Playing with sharks

Summer continues. Even in the tropics, we have summer. Our summer days are shorter than those up in New England for example. The sun is still pretty far north of us. Even at dawn.




We've had at least two days so far in July when the temperature hit 90 degrees. It doesn't feel like it's that warm with the almost constant wind, but it does happen a few times a year.

The weather in general has been pretty good. A little rain here and there, always welcome in reasonable and well-timed quantities. And it's been like that. Every few days a squall blows through, we get some gusty winds and rain, and then it leaves. Sometimes it leaves rainbows.




The good news on that one is that I finally got a good fix on the leprechuans' pot of gold location...




And as soon as the outboard parts arrive we are going to go out and dive on it. I figure with this photo I can line up the boat and go straight to that spot!! Heck it's only about nine feet deep there, I am surprised someone hasn't found that gold by now.

While we are indeed waiting for our outboard parts (they actually tried to mail them, the fools!) our boating has been limited to our little kayak, "Low Cay". Fortunately we've become really fond of this little rubber boat. It lets us get into places we could never get to with an outboard motor. It's quiet, economical to run. And of course it's great exercise for the new knee. Are they supposed to make those clicking noises?

Yesterday we decided to go explore someplace new rather than just tour the same canals again. There is a large part of this island that is not developed or even accessible except by boat. So we decided it was time to go take a look at some of it.

This is a sat view of the area we kayaked Saturday. We had seen one little piece of it a few months back, but most of it is totally new to us.




We started at the spot marked "Boat ramp", went south to Osprey Rock (marked "cave") and then turned around and went north past the "fishermen", up into that inlet north of where I have labelled "chasing sharks". I guess these descriptions kind of synopsize what this part of the post is about. (Except for the DIY. I've got some DIY at the end, of course. Don't I always? It's what my life is about down here on a day to day basis. Gotta have my DIY. A day without DIY is like a day without...DIY. sigh.) We did about six miles or so. I forgot to take the little GPS with me, again.

Okay back to the travelogue. We drove all the way to the end of that dirt road you can see in the sat image. Like most of the other roads on this island, we don't know if it has an official name or not. Most of the roads here do not have official names. There are no street signs, for example. No house numbers. No mail delivery (are you listening this time, Yamaha parts people in Florida???) And nothing on the maps. It's about six and a half miles from the pavement to the boat ramp. Bad road all the way, too. That's another version of the story of our lives. Bad road. Bad, bad road! Anyhow, I will mention this road again later.


At the end of the road there are a couple of places where one can park their vehicle and easily access the water. We chose this spot as a good place to launch "Low Cay".




Nice little secluded, protected cove with a small sandy beach and shallow, calm water. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. They could shoot a Corona beer commercial here, easy.

And you can see Osprey Rock in the distance in that photo. It's the rock split from the cliff face off in the distance. The round looking one. That was our first intended stop in the kayak, until we got distracted.

Now this is actually the spot I am calling "boat ramp", although you probably won't understand why until later. This is looking north from where we put in.




Does that look like a "boat ramp" to you? Nope. Me neither. More on this later, too. Same old ugly, clear blue water, too. Do we miss muddy, brown ocean? No. Not ever. Never.

Okay, first thing we did was zing right up to take a close look at Osprey Rock. It was blowing pretty good offshore so we hugged the coastline, staying in the lee of the low rocky hills. Our intention was to go grab a couple close up photos of Osprey Rock and then head back toward Frenchman's Creek. This was about 3:00 in the afternoon and we didn't have a lot of time to waste. Or so we thought at the time. That was Plan A anyhow.

Well, first diversion was when we were headed out across what is called "West Harbour" toward the Rock at the end. We saw this indentation in the little cliffs...




And we just had to go check that out. And as we got closer, we were surprised to find a series of small caves, complete with a great little protected anchorage for a small boat. With the prevailing NE winds here this place would be protected just about all of the time. I am sure that wasn't lost on early visitors.




