you are not careful. But they are WAY easy to trick. La Gringa and I picked up a few of these ourselves last year. I took the aluminum frame from a paint roller and straightened it out to make a lobster 'tickler'. When I lightly touched a lobster's tail with it through some crack in its rocky hiding place on the reef, it would shoot out from under the rock and was pretty easy to grab after that. See the long antenna the fisherman is holding the lobster by? They will stick those right into your face when you are trying to coax one out from his crevice. Sort of a crustacean 'stiff-arm' tactic. If you grab those antenna, they instantly come loose in your hand underwater. But once they are out of the water, you can support the entire lobster from them. I think they must let them go as a defensive maneuver if something grabs one. A sacrificial body part.

A basket of cleaned conch shells at the Five Cays Fish Market for the visiting souvenir hunter:


We looked at another veteran panga sitting in the sun drying out. I am pretty sure this one didn't come from a fiberglass shop in southern Florida:



When people here ask me what kind of boat we chose for ourselves and I say "panga", they don't always know what I am talking about. They don't know it by that name. But when they see it, they immediately recognize the design. It's a very well known hull design here, it's just not known as a 'panga'.

And the best part of the visit to Five Cays today was that we caught up with our friend Evan. He has been working as a boat mechanic for a couple months now, learning outboard maintenance and repair. We caught up to him as he was installing a new 200 hp.outboard on a customer's boat. Yamaha, of course.



Sure doesn't upset me the least little bit to have a good friend here who is a Yamaha mechanic. With access to the right tools and factory parts.

Evan's got a new car, a new girlfriend, and a new job he loves messing with boats and motors right next to the sea all day. Life could be worse for a young man. Could be worse for an old man, too.