The Aquarium, Pine Cay Part 2

There's nothing I can say that will improve upon  the images we've been lucky enough to record here.  The trick is to know when to shut up and not try. Looks like I still can't do that, either.

This is the second part of our latest Pine Cay trip report.  We've done so many posts about Pine Cay that I hesitate to keep explaining the details.  If you're new to all this Turks and Caicos stuff, please look at the list of topics over in the right side column listing for older posts.   I'm going to try something new for this blog. Our new "kite-cam' capability  gives us a way to easily label some of these places where we're taking all these photos..  Please let me know what you think.  Does this help make sense of it all?

I can put little numbers on that aerial image and reference it all together.  It reminds me of  a science project with the rest of the class doing the grading. I guess the upside of that is being reminded of  what it was like to be 16 with homework assignments again.  If that's an upside.  La Gringa would probably tell you that I act like a juvenile most of the time, anyhow.  And I'd have to plead guilty, as charged.

"But it took years of effort to become the mess that you see." (John Fogarty, "Rattlesnake Highway")

It's a nice walk through the sandy bush trails of Pine Cay but  we took a golf cart over to the Aquarium. We had kites and spools of string and camera stuff to carry. None of it heavy, but all of it a bit awkward when not suspended as the wind  intended. That's sort of true of flying things in general, isn't it. They're graceful in their element, but mostly look pretty awkward when moving around on the ground.

This trail is obscured by trees in that photo from the kite, but I marked its location as [1]. We went to the end, and then came back and turned south to the little beach.   That white rectangle is the top of the golf cart. This is the drier, lee side of this island microclimate, and the vegetation reflects that.  It's not quite as tall or as lush as similar locations just a few miles upwind.  You can also see from the narrow  single cart trail that this is one of the less traveled "roads" around here.   We got two lane dirt roads elsewhere.

I just happily snapped away right to the end of this one at the water's edge.  This is also from location [1], looking  generally westward across at the uninhabited island of Water Cay.

We've been to the Aquarium many times. La Gringa tells me this is the 8th post that mentions it, in fact, so I am going to keep the scientific explanation out of this post in our never ending fight against redundancy, repetitiousness, and saying the same thing over and over.   As I keep telling you time and time again, I never repeat myself..... uh... please just forget I even said that.  While I'm thinking about it, though, I want to mention that Sara Kaufman did a nice write up on it in Caribbean Property magazine. There's a lot of good Pine Cay info in there. And her write up is much more concise than mine tend to be. I tend to ramble, in case you haven't noticed.

Back on topic, I wanted to mention that in all my visits to this very spot, I never really thought that much about the little humps of rock you can just barely see by the water in that photo (above).   This photo is in a sequence, but I wanted to point those rocks out for some more discussion later.

 I am going to use this image of the Aquarium from another one of our posts, since it's already uploaded with the Picasa image hosting service I use. This is my own mental laziness equivalent of the paperwork reduction act. Or just an excuse to entice you to read earlier posts, take your pick.   You can see that this was once an open, deep channel between the ocean and the Caicos Bank. 

I know the writing on there is confusing since it's out of context for this post. That's about a kayak trip from hell. If you do want to know what all those  frustrated words are about it's on this Mid-Winter Slog Blog post.  I don't even like thinking about that trip, but it did teach us some valuable lessons about getting caught on the flats at low tide.That image shows you the geology of the Aquarium and should also help with making sense of these photos.

This is a view of the little beach you can see in the aerial, and was taken from location [2].  Now it's all reminding me of an episode of CSI.  I'm not so sure about this numbering idea.  I'll wait for your feedback before doing it again.

We've often seen the water here so clear that you can easily watch big schools of snapper swimming back and forth ten or twenty feet down, over the edge of this underwater ledge. I almost used the phrase 'with the naked eye' there, but then I got to wondering what other kind of eyes there are.  Aren't they all naked?  I know mine have never been dressed.  At least, not while I was wearing them.  My eyes are nudists!  Oh my.  Do I have to register them or something?

  The water was still a bit stirred up from recent winds on this brief visit, and not as clear as we would have hoped.  You should be able to see the windrows, or  Langmuir streaks  as an indication that it was still blowing enough to affect the water. You can just make out the lighter colored ledge here.