We pedalled up to the shore, and could see that people use the center cave as a camping spot. It looked like fires had been built in the other caves, too, but I didn't go check those out. Yet. We could see holes in the top of the cave, and someone has even installed a wooden ladder to be able to climb up through one of them. It's difficult to see much from the ocean here:



So La Gringa dropped me off, and I climbed up the rocks to take a look. It wasn't until I actually got up into the mouth of the cave and looked back that I realized what a truly nice spot this is:




Inside, there was easily room to sleep a dozen people on sleeping bags in just the main cave alone. There was a great place for a fire, and the cave provides a natural chimney to let the smoke out.




Nearby there is a smaller round hole in the roof, and this is where someone has secured a ladder...




I was about to climb it to see what the top of the the ridge was like, but first needed to go back to the boat to get my shoes. I had gotten this far barefooted, and there are some seriously sharp rocks in this country.

Well, when I started back to the boat I noticed La Gringa has it pinned in place with some kind of three-point mooring technique she had obviously developed while I was in the cave..




And the dog was getting big time antsy. Once he's in the bushes and on the trail of a lizard there's no telling how long a delay will be involved. Realizing that we had miles to go and it was late afternoon, we saved further exploration of the caves for another trip. Half an hour into this expedition and we already have a whole 'nuther thing planned to come back and investigate. We pedalled onward..

To the original objective at this end, Osprey Rock:




We decided not to go check out the other side. It's tough to see in this photo, but just a short distance out from behind this rock the wind has the water worked up into a good two to three foot chop. No biggie for the Contender, but it's major face splash in "Low Cay". And we have to keep rescuing the dog.




You can get a better idea by peering between the rocks at the ocean on their windward side:




We elected to explore smoother water today.


We hung around here for a few minutes, looking at rocks, waves, taking photos. Yelling at the dog to stay in the boat. Then we did a 180 and headed back toward Frenchman's Creek. This was our original objective, we reminded ourselves. To make up for the time we spent lollygagging around Osprey Rock because I wanted to look in the cave, we headed straight to the little point of land I labelled "Fishermen". But the correct name for that is Bonefish Point. As we approached it from the south, we noticed some activity in the distance:




We were not sure whether or not we had come upon some daytime ceremony we might just want to miss, so we cautiously moved up to between those two rocks until we could see what was going on.




"Low Cay" is a fantastic sneaky boat. With the silent Mirage drives, and the soft sides that don't make clunking noises, we have found we can creep up on birds, fish, and even fishermen:




I figure these four guys must have walked several miles to get to this spot. There is no road close by. Or I guess it's possible they launched a boat up the creek and have it tied up on the other side of this little cay. Looking at the sat image, it seems plausible.

Friendly guys, with coolers and hand lines, enjoying a really nice Saturday afternoon without another soul in sight, Well, except for these two bizarre white people with a funny looking little dog in a rubber boat that came by...




We never did figure out the deal with the umbrella on top of the palm tree. I am sure it makes perfect sense to someone. Or it did at one time.

We continued North, hugging the shore here where the water was smoother. We passed a lot of un-inhabited beach. Saw some birds, but no more people. We went over to see what this dark thing in the water was.




I had wondered how mangrove plants started in an area, whether they gradually moved out from shore by extending shoots. Well, this one is starting all by itself in about four or five feet of water. It's a long way from the nearest other mangrove.

I mentioned birds, like this laughing gull that kept buzzing us.



I don't know if he thought we would have fish or if he had just never seen a Jack Russell Terrier on a kayak before. He lined up several perfect bombing runs, but never released any bombs. Maybe that's why they call them laughing gulls. They like practical jokes?

We got into a shallow area along the shoreline and La Gringa spotted this dark shape moving just offshore from us. So we angled over to see what it was. Remember the last time we did this it was about a 14 foot tiger shark.



When we got close enough we could see that it was only about a six foot Nurse Shark. We started out just trying to get closer to see if I could get a good photo but the shark kept zipping this way and that and staying right out of range. So we ended up chasing the thing all over the place, until it decided to move up into the real shallows right next to the beach. I think it was exhausted and just wanted to take a break from all the fun and games with kayaks. This was too shallow for us to use the Mirage Drives, so we had to unlimber the paddles and move like a conventional kayak.



This did let us get right up close to it and I was snapping away with the camera.




I think it was at about this point that Dooley the Disbelieving noticed that there was this big thing moving around just underwater and that it looked amazingly like a fish.




