Rusty Old Wrecks

We usually  start these posts with a sunrise.  And this is not a sunrise.  I bet you spotted that right away. I know I would have.  On most days.  I decided to try something different than a sunrise this time.  I grabbed one of the  photos that  represented the general theme of this post. You can't tell what a post is about from looking at a sunrise.  It's like trying to judge a book by the cover  Now this photo is descriptive.  You can tell that this post is largely about a rusty old wreck on a beach. And yes, I  do realize how appropriate it would be for you to say that it takes one to know one.

It's not all about a wreck of course.  It's about two wrecks. One is in much worse shape than the other.  It's a relief for us to be able to start posting some boating photos again even if we're presently limited to the kayak.  We start to get cranky when we don't get out on the water enough.  Weekly would be our minimum, ideally. We'll be working on getting out more over the next few weeks.  More on that later.

We've recently written  about a new restaurant on the island.  We've been thinking about the possibility of us sailing our little Hobie over some day for lunch.  We decided to take the dog and grab some cameras and pack a lunch and take the boat for a dry run.  Hmm.  Is that an oxymoron?  I mean, I really can't take the boat on a dry run, can I?  It's got to be wet to work.   Now that I think about it, a dry run is a very bad thing to take a boat on.  Like, for example, that boat in the photo up there.   Now, that's a boat having a dry run.

We wanted to  sail over and back as an excuse to be out on the water with the dog on a beautiful mid-winter day.  And it was also an opportunity to try out a new "Dooley Cam" mount I've been working on.  We headed out of the canal as we usually do.  Dooley's going to try his paw at being camara dog for the day.   It's totally okay with him, too, by the way.  The camera weighs very little, and the new mount is as light as I can make it.  It sits further back on the camera platform (dog) and seems to make it easier to squirm under things one shouldn't be squirming under.   He gets excited when he sees his life jacket.  He knows something fun is in the works.

Taking the dog along pretty much guaranteed that we would not be wading ashore for lunch at the restaurant when we got there.  If we got there. We made the decision to take him  knowing that it would limit our lunch options.  But he does so love to go sailing.  And he's been a good dog lately.  What kind of people would we be if we didn't reward  good dog behavior from time to time?  Don't answer that.  We're not that kind of people.  We reward this little booger often. Probably too often, in fact.  He's been rewarded for good intentions alone.   He's been yelled at a few times also.   He doesn't want me to write about those, though.

We boated  through South Side Marina on the way. We were just recently up at Bob's new almost open but not quite yet bar.   And restaurant, I think.  I'll put up a couple sunset-at-Bob's photos at the end of the blog.   There are several cruising boats in the marina at the moment.  Season has started.  In this photo are the Molasses Cat II,  the S/V Compass Rose X, and the seriously equipped S/V Mora Mora with an interesting open transom design.    That could be fun to play with in a following sea.  Great idea for a protected space and easy access to the water.

The power catamaran in the photo there is the Molasses Cat II.  This is a brand new boat, and almost a direct copy of the Molasses Cat that has been running people out to West Caicos and back for quite a while now.   That tells me that the owners like the design.   And it's a very distinctive design.  These boats have two inboard jet drives that can sound like something a Klingon would drive.  I don't know a lot of the details but imagine that their shallow water capability as a big jet boat is one of the attractive factors.   The addition of a second boat is a welcome sign to a lot of the people in this area.  It's been recently announced that construction will resume on the Molasses Reef resort and complex on West Caicos.   Once again, there will be several boats a day running from the marina with workers commuting to and from the project.     And this time, hopefully, there will be a place at the marina where they can relax with a cool drink at the end of the day.   It still needs a name, though.  Bob's Dead End Bar and Restaurant?  

The wind velocity was less than 10 knots, and for us that's a very lazy sail.  We went by to take a look at the old wreck sitting out in the water between Cooper Jack Bay and Five Cays.   We've been by here a few times over the years, and there is less to see every time.  When the birds on the wreckage became visible,. Dooley the Devious decided not to bark himself silly for a change.  I was surprised when he went into some kind of quiet stealth mode.   I so often wonder what's going on in that furry little skull of his.

He never barked, or said a word other than mumbling something about grappling hooks and cutlasses.  He just stared at those birds while we silently sailed nearer and nearer to the wreck.   Sometimes when he gets excited he starts silently shaking.   This time?   He looked like a four legged tuning fork.

Finally the birds flushed.   Dooley never batted an eye.  I think he was realizing how big these birds actually are.  Bigger than he is.     And I know how he feels.  Heck,  I still worry about those flying monkeys in that witch movie with the rusty guy, the scarecrow, and that sniveling lion.   Now imagine how Toto felt.

As we sailed past the wreckage and then away on our new course he just turned around and rode backwards for a while.   He kept his eyes on those birds.He was so keyed up that he was shaking from the internal tensions that watching these birds was causing him. I know not why.  This is a normally very vocal dog, and yet in this whole thing nothing was ever said.  But he knows where they live.  I hope they don't haunt his dreams like I've been told those danged flying monkeys can do to an impressionable mind.

We realized that while I was snapping his photo, Dooley was filming the whole thing with his own video cam.




We're still having issues with the GoPro cameras.   I've greatly reduced but not eliminated the fogging issues. If we leave the camera turned on for more than about fifteen minutes it still starts fogging up.  The other blurs on there are dried salt deposits from the sea water.  We're still fine tuning this whole Dooley Cam idea.

The photo I took at the end of that little video was my view of the intense look on the dog's face.  I doubt if those birds had ever before experienced Dooley's version of an intense stare.  This dog radiates  when he's focused. Sometimes I think he studied Vulcan Mind Meld.   Did you ever get a nervous feeling that something somewhere was watching you?   No wonder the birds were getting spooked, too.

It can be difficult to pick out individual buildings and features on the shore from way out on the water.   It all looks the same from a mile away.  But as we got closer we were able to make out the Yamaha dealership at Five Cays and we knew that Bugaloo's restaurant is the next business up the beach.  We were a little bit concerned.   From way out on the water we could see dense smoke start billowing from something near the shore.  From where we were located, it appeared to us that the smoke was right about where we were starting to see the palm trees on the beach at Bugaloos's.  Perhaps you can see it in this photo, just a little left of the bow of the kayak.

 

 

We were saddened when we thought of the new restaurant burning.  We really don't know much about the Five Cays neighborhood on a daily basis, but we couldn't think of anything that would be putting out that much smoke.  Other than the kitchen at Bugaloo's.    We were hoping it was something other than that.