And you can really see the ledge looking down from above up in that aerial photo with the numbers on it.  It's off to the left of  position [3]―I'll say no more about what that reminds me of― and you can see that the water gets pretty deep immediately there.  We've seen sharks, tarpon, and dolphins in here despite the shallow nature of all the water to the south. I wonder if there's still some genetic memory in these sea creatures of habit. Do they have a dim feeling that  great granpa said there should be  an opening to the sea right about here? One that must have existed for centuries before the 150 mph winds of Hurricane Donna closed this up just a few generations back in the grand scheme of things. Is Grand Scheme of Things supposed to be capitalized?  I was going to call it just the GST but find that this acronym has already been firmly taken.

While I was playing around with my new kite aka 'latest toy', La Gringa took the little pocket Nikon for a walk around on the big limestone outcropping.  She was impressed by this plant coming up through apparently solid rock although we know that can't really be the case. There has to be some dirt involved somewhere, doesn't there?  I meant dirt for plants, not for the blog! I'm saving all that dirt for the uncensored ebook version.

She tried to get some good images down into the water, but even with the sun overhead the turbidity had not settled out enough yet to show it at it's crystalline finest.  Needs another day or two, but it does eventually get almost as clear as you can imagine. Kind of like an aquarium, come to think of it.  Full of fish.

She got another view of our nominee for healthiest hardy plant of the day.  This includes the little cays off to the south.  And some of those treacherous shallows that have thoroughly schooled us on some of the realities of getting stranded at low tide around here.   That's potentially much more serious than it might sound.  This is all part of an education that has greatly affected our choices regarding boats.  And we don't travel without fresh water.

Okay, in my roundabout but semi-logical way we've gotten back around to the little piles of rocks I made such a big deal over earlier.  This is another view that we took as we traveled from the south end of the Aquarium up to the closed off end.  I wanted to find another spot to redeploy the kite.  See the line of rocks?  I still wasn't even thinking about them at this point.  They just happened to be in this photo.  It wasn't until I looked through the aerials that I even realized what I was seeing.

Then when I was going through those hundreds of images it suddenly became obvious. At some point in the past someone built a small boat ramp at the end of that road.   I'm not claiming some great archaeological discovery here, but offer it as an example of how a different perspective can quickly identify features and put together a story that wasn't so obvious at ground level.

This sure gives me some ideas about many of the places we've already written about here on this blog.  Now I want to go back and put the kite up and see what we can find out with this as another tool.  And you know how I am about new tools. One of the things that immediately comes to mind is the old pre Civil War era  sluice/canal ruins over on West Caicos.  I think we can take this setup back to a lot of places you're probably tired of looking at from ground level, and hopefully make it worth taking another fresh look at.   We'll see.

We went over to the ocean end of the former cut between Pine Cay and Water Cay.  This is a nice place for a beach picnic.  Quiet, peaceful, and generally deserted.  This is looking to the south, at the opening onto the Caicos Bank.  Once upon a time before 1960 we would have had to be on a boat to get this exact perspective.  Preacher tells us he remembers sailing through here on a sloop drawing seven feet when he was young.  It's pretty solid feeling sand these days.  I wonder how many people have looked at this over the past fifty three years and thought of running a front end loader or backhoe through here and opening it back up.  200 meters of trenching beach sand would do it.  And I'm sure there's a law against it, no matter the natural order of things.

What I mean about nice picnic spots?  There are plenty shady places under the trees.  You can see the little Casuarina groves in the first aerial, all up in the general area marked [4].

And the view is pretty much along the lines of what most people would probably consider a fairly nice beach.

We put the kite up into the air in the vicinity of that first aerial where it's marked with the Arabic numeral [5]. This is looking back at the Aquarium to the south, from the eastern edge of the historical cut.  The tidal currents must have really been ripping to cut the edges that clean.  The rocks on both sides are near vertical in places.

That's my white kite string on the left hand side of that photo. The camera is on a DIY pendulum mount about a hundred feet below the kite itself.  As it swings around it often includes the string in the photos.  It's not hard to crop it out in most cases.  I've read that black string is easier to 'photoshop' out. I guess it blends into backgrounds better and doesn't need so many pixels moved around.