He normally doesn't assign much weight to what he sees. If he hears something, or smells it, then he is all over it. He knows he heard something or caught a whiff of something. Those are his primary senses. I don't know about his vision. He might need glasses or something, but he doesn't trust his eyes anywhere near as much as he does his other senses. (I am also convinced that he has absolutely no sense of taste either.) ( Great sense of humor, though. For a dog.)

I guess we had tired this poor old shark out by chasing it around, or maybe they are just naturally lazy and laid back. But in any case we found out that you can get quite close to them if you want:

After seeing me grab the fish and getting a good sniff at it Dooley the Delighted realized that THIS is what those dark shapes under the water were all about. From then on he examined every single shadow he could find in the ocean. And La Gringa had to start restraining him. Again. He paid a lot of attention to the ones he saw swimming in the shallows:




Then he got pretty good at spotting them at a distance:




The problem is that NOW he wants to stop and investigate every single dark splotch he sees on the bottom. Getting home could take days if we let him look at every rock in the ocean.




Eventually we got to the entrance to the interior water that you can see on the sat image. It was now almost six o'clock in the evening, and we still had to get all the way back, pedalling into the wind and current. So we did not get to do all the exploring we intended. We will save that for another day, too. This trip provided a lot of ideas for new places to explore. And we really appreciated this area. We saw miles of beaches without a single human footprint on them.




By this time it was approaching 6:00 and time for us to turn around and start back. We managed to get a few hundred yards into the entrance to that creek, but knowing that we had several miles of pedalling back against the wind, waves, and current we decided to turn around.




I snapped a few photos of the beaches from a distance as we slowly made our way back. This area is composed of small cays and there is no sign of human habitation. No power line, condos, resorts, marinas, docks, or footprints. It basically looks the same way it looked a thousand years ago, I imagine.




Except for the stuff that floats ashore of course. off to the right of where this photo was taken we spotted a huge piece of bamboo washed ashore.




I think it might be the biggest single piece of bamboo I have ever seen. Now I am wishing we had tied a line to it and towed it home with us. To add to my growing bamboo collection, of course. I am not sure why I have starting picking up big pieces of bamboo. I just know there is something useful about it if I can just figure out what. I have a small but growing pile of it at the house already.

All along this coast there are these nice little spots that make us want to pack a picnic lunch and just hang out for the day. Dozens of them. With nobody around.




Perfect places to play 'castaway' for a day.

Finally we made it back to the spot where we had originally launched "Low Cay". Before we even made it ashore, a gentleman appeared on the beach and waved us over. He asked if it might be possible for us to take a photo of him and his wife in our boat. At least that's what I thought he asked.

We said 'sure, why not?', and he waved to his family. Which proceeded to filter out of the bushes and climb into the boat, with some help and direction from La Gringa and myself. We loaded a very pregnant woman into the front, a naked boy (hiding behind the front seat with his, uh, posterior sticking out) another lady in the back, and the gentleman who started this all gently carried a newborn infant out to place with the woman in the rear whom I assume was the Missus.


Dooley the Demanding was back and forth, not sure what was going on here. But he knows he does not like other people in HIS boat.

Once they were all settled in place, La Gringa took some photos with their camera and the water in the background while I photographed the scene from another angle.




So finally, with that out of the way and our new friends disappeared back up the shoreline we were able to beach "Low Cay" at the same spot where we had launched some three hours earlier.

We were a bit surprised to see that someone else had used this spot to launch a boat, and a bigger boat than ours.




We had seen three guys out in about a 21-22 ft. skiff fishing earlier, and assume this is where they started out. Now, some things about this rig caught my eye. You might notice in that photo above, and in this one...




...that the boat trailer front, or tongue, is at an unusually high angle. Well upon closer inspection it's not hard to figure out why. Someone has mounted a trailer tow ball hitch to the swing away tire carrier on a Nissan SUV. I am not kidding:




This setup illustrates one of the very basic differences between the TCI and say, Sparta NJ, or Falmouth MA. In either one of those fine little boating community towns, I can easily imagine the reaction of the very first police officer to see something like this tooling down main street on the way to a boat ramp. A traffic stop of this nature might make the local newspaper in the States. Here, if it works, it's okay. If it fails, you are in trouble, but up until that point it's more of a 'no harm, no foul" attitude. We kinda like it, actually. Doesn't mean I would follow this guy too closely on the highway. With freedom comes some responsibility.

