Beach Break

We're taking a break from  the string of Providenciales photos that have been posted here lately. For what seems like forever, actually.  I know that you find our tales of South Side Marina to be consistently fascinating.  And that the never ending tedium of grungy old boat work captures your rapt attention in exciting new ways that defy imagination.  We know you're anxiously awaiting yet another blog post with  even more sunset photos from various spots around Bob's Bar, mixed in with aerial shots of it all.  Well, this ain't going to be that post. We needed a change of cay.

We were invited out to one of the other islands for a visit this week.  It was a chance to get away from the increasingly busy marina, the never finished boat, and the island micro-city of Providenciales. To say we leaped at the opportunity would be uncharacteristically understated.    A couple languid days of beach time miles away from the boat was a real treat.   I put  my travelling shoes on specifically for the extreme pleasure of kicking them off again once we arrived on Pine Cay.  Shoes weren't really necessary for the trip over.  It was a symbolic thing.

 I know some of our readers caught up in the grip of winter probably don't want to hear this right now, but the weather was uncharacteristically warm.  Reminded me of June.  It was like summer  with air temperatures well up into the 80's.   Light winds.  No noise not created by nature's wind and waves, no crowds.  Just blissfully peaceful beach and the soothing murmurs of translucent blue tropical water lapping at the sand as a soundtrack.

We don't do much on these trips.  Dooley and I took a walk down the beach for a few hours one afternoon. "Walk" is probably not an accurate description of what Dooley does.  He only has a couple of speeds, and neither of them is really a walk.  He doesn't stop anywhere for long voluntarily.  Or unless he's pretty tired.   He's starting to get up there in dog years, so he's not exactly the same fireball he was ten years ago. But he still loves the ocean and the beach and this special little island in particular.   There are so very many things to look at and sniff, for those of us who are into that kind of thing.   He was so excited to have a beach day that he was frequently overrunning his nose. He had to circle  back to check out things he only caught a whiff of whilst running blithely by on his first pass.

It's a little frustrating for me to try to get photos without dog footprints in them, as I've bemoaned many times before.  The moment I point a camera at something he's all over it.   He wants to know what it is about whatever it is that might be interesting. Getting undisturbed photos with Dooley around takes a technique similar to spear fishing.  It's best to approach the target at an oblique angle, apparently ignoring it while heading toward something else  entirely.  The trick is keeping track of the subject in peripheral vision, disguising the interest, until at the last moment, I turn and quickly shoot the photo.  Before the dog can change direction and ruin it.  

See the doggie prints in that one?   He had already scooped me and was circling for another pass.   I took the photo anyhow.   I think I was seeing something similar to one of the mirror images we sometimes post here.  Except this one used shadows.

 

This desiccated and shattered approximation of a shaved head is what I always heard referred to as a "Norwegian buoy" back in my oceanographic career days.   We used a lot of these bright orange and blue inflatable buoys to mark sub-sea moorings.   They are popular because they are well designed and built very rugged.  I thought they were practically impervious to the elements. A walk along the beach here will put that notion to rest.  Even these tough ocean going floats eventually will succumb to ultraviolet radiation if exposed long enough.

Here's another one.  Same thing.  Totally destroyed by the sun.   It's enough to make one wear a hat down here.  Especially with a bald head that's not nearly as tough as these buoys once were.
 

Not all of the interesting sights on the beach are flotsam.   Dooley used to try to dig out sand crabs when he was younger. Then he ran into a few of the local land crabs that were the approximate diameter of a large dinner plate and a whole lot meaner.  The term armed and dangerous comes to mind. These days, the dog gives them a wide berth.

This is the home of a small one.  Complete with the trash from last night's dinner flung out for the tide to deal with.
 

 

I've given up yelling at the dog about destroying my photographic subject matter.  He's set in his hot 'n trot ways, I suppose.  At least his tracks make it easy to see where he's been, and what he's been up to.  And sometimes it's useful to know which way he was headed when he was last spotted.  He does get caught up in his own little world and disappears from time to time on some trail or other.   Not too hard to follow when his are the only tracks in sight.

 Another shot of untrammeled beach, taken while the dog was off being obnoxious somewhere else.

Which might have been his very purposeful and direct trip over to an upended and broken palm tree that had washed ashore.   He had to make a stop, in that time honored tradition and special relationship that dogs and trees seem to have enjoyed since the beginning.