Here's another view looking off toward a cloud bank. That sure looks to me like it might be forming over the nearest end of the island of Mayaguana in the Bahamas.  It's about 44 nautical miles in just that direction.  We anchored there for a few hours on our sailing trip home from Jacksonville with Twisted Sheets.  We didn't take any photos there, and I wish we had.  You can see the glow of the lights of Provo from there at night.  From here, you can only see the clouds that form over that island without the light pollution.  I think we got the better deal on views although it is nice to have a glow to steer by when you've been up for fifty hours, it's pitch dark, you're in a shipping lane doing 3 knots on one engine into the wind,rain, and seas, and your electronics are failing.  Yes, it is.  Light pollution can be your friend.

More nice picnic spots.  That's the far northwest point of Providenciales way off in the distance, about 12 nm to the west.

So far the camera swings and swoops through the air taking photos at a preset interval. I don't yet have a way of aiming it other than to plan the entire setup for orientation in a general direction.  That works surprisingly well, we're finding, as we gain some experience.  I'm hoping that you can already see the improvements in these photos over my first efforts.  Some new tricks take old dogs longer to learn. Possibly I just need a couple more cookies as incentive.  It works with Dooley. Sometimes. When he's  in the mood.

This is another view back up the beach to the east, where you can just barely make out the trees around the Meridian Club in the distance.  There's nothing but clean unbroken beach between here and there.

That's pretty much it for our latest set of Aquarium photos.  We also did some walking up and down the beaches experimenting with the kite.  I have to tell you, it's a bit of a nervous feeling putting a camera out over the ocean downwind at these distances.  We're getting accustomed to it, and have a list of things we want to change about the kite setup for future optimization.  This has been a real learning experience weekend so far.   Pretty easy to spot the three of us on the beach in this one.

We've gotten some questions about the kite stuff so I'll write a little bit about that.  Hopefully it won't be such a big deal once we start using it only from time to time as appropriate.  This weekend was all about the kite and learning how to get images with it.

This photo was taken by the GoPro as I attached it to the kite line.  You get a lot of out-take photos with this thing flopping around on the ground, too.  We might use one from time to time. In this example, you can see that I have the kite up  almost directly above me in stable air as I'm attaching the camera rig to the line.

My research into this taught me that tying a knot in the sting effectively reduces it's breaking strength by half.  So kite flyers look for ways to attach things without knots.  And it works.

I've found a cool idea online for rotating the camera using the pendulum motion to ratchet some simple gears, and I'm going to try to copy that design here.   It won't be any time soon, judging by present schedule and list of previous priorities.

The fisheye effect of the GoPro setup does have a little bit of a novel effect, I suppose, but I've also looked into removing that in post processing.   I've obviously decided that it's better not to try to correct for it.  I'll show you why.

Here's an image showing the whole Aquarium, with the horizon showing the fisheye distortion.  Notice that the resolution, such as it is, is fairly evenly distributed around the edges even though it's position is "wrong" visually.

I ran that through a photo editing program (Corel)  and corrected it so that the horizon is nice and level, as most normally adjusted people prefer their horizons to be when looking at the ocean.  Mountains are another matter entirely, of course, but we're talking flat here.

The trees along the right border of the photo show that the distortion of the horizon hasn't really been removed.  It's just been redistributed, in a manner of speaking. The trees are distorted and blurred along with the road, the rocks, everything around the edges. The top of the cart is no longer rectangular, and the little palupa roof is unsymmetrical as well.  This would make any measurements I tried to make inaccurate.  After looking at that, I've decided that I would rather have the information in the photo.  This is going away when the new camera gets here, I hope.

I've already mentioned issues with the kite reel.  We started with an open spool normally used for hand line fishing. It was a bit of a physical challenge. I had to keep a tight grip on this spool, wearing gloves to grab and control the line.  Reeling several hundred feet of dacron back onto the spool without twisting it was tedious and tiring. I can't just wrap it around, you have to rotate the spool like a little winch drum to get the flat line to lie straight. It's a braid that flattens. Here, this is a photo of the old spool. It's an old photo. Taken last week.