 

And it was.  As we got closer to the beach and our angle changed, we could see that whatever was making the smoke was NOT at Bugaloo's.  I think it must have been someone burning an old tire or something on the hill behind the restaurant, but  it was clearly not even next door to Bugaloo's.  We were glad to see that things were cooking along normally at one of our new favorite restaurants.

 

 

  We sailed up to about where we observed water deep enough for us to anchor at low tide.  On this day, it was high tide. We had not seen these poles in the water when we were at the restaurant thinking this whole thing up a week earlier.

It's good to know that there are some obstructions there.  These things are not always so obvious on days with more wind and wave action.  They can get hidden in the waves.   This was one of the calmest days we've seen in weeks.   There are three of these stakes there, with a nice white buoy at one end. Mental notes have been taken.

Now this is where something  funny happened..  See that photo above?  That is what Bugaloo's Conch Crawl looks like from about 150 yards offshore.   We could see the people there, and we assumed that at least a couple of them might be looking back out at us, in our little yellow sailing contraption.  Well, we were right.  A day or so later our friend Michelle of  the M&M crew emailed La Gringa with a link to a Facebook page.  It seems that while we were sailing around the rock taking photos of the rock and Bugaloo's  one of the diners at Bugaloo's  was taking photos of us sailing around the rock taking photos. This photo was obviously taken with a pretty decent lens, as we were about 160 yards from the restaurant.  Do these characters and this boat look familiar?

This photo published here with the kind permission of  fellow TCI expat  photographer / conch aficionado, Bob, whom we've not met yet, and you can find more Turks and Caicos and Providenciales images at his "Provo Up Close" site.

We had already picked this out as a likely place to park the boat should we want to wade ashore for a leisurely lunch some day without Dooley the Devourer to deal with.  That's the small group of rocks in those photos.    Now we know it's still visible at high tide.  Under normal conditions, there would be a little bit of a chop in this bay from the prevailing wind.   It would make Bugaloo's what sailors call a 'lee shore'.  In essence that means that  if the boat pulled it's anchor it would get blown aground.  Sailors hate it when that happens.   It looks like it would be easy for us to drop our anchor behind these rocks and leave the boat in a protected spot while we had lunch.  The little folding grapnel anchor we have isn't that great in sand but it would get a good grip if I just wedged it into these rocks.

 It's limestone and not coral, so it wouldn't hurt anything.  Well, maybe a barnacle or two.   Using a small island as an anchor is probably massive overkill in the world of mooring design, but we could enjoy our distant lunch without worrying about the anchor pulling.  Except of course I would then be worrying about the line chafing.  But that gives me an idea.  I can put a short piece of plastic tubing over the anchor line where it might rub on sharp rock.   Now I'll have to find something else to worry about.

We wanted to make sure the water is clear all the way around the rocks, and that it's deep enough that we wouldn't find our boat aground if we left it here at low tide.   So we sailed around the rock to check it out.  Looks good to me.  Plenty deep.

That white buoy in the photo below is at the end of that line of stakes that I was whining about a couple of photographs up.  I'm guessing that those are to mark where the deep water ends for the local conch boats.  This is kind of how channels and shoals are marked down here.   Hey, it's a system.  Of sorts.

Having achieved our stated goal of sailing from South Side Marina to Five Cays, we were looking around for something else to do.  We didn't feel like heading back just yet.  Getting  here from South Side Marina took us just under an hour.  That was with very light wind, and a detour to take Dooley seagull rousting.  We could do it in half an hour on a breezy day.    That's probably quicker than we could drive it.  

We still had the whole afternoon left, so we just sailed over in the  general direction of South Dock.    We had the vague plan of sailing by some of the Five Cays and maybe stopping at Bay Cay for a break.  But we've been there so many times I hesitate to even post more photos of it.  Then we spotted this shipwreck looming over the nearby landscape.  We'd glanced at this area from a distance many times as we zoomed by outside of Bay Cay on our way to somewhere else.  And I would think to myself that 'we should go over and check out that beach one of these times' and this time turned out to be that one of those times.  This time we decided to just slowly sail over for a closer look.

We realized that what looked like a shore line from a distance is actually a series of  small islands protecting a stretch of sand beach.  We decided that the shipwreck looked intriguing.  All the excuse we needed to go for a closer look.   It's interesting, and a little bit foreboding from a sailing standpoint.  It's difficult to judge the water depth and bottom from a distance.  It could be rocky and shallow.

This looked like fun.   We had to slip between some small islands and numerous rocks, but that's a very nice looking beach on the other side.

We thought our sailing might be a little rusty, too, after how little of it we've done recently.  But we had no problems getting over the underwater rocks  and  into the smooth protected water.  It's like a little harbor in there.  With this scene, I was expecting Gilligan to step out from behind a tree any moment humming something about a three hour tour.

Ah, but this is not that island, and this is not the "Minnow".  Nope, it's the  M/V Serenade I.  With ties of some kind to Toronto, apparently.   This is sure a long way from Canada.   This is my second favorite photo of this bunch.  I wish I had gotten a close up of the starboard rudder and prop shaft.  It's completely wrapped up, thickly, in  ropes.   Lots of them.  Easily enough to affect operation.  The rudders are bent inward severely, as you can see in the photo.  This boat came over some hard ground on it's way to the sand.

We walked around just enjoying the day for a while.  We spent at least an hour here.  I took a lot of photos of the old boat.   There was just something about it that struck me as being fairly photogenic.  In a tropical beach scene kind of way.

There was a lazy summer day feeling on this early February winter's afternoon.  The sun was warm.  The only sounds were the wind softly blowing through the Casuarinas trees and the small waves gently massaging the shoreline.  And me yelling at the dog to get the heck out of the photo.  There was that. And useless.  He  conveniently and reliably forgets all of his English language skills when he gets like this.  No habla 'get over here Dooley!', either.  At least he had his camera with him.

The rudders on this boat are so horribly mangled that I doubt it was beached here first.  I think it got washed in through the rocks and was just lucky enough to end up on a nice soft place among the Casuarinas trees.  They may have lost the boat, but everyone on it should have been able to walk away from this one.

This scene is what one small aftermath of a hurricane looks like several years downstream.  Kind of tells a story, doesn't it?

Speaking of Casuarinas trees, we were pretty impressed by this one.  It was completely blown over in that storm. Totally ripped out of the ground.  Almost all of its root system is in the air and exposed to 100+ mph sand blasting wind and waves.  And  yet a few of its downwind roots held on, and kept it from washing away.  And it took what the storm left it with, and now it thrives.  How can I not like a tree like this?

Turtle Cove has a nice example of what one of these trees can look like when it's been trimmed as a hedge. Some people know these as Australian Pines, although it's nothing like the pine trees I am familiar with.   