The only other signs of humanity we saw while on our beach walk were the occasional boats passing by offshore. This is the North Caicos ferry, zipping passengers back and forth between Leeward and Sandy Point.  We've taken this very boat quite a few times ourselves.

As you can tell from the photos, for most of the time on this beach there are no boats passing by for long stretches of time.   It's truly a tropical island lovers version of primeval peace.

At one point I saw these blue bits of polypropylene line sticking out of the sand and went over to take a closer look.   There was something familiar about it.

Oh yeah, now I remember.  I am almost certain that this is a remaining remnant of a large section of fishing net that washed ashore here during a storm back in 2011.  I cut a piece of it out and took it home.  So this net has now been here for five years.  I didn't have the energy nor the time to dig it up and see how much of it is left.  I suspect the piece I cut out is the only attention anyone has given it since then.

I know that this is the same net as the one in that link I posted above.  The background of the photo is that same group of Casuarinas trees in both photos, 2011 and 2016.   We were actually headed for those trees in search of a  spot to take a break.  The sun was fierce and the idea of some cool shade was popular with both of us.

I let Dooley pick the shady spot.   He has his own criteria for these things.   I don't know what those are, but I've learned that sometimes it's just easier to go along with him. Besides, this spot under the trees on a soft bed of Australian Pine needles looked pretty good to me.

So we settled in for a while, to relax and just watch an afternoon at the beach develop.  As you can see, the excitement was minuscule.  The white thing in the middle of the photo on the horizon is a sail.   That's all we really needed for subject matter. Sailboats are good for a nice long observation.   They don't go anywhere very quickly.

It was a good excuse to run the zoom out on the new camera.   Same sailboat  at 20x, taken while I started to slump down into a more comfortable observation position, with my head comfortably against a log.  Judging by the changing angle of that sprig of beach grass.

Dooley got into the spirit of the idea, and he sacked out next to me. I can't be entirely sure, as time moves differently here, but I think we may have dozed off for a few minutes.  It's certainly a good place for it.  It actually might have been more than just a few minutes.  I had needle marks tattooing the backs of my legs and arms from the Casuarinas leaves.  I'm going to assume I must have remained fairly stationary for about an hour.   

And then when somebody's snoring woke me up... I looked around and quickly discovered that absolutely nothing had changed during my unplanned nap. The sun moved a little, the waves were still breaking out on the reef, as a distant murmur, and this could just as easily have been the year 1816. I'm guessing that this view hasn't changed.   This was a languid afternoon experience that I had not had in a very long time. I woke up refreshed and relaxed, and worries seemed to have all stayed behind back on Provo for a few minutes.  When was the last time you took a nap with your dog under a shady tree on a tropical beach? Hmm? Don't you think you're overdue?

Did I mention 1816?  Maybe the distant views on this day were not so different from those of two centuries before after all.  And no, I wasn't hallucinating.  Not this time.

That photo reminds me of another time, much more recent than 1816.  I'm thinking of that day back in 2010 when we caught a distant view of a schooner under sail.  I posted that photo, and several weeks later we got an email from the captain of that boat.   This lead to a meeting with Captain Bob Nichols, who was running supplies to orphanages in the Bahamas and Haiti on the "Star of the Sea".  We got involved in supporting a couple of their trips to Haiti, and this all led to a long term friendship with Bob.  He's no longer running that boat, but we do stay in touch. You might see his comments show up here from time to time.

Meanwhile, back on the island, the dog and I cut through the bushes and intersected one of the major highways on Pine Cay for our walk back. We'd had enough sunshine and knew we could find shady patches all up the island if we stuck to the roads.   As you can see, dodging traffic wasn't much of an issue.

I guess we'd missed the big parade when a large iguana cruised down the middle of the road, apparently without a care in the world. It's probably a good thing Dooley got there well after the iguana had taken his exit from the highway.  Dooley always seems to think those encounters are a lot more fun than the lizards do.  Anyhow, this is what an iguana's track looks like. The little sweeping marks are where the iguanas claws brushed the sand as it walked, and the long furrow is from its tail dragging.  Boy, don't we all know that feeling.

And it continued pretty much all the way up to that next rise in the road.  That's where you can just make out a little spotted dog with his nose to the ground, 50 yards ahead of me.  He's the speck up ahead in the wrong lane.
 