See the strain and concentration?  The trickle of sweat? The stupid open mouthed look of an idiot trying to remember "left hand, right hand, left hand ...don't let go of it, repeat"...  Just look at the knots in those mighty forearms.... well,okay, the actual knots are all in the forehead so please forget that part. Physical, mental, it's  a strain after a half an hour of this.  If this spool got away from me it would really change the pace of the afternoon.  Imagine chasing a $500 hat for three hundred yards in the wind over the beach just to watch it fly a half a mile offshore and sink.  I could follow the string to the bitter end, swim halfway out to the reef and it might make for a good blog post. but it wouldn't have any more aerial photos in it after some point of impact way down wind.

Now here's the  shiny new kite reel.  Just recently fabricated from scavenged materials in my very own home workshop.



It's not quite finished yet, but while I fine tune it I went ahead and loaded up 1000 ft. of 200# dacron string on it. This is lighter than the heavy white line we were using. Thinner, and black instead of white. I'm following directions I found on the internet, although I modified the brake setup on the reel.

I meant to take some photos of the construction of that reel for a DIY section here.  Had my camera sitting right on the work bench. I even managed to take a couple  shots before getting totally lost into it.  Put on the headphones, and then it was an afternoon piddling around with making things  with tools.  Lyle Lovett,  Paul Butterfield, Trombone Shorty, Rodrigo y Gabriela and Papa John Creech all explored the acoustics of the empty concert hall between my ears.  By the time I remembered the camera, I was just finishing up cutting the threads into the axle. I cut that from a piece of the standing rigging salvaged from a shipwrecked catamaran.

I've also discovered this photo technique of blending the cluttered shop into the dark background. The optical equivalent of sweeping the dirt under the rug, I suppose.  But hey, it works! I think that this is a cool photo for us DIY geeks. That's a 3/8-16 thread in what I think must be 316 or 316L stainless. It's harder than what I am used to, and shows no sign of oxidation after years in the ocean.

I used the salvaged standing rigging, some black locust driftwood, and pieces of our destroyed aluminum satellite dish in this.  The brake pads are scavenged starboard, and the fairlead is a bicycle spoke.   The winch drum is made from the center pieces of plywood left over from cutting the rings for the outside lights.

We haven't tried it out yet. I'm sure some modifications will be forthcoming.

Preacher Stubbs was involved in a lot of this before he left us and returned to Provo. He knows a thing or two about kites. He was impressed with how well this one flew, in fact. About five minutes after the GoPro snapped this photo of us he was on the phone to Froggy the master kite craftsman over at Bottle Creek.  I'm not sure if watching this one will affect J.R.'s own design, but it does fly pretty well.  I know he'll be interested.  Any competitive edge will get a lot of attention.

When I showed Preacher the jpeg images on the laptop, he was impressed and appreciative at what the overhead views were showing us. Seeing these islands fleetingly from an airplane at a thousand feet is different from this 100-200 ft. height perspective. He immediately thought of a few historical sites where this could be useful.  Think about those old plantation ruins, for example.  He and I still discuss putting together a book of the history of these islands from his perspective. The really big changes in the culture here have all happened during his life time. And he's got some great stories, if I but have the nerve to publish them.

I see that I have drifted well off the Aquarium theme a bit here.  So this is probably a good place to put in one of Dooley's favorite videos from this weekend.


He probably rousted three of these guys on the road to the Aquarium, but rest assured that no iguanas were harmed in the making of this blog post. Other than a briefly elevated heart rate and spirited scamper through the underbrush, their lives go on unimpacted by the experience.

I'll bring this one to a close after a brief and free advertisement anecdote for one of our favorite beach dives on Providenciales. We'd mutually decided that we needed a cracked conch fix one afternoon and headed over to 'da Conch Shack' in Blue Hills.  We were at one of the little tables out of the way on the beach side, shooting the breeze with friends, when Pete the manager came over. He said that a photographer was going to be wandering around taking photos for some magazine. He asked if we minded, as we might be in some of those photos.  Of course we didn't mind.  And we had our conch and forgot all about it.  And don't blame the conch for the forgetfulness. These tropical days all flow together after a while.

Then recently I was reading the BBC travel news and saw this article on the world's "best beach restaurants".  I looked at the photo and recognized some faces and realized that this is one of the photos taken that day. I'm sure this is a much better photo than the ones with us in them.

(photo lifted from BBC online article as credited in link above but this isn't being used for commercial purposes and it's free publicity for them anyway, so phtttt.)

