The Ruin of Dick Clark

This is yet another Sapodilla sunrise from  yet another morning on the hook.  We've been fine tuning the boat getting ready to leave Provo for a slightly more serious excursion.   We're thinking of heading someplace we've never been before.   But then again, we're pretty much always doing that.   Sometimes we're better at it than we are at other times.  

 
It's always nice to regain consciousness with the boat  still more or less where we left it the night before.  I'm not going to revisit the whole Sapodilla description again.  There are several previous posts on it if you're interested.  We like zipping over here from time to time for a break.  It's close by, yet a great place to get out away from the island just far enough to call ourselves "off-grid".  I guess that means the nearest electrical outlet is  further away than our longest power cord.  And no, you can't really plug two of those together very well on the ocean.  Not more than once, anyhow.

This was the third time we'd visited this protected little bay for overnight stays. This was still in "cruising season"  and there was still a few  transient sailboats coming and going.  Like this group  traveling together who blew in one morning and took up temporary residence here for about 18 hours.  They kept their rubber boats going in and out of South Dock as they arranged customs and immigration clearance into the islands and loaded up provisions.  Provo has the first good grocery store for many a mile south of Nassau.  Things quieted down around sunset, as things sometimes do.

And early the next morning we awoke early to the noise of about a dozen sailors chattering away on the VHF radio.  We  looked out to see the crowd already underway heading south.   Wow.  That was a quick visit.   Apparently a bunch of sailors on a mission. Or an expedition.  With an agenda.  And a schedule to keep.  Doesn't sound much like the sailing life we'd be pursuing.  And even the word pursuit is misleading in this case.  Not much chance of us ever falling in with a group of sailboats traveling together.  We'd be more likely to pick a different heading entirely.

You can probably tell by the blurriness of this photo why I didn't use some of these earlier.  I took a lot of these with a little waterproof Nikon point and shoot camera that just doesn't do as good a job in low light as what we are accustomed to.  It's since been delegated to underwater work, where it does fairly well.

We've been playing around with various navigation programs for the boat.  Until we get another chart plotter we've been using a GPS enabled tablet.   This is what it shows us while we were anchored in this bay.   The numbers are the water depth in feet.    We're the little boat icon just to the right of the symbol marking the "Wreck".    I've already shown you some underwater photos of that little wreck in a previous post.

After examining the wreck in person I now like to anchor close to it.  Because nobody else wants to anchor anywhere near it.  I need a big smiley face here.

I'm in the market for a new chart plotter.  This would let us use the iPad program as a backup.  There really aren't that many choices out there for stand alone chart plotters without touch screens these days.  I'm not a fan of integrated systems sharing one display.  I don't like the idea that if your single display has an issue you've lost all your electronic info.

While I've rambled on at some length about Sapodilla Bay and Sapodilla Hill, I really haven't said much about the next bay to the west.   That's called Taylor Bay.  Here's a Google Earth image showing both bays:

I put a little "X" on there about where we were anchored.

 We left Twisted Sheets happily hooked to the seafloor at Sapodilla and took the RIB around Taylor Point.  We headed over to the sandy section of beach facing south on the far side of Taylor Bay.     We had an onshore breeze here so I wasn't all that happy about leaving the dinghy on a lee shore but it was a mildish sort of day and we were not planning to stay long.   This is what Taylor Point looks like from the other side.

And after fussing around and fidgeting and resetting our little anchor a few times I was okay to leave the RIB floating just off the beach.   The old outboard motor's lift bracket is broken, so the first thing to contact the bottom here would be the skeg if it broke loose from the anchor.  That usually keeps the boat off the beach but it's not good for the motor.

I think you could probably tell where this photo was taken on the satellite image. Right there in the middle of that big beach. Looking to the west away from Providenciales.

And turning around and looking east toward the main part of the island you can see the curve of the beach as it starts around the bay and ends up  at Taylor point.

I noticed that the color of the sand in these photos is completely different when I was facing the sun as compared to when I was facing away from it.  These were taken within a minute of each other.  In the photo above, I was facing millions of tiny shadows of the sand grains.   The sun was on the other side of them.  In this photo below, I was looking at millions of tiny reflective faces of those grains without any shadows and the light source was behind me.  So the sand looks much whiter.  Fun to figure this stuff out, ain't it.