We didn't spend all our time on the beach.  We did go check out some of the Pine Cay things we hadn't seen in a while.   I think it was about a year ago that we'd seen this structure built as an observation platform overlooking the water in the Aquarium.   I could have told them that using steel post anchors was a bad idea.  These posts are now essentially untied from the concrete.  The galvanized lag bolts are a nice touch, but totally useless at their intended purpose with the anchors completely rusted back to elemental iron.
 

Speaking of structures, we managed to make a side trip over to Devil's Cut. I had posted photos of this bridge back when it was new.  We were curious as to whether or not it had survived Hurricane Joachim a couple months ago.

The bridge seems to have survived, and in fact has apparently been shored up a bit at each end from it's original position.   That makes me believe that it may have been repaired.

And if you're interested, we also have plenty of photos of this area before someone decided to make it more accessible.

We were there just a half hour after high tide  as the water on the Caicos Bank was starting to rush by on its shortest path back to mother ocean. We got our feet wet getting from the golf cart to the bridge on this side.  Dooley hated every minute of it.  So much so that he made a half dozen trips through the water just to remind himself of how awful it all was.

The side of the bridge on the little no-name cay now has a paved path over the rougher parts of the ironshore limestone.

We had nothing much to do and all day to do it, so we took a walk around the perimeter of the islet.  Just taking the dog and the cameras for a stroll.  

This is a little disappearing history here.  The black pointy things sticking up through the mangroves are old conch shells, discarded from years ago when conch were still plentiful this close to shore.   They break down slowly, but they do eventually return to the sea.

When we rounded a turn in the trail we could see that someone has put something out on the point of the cay nearest the cut through to the Banks.   We had to go take a look to see what's new out there, as well.   The "pirate" flag did catch our attention, rippling and flapping in the breeze as the easterly trade winds had their way with it.

When we got to the point we could see that there is now an umbrella stand cemented into the rocks,  a bamboo flag pole, and a marker of some kind.   And the pirate flag.   I confess I'm not much of a fan of the cute Disney version of piracy. I think this would be a great spot for the Pine Cay ensign,  but I don't get a vote with those folks.

Looking across the cut I noticed that there have been some changes over on that side, too.  Especially since our friend Preacher Stubbs showed us how he cooks conch, back on a New Year's trip seven years ago.

There is now another one of these marker signs hammered into the shore over on that side, too.

 

 The dining room table that was here in 2009 seems to have survived the years okay.  I didn't have a boat with me to go check it out,  and this isn't the kind of place I would swim across during full ebb.   At least, not on this day.  Once again the new camera let me get closer without getting wet.  You can see some of the tidal current ripping through here.   

 

We liked the pattern that the Oystercatchers make when they stroll around in the sandy spots here.    We didn't see any of them on this visit, but it's probably still a bit early in the season for the birds to be here in force. They start showing up in larger numbers later in the spring during nesting season.   There are obviously a few around now, and they've been here since the last high tide.

We walked around the rest of the little cay.   I don't remember if this section of shoreline had been intact when we were last here.  It illustrates what is slowly happening to all of these islands.  The waves undercut the shore line until the rock ledge breaks and falls into the ocean.   There is less island here every year, as the ocean grinds it very very slowly back to sand.

The broken ledges can form some attractive habit for small fish. I was expecting to see some pilchards here on this trip.  Must have spooked them stomping through the underbrush.   They're skittish things, with good reason.  They're the favorite entrée for many species of marine life.

All good things must come to an end, and we had to get back to our floating home at South Side Marina.  We had a wonderfully relaxing visit to Pine Cay.  I just realized that these were the first nights we'd spent off of the boat this year.

This is a little hut to shelter people from the elements while they wait for their ride at the Pine Cay marina.  I was just walking around snapping photos until the scheduled boat trip to Providenciales was ready.  

And I found a spot where the pilchards are hanging out.   If you look at the water between the dock and the shoreline you can see a large school of them.  This is a larger version of the type of environment  they like.  They seem to like some protection from the open water.  It's similar in layout from the broken rock ledges and the channels between them and the shore.

That's a whole bunch of very good bait right there.  Or one could put them in a can with olive oil and call them sardines, and be entirely accurate.