Oh well.  Worldwide exposure is probably not all it's cracked up to be, from what I've seen. If Dooley had been there, we might have had a chance of making the cut.  But his behavior in restaurants is a tense situation at best.  He thinks it was all really meant for him, and he resents anyone who doesn't agree.

Our next post should be finishing up this trip with some marina and boating photos, unless something more interesting happens in the meantime.   We can only hope.  And try to be careful what we wish for.  That whole 'something interesting' aspect of life can really sneak up behind you if you're not careful.

I haven't been putting a lot of DIY stuff into the blog lately, comparitively speaking.  But rest assured it's still going on here. Big time. I don't bother with a lot of it because I just don't think you'd find it all that interesting.  I'm sure there are enough rusty metal photos on here to last all of us a lifetime.  Or maybe it just seems like a lifetime in my case.  Or perhaps I've just lost the novelty of having something break every day of our lives.  And of the DIY's that aren't about repairing the result of life under a salty sun, most of them just aren't 'blog-worthy', if you know what I mean.  I'll give you an example.

We've been having issues with our collection of kitchen cutting boards.  We needed a larger cutting board and a way to drain dishes that we'd hand washed. I used some of that big hunk of starboard we found washed up on a beach to make one. For you other tool freaks out there, I'm still finding that pneumatic tools seem to work fairly well and last a long time.   This 16"  air sander has outlasted two electric sanders, as one example. They are real simple devices.  Just be sure to put a couple drops of oil in them every time you use them.  And dry out your compressed air.  And it was cheaper than either one of those long gone electrics.  If you ignore the cost of the  compressor, which is a very useful thing to have anyway. 

The electric router is still working–touch wood– so putting a drain groove around the edges was simple enough.  And there we have it.  A DIY that I normally wouldn't bother mentioning. And I only mentioned this one because I thought it might give someone an idea.  This custom cutting board fits a spot in the kitchen so exactly that it doesn't move when it's in place.  And it drains into the sink.    I guess I can file this under fun facts for flotsam.

And of course we continue to look for ways to showcase this beautiful little country for you with our images. I am sometimes reminded of that old cliche' about the difference between men and boys being the price of their toys.  

We're still essentially playing with crayons. A second childhood with technology added.  Sometimes the results are worth posting, many times it doesn't work out.   But it's sure a lot of fun trying to fill in the colors for your amusement.   How are we doing so far?

The Airs of Pine Cay, Part 1

This post is going to be all about Pine Cay after my usual opening blather.  I know you're probably ready for some warm blue water  photos, especially as we read the headlines about another snowstorm in Denver this week.  We've got some warm sunny beach images to share along with the results of our first few feeble fumbling forays into aerial photography from kites.  We're still  inexperienced with that but you can judge for yourself.  That perspective between the surface and 200 feet above the surface is not the easiest to photograph.  Aircraft can't fly that low (or close) legally over populated areas, and even if they could, photos taken from a platform moving 60 mph a few hundred feet away are not the greatest. We tried helium balloons here years ago. Got some decent results, but a lot of wind issues stopped that one. Well, we're back at it.  We don't give up easily.   But you already knew that, too.  But first.... a sunrise photo of a different sort from our usual spot, here high on the hill at home on Hawksbill.

I'm still working on a little motorized slider for this kind of stuff.  It's going to get better as we figure out what we're doing.  How can you go wrong with a photogenic place like this?

The pure and elemental beauty of these little islands still grabs me right by the eyeballs and stops me after 8 years of living surrounded on all sides by these kind of views.  

That's a stretch of the beach at Pine Cay. Not another person on it, nor even another footprint. The little white bits on the horizon are ocean swells breaking on the reef a mile out.  The dark horizon is the Pine Cay Cut, a natural opening through the reef. I wish that I could do it justice with a photograph and  I keep trying, but so far I can only capture snapshots like this.  As nice as the photos look, the reality is much, much better. The photo doesn't have the audio, for starters.  Imagine that the only sounds you  hear are the wind through the trees and the waves ceaselessly nudging and rearranging that clean sand around on the beach. It's so fascinatingly dynamic, that ocean. It's spent billions of years going about the planet's business in the slow sculpting process that shapes islands, and atmospheres. And it shapes a specific type of people, too, this primordial ocean.  If you're reading this and enjoy it, you might well be one of those people.  Humans are about 70% water. How can we not feel the same pull of the moon that moves entire oceans?  And all of the land on earth is on islands, if you step back far enough to view it.