"Trailer lights and turn signals? Yeah, we got a wire for that"




"Safety chains? That's what we cut up that expensive nylon winch strap for!"


"This trailer has brakes, right there in that box. And we even tied the thin steel tubing spare tire carrier to the bumper with a new piece of yellow polypropylene rope!" If the bumper holds, they are good to go. And they obviously made it.

I guess nobody is going to complain that there's no license plate on the trailer at this point...

Thinking about all this, I realized that they not only got through town with this setup, and launched their boat, but they made it down that 6.5 miles of bad, bad, rough and rutted road I talked about earlier.

And that's why I am referring to this spot as the Boat Ramp, and the next time I hear someone complaining about the condition of a boat ramp someplace, I am going to show them this photo:




And I have a whole new respect for the way Nissan builds their spare tire carriers.

As for "Low Cay", our job is simple. Deflate it and roll it up and all 14 ft. of it fits in the back of the truck:




We are really appreciating the versatility of a small inflatable boat around here. Somehow, I just cannot see us ever backing the Contender up to this ramp on a boat trailer... Maybe if I put a trailer hitch on the spare tire carrier...you reckon they are rated for 4,000 lbs or so?

So that was Saturday's kayak trip. Other than that we have been keeping busy with the usual stuff. We have one son down with us at the moment who is now officially 'into' kite boarding. La Gringa and I have done a little beach combing locally. She discovered a small mother lode of "Sea Hearts" and filled a bucket with them. These go well with our casuarinas wood and bamboo collections, I might add. The "Sea Hearts" look like this on the beach:




Or like this in perspective:




We have heard of these seed pods being referred to as "Cuban Hearts", too, but in looking them up online I discovered that's not accurate. They drifted here from Africa, if I am reading this right: Sea Hearts


I made a momentous discovery on this trip, too. I found a complete pair of matching flip flops washed ashore!




We find shoes all the time. Thousands and thousands of shoes washed up on the beaches. But never two of the same pair, until now. And they are even my size!

And in the shadow, you can see I have also scored yet another length of bamboo that La Gringa had found and told me about..

Oh, now here comes the dreaded DIY section. Those not interested in rusty steel can leave now. But I have to be interested in it. You see, it seems to be interested in ME. It follows me everywhere I go these days. Even into my dreams.

Here we have the current fleet of land vehicles, each of which needs immediate work on something that is corroding away.




The Suzuki is up for sale, so I am not putting much effort into that these days. The D-90 (with the bamboo sticking out the back) is waiting for me to fix the canvas top that rotted in the sun. Lately I have been concentrating on the D-110 since we use that the most.

I have ordered an air compressor, a small sand-blasting cabinet, and a paint spray gun. I am hoping that these will better arm me to deal with stuff like....THIS:




Yes, the 110 has five rusty steps. They were once folding steps. They no longer fold, because they are encased in a nice layer of rust. I have been experimenting with a method of preliminary rust removal that is working so far. From a tip I got on an online fishing/boating forum, I took a bucket of water and added some baking soda to it. I then bolted a piece of wire coat hanger to one of these rusty steps, and immersed it into the bucket of conductive water. I attached the negative lead of a small battery charger to the coat hanger, and then attached the positive lead to a piece of scrap metal. This also goes into the water, not touching the rusty part. I won't go into how it works here, but it does. I left the first rusty step in this solution bubbling away overnight, and the next morning there was an ugly blob of floating iron oxide and hydrogen and oxygen foam on the top of the water:




(it is TOO rusty foam!) and the water itself was totally opaque.

Here is the step that sat in the underwater electric chair overnight compared to the next victim:




The black residue wipes off easily. And although it's not quite ready to paint, this sure took a lot of effort and the cost and mess of wire wheels and sandpaper out of it. This takes no effort at all. I am thinking that the sand blaster will leave this ready for a primer coat. After I get it apart.