This one is looking north up into the vegetation.   And yeah, that's Dooley the Demented scrounging around the underbrush looking for trouble.

These next two photos were shamelessly lifted from the internet, and I did that heinous deed some weeks ago and don't remember where I found these.  Since I'm not using them for commercial purposes I'll only expect  minor twinges of conscience for not crediting them.  

This one is a view of Taylor bay looking south east.   You are politely requested to notice that nice beach house at the end of the road there on the right.  That house belonged to the show business personality Dick Clark, of American Bandstand fame.  Among other fames.    The house is no longer standing and I had to look around a bit to find some images of it.

This is also a photo lifted from someone's archives showing Mr. Clark's house from the beach right in front of it.   We couldn't get photos of any of this during our trip.  It's all been demolished right down to the concrete and tile foundation.

We did walk down to that point to take a look, of course.    There are a few of Dick Clark's palm trees still growing there.   This is the group that was on the right of the old photo of the house up above.  Nice spot for a house isn't it.

I took a closer look on Google Earth, and yep, nothing of the house left in that image, either.   That's just a smooth slab with no roof lines showing.

Of course we had to have a look around.  We went up through the bushes and took a look at the old house foundation.  This is that rectangle you can see in the Google Earth image.  Not a whole lot left other than the foundation and cisterns underneath.

This is the little ridge I climbed up to get the photo above.  It was pretty smart the way the house was tucked in behind this rock.  It would have been a great wind break for most conditions.  I was looking at these tiles and just thinking about all of the celebrities who must have been guests here over the years.

That piece of white pvc sticking out of the tiles is the vent to Dick Clark's bathroom.  Now is that some memorabilia or what?   And no, we didn't take anything.  Not even sure we actually touched anything, come to think of it.  We've heard a few things about those Hollyweird types....

We wandered around for just a few minutes, as I am always a bit antsy about getting back to the sailboat when it's on the hook and I can't see it.  We did look at the beach in front of the house site.  Needs a bit of cleanup I think.

This would have been one of the views from the ground floor of the house, from Taylor Point all the way back along the beach to the house site.   Notice there are no other houses along this stretch of beach.

That's basically because Mr. Clark owned most of it.  The estate is 30 acres, and you can own this wonderful beach house site  for only $ 23 million. Heck I bet you could get it for a cool  twenty million now that the house is gone. I found a real estate ad for the place, with some photos taken back when the house was still standing. Christie's still has the listing, as far as I can tell. And I learned from that ad that the place is called Paradise Cove and it includes  2200 feet of privately owned beach front. What a deal.

We've had a lot of things to do getting the house ready to sell and downsizing ourselves as we moved onto the boat.  It's a lot easier to take care of daily business when we're plugged into the marina.  But we really prefer being  anchored away from land, and look for any excuse to go out for a few days away when we can. Life on the hook is simpler in many ways.  Dooley loves lying in the sun when everything is calm on the ocean and the boat.   He knows  all the good sunny spots.  He's always made it his business to know all the good spots where a small dog can relax in comfort.  Including friendly laps.

And he still keeps his eye on La Gringa and me.   He's only really relaxed when the three of us are in the same place at the same time.    Every few days at anchor I'll put on some snorkeling equipment and hop in the water to take a look at the anchor, rudders, and propellers.   Just a general checkout and excuse to go for a swim.   Dooley watches me the entire time I'm in the water.

Going inside the boat and closing the door before he could follow me in doesn't stop him from keeping his eye on things, either.   He knows which windows and hatches to look through.

He especially knows which one leads into the galley where all the food is stored.

I think in that instance above he was telling me he really, really would appreciate a little trip ashore.  He has apparently developed quite an interest in botany since we've started sailing.  I know he always heads for the nearest tree or bush when he gets out of the RIB on these shore trips.   Here we are returning to Twisted Sheets after one such excursion.    He looks pretty pleased with himself.