The boat's hull and pilot house still looks pretty solid structurally.  This looks to me like a well built, rugged boat.  Those Canadians are pretty good that way.  I've spent a fair bit of time on Canadian boats, come to think of it.   This one is beaten down and out,  but I couldn't find any gaping holes in it that would have caused it to sink. I didn't even see any serious dents in the hull, come to think of it. People have stripped everything out of it that the storm didn't take.  And then they burned what was left.   I would assume this was done to make it easier to remove copper wiring.

Here's another angle on the hardy little Casuarinas tree.  It appeared to me that the same force had its way with the local wood and the Canadian steel.   This was one of those events  in life that bends some paths forever.

I hope I'm not boring you with all of these boat photos.  I was planning to pick out one or two of the better ones and then realized that I liked more than a couple of them.  And if I don't show them to you  right here, and now, then I'll never show them to you at all.

 You can see some of the narrow openings between the little islands in this one. I'm thinking that we're seeing the source of the rudder and prop damage there.   This whole thing could have been the result of an anchor letting go.

Dooley was back and forth constantly while we were playing with camera angles.   He was searching for whatever it is he searches for.   I don't think he's particularly particular or peculiar.  He's up for adventure.  He'd prefer to bask in the lavish praises and "Good Boy!" he'd get for chalking up another rat, big time. But he'll endure the minimal shame of a "leave that lizard ALONE Dooley!" if the opportunity presents itself. Dooley is a firm believer in the do-it-and-ask-forgiveness-if-caught school of dog obedience compromises.   I'm wondering if a loud thunder ringtone would be useful in manipulating this animal psychologically.

We didn't climb inside the boat.  It really appeared to me that everything that could be removed from it  without a cutting torch or explosives is gone.   Surprisingly the internal steel is still intact.  Rusty, but holding together.    Every removable fixture and every bit of wiring or cable hs been pretty much removed.   This baby has been stripped.

If you were a shipwreck with a choice of spending your final years somewhere near Toronto or on a deserted beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which would you choose?   I rarely seem to hear anything about anyone retiring and moving north.

This area is a sort of natural catchment spot for boats that get washed across the Caicos Banks and over these rocks. In addition to the Serenade I there is the wreck we stopped by on the way over and we know of at least two other submerged shipwrecks not far offshore here.   There are pieces of another wooden ship buried in the sand here near the steel one.   All that's still sticking above the sand are some ribs and planking. And that's been the subject of a few bonfires.   Makes one wonder what could be buried under the sand here some five hundred years after the Europeans first started visiting in their wooden boats.

We walked to the end of the small  beach.  It terminates in a hard rocky hook out into the water.  This native stone barrier encloses and protects the end of this  micro harbor.  Some man's grove of mangrove?

We decided we'd explored enough of this spot for one day and decided to head back toward home.  Dooley found shade to pick the sharp 'sand spurs' out of his feet.  Nice spot for a break.

We left the beach and zig zagged into the light breeze back toward South Side Marina. We got a new view of  the shore side of many of these small islands that we've only seen from a distance offshore. All of these are probably worthy of a visit and some exploring.  So many islands, so little time.  Can you see the big crane standing on the edge of this one?

La Gringa says he looks like a dental pick.  I guess in nature sometimes form follows function. Here's a better view:

The wind dropped to almost nothing.  We were just barely creeping along on sail alone, so La Gringa and I pushed away at the Hobie Mirage Drives.   We pedaled the boat most of the way back.   Great exercise and knee rehab.  While the camera dog got caught up on his sleep.  Hey, it's not easy humping a heavy video camera around in the bush while dressed in a life jacket.

It was a very calm trip back.  This video should give you a pretty good idea of how Dooley could sleep through the quiet parts:




The  whole trip back was quiet and peaceful.  It was a really nice end to a great day on the boat.  As we neared the marina we passed behind a departing sailboat.   We could tell from the distinctive shape of the stern that it was the S/V Mora Mora heading out toward the Southwest.   It made us wish we were on Twisted Sheets right along next to them.

The light wind picked up a little as we entered the canal, and the direction came around to the south.  This put us in the unusual position of being able to beam reach up and down a long stretch of canal that we usually have to struggle to negotiate.   We sailed past the spot where we typically stop.   And saw this nice image of what could be a very nice place to sit and contemplate the quiet rhythm of the tides and the clouds.  Isolation guarantees privacy.

When we went back through South Side Marina on the way home we could confirm that yes, indeed Mora Mora has left for parts unknown.   We also saw that the other Molasses Cat was back in.  With them side by side, we could see some slight differences in the boats.  Mostly something to do with the hull spacing, I think.  I'll take a closer look next time we're at South Side.

We spotted something new in the neighborhood since the last time we were here.  This is a sign that announces that a commercial company has applied for  government permission to turn this part of the canal into a place where dolphins are imprisoned for people to touch.     The UK's governor for the TCI changed the law to make it legal to keep dolphins in a private prison, for commercial purposes.   There is now nothing to legally keep someone from doing this.  There has been a large negative response to this proposal, but I have not read anything about it being cancelled or denied.    I really don't have the words to adequately express my own opinion on this. If I had a vote, it would be 'no'.

This is a pretty unlikely place for a 'petting zoo' of any kind, come to think of it.  There really are no native mammalian species here other than birds.  We do have lizards.  We have geckos, and the little chameleons, and curly tailed lizards and iguanas.  And dogs.  There are a lot of dogs on this island.

Some of them live along the canal, and they have learned to recognize the sound of the Land Rover when we are driving to the boat ramp.  They recognize the boat, too.  Dooley knows there are dogs along the canal, so he is looking for them.  Remember up above at that bird video I mentioned what a vocal little booger he is?  Well, I'll show you some of what I am talking about.  This is the Dooley Cam video as we boat back up the canal at the end of the day.  There are two local dogs running along the side of the canal ahead of us, but you can't see them because of course Dooley is focused directly on them and his head is blocking the view.  But you can hear him. Muttering, threatening, whining..... I don't know WHAT this dog is saying. I think he was telling them he was either a lawyer from NJ or a caninicidal maniac...or is that a dogicidal caniac? I'm not sure. He mumbles a lot and was keeping his voice down. Whatever he was saying, it was keeping the local dogs pretty nervous.

Do me a favor, okay?  Please play this video for your dog and see if he can translate it for me?



Do dogs study opera?