I didn't do this on my own, of course. I had constant advice and supervision from my shop manager, Dooley DeRusto. he doesn't get his paws dirty if he can help it, but he's a good supervisor. And he grins at my jokes.




So I guess we can say this method has now been "Dooley Authorized"...

And that's basically the end of this post. We have lots more, but this one has gotten long enough already. A few nights ago we were out front to snap yet another sunset photo to close the blog post with, when I looked down at our papaya tree. I had thrown all the seeds from a papaya we bought at the grocery store down by the driveway to see if they would grow. And they did. It's that dark green tree with the big leaves:




So, I got sidetracked and made my way down to check on the status of things in what has now become a papaya thicket. And we have about thirty of them in there, so far:




And once in there trying to take the photo, I realized that the light was failing, so I scrambled back out just to barely make it in time for the sunset photo that I started out to take. Once again, I almost missed it by getting sidetracked.

And finally, we can end this, with that:

D.I.Y....Yi....Yi!!

Man oh man, this week it seems like stuff is breaking, rusting, corroding, or just quitting faster than I can fix it. (I'm starting the post with this complaint because it also happens to be my main excuse for letting a week and a half go by without a new post.)

But it's true! I have been up to my elbows in all kinds of things. More on that later.
I wish I could paste in one of our semi-traditional-when-we-got-'em sunrises, but it seems we haven't grabbed a camera at dawn this week. I don't know why. I think we are going tropical. Hey, how bout a sunset instead?



What we thought was cool about that one was when we went to the other side of the house the sun was just illuminating the tops of the clouds over there, with the bottom ones shadowed:



Well, WE thought it was cool looking, anyhow. Guess you hadda be there. I have another one for the end of the post, anyhow. Maybe you'll like that one, it's from a different location. For a change.

Okay, back to my excuses. In the past week I have been working on a gas grill, dishwasher, refrigerator (all fixed), two Land Rovers and a Yamaha outboard motor (never ending issues), a salt water washdown pump on the boat, and trying to fit some relaxation time in, too. The pump works great and people got to have their relaxation time. I'll try to fit all this in one post without getting too mouthy about it. Not dwell on any one thing for too long. Not go on, and on, and on...

I'll start with the funnish stuff, and save the DIY stuff for the end so certain non techno-geek people don't have to wade through it to see the good stuff.

The offshore, deep water fishing has been lousy. Oh we don't let that stop us, though. And Dooley the Devoted (fishbiter) gets excited when he inspects what we are loading into the bigger Rover. I think some people go through life looking for walls to bounce off of.



For a while I thought our fishing had just gotten way rusty, but we've talked to several other people who are not rusty. They say the same thing. Now, when I say 'fishing' I meant our traditional way of just trolling around with some combination of lures or bait trying to catch some pelagic like a wahoo, tuna, rainbow dolphin, etc. We know the bottom fishing has been okay, and people are catching and releasing marlin. We don't generally do either. BUT as I mentioned in the last post, we have dusted off our jigging stuff. Mixed results so far, but results. I hooked up a teeny grouper:



La Gringa hooked into what we think was about a forty pound yellowfin tuna, but it tore the hook loose just before we could see it clearly enough to be sure. Then Saturday, she caught a Cerro Mackerel and a Red Snapper. I didn't catch anything.

Well, I did manage to catch some ZZZZ's while La Gringa trolled the boat back toward home.



La Gringa has been driving the boat a lot lately. Through the cuts in the reef, and offshore. She's good navigating with the GPS and depth sounder and these days she drives while I rig fishing gear. It's working out real well. Much better than when I was trying to do everything myself. Now I can relax and fish, too.

I know they don't show well in this photo, but Saturday we were surrounded by a group ( a 'pod') of around 20 small bottlenose dolphins.



We first noticed Dooley the Demented whining and barking, and we could not figure out what he was on about. Not his usual obnoxious high pitched bark, the one that makes you want to fling him some distance away. No this was a soft little yip bark. And then a moment later, there were at least 20 dolphin around the boat. We have seen him do this before. We know he hears the dolphin. And they hear him, and there is a mutual interest.