Plant yourself in a comfortable beach chair in a shady spot with a good book here, and the sound alone will put you into nap mode before you realize it.  And the light.  It has some special  summer luminosity that artists have sought and appreciated throughout the centuries. And it's always summer here, essentially. We're not artists, but we appreciate the creative efforts of those who are inspired by the beach.  Like this  hunk of driftwood festooned with bits of stuff that's washed ashore.

Even Dooley the Debauched seems to be absorbed contemplating the natural beauty of his surroundings.  What deep philosophical thoughts must be running through that hairy little head when confronted with all of this natural wonder.

The water is incredible and that's a weak description.  It's much better than incredible.  It's as clear as any mountain stream but that's where that resemblance ends.  It's salty, for example, and that makes it buoyant.  You can lie back and float in it effortlessly.  I've dozed off while floating right down this very beach on calm days.  Seawater snoozing only lasts for a moment, because as soon as my neck relaxes my head sinks down until Poseidon  hits me with a super snort of salty saline solution. Talk about yer rude awakening.

I think that if one were to put on some dark glasses and a  broad hat or visor for  shade, and clamped on one of those inflatable airport gift shop neck cushion things for flotation, you could fall asleep thirty feet off Pine Cay and wake up on Grace Bay three islands west of here.  You'd be fried like overcooked bacon on top and wrinkled up underneath, but I think you could make the trip using only breeze and the longshore current. If something didn't eat you on the way.  I'm not suggesting that anyone try this. You'd be the food chain equivalent of a home cooked meal by the time you passed Little Water Cay, but you know what I mean. If I ran a glass of that ocean through a paper filter I don't think it would improve the clarity enough to notice.  It doesn't get any cleaner than this. The temperature of the water is exactly what you would dial it to if you had a dial that could even do that.   Hmm.  I better get back to the blog post.  It's supposed to be about Pine Cay.   So I guess this is the end of the initial blather I mentioned early on. A bad habit of mine. As I was writing this, I also saw an article in one of the local online news sites about the homeowners of Pine Cay.  I thought some of you might be interested in this.  The expats here are very involved in the local community in a very big way.

We just recently decided that we needed a bit of a break from the daily routine of the "big city" that Providenciales seems determined to become.  We hadn't spent a night on "the Cay"  since bringing some   assorted offspring out for Daniel's birthday  get together over a year ago.   We were way overdue.  We miss this place when we don't visit for a while. It's a very special place among a whole country full of special places.

We were out walking the beach in front of the Meridian Club shortly after daybreak on Saturday. These little point-and-pray cameras we carry around  don't handle subdued light well, but we snapped off a few early morning shots before any of the hotel guests descended  to the sand.  It's quiet here at dawn.

There are a lot of  things to do around the Meridian Club. Snorkeling excursions, sailing, fishing, kayaking, paddleboards, swimming, tennis, I was wandering around with Dooley and saw some whimsical beach art planted around the edges of the little sand trap golf course laid out on the beach.

We've been playing around with some different camera techniques  in our efforts to liven this blog up a little bit visually.  You saw the time lapse stuff up at the beginning of the post.  We've also managed to get a few aerials.  The GoPro Hero cameras are not the best choice for this kind of thing, since they're primarily video cameras and not intended to compete in the high resolution still image market.  I've got another camera in mind (of COURSE !) but we did get some shots that are at least good enough to see the potential of a better lens setup.  I labeled some of the major features here so you'll recognize them if they crop up again later.   "Crop up" again. Nyuk nyuk.  There's a good aerial in the photo section of the Meridian Club's own web site, by the way.   And ours will get a lot better after I decide between the new Pentax and the updated Nikon AW Coolpix.

The early morning photo of the Meridian Club up there above this was taken from under that big Casuarinas tree that is obscuring the pool in that aerial, for reference.     And here's the view from under self same tree as I turned around looking right between those Hobie masts.  Still fairly early at this point.