The dog talks to lizards, too.  And being lizards, they largely ignore his cynolatry leanings and they certainly don't trust his advice. Which has repeatedly proven untrustworthy from their perspective.   For some reason, this seems to have been a great year for lizards.  We always see a number of them, but lately I've noticed twice as many as usual.  We've seen populations of various sorts of critters peak here over the past few years.   Three winters back it was the season of the tick.  After that we had a heavy year of wasps.  Last year there seemed to be a plague of termites across the island, and I know for a fact that the lizards love to eat termites.   And then this year we have a glut of lizards.  Some of these suckers are getting big and bold, too.  This guy was eyeing my cheeseburger at a nice sidewalk restaurant called Vix in the Grace Bay area.   Regency Village, I think the shopping plaza is called.  And they do have good cheeseburgers.  I didn't say "cheap", to be clear.   I said "good".

We've been somewhat crippled in the boating department lately due to a combination of circumstances.  Without the use of our pedal powered inflatable kayak we've continued to take walks as a way to help rebuild my knee.  I always grab a camera for the trip, but there's not much of note to take photos of on most days.    I'm tempted to take a photo like this one and report that we stumbled upon the remains of an aviation incident.  Local tribes have swarmed out of the surrounding underbrush and are actively dismantling the crashed airframe...

It's been hard to come up with stuff to write about lately, and sometimes, it's even almost embarrassing to walk this road.  For example, recently we were walking along and spotted  a suspiciously familiar hunk of metal lying out on the roadway.   It took a few minutes to realize why this looked familiar.   It looks familiar because it is exactly the right shape, color, and material of a piece of Land Rover.   A 2006 model Defender, to be precise.  Sigh.  Why would a piece of a relatively new (25,000 miles) vehicle be lying out in the middle of a dirt road?   I might as well tell you about this now.   We're officially giving up on the Land Rovers.   And soon.  We've tried, but we just can't support them any more.  We're definitely going to miss them.  They have a character that nothing else has ever had.

I know I've gone on for years about the corrosion issues here.  I've spent many many hours trying to find ways to deal with it.  It's bad all over the island, but especially bad out here on this unpaved road where we live.  The problem isn't only the fact that we live in a beach community in the salty trade winds..  It's deeper than that, no pun intended.  This very island is composed partly of salt.  It's made from limestone that formed from the skeletons of tiny sea creatures sinking to the bottom of the sea over millions of years.  Since the rock itself was formed at the bottom of the ocean, it's basically got the same salt content of seawater. Crunching it up into dirt makes for salty dirt.  Add rain and even though thats fresh water, the moment it hits this dirt it becomes something else.  And what it becomes is something that eats steel. And a lot of other things.  Sodium and water get into a lot of mischief together.

And there's more.  This is an island.  The only way to get dirt to use to build or repair roads here is to dig it up from someplace where people want to get rid of it.  In our case, that's usually where they are dredging out a marina or boat slip or canal.  This fill has been pulled up directly from the sea floor at South Side marina.

The fill is dumped on the road, graded out and rolled flat.  It makes for a very hard compacted surface.  Until it rains hard for a day or two.

When it rains, the fine particles wash out of the coarse particles and the result is muddy potholes and exposed bedrock.  This happens several times a year here.  Well, that's the result of heavy rain and vehicle traffic on the road.   And the result of the road on the vehicles?  Well, this is the rear cross member of our Defender 90.   This is not the same as a vehicle rear bumper.  These are not bolted to the frame.  They are actually structural members of the chassis, welded to the frame.  I grabbed a corner of it recently, thinking I was going to peel off a rusty bit of paint.   A fist sized hunk of steel came away.  Whoops.

And our trailer hitch is bolted to this rear cross member.   As you can see, I am still willing to pull the light Hobie Tandem Island slowly down the road to launch it.  Even with the trailer, that weighs something like 300 lbs. maximum.  The skiff weighs closer to 1800 lbs.  Take a good look at that cross member, and tell me.  Would YOU hook up a boat and outboard weighing a ton and pull it down five miles of bad road?

 Now you know why we haven't been taking the skiff out boating much so far this winter.  Our tow vehicle is headed for the last roundup.   And we're not going with Land Rover next time around.  I can talk about that with anyone interested enough to write.  It should be fun having a new 4x4 to play with.  I'm sure there will be plenty of photos.

I mentioned the local wasps briefly when I was talking about the yearly plagues here, earlier.   I wanted to tell you something about these guys in case you're planning to visit here.     We have wasps here.  And everyone is accustomed to bees and wasps, they're everywhere.  I've known a lot of different brands over the years and they generally follow a given type.  The ones we have here resemble what we call Yellow Jackets in Texas, except they are more wasp-like.  They look exactly like this one, who was drinking water on our porch a few days ago.

These things are all around this time of year.  When I am working in my little garage shop, I might have two or three of them hovering around at any given moment.  And they are pretty easy to get along with.  They are very easy going wasps.  They won't hunt you down and aggressively sting you.  Unless you break their rules.   The rules are simple and as far as I can tell, there are only two of them.  First,   Don't crush one of the wasps.  I don't know exactly how they get their distress signals out, but they do.  If I crush one of these things I will typically see between two and five others show up within  a minute.  And they come in fast and aggressively.  Almost as aggressively as if you break rule number two.  And that one is to never, ever, not even barely touch, threaten, shake, or molest their nest in any way.     After some of the experiences that I've had with these things, I won't even whisper unkind descriptions of their nest.    They are touchy about the nest, I tell you. 

I bring this up because, once again, I've had a confrontation with these guys. I stupidly stuck my hand into a bougainvillea bush and actually grasped one of their precious little nests.   I got stung just twice on this one.    The swelling lasted about two full days.   I had to let my wristwatch band out two notches, and it was a good thing I got my ring off my finger right away.   That's from past experience.  I've had many  bee, hornet, and wasps stings over the years.   I don't have an abnormal reaction to them.  These are just particularly potent little critters.   My advice is to just leave them be.  And my experience is that if you can manage to remember to do that 'leave them be' part, they'll return the favor. 

Of course, having said that, I did wipe our their entire village as a result of this unfortunate incursion. And I paid for it. A mutual respect seems to be the best course of action.   This reminds me of a bumper sticker that I see in Texas;  "An armed society is a polite society".  In my little corner of the garden at least it's going to make for a more respectful relationship.  Because these things are definitely well armed.  Swatting, stinging, screaming hysterically, mad buzzing, spinning in circles blindly spraying insecticides and scaring the dog....... is not the answer.  And just when will this cycle of senseless violence ever end?

Did I tell you about the ants?

This post has rambled on just about long enough.  I do have a few more photos to put up before they become obsolete.  This morning La Gringa was out at dawn with her camera hoping for a nice sunrise.  The clouds obscured that moment, but we got to watch a boat leaving at dawn and headed south.   I suspect their next stop was Luperon, about 130 nautical miles south southeast.  With a possible stopover at Big Sand  Cay.