And life on the boat at anchor pretty much follows the same general routines as in the marina.  We have to keep a close watch on our resources, especially electric power.   We have enough solar to keep up with our uses during the day, and enough battery to store power for an over night.  We have a small portable generator for cloudy days or times of unusual demand.   For example I might fire up the generator if I needed to run a power tool for a while.  

And along those lines I took this opportunity to install a couple of new inverters.  One 2000 watt version for when we need a lot of ac power, and a little 650 watt version to run just the basics like computers and cameras.   I don't have a photo ( yet) of the installation but I put them under the helm seat.   I do have a photo of me metaphorically scratching my head while planning the installation.  I had to momentarily run Dooley out of one of his favorite sunning spots.

I finally got the ancient wind generator working again.  Did you ever see the slip ring assembly these guys came up with?  Clunky, but it works.

And we spend a lot of time watching the sea, the weather, and the sky.  Sometimes we see a strange cloud or front coming over the water and we just have to stop for a moment and watch it all develop.     This was us trying to get a photo of a Green Flash one day at sunset.   They're almost impossible to accurately predict so we have to be ready with a camera just at that moment the sun slips below the horizon.    You can just see the sun doing that very thing here. No flash, but some cool clouds.

Well, that's going to be it for this post.   We've got a few ideas for our first trip out away from Provo.  We're going to have to go fairly far afield for the next one, and we're thinking South Caicos might be a good goal.   And after South Caicos, we're thinking of Big Sand Cay and some of the smaller islands between Salt Cay and Grand Turk.  
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 And after that, who knows?   It's a big world out there, the possibilities are pretty exciting.    And we ain't getting any younger.

Messing Around

 "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

(from "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame)

 

I've used that old quote in an early blog post back in '08.  But it still fit when we decided to go messing around in a small boat again this past week.  I'm pretty sure this isn't going to surprise anyone.   We've been messing around in boats of one sort of another for quite a while now.  A lifetime, really.  We actually did have a purpose in taking the RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) out for a ride.  I've been doing some work on this old outboard motor and wanted to give it a good workout. To get an idea of how reliable it is.  I wanted to run it for several hours simply to see if it will run for several hours. This is a good thing to know about a boat. One treats boats that will run happily for hours differently than one does those little monsters that stop running when they feel like it. The ones that turn on you viciously.  We needed to know which type ours might be. That's the excuse for the trip in any case.

We don't really need a purpose to go for a boat ride. If you've read much of this blog you already know we're pretty well inclined to hop on a boat at the slightest excuse.  We'll even accept flimsy excuses.  Sometimes we'll  even accept flimsy boats.   What we do not want to end up with is a flimsy excuse for a boat.   Two flimsies together at the same time is bad juju.
 

 

We've zipped around locally in this RIB a few times. Mostly we stayed within rowing distance of the marina. Short rowing distance, because these things row like badly designed air mattresses to begin with.  Well, maybe not quite that bad, but bad enough that rowing one is a last resort.  So this time we thought we were due to see just how reliable the old Mercury two stroke might be.  

We set out from South Side Marina without much of a destination in mind. If the engine sounded strong I thought we might make it all the way to Bay Cay, or perhaps even South Dock. We actually made it a lot further than that. We took it out to Turtle Rock.  Here's the approximate path we took marked by a light blue broken line.  I forgot to mark the location of the old wreck in the Cooper Jack Bight.  But you can see the squiggle where we diverted from a direct path across.

We didn't start taking photos until we were out by the old wreck where we had sailed the Hobie Tandem Island a few years ago. We swooshed by it to see how the steel had fared during Hurricane Joachim a few months ago. We could tell immediately that a lot more of it has collapsed since we were last here.

I'll apologize for the photo quality right up front here. I didn't bring the better camera because the better camera is not waterproof. We also were dealing with one of those days with varying light quality as there were storms passing by and some of the clouds really darkened things up. But if you want to compare this old wreck with what it looked like just a couple years back, here are some other photos from  a previous post. The wreck is the third one in that post.

The engine was running fairly well, and we continued onward.  We headed over to see how the old wreck of the M/V Serenade was faring. You can find plenty of previous photos of this wreck in the same post I linked to in the previous paragraph. At this point we were pretty much following the same path as before.