Once the sun got cranking we got the camera up a couple hundred feet and walked down the beach to the west, letting the little GoPro snap away taking one photo every five seconds.  We ended up with literally thousands of photos of Pine Cay. Like this image that shows  the pool that was obscured by the tree in the earlier one.   We're still learning some techniques, but we did get a lot of stick time in on this trip.   I figured I would do all the writing on the ugly photo so it wouldn't cover some of the interesting stuff on the better one. I can remove the fisheye effect  with post processing, but it just moves the distortion to the edges. There are enough other reasons to quit using GoPro for this, anyway.  It's just not the tool for the job.   The photos did get better as the light improved throughout the day, but not by enough.  These will have to do, for now.

You can see all the way across the island to the Caicos Bank on the other side, including several other small islands.  You can also see one of the little freshwater ponds on Pine Cay.  I'm planning to talk a little about these ponds in a subsequent blog post.  I need to do some historical research first, and don't want to delay getting this one out while I educate myself.  I figure we got enough photos on this weekend for at least three short posts.  If one could call what I do here 'short' posts, I guess. I can't help it, you know.  I'd like to show you all thousand images we just took.  It's pretty danged hard to throw most of them away and just use a few.  I've turned into a photo pack rat and my hard drive is fast becoming unfast.  Self control has never been a descriptive word someone would use in my behalf.   This is another shot from the club looking outward.  There are plenty of little shaded huts and chairs for as many people as are ever likely to be here.

These guys are in the aerial photo, too.  Just way too small to see.  Come to think of it, it's ALL aerial photos to an ant. I marveled  at how hard they must have worked overnight to build this place.  And I can guarantee you that it will be stomped flat shortly after the breakfast bunch at the Meridian club filters down to the beach to complete the morning's braise.  And they'll just build another one. Every day.

I think I must have been looking at the ants while considering those new cameras I mentioned. The Pentax has a great looking setup for macro photography, in addition to the other functions we need for aerials. Would extreme closeups be interesting in this blog?  I think it might work in some cases. There are  times when a closer look at something would be handy to use in a description.

We wandered up and down the beach for a while in that early morning illusionary euphoria of having an entire island  all to ourselves. La Gringa was using the internet link at the Meridian Club and eventually Dooley the Dogie and I worked our way back to the rendezvous.   I sat down on a low wall between the pool and the feet washing stations to take a break.  I noticed that something seemed to have instantly caught the dog's rapt attention.

I thought he must have spotted La Gringa in the distance, but that wasn't the case.  He was downwind of the Meridian Club kitchen.

I'm going to throw another ground level photo of the beach in here, just because I think it's pretty. Can you see how hard it is to discard several hundred of these shots?

We walked around  the Meridian club to take a look at some inflatable stand-up paddleboards that they have for their guests.  I've been interested in these things for our sailboat, Twisted Sheets. Actually I'd hoped to try one one, but it wasn't to be on this trip.  Maybe next time.  But we did see an example of the 'reef balls' that are getting to be so popular here these days.  The Pine Cay Homeowners group put something like 250 of these stabilizing habitats in the ocean offshore here and have one on display at the club.   We want to come back on a regular basis and get underwater photos as the critters move in over the years.  Wouldn't that be an awesome time lapse? One photo per hour for months.  Somebody want to help me develop a solar powered underwater GoPro?  A photovoltaic cell and a connector on the GoPro case to keep the battery up, packaged to be secure inside a reef ball. Coat the glass to prevent growth over the lense. Cool idea, eh?

We found La Gringa and her laptop finishing up in the outdoor restaurant area.  This isn't La Gringa. She had a computer with her and curly hair.

 The view from one of the covered outside tables, looking toward the beach.

And another one of those beach shots I couldn't bear to discard.  This is looking up the beach to the east.

One of the local day charter catamarans came sailing by on a tack in toward the beach while we were there. This is a Wharram design named Beluga.  I think these guys sail more than any other boat in the islands.  It's a rare day that we don't see them tacking back and forth between the beach and the reef, taking customers for a nice sail and then returning them to Providenciales.  If you find yourself down here looking for something nice to do, you might consider a sunset sail on Beluga. Tell them the 2 Gringos sent you.  Heck, Take us with you! We'll put the photos here. They're a dog friendly boat, so no worries there, mate. We always exchange waves and barks when they pass us while we're in our little Hobie.  They also have some nice photos on their website.    I think they should advertise here, though.  Of course I'm pretty biased.