Watching sailboats leave for distant islands makes us want to get in a sailboat and leave for a distant island.  Do you know that feeling?

 La Gringa and I recently went down to Bob's Dead End Bar (and DIY Restaurant and that's NOT the name of it) at sundown to say hello to Cameron, who is a seasonal  semi-resident of South Side.  We usually see Cam and news of the first blizzards at the same time.  It's a bit of an unofficial tradition to get together for drinks at sundown at the marina, and I can see Sundowners being a good name for this bar but I'm sure that is so overdone.  Anyhow looking down at the marina we noticed that "our old slip" is vacant at the moment.  Next to the palm tree on the left.  Bob had the cool bar lights on.

I missed the sunset, naturally. I got caught up in conversation and forgot why I was sitting there.   How about a photo taken thirty seconds after sunset?  Use your imagination?  Sunset photography may be one of those things where it's definitely not better late than never.  It's  more a matter of  recognizing and seizing  moments.

In my defense we were running late.  We had just pulled up and I didn't really have that much time to settle in and wait for the best angles.  It wasn't a particularly breathtaking sunset anyhow, so there.  I've said it. That's La Gringa on the left unpacking some stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon, Cam in the middle explaining something to me, and Bob on the right.  With the beer bottle.  There's another guy sitting in front of the post. I don't know him.  Two more groups of cruisers were coming up the hill as I fumbled this sunset, but I didn't take any more photos.   Sometimes  flash photography just doesn't seem appropriate.

I didn't start this post with a sunrise photo, but as long as we're defying tradition here I'll end with one.  The Marine Police boat Sea Defender headed out on patrol.

Bugaloo's Conch Crawl

This post should see some more tropical-like photos uploaded for our  readers  in the far  north. For us that's anything north of Mexico and the Bahamas.  We still shudder when we remember those years of daily commutes in the frozen dark to spend all day inside under fluorescent lights.  I used to get what I called a sixty cycle headache from staring at white paper all day in the flicker.  We don't much miss any of that. I do believe that some people are born  attuned to four distinct seasons and they happily embrace the ice and snow for half of their lives. And I know for sure that some of us just need more sunlight.  We've tried both extremes and are 100% sure that we're tropically bent.   It still feels strange to think of us 'going up north to Texas' on a visit.  That's one of those little things that tend to reset the realization that we do indeed live in a foreign country.  But then... do we, really? Can any place that you've come to consider home still also be foreign to you?    I know that we miss this little island when we're away.  I suspect that's some kind of psychological litmus test.  If you don't miss some place, it's probably not home by those definitions.Well, whether  foreign or not, it's still pretty comfortable here in January.

I want to talk about a new restaurant that's recently opened up on Providenciales.  We've been there three times in the past month.  We don't normally flog commercial establishments, and have no incentive or stake in this.   No money invested.  We don't know the owners, or the bartender, or the staff. Other than what would be expected after being there several times as customers.  I do think they should advertise on this blog, but then I feel that way about everyplace in the Turks and Caicos.

Doesn't this look like the kind of place where you could stretch out with a cold one and just chill for a while?  Nibble on a couple conch fritters.   Put the umbrella up when you start to feel the heat.  The sea breeze keeps it pretty cool, but you do need to keep an eye on sun exposure here.



That's the beach in front of Bugaloo's Conch Crawl.   We took some of these photos on our first visit. I notice that we were there near high tide.  We pay attention to those kinds of things.   We liked the place.  We went back a couple weeks later at low tide, too.  There are photos from each of those lunches mixed in here.   I just gathered up the best photos of the lot and posted them.   The major difference is that there is a whole lot more beach at low tide.  So if you notice the big discrepancy in how much beach is exposed, now you know why.

I think  this structure is a band stand type of thing.  Could also serve as a speaker's or awards rostrum.  Looks like a Corona Beer advertising location. Or perhaps a good spot to set up some kind of souvenir stand.  I think I'll buy a t-shirt myself when they come out with them.  That distant view is also of some interest to us.  Those are familiar waters and very familiar hills and islands.



Did you notice the guy with a rake in his hand patrolling the beach in those photos?    We saw him constantly patrolling, picking up little bits of seaweed and trash. This has to be one of the cleanest beaches in Provo. It's certainly clean for a beach restaurant, no bones about it.  Yuk yuk.  I think the owner is making some statements, throwing down the gauntlet,  and looking for ways to make his place better than the competition. If you know of the history of Bugaloo and 'da Conch Shack', it's understandable that there is some competition here. You know we're big fans of the Conch Shack. Steady customers for seven years.  We've come to know the staff there and we don't need to see the menus.  And we love the place.  We were still very keen to check out Bugaloo's new restaurant in Five Cays.  It's pretty darned good.   Some of the people in our party would say that, so far, it's better.

This is what you'll see from the road  in front of "Bugaloo's Conch Crawl". It's the view after we passed the restaurant, drove down to Marty Mason's former fish operation at the end of the road, and then turned around and drove back.   I guess I shouldn't call the fish pier "former".  It's still there.  Just not currently in business.   We asked Marty about that.  It's another tale of a struggle to recover from hurricane damage.

A lot of  visitors  to Providenciales won't get to this part of the island unless they make a special effort to do so. Five Cays is on the other side of the airport from most of the normal sightseeing spots.  Some might say that it's also on the other side of the tracks.... in a country where the only railroads are ghosts.

Railroads aren't the only ghosts here, either. This part of town reminds me of some of the other islands, like North or Middle Caicos.  Where you sometimes find someone's business dream coming true next to the ghost of one that didn't.

 I suspect this might be another victim of our 2008 hurricane season.  The same thing happened to Marty's commercial fishing business down at the dead end of this road. It's never yet recovered from Hurricane Hannah.  A lot of small business owners here are self-insured.  This is a high stakes game in the Hurricane Zone of life.  I'm going to write my own version of some local background here,  so if you want to continue reading about Bugaloo's jump down to the next photo.

Most of the people who read this are not as familiar with Five Cays as they are with the Grace Bay and Leeward neighborhoods.  You really need to rent a car to get out to places like Blue Hills and Five Cays.  I might not make any local friends among the local cab drivers by saying this, but the big van taxis that you'll get from the airport or the Grace Bay hotels will charge you more for one round trip to the Conch Shack in Blue Hills  than it would cost you to rent one of those Daihatsu Charades for two days.   My advice is to rent the car for two days, which will be enough to let you see the entire island without rushing around.  Get out to South Dock, and Sapodilla Hill,  and try dinner at La Brisas, too, while you've got the car. Try to catch the sunset over Chalk Sound.  One simple rule:  Don't be stupid about leaving valuables in plain view in the car.  Oh, and another rule, fasten your seat belt.  The police here won't give you grief for too many things unless you're causing problems,  but they will come down on you for the seat belts. 