We didn't go into the beach to look at the wreck this time. One reason is that it was low tide, and the rocks between these little islets are sharp and treacherous.  We're in a rubber boat, remember. Without a patch kit, or even a roll of duct tape.  And we were on a mission.  And we were concerned about the weather. And two of us didn't feel like it.

The cloud cover was intermittent, and we did get some nice periods of sun.   I think you can tell by the water color whether we were under cloud or not.   When not, it looks more like this:

We zoomed out away from the shoreline to go around those islands.   A lot of the water between them and the beach is dangerous for boats.  Shallow and rocky in places.    The  motor was still running well and we decided to just push on a bit further. 

We did skirt along the southern edge of the several small cays here. We decided to just take a lot of photos for no discernible reason other than to show you. We've gotten a few emails lately from people up in the northern USA and Canada and the feeling we get from them is that some people like to look at the water and islands here in February. We do, for example.  One of the reasons we live here in the first place, come to think of it.

Anyhow, we just cruised along snapping photos.  I think we must have a couple hundred of them from this trip in total. I've selected a few dozen of them, and have broken them up into two blog posts  so you don't have to wade through all of them at once. Stretch it out a bit.  Doing what we can for the snow-bound tropical daydreamers. We well know the feeling.

That little rock in the foreground is the reason we don't scoot along at full speed closer to these islands.  There are a lot of those around, and they'll rip a boat up pretty well if you  hit them at 20 mph.

Just another winter day south of Providenciales.

This is the Turks and Caicos Government's radar installation. That tower in the photo has a fairly new radar system at the top, and people man the display and the radios there 24 hours a day. Their primary function is immigration control. They try to spot illegal boats approaching Providenciales.  When they see a boat they try to contact it on VHF radio.  If they can satisfy themselves that the radar target is a legitimate vessel, they allow it to continue to approach the  island.   If the boat doesn't answer the VHF calls and looks suspicious they will vector one of the Marine Police boats over to take a look.  

Quite often the radar target is another one of these Haitian sloops, like this one recently intercepted out on the Caicos Bank. This one has been lifted up onto the shore at South Dock. This is the major port of entry for commercial vessels and shipped goods entering the country.

This is not a shipwreck.  Yes, I realize that it might appear to be a derelict to the untrained eye, but the truth is that it just needs a decent coat of fresh paint. We didn't notice a lot of activity on board, so it might be awaiting some kind of government action.  I know there have been several instances of lobster poachers from the Dominican Republic getting caught in TCI waters lately. I'm not saying that this is one of them, but this is where they would be brought if they were. We tend to hear the names of the most common commercial boats in the area on our radio, as we have it on 24 hours a day. We don't remember the "Randy B".

Now the thing on the beach in the left side of this photo is a wreck. No doubt about it. Sitting on the beach open and rusting is a pretty good giveaway. This is also within the South Dock Customs and Immigration complex. It's not a marina for pleasure boaters to tie up in to sip Mai Tai's or Rum Punches.  

When we spotted those two other RIBs pulled up on the beach in this photo we knew there was a high likelihood that there were cruisers anchored around the next point in Sapodilla Bay. It's common to bring the dinghy in to South Dock to clear Customs and Immigration.   So we decided to continue our trip further westward to find out what kinds of boats were on the hook in the Sapodilla Bay anchorage.

This is not one of them. "I'll bet you figured that out already, didn't you?", says Captain Obvious.

This wreck has been here for some years now, and isn't really falling apart yet. Well built steel hulls tend to mess up the scenery for years before slowly falling apart and slipping underwater to become hazards to navigation.  Sadly, this little country just doesn't have the resources to clean these messes up. So they become local landmarks, artificial reefs, and the subjects of many photographs.  Like these.  We went between the old wreck and the shore to get some more pretty-water photos for you.

This is what that upside down wreck looks like from shore.

And this is pretty much what the shore looks like from near the upside down wreck.

After rounding the point we quickly saw the anchored cruisers who had sent their dinghy's to South Dock for Customs and Immigration clearance. There were two monohulls and a motor yacht on the hook in the outer, deeper part of the anchorage. This kind of sailboat typically needs 4-6 ft. of water under the keel to be safe.