While Pine Cay is a privately owned island, the laws here permit public access to all beaches below the high tide line.  Which the ocean conveniently re-draws twice a day. Sometimes we see different boats tuck in to some of the little sheltered areas in the lee of the island.  They typically drop the hook (anchor for you non-boaters) and stay for lunch and a swim.  We've done the same thing ourselves, and certainly plan to do more.  To be honest, though, the diving is much better out toward the reef.  Maybe they were collecting Sand Dollars.  This is a good place for it.  The Meridian Club logo is a Sand Dollar.  That land sticking out is named Sand Dollar Point, in fact.    We've used them for Christmas decorations.

I was flipping through the photos looking at all the images we took on this little microvacation and found one that shows where the airstrip on Pine Cay is located relative to the Meridian Club.  I know there must be a few other pilots out there reading this.   It's paved, with pilot controlled lighting. The airstrip is the runway there on the left side of the image.  That's a better view of the fresh water pond there, too.  A rarity in the Bahamian chain.  And geologically this is  the southeastern most part of that chain.

We spent a big part of this day trudging up and down the beach,  learning the fine points of  KAP, or "Kite Aerial Photography" and there are definitely some techniques involved.  It's a good hobby for tinkerers, too, as you pretty much have to build your own gadgets wherever gadgets are needed.

I found a use for my sailing gloves and have already learned not to become emotionally attached to the camera.  It does become easier to emotionally detach from something that makes me look like a one string marionette doing a river dance.  The kite pull in the trade winds is substantial. This is also something I am addressing by building a kite reel to take the forces.

We walked  down the beach for about a mile west of the club, taking photos and playing with string and camera angles and techniques. I was kind of 'tied up' so La Gringa carried another camera for the earth-based shots. One of the homeowners has done a great job growing a Casuarinas tree trimmed specifically as a beach umbrella. You already know I love these trees.

The other photo I posted here showing the beach to the east was taken at beach level.  This is an aerial view in that direction from about 200 ft altitude. The little island off the tip of Pine Cay in the left side distance is Ft. St. George Cay, which is the correct name for what's commonly called Fort George these days.

We did have to keep an eye on Dooley the Delinquent.  He has taken it upon himself to annoy the iguanas from time to time.    He chases them until they dive down into their lairs, chuckling to themselves at how secure they are.  Well, what might seem like a secure bunker to a Rock Iguana  is just another cat's   sandbox diversion to Dooley the Digger.  Man, can that little dude throw some sand!

He started out in that photo (above) at the entrance to a burrow just large enough to admit an iguana.  Maybe 10 cm wide.  By the time I got re-positioned and got the camera set up for video, he'd dug himself in by about a body length and then some. I had to grab his stubbly little tail and haul him out, his head and face totally covered in sand. Good thing he grew a handle back there where most dogs have a tail.  He'd be in Shanghai by now if I hadn't grabbed him, and the airfare back just wouldn't be worth it.  Turn on your sound and check this out:




He went from there directly to a much needed shower. We don't let him bug the lizards when we can help it.  So far, all he's done is chase them around.  They're just a little too quick for most dogs, and they dodge between the bushes and dive into their hidey holes.  Terriers are a different kind of dog, though.  If they can't find a fox or rat, they'll find a work-around with a substitute.

We've got plenty more photos to show you, and they get better with experience but I'll end this post now to get it onto the internet.   We have photos of the marina at Pine Cay, and the area between Pine Cay and Water Cay that's called the Aquarium.  Those should be along shortly, as soon as I can get through several hundred images and pick the best ones.  

I can end with a sunset, although it wasn't one of our better ones.  I had taken this thinking it was going to be the best timing.  That usually happens when the sun is obscured by clouds and I could see that the horizon was clear.  So I thought that was the end of it.

Then as I was walking back to the house I turned around to see if there might be a chance for a Green Flash.   Green Flashes aren't worth anything, they're just a rare sight.  I've only seen less than half a dozen in my life and none of those were here.   I didn't get one this time, either, but realized that the same sunset a few seconds later was still interesting enough for a photo.

So I walked back on out there and took it.   Remember Carpe' Diem, and all that, y'all.