This is another good place to catch baitfish.   This is the fuel dock at Pine Cay.   It's also a boat ramp.

Or a swimming hole, if one relaxes their standards far enough.  Dooley ain't choosy.  Salt water is good enough.
 

And another half hour after that was taken we were back on a boat to Providenciales, and back to our hectic life refitting an old catamaran at South Side Marina.  With a wet dog on our laps.  And in the car. It's only a seven mile trip. 

We could have timed that  last part a little better.

We were only on Pine Cay for two nights, and didn't get photos of either one of those sunsets.  I guess we were too busy or something.   But hey, we have plenty of nice sunset photos from South Side Marina if we ever run short.

Like this one:

 

I know it might seem strange, but this old boat is starting to feel like home.   If you can imagine a home that moves almost constantly.   Complete with a  soft chorus of creaks and groans  every time the weather changes.   I wonder why that feels so familiar?

Cheap Fill

This is going to be a quick, low-quality, cut-rate, disappointing post to fill in this big blank period between the last post and the next post. I'd call it an interim post, but I think I've overused that term in some of my earlier shallow excuses. We are working on a new post, but other commitments keep splattering on the windshield of life and delaying us. Hence this Cheap Fill of a post to let you know we haven't forgotten you. Nope. Not at all.

We had a visit from an old friend in late June. The "Star of the Sea" stopped by the island on another run to Haiti. Captain Bob Nichols and crew spent several days here, taking on fuel, food, and water. If you have read previous posts in this blog, you have read about the missionary work that the three-masted schooner has been involved in. If not, or if you'd like to read up on the boat in more detail you can take a side trip to that post by clicking here: Star of the Sea.




While setting up that link I noticed that we've written and posted photos of the boat on four different posts. I am hoping most readers know that if you click one of the topics on the list over on the bottom of the right side of this page, you'll be instantly transported to posts on those subjects in a separate window. When you're done, just close that window and you'll return to this one. In the perfect Internet world, that is.

We heard Capt. Nichols on the VHF radio one morning as they approached Providenciales on their way in from the Bahamas. They're once again out sailing the seas to deliver donated food and supplies to orphanages. They sail from Florida to the orphanage in Cat Island in the Bahamas, and then they sail from Cat Island to here. From the Turks and Caicos Islands they go pick up more supplies at the Morton Salt Company on Great Inagua and take them to starving children in Haiti. We published a map in the earlier post. Here's a photo of the ship docked at the Southside marina. This was taken from a little shelter where it's rumored that passing sailors and motor cruisers occasionally put aside their differences and get together for cookouts and happy hours. It's a nice spot to take a break on shore for cruisers who need a break on their journeys between the Southern Bahamas and the Caribbean.



We did have another reason to visit the boat again besides just saying hello. Captain Bob had decided it was time to replace a couple of the main sacrificial anodes on the hull of the Star of the Sea, and this is a good place to do it. For any non-boaters out there, these anodes are just big hunks of the metal zinc. Boats with metal parts in the water (and especially those with electrical systems) generate electrolysis in seawater. The short version of all this is that zinc acts like the weakest link in this circle of electron swapping. It corrodes away first before iron, steel, or aluminum corrodes away. This is useful information to boating people who don't want their boats' metal parts to disappear.

When these hunks of zinc anode are all eaten away, the electrolysis starts eating on the aluminum, iron, and steel parts next. So from time to time someone has to remove old corroded zincs and replace them with new ones.

Captain Bob had located two suitably sized anodes here in Providenciales, but they needed to be modified to fit the mounting studs welded to the hull of the Star of the Sea. He brought them over and left them for me to do a little 'bush machining'. I ended up 'milling' the slugs down and drilling some holes to make them fit. Here they are sitting in the skiff.



I should have put something in the photo for scale, but the line there is ½", if that gives you an idea. I said I 'milled" the ends, but actually I used a reciprocating demolition saw to cut the ends down. This is because the studs welded to the hull only protrude about an inch, and the zincs are too thick. Ideally, with correctly sized zincs, the holes would be drilled in the steel mounting flanges. If you're curious about the labels, "Camp" is the name of a company that specializes in zinc anodes. There are lots of different versions. Painting over the zinc is bad because paint protects it from the sea, and the electrolysis goes looking for something else to eat. Like, a rudder or a propeller shaft.