You might not be able to make it out in this photo, but the tip of another cruiser's mast is just visible over the left side of the rocks here.

That little gazebo is a nice looking place for someone to watch sunrises, sunsets, stars, boats, waves, clouds, birds.... whatever one might want to watch.  We snapped a couple more photos as we rounded that point.
 

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I know I'm probably pushing it, but hey, I figure there's someone out there somewhere who will like the tropical scenery, and won't mind seeing it from different angles.  Or not.    Personally, I think it's scenic.
 

 
We continued onwards around the point into Sapodilla Bay. We already knew that if there was another sailboat in the anchorage that far in, that it was probably a multihull.    Catamarans typically draw less water than deep-keeled monohulls.   They can anchor closer to the beach, in more protected water.

Kind of like this one, the third sailboat at the Sapodilla Bay anchorage that day.  A Lagoon catamaran riding comfortably on the hook in about 4-5 feet of  protected water.

We weren't really doing much in the way of sightseeing, much to the dog's disgust. The outboard was running sweet and clear and we wanted to push on. There were cloud banks approaching from the distant north and we knew we might have to cut the trip short at some point to seek shelter. 

This is looking across towards the western edge of Sapodilla.   This is actually from a spot where we may be anchoring our sailboat sometimes in the near future as we head out on some new adventures.  Soon.

 We continued on along the beach of Sapodilla, and rounded another point. This one has one of La Gringa's favorite beach houses on it. Except, well, there's no beach here. And 'shore house' just doesn't sound right for some reason. Nice place, though.

Rounding that point brought us into Taylor Bay. This is a smaller and less crowded version of Sapodilla. Many of the houses and villas along these beaches are available for holiday rentals, and these are some of the nicest, safest beaches on the island. These are great places for families with small children, or really anyone that doesn't want to get slapped around by waves. These are gentle, sand beaches that stay shallow well out into the bay.   That power boat anchored there is in water just slightly over knee deep.  We saw people walking around it.

See the line of clouds approaching from the north in that photo of Taylor Bay?  We figured we might have another hour or so in this general vicinity before the clouds and possibly squalls arrived.  We had no real reasons to hang around Taylor Bay, for we had promises to keep...
 
This is the western sidee of Taylor Bay. Not much development on this part of it.  Makes for a really nice protected beach, too.
 

 
   I could tell that Dooley the Demented had beachcombing on his little mind.  Or something.
 

 
We looked out toward West Caicos to the Southwest and could just see the speck of Turtle Rock out there. We decided to make a run out to it before turning around and heading back home to South Side Marina. Turtle Rock is the little speck just to the left of middle in this photo.

And a few minutes a full throttle brought it all more into focus.

We came out here in our skiff some years back. It was August of 2011 and the weather was perfect and the photos came out much nicer.   Here's a post with better photos of Turtle Rock.

Seeing this cave half way up the face of this rock reminded me of my intention to come out here some day, climb up the 3 meter rock face and see what's inside. I still plan to do that.  It will have to be another time, though, as I didn't bring the shoes I would want to wear to climb this rock.

This was the westward extent of our little RIB trip, so we circled the rock to get a few photos before heading back. I don't know if you will be able to see the underwater ridge that extends from near the rock almost back to where we were sitting with the camera, but several spots between here and the rock have obstructions within a hand's width of the surface. The darker patches are the broken off rock ledge.

I stuck a little arrow on this one, to show you one particularly dangerous little bit of limestone.

 
Well I don't know that 'little' is accurate there. The whole piece of rock is the size of a small RV.  It sticks up to within six inches of the surface. I'm sure more than one boat has collected a scar from this one over the years.

This is the west end of Turtle Rock, where we anchored and swam on our previous visit four and a half years ago. I am astonished that it's been that long. We need to get out more.

 

Well, this is it for this first batch of photos. I have a couple dozen more we took on the way back to South Side Marina. We stopped and let the dog run up and down the beach for an hour or so. I'll go ahead and post these now, and then upload the rest of them in the next few days.

 

Things are picking up at the marina. It's full for the first time this season. The bad weather in the Bahamas has taken a break, and the more adventurous cruisers are starting to show up on their way south. Life is getting a little more interesting. More to follow.