Remember to drive on the left. Driving styles vary widely on this island.  And rental cars come in both right hand and left hand drive.  Don't hit anything and you'll do fine.  You probably won't even see a policeman unless you create a problem. Do I sound like your mother? That's scary.  If you've got a mother like me, I mean.

Provo's Five Cays settlement is one of the largest residential neighborhoods in the Turks and Caicos. Near the nuts and bolts commercial part of Provo, where a lot of manual labor opportunities create jobs for immigrants.  There are not really too many tourism-oriented businesses visible in Five Cays, although the entire country essentially depends upon tourism in one form or another.    It's near the South Dock port of entry, customs, immigration, and all the shipping and courier businesses.   It's the island version of a working class neighborhood, complete with untidy gardens, children and dogs. There's usually some fresh graffiti spray painted somewhere.   If one were the type that mentally accumulates crime statistics, the name of Five Cays crops up in the local newspapers more often than anyplace else on the island.   Maybe in the entire country.   This is a very distinctive local neighborhood. You will definitely know that you're not in Leeward or Grace Bay.

But then when one really digs into the violent crime stories (as a lot of us expats do) they find that in almost all cases victim A knew perpetrator B and in many cases were either neighbors or related.  Maybe by marriage.   What you don't see are reports of holiday visitors  having problems in Five Cays on a regular basis.     Maybe those petty criminals are all over watching the beaches at Grace Bay for unattended beach bags and unlocked rental cars. Naive strangers carrying  obvious wealth create a potential opportunity for a certain mindset. It's the same everywhere. Your town, too. 

And now we'll return to our irregularly scheduled lack of an identifiable program.

This is the entrance to Bugaloo's.  That's a rabbit hutch in front, with a hand dug 'lagoon" alongside.   This is one section of a large parking area.   You can see a vehicle parked in the other secion, which is closer to the beach and tables, but then you totally miss the rabbit hutch.  We did that on our first trip.  This time I walked over to take a look.   While the rest of my party has stormed the outside dining area, claimed a table, and ordered a pitcher of rum punch.  They pretty much had the procedure down by this second visit.  The waitress remembered them.   I can't understand why.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.  The Blog Doobie is taking photos of a rabbit hutch. Talk about feeling like a tourist.  And I grew up mostly rural.  I think the hutch is cool construction.  It's a conglomeration of local sticks.  The rabbits seemed pretty mellow.   I told them that I'd check the menu for it.  Find out if there was anything on there besides seafood.  I mean, if there's just ONE rabbit, it's a pet, right?  As in, two's a population explosion and three or more rabbits is starting to look more like a steady supply?

I found Bugaloo's sea water pond to be pretty interesting. It runs alongside the building.  I saw several large fish and a couple of sea turtles in there. The fish are to the left just at the end of the piling reflection.   I was pretty curious when I saw this. It was low tide at the time I took this photo. The shoreline had receded off away from the beach. The ocean is very shallow water here.  And yet this turtle still had plenty of water to swim in, slightly above sea level.  I wonder if turtles notice when the tide stops moving. They must feel part of that rhythm.  I'm no expert on marine biology, but I don't think you find sea turtles in places without tides.

"But I didn't ponder the question too long, I was hungry and went out for a bite" (to quote Jimmy Buffet) and  I stuck my lens in one of the open windows as I walked by the inside bar.   Looks pretty comfy, but I knew my crew freshly down from the north country  would be outside in the sun  if it were possible.  And here that's usually possible.

I think the ubiquitous cable-drum-conch-table has become a standard here. Kind of like the steel drum entertainment in some countries.   There were two guys out there working away cleaning conch.  I noticed they were tenderizing the conch out at their cable spool table, too.  That's a good idea.  This stuff has to be bashed with something hard to tenderize it.  Little bits of conch typically get splashed and flung all over the vicinity whenever I do it.   I end up with some pretty messy vicinities. Doing it out over the water makes a lot of sense. I wonder that these guys haven't put some lines out in the water.  All those thousands of bits of splashed conch must lure in some larger fishies.     The restaurant was almost empty when we got there for lunch  half an hour before noon. And these guys were already stocking up for the lunch crowd.   That struck me as a good way to minimize wait time, and also showed a confidence in the clientele.   Open the conch, and they will come?  We see that Bugaloo has also included an outside bar.  He seems well set up for hosting entertainment and crowds.  I was pretty impressed with the place all around.  And this was before the food got to us.

This is the same area as the early photos in this post, but from near where we parked.   A shortcut from the car to the nearest table without going through the bar.  yeah, that guy is still raking sand.  Slow and steady. I guess you don't want to wrap up a sweet job like that too quickly.

As mentioned, the place was sparse just a few minutes before noon.  But it fills up fast, even on week days.  By the time we left, there were only a couple of empty tables.   And no, we did not stay until dinner.   Although this could be a very pleasant place to while away a peaceful afternoon with good company.

Thinking of my incarcerated buddy Harvey in the hutch up front, I tentatively looked at the menu.   Whew.  No rabbit.  I was relieved.  (Don't you just hate it when you find a hare on your plate?)   I guess he knew he was safe.  Had that smug look in his beadly pink little eyes.

I know I'm starting to sound like some food critic, but we do like the decor here.   This is La Gringa's lunch of coconut cracked conch, cole slaw and fries. She wanted the Mac & Cheese, but they did not have any on either of our first two visits. Lost a couple points there with La Gringa.  We got the feeling they are still up shifting to their full potential, and haven't quite reached the stabilized operating mode of a smoothly managed and experienced operation.  (How was that for some euphemistic soft shoe?)  Anyhow that's  all small stuff.   The food is outstanding. I'm sure they'll have the macaroni and cheese issues sorted out in good time.  Or we'll just have to keep asking until they do.   (note: on our third visit, they had it.)

The service was good. The prices are within the local ' brackets' for similar fare. The view over Five Cays Bay  is great.  The decor is Tropical Warm.   I looked at the chart, and this body of water is labelled "Bermudian Harbour (Mudjon Harbour)"   Gosh.  Where have we seen THAT name before?

Why do I get this mental image of some terrified 16th century navigator frantically trying to convince his captain that he had indeed finally found Bermuda and the harbour on the chart must be around there somewhere?  Someone sure seemed desperate to find a Bermudian Harbour here.   They kept stating that they had done so. I wonder if that navigator ever saw Bermuda again....