We took another look at the ship while we were delivering the zincs. I don't think that I ever showed you where cargo is stored in the previous posts. I was trying to think of something new to photograph, and I know that I was interested in where they stacked seven tons of food.

This is the starboard side of the cargo hold. The food boxes are stacked in there between the fencing and the hull.



You can see photos of those food boxes being offloaded in Haiti if you jump to the second half of the post Loose Ends.

I don't know, exactly, what's inside one of those food boxes. I'll try to remember to ask Captain Bob to send us a photo of the contents one of these days.

This is the port side of the cargo hold. Yes, that's a mattress on a sheet of plywood on top of the cargo cage. This is where one of the crew sleeps for the entire cruise. No air conditioning. No television. No room service. No privacy. No kidding.

And not very comfortable in ten foot seas. What holds you on the mattress?



The food is decent though. I certainly wouldn't begrudge them a good meal. We can also verify that in addition to being an old-fashioned modern-day sailing missionary, Captain Bob is an excellent cook. That's another oxymoron, isn't it? I had already decided not to call him a swashbuckling Christian, and then let old-fashioned modern-day slip by me. I'm leaving it in because it comes as close to saying what I mean as I can think of right now, if you know what I mean.

Capt. Bob and his crew were out at the house playing catch with Dooley the Dervish. Well, it was 'catch', or 'fetch' if he missed the catch. Dooley loves it. And Bob noticed that all the fuzz was chewed off Dooley's favorite tennis ball. He said he had about 500 used tennis balls that he was taking to Haiti. He figured he could probably spare one for Dooley. So I asked him why he was taking all those used tennis balls to Haiti. Bob told me the majority of these kids in Haiti have never in their lives owned a rubber ball. If they want to play 'catch', they have to use a rock. If you've ever played catch by throwing a rock back and forth, you probably know that it's a totally different experience than playing with a bouncy rubber ball. There's something missing from the fun of the game when you have to catch a rock thrown at you. A single used tennis ball would be the equivalent of the best gift these kids ever received. Probably the only gift they ever received that wasn't immediately eaten to survive. Things are pretty bleak in Haiti.

We try to help where we can. Like, getting the word out that the mission still needs donations to pay their expenses to make these life saving trips to the orphans. When the accumulated donations add up to five thousand dollars, and the donated food is ready, they can start planning the next trip. The food is donated by churches in the USA. Bob donates the ship, and the crew are all unpaid volunteers. The money goes for diesel fuel, food, and supplies. Using a sailing ship is about the cheapest way there is to transport tons of cargo. I thought I would show you guys that donations to the ministry are not going for luxury ship accommodations.

We took a tour of the ship again when we dropped off the modified zincs. While we were down below decks, Dooley the Detective was searching the deck for the kinds of things he's interested in. Every time I looked up, he was pacing past the portholes, and peering in to see what we were up to. I thought it made for some good photo ops:



I was also playing around with some of the effects built into the photo software, looking for a frame that would complement the round porthole:



Dooley really wanted to come down below with us, but we decided it best to leave him up where he couldn't get into much trouble. If he had smelled rats on board, it would have been a different story. It's very, very obvious when he gets on the trail of a rat. I'll spare you the ugly details, but suffice it to say that rats use Dooley stories to scare their kids into behaving.



We didn't abandon him on the deck, of course. We wouldn't do that to him. We'd have to pay for any damages. Anyhow he was in good company with one of his new buddies. This is 'Sharky', from Cat Island, Bahamas.



Did you notice that anthropormorpologically speaking, Sharky and Dooley have assumed the same pose in that photo? Is anthropormorphologically even a word? I doubt it. And if it is a word, there's a better than even chance I am misusing it. I am trying to say they have settled into similar sitting positions, given their obvious differences. Dooley is the one getting his ribs scratched. Looks to me like they are both enjoying it.

Sharky is sixteen, and is the son of the director of the Cat Island orphanage. He is making his first big sailing trip away from home. Nice way to start. Sharky brought us a watermelon from Cat Island. We iced it down and shared it with the crew. Delicious.

We noticed that the ship is starting to show the effects of all the wear and tear of constant traveling in the tropics. This boat gets tied up next to some pretty marginal docks and wharfs and quays and, well, rocks. She gets a beating. Bob told us that she is going to be hauled out at a shipyard in Florida after this trip, and the hull will be cleaned and painted. I'll try to show you some before and after photos the next time she comes through 'town'.