We had some more excitement last week. A Haitian sloop with a reported 180 illegal immigrants came in at Long Bay, a really short distance up the coast. Maybe some of you boating people will enjoy reading this version: Sloop docks in Long Bay

Well, despite some fairly serious outboard motor problems on our last trip, we had to swing by and take a look at this boat on the way in. Can you imagine 180 scared people coming a hundred and thirty miles across deep, serious ocean in this thing, taking a couple days and nights to get here, standing room only, and then to crash on this beach and run up those paths to hide in the bush?




Nobody seems to know how many of these boats leave Haiti never to be seen again. There are no records. We have seen wrecked sloops out on French Cay, and none of these people are going to swim to Providenciales from French Cay. A surprising number of them cannot swim at all. They would have to swim across the exact same water where we saw this guy back in April:



The general consensus on this, by the way, is that it's a big Bull Shark. It was about half the length of the boat, or about 12-14 ft. I didn't climb in there to measure. Some people thought it might be a Tiger Shark, but either way, it's not domesticated.

The newspaper says there were 180 people on that sloop shown on the beach in La Gringa's photo. They caught around 30 of them. So, another 150 people were running around trying to find places to hide. And although the boat came ashore on a small stretch of unoccupied beach, here is a broader view of the area:




I expanded my view of that photo, and I could count eleven homes in that one picture. With more to either side and inland than are in the photo. Must have been an interesting night in the neighborhood. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a hundred unexpected guests?

After checking out the sloop we headed back to the marina. We are having some major issues with the boat, which I will talk about more, later. Here's Dooley the Disadvantaged standing on one of the few spots on this boat where he can see over the rail:




Or he can see, until someone with a mean streak jinks the boat sideways a bit to avoid a coral head. Then he has to scramble a little bit for some traction on the fiberglass:



This is probably the trickiest part of our normal trip, getting back into our slip. It's just the delicate handling of fitting a single engine, 28.5 ft. long boat between the bow of that catamaran and those three Honda props. We have to go right through that opening:




Then two boat lengths in at a 45 degree turn to the left and then a hard 90 degree turn to the right to fit into about a twelve foot wide slip. The wind is typically from the right in that photo, averaging 12-15. So far, so good.

We've been enjoying the kayak when we can fit it in. Weather is a big factor, of course. But we've had some really calm days again, similar to a couple weeks ago when we loaded up on conch. We managed to pedal our way out a couple miles or so onto the Caicos Bank. This is the farthest we have been from shore in the rubber boat so far. Dooley the Diligent drives us nuts on days like this. Oh it's not the distance from shore. He doesn't care about that. Blue skies, he's happy.




But he scans the water for ANYthing. Everything. Whatever. He is immediately suspicious of anything that doesn't belong there, in his opinion. And he's got a very conservative opinion. Mr. Zero Tolerance for STUF (Suspicious Things Unsubmerged and Floating).

You can imagine what something bizarre looking from a distance, like this palm frond, looks like on a flat calm day:




Sure, it's easy to see what it is up close, but logs slowly roll in the slight swell, and seem to move. And from a distance, once he spots it Dooley the Dedicated lasers in on it, giving it his complete and undivided attention. He even goes into a little alert pose, ready for action. He'd dive in to bite it with half an excuse:



Of course he looks back to make eye contact with the skipper and to make sure we see it, too..



And then he's on it, full time. Might be a threat. Or something to eat. Or play with. Whatever it is, it's not being ignored. And the tension in his little muscles become visible as we slowly pedal closer, and closer to this mysterious (to him) sea thing:



By bracing his hip against La Gringa's foot, Dooley the Detective is ready for anything. He knows where his people are. He's braced if he has to move suddenly. And he knows just about exactly where the nearest lap is located if things suddenly go south on him. This thing could be violent...



At the closest point, he is about as focused as he gets. His hackles are up (yes he's wet. He got thrown overboard the last time we went through this). If looks could kill...




"Relax folks it was just a log. Hey! Wait a minute..What's that over there? You see something? Let's go check it out!"




And of course he pays no attention at all to the things that we find most interesting. Like seeing some of our countrymen flying by in a US Coast Guard helicoptor:




Sometimes we tend to forget that there are three of the southernmost Bahamian islands within fifty miles of us. The USCG participates in a joint patrol effort with the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was called "OPBAT", although