These guys hated every bit of the Bugaloo's experience.   The conch fritters, the pitchers of rum punch, the sun, the sand,  the clear warm water, the beach. They would rather be in New England and Colorado in early January.   See their miserable faces? This is just one version of me doing sarcasm.

As things got busier, more and more people showed up for lunch.  Not only obvious visitors, but locals.   Some interesting looking characters around here.

At least he had his hair tied up behind him, in a 'frony-tail'.   (which character did you think I was talking about??)

Seriously, if they don't already have a Captain Conch, I think they should consider tailoring the position.  I have a candidate in mind.

I was trying to get a good photo of the rum punch pitcher with the dark rum "floater" on top.  I discovered that there was a brief window of opportunity  with the first pitcher before it got stirred up, which I missed.  It seemed that subsequent scuttles spent scant seconds in a state of stratification.  Silly me.

Bugaloo's has a very interesting location from our perspective.  Five Cays is near our favorite small boat sailing ground.   Big boat sailing ground too, come to think of it.  Here's the coastal radar station tower from the back side.   I wonder if they blank the radar transmitter when it's sweeping over  populated areas nearby?  We talk to these guys on the radio sometimes.  Maybe I'll remember to ask them.

I don't know exactly what this lady ordered, or in what language, but I know they brought her beer in a bamboo mug.   Without taking it out of the bottle.   I don't know if that's the regular way to serve it here. I could imagine some potential problems at around 1:00 in the morning, but that's just me.  I wonder why they would serve it like that.   I just had a thought.       Does anyone know if radar transmissions make beer go flat?  And does bamboo block microwave radiation?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Well, one of them does, anyhow.

We took a closer look at the sea water lagoon on the way by.  It's built with native stone and masonry sides. I recognize the handiwork of another inveterate sand castle and moat builder....who's managed to snag a budget.   I didn't notice any  conch in there.  Just the turtles and those fish so far.    I don't know if the fence is to keep the turtles in, or children and dogs out.  Dooley, for example, would be very interested in that turtle.  I think he was a big game hunter in a previous life.  Looking at the water level,  I was reminded of my earlier questions about the tide.

They've buried a couple of PVC pipes in the bottom of the pond/lagoon.   These are what allow the sea water to be exchanged as the tide rises and falls.   Someone has put caps on the pipes while the tide was high, preserving the water level during the low tide.    Someone has a pretty responsible job here. If they forget to cap those pipes just once during a low tide, they're going to have a problem with their creatures.
Looking at this, I had an idea for a flapper valve that might do the same thing.  I need to talk to Bugaloo about this.   I think we might be kindred spirits when it comes to playing with beach sand.

Bugaloo obviously cares about this lagoon.  I think that grass in there is the stuff that conch like to vacuum for their daily bread.   I wonder if he's thought about where the nearest gasoline powered pump is located.  I mean, if  those pipes were uncapped   all the water would flow out with the tide. It would be good to be able to fill it back up without having to wait for three or four hours.  I'm not sure about turtles, but fish can't handle that. A Honda powered 'trash pump' would do it, with a few hundred feet of intake hose.

Of course as soon as I started thinking about these things I had to go check out the intake for the pond.   I can't help it.  It's an affliction. Kind of like a hyper kid  in slow motion because he's older.    I don't think hyper kids ever discover older unless they discover slow motion first.  This was during our low tide visit to Bugaloos.   We had ulterior motives, which I'll talk about in a minute.  But the black hose is the intake that allows the pipes to admit the water that nourishes the sea life inside the lagoon that Bugaloo built.  The low tide shoreline is quite an appreciable distance from the lagoon intake.  If someone were to take   the PVC caps off the ends of those pipes in the lagoon right now, this would look like an artesian spring as the water drained out.   For a little while.

Someone has to keep an eye on the tide and the lagoon water and the PVC caps, day and night, year round.   It's not all fritters and Corona commercials, being Captain Conch.  You don't make that rank without showing some long-term reliability.  Oh yes indeed.  This is more than just a spiffy uniform on a sunny day.

Before I forget, I wanted to point out the little bitty dot of an island off in the distance just to the right of the  far land mass in middle of that photo.  That's the little cay called Cooper Jack Rock.   It's the first little island we get to when we sail out of South Side Marina.   So... this beach and restaurant is a little over a three mile sail for us in the Hobie.  This is one of the reasons we were interested in what this was like during low tide.  The water is deep enough for the boat, and there are some rocks just offshore there in deeper water to the right that we could anchor behind. We might have to try this out. A rising tide would be best for us.  It would be fun to sail up, drop the anchor, and wade ashore for some conch fritters and refreshments.   It would take us something like fifteen minutes to get here on the Hobie.   And over an hour or so to get back.  Typically.

Speaking of sailboats (notice how smoothly I moved to a subject closer to our hearts than even conch?) we've been visiting the S/V Twisted Sheets over in the boatyard on a regular basis.  We are planning to have the basic electrical mess caused by the lightning strike sorted out by professionals.  That project is underway now.   And after that, we hope to have them go through the engines thoroughly and rectify whatever needs rectifying.   We hope to be launching her again after that, with some sailing plans already in the works.   Future plans include replacing the hard top and dinghy davits entirely with a custom built top that incorporates it all into one structure.  It has to support the solar panels, extend out far enough to hang the dinghy, and accommodate two hammocks.  We've got some other ideas, too.  An arch with steps up the sides would help when tied to fixed docks at low tide.  We want to think about this one.  I've been doodling around a lot with ideas.  Any help greatly accepted on this.  I need a clean design that looks right, and uses a minimum of welding.  Basically replace everything in this photo from the fiberglass up.

Other than recovering from the holidays and surgery, we've been taking it fairly easy.  The longest  trips  we've made lately are the 10.2 road miles from the house out to the boatyard to check on the catamaran.   On one of these last week we noticed on the way to the marina that there are a number of "speed bumps" installed.  I've seen these called "Sleeping Policemen" elsewhere in the world.    Anyhow, to return to the subject, notice the sign going this way says Speed Bump Ahead.   And so it is.  There in the near distance with the usual ruts around each end where people who don't want to go over them go around them.

For some reason we noticed that on the way back the sign said Speed Hump Ahead.  Not Bump, but Hump.  So then we started paying attention.  Why are they bumps when heading in one direction, and humps  going the other way?   And it's not consistent.  I think it was something like Bump Hump Bump Hump Bump Bump Bump.  Has kind of a nice rhythm to it, when you look at it that way.  I'm not sure we agree that a bump is the same as a hump.   Obviously, if they were the same, we wouldn't need two different signs, now would we. I'm confused.

As you know I'm putting some knee rehab efforts in.  La Gringa and I have been walking a lot more than usual.  I take a camera along in case we see something newsworthy or photogenic.  So far, it's just been the normal kind of things.   I still take photos, though.  Lifelong affliction.

We've been looking at some of the native vegetation.  It constantly amazes me how some of this stuff can survive on the rocks facing into the almost constant trade wind here.   These are tough little plants. I don't have a clue what the name of them might be, but they remind me of dwarf trees.  A kind of natural Bonsai.   And they literally grow right out of the limestone rocks, just a few meters from the ocean, and no source of fresh water other than seasonal rain.  Where do these things get their nutrients?   Amazing.  I think we want to start seeing what we can come up with by giving more water to life that's already thriving here on just what it can find on its own.   If we suddenly disappear please tell the investigators that I only gave it nitrogen and some water.

We never get tired of walking the beach.   These are not the best beaches for finding lots of floating debris.  This area is tucked up into the southern shore of the island, is very shallow, and protected from the wind and long shore current. So it's not a good place for driftwood or flotsam. But it's not bad for a winter's afternoon stroll.

I  liked the look of those sand ripples, and wondered if they might be a good background change on my computer desktop.   I thought it came out a little bland.

So I used the software to generate a bunch of  suspended clear droplets.  Well, not really.  But you get the idea.  Voila.  Gringo Wallpaper.

I haven't mentioned Dooley yet in this post, but rest assured he's going along with us on these long walks.  Just a few days ago we were walking along the beach when I spotted some unusual rocks scattered under a tree on the beach.  These rocks sure resemble the blue slate ballast stones we recovered from an ancient shipwreck site we found out on the reef.  These are blue.  They are not native limestone.   They were probably brought here as ballast in a sailboat from the Azores.   That's based upon what Dr. Don Keith told us.  He's pretty knowledgeable in these early shipwreck things.   I believe him.    But the question here, is how the heck did blue slate get out here on this beach by itself?   Another mystery.  And of course Dooley the Distracted was no help at all.   That's the blue rock fragments that he's standing in the middle of.

He's actually quite a challenge to take on a walk.  He has an uncanny nose for the least molecule of edible garbage.  And people do fling chicken bones out of  automobile windows.  And he finds them.  And eats them.  And this causes us all digestive problems later.    He gets one whiff of rotten two week old chicken bone and he's on it like a duck on a June bug.    So lately I've been walking him using this leash I made from some of the black nylon coated shock cord I bought for the Hobie Tandem Island.    This has been an interesting experimental leash.   It stretches out quite a bit when he pulls hard.  This takes the constant shock out of the leash as he charges madly from one side of the road to the other in his version of taking a walk.   If we walk four miles, he trots for twelve.  And where it really gets interesting is when he stretches it out directly away from me as far as he can.   He is like shifted down into four wheel low, and his little legs quiver with the strain as he tries to get his nose one millimeter closer to whatever has his attention.  In this photo, we are going down a steep slope in the hill in which the road is cut. I am standing about six or seven feet above the road bed.  Dooley is headed down on this springy leash like a combination of rappelling and bungy-jumping.

I had to traverse down that diagonal cut to get to road level.  Makes for some interesting knee rehab with an excited Jack Russell on a big elastic band.  This will indeed test one's knee stability and strength.  This physical therapy stuff doesn't have to be a drag.  Does anyone make offroad inline skates?

Sometimes when he gets the leash stretched out all the way to the end on level ground it gets humorous. He will put everything he's got into pulling it straight ahead.   The resistance is along the center line of his body, and his thrust. He starts looking like a badger in a pulling contest.  He'll pull until he starts choking himself.  Then he gets tired of holding the strain, and turns to one side or the other.   The first few times he did this, as soon as he turned  off center line, the stretched shock cord yanked him into a fast 180 degree turn in the blink of an eye.   He's since learned that he needs to back down in a straight line before turning.   Or hold position stubbornly clamped to the earth with his teeth gritted and his muscles quivering until I give in and walk toward him. It spins him dizzy to try to turn under tension.  I was afraid it was going to give him whiplash.

This is just a photo of the road we walk near the dead end.   These rocks are embedded in the road, right in the tire track.  They would be great for stubbing a toe in the dark.  And a man would have to be a natural born fool to be driving around here fast with bald tires.  And we do have some of that variety here.  We definitely do.  Vehicle inspections here are largely subjective.

I still haven't located and repaired the leak in the inflatable kayak.  This has been limiting our boating, considerably.  I am avoiding pulling the skiff on it's trailer with the Defender.  The rear cross-members of the Land Rovers are crumbling to rusty hunks.  The trailer tow hitches are bolted to these cross members.  It's a problem for us, boating wise.  We may be making some vehicular changes in the near future.
Twisted Sheets is in rehab,  we don't trust the rusty truck bumpers to pull the skiff, and the inflatable has a leak.

Thank goodness we planned ahead and have the Tandem Island.   It's on a trailer, but it only weighs a fraction of the skiff.  300 lbs vs about 2,000.  We took the Hobie out last week when we had about 20 knots of wind.  It was a nice winter sail, although a bit wet at times.   Just another cold winter's day in the Turks and Caicos.  Makes one want to reach for the mukluks, doesn't it?

I haven't been very diligent about documenting my DIY stuff lately.   There's just too much of it going on, especially after all the time we spent away in the past three months.   You can't just walk away and leave things here and expect them to be the same when you get back.  A few days ago I was working away at the bench when La Gringa asked me what I was working on.  I told her it was open heart surgery on a croc flip flop.  She told me to take a photo.  This qualifies as DIY.    I cannot just trot down to the store to buy a new set of flip flops.   That would be an international flight to Miami.   So in the meantime, I play tropical cobbler.  That pad will get tucked back inside the shoe where the big nail is holding it open and glued with Goop. Sometimes it works.  Bought me some time, anyhow.

That's pretty much it for this post.   We really didn't have much in the way of new adventure, but this is supposed to be about day to day life here, too.  I wanted to change the scenery on the blog and move away from the holidays.  Also wanted to get the word out about Bugaloo's early in the season.   It's worth checking out. Conch Shack has competition, no doubt about it.  Hopefully they'll just improve to  match it.   They better. Bugaloo means business.

We didn't take any outstanding sunset photos in the past week or so.  La Gringa has been experimenting with her new tripod, and what she can finally get with her longer lenses.  This is a photo she took of the boatyard some 900 meters away, at dusk.   I think it's pretty good for an image taken with low light in the wind.   I think she's hoping to get some good full moon on the water images now, too.  One of those masts is Twisted Sheets.   It's the short one with the fried radar.