Speaking of beatings, I really don't mean to beat you up about donations but we believe that what these guys are doing is just one of those worthwhile things in life. It's very basically just the right thing to do from a purely humanitarian aspect. These food donations are not just a big box of candy bars. Those kids are starving, literally. And it's not just the children who are helped by this. Bob was telling us that on the last trip they were in Haiti during the cholera crisis. The survivors of the cholera are intended to be put on specific diets in order to let them recover from the ordeal of being completely cleaned out of nutrients and the good kind of intestinal bacteria. But the right food is seldom available to most of them, and continued dehydration and starvation are very real threats to their continued existence. The donated food is the ideal mix for cholera patients. So in addition to that seven ton cargo feeding hungry orphans, it is also being used to increase the chances of survival of the adults that are taking care of them.

I posted a link to the Star of the Sea mission on that previous blog post. This time I am posting a link to their Facebook page: Star of the Sea. There are more photos and information there for you Facebook fanatics. If you can spare a few dollars for a good cause, please help. And it doesn't always have to be just money, although space on the boat is somewhat limited. I've already told you about the tennis balls donated to liven up life a little for the kids of Haiti. While the crew was in town here, we also took them to rendezvous with a local businesswoman who was sending a pile of donated clothing back to Haiti with the ship.

Now I'll get off my soapbox, and back to our own little privileged world, where nobody starves and where children are never even asked to imagine living a short miserable life in a hungry world without toys.

Ah, speaking of toys (how's that for a segue?) I thought I should make some modifications to the skiff after our experiences in some squalls a couple of weeks ago. As captain of our own little boat it behooves me to make sure we don't get caught offshore in those conditions again without a radio, a compass, and something to hang on to. I know, I know, it would also work if we just stayed close to land. We'll take that under consideration, but in the meantime, I have made some modifications to the boat.

This is what the little console looked like before I started. I have already installed three grab rails so that people have something to hang onto, and I have ideas for a much more substantial frame and seat. I want to have one fabricated that incorporates a seat and windshield frame in front of the console. That project is still in the design phase. I also needed a compass and radio. The compass is easy, and I bought one of those on a trip last month to Pittsburgh when I stopped by a West Marine store. Mounting the radio was a bit of a challenge. I just could not find a good place to mount one on this little boat.



I wanted the radio protected and out of the way. We only need it when we need it. I decided I had to make some kind of a mounting bracket. I used a scrap piece of marine plywood for the prototype. Easy enough to screw the radio bracket to a strip of plywood:



All those shiny shavings and dust are zinc particles left over from me sawing up Captain Bob's anodes, in case you were wondering. I should have taken some photos of that. I had zinc shavings in places that should only see zinc oxide. I cleaned all this up after this project, but at the time I knew I was going to be sawing some more metal to mount the radio. Sure enough, I added aluminum and 316 stainless shavings to the pile before it was all over.

I had some aluminium angle left over from the modifications I did to the Hobie Tandem Island trailer (photos in that same Southside Marina post) and I just used two pieces of that for angle brackets on each end of the plywood. I drilled two holes in each side of the skiff console that match up with the two holes in the brackets. This way, the only mods to the console are four little holes that are nicely covered by stainless screws. I might even be able to engineer up some drink holders that use the same screws.



I did run into a problem in mounting the radio antenna. I didn't have any stainless quarter-twenty bolts that were threaded all the way to the head. I needed four bolts that would hold the antenna bracket to the fiberglass console. It was a Sunday when I was doing this, so I couldn't just make the always exciting trip to the hardware store for the correct bolts. And not being a disciple of delayed gratification, I couldn't wait until Monday. So I just continued cutting the existing threads with a ¼-20 die. Which added to my pile of metal shavings. I did vacuum it all up once I put the hacksaws and drills away.



Here's a before and after photo. You can see that the top bolt would not let me tighten up a nut enough to hold this antenna mount (the thing in the top of the photo) to the thin fiberglass. The bottom bolt is the 'after' version. A tap and die set is one of those tools a DIY guy will find very very useful in a place like this. It sits unused for long periods of time, true, but when you need to cut new threads or clean up old corroded threads (which is called 'chasing' threads, by the way).... there's nothing better than having the correct tools. And for me, nothing rarer.



So anyhow, here is the 'after' photo of the skiff console with a compass, grab handle, VHF radio, and a short 4' antenna installed. A four foot antenna won't give us the range of an 8 ft. antenna, but it should cover us for most of the places we'll be taking this little boat. I had to cut out two places on the plywood strip so that it cleared the hydraulic steering and the bottom of the shifter/throttle assembly. If it works out okay, I plan to replace the wood with Starboard or some kind of plastic, using the prototype plywood mount as a template for the finished bracket. What I'll end up using for that will depend upon what I can find locally. An added benefit of having the VHF is that now we can register the boat and fish legally.

How would you like to have to haul your boat up that driveway? And the driveway is MUCH better than the road to the nearest pavement, four miles away. We do a shake, rattle and impact test on the boat and trailer every time we leave the house.



Another aspect of living here is what I've learned about fuel and outboard injectors. Using unfiltered fuel from the local marinas has caused me a fair bit of grief over the years. These days I tend to buy gasoline from the automobile stations and top up the skiff's 25 gallon tank before leaving the house. I think the automobile fuel stations have cleaner fuel, because it's fresher. They have a higher turnover than the marinas, and they tend to use more modern pumps with better sediment filters. The fuel at the local gas stations also is less expensive than the marina fuel. We just filled up the Land Rover last week, and diesel is presently running $ 6.30 a gallon here, to give you an idea.

I now use a little Racor fuel filter when I fill the skiff's tank. I use this even with fresh fuel straight from the gas pump. And I'll show you why.



I wanted to top up the tank for a recent trip up to Water Cay (more on that in the next post). This is the fuel filter when I started. No water, no dirt.



I drove the Land Rover to the nearest Texaco station and filled up two clean six gallon containers with gasoline. I just siphon the fuel from the container to the tank. This is easier than pouring it, and doesn't splash all over the place. Also, the filter is limited as to how fast it can pass fuel through the filtering screen (2.7 gallons per minute max) and using a small hose works just fine. It also lets me carry on with other stuff while the siphon is going on.



After siphoning six gallons of fresh, new gasoline, this is what was left in the little Racor. This was filtered out of the fresh gasoline:



About two tablespoons of water in six gallons of new gas:



There were also particles of sand and what appeared to be rust in the fuel. And this is the clean stuff fresh from the pump. Of course we also have an even better filter between the tank and the Suzuki, and I have started trying to keep the tank in the skiff topped up to minimize the condensation inside the tank. It's also a handy place to store gasoline for the generator, but that's a whole 'nuther story for another day. Our generator gets used a lot.

Well, despite my initial description of this as a short post, I see my long windedness has stretched it out about as far as I feel I can get away with. We have another post with some nice photos and videos coming up. All these mods to the skiff and filling it with gasoline were, of course, preparations for a trip to another island. I managed to cobble up a way to mount the new GoPro camera to Dooley the enDuring... and here's an advance photo of him after swimming ashore with the camera attached:



Just editing a few minutes of video from Dooley's view makes me feel like taking a nap, but we'll get it done. Actually, La Gringa takes over from this point on the videos, and we recently generated a lot of footage to go through and edit. We have also just returned from a 4th of July trip to Austin to visit family last weekend, and on the way back to the airport we stopped by an electronics store and bought two sets of anti-fog inserts for the GoPro camera. So we should be able to improve upon the quality of our videos using that underwater housing by preventing the lens from fogging up. Hopefully. We'll soon know about that, as I have several ideas for some different videos and more of the still photo montages and time lapse stuff we've been doing. For example, I am thinking of attaching the GoPro to a rock or anchor and lowering it down to deeper water outside the reef. That outta be fun. And of course we have scads of ideas using the Dooley DogCam approach. He doesn't seem to mind being a camera platform. I am drawing the line at buying him his own director's chair and a beret, though. Hmm.... Dooley the Director...?

I'll close this one with a short time-lapse from the GoPro camera. We were hoping for one of those nice, dramatic, tropical sunset scenes. We didn't get one of those because we were in a typical summer hazy day situation here. But I am hoping we can compensate for that with the neat effects of the clouds reflecting on the salina as they head for the sunset and the horizon.





Cool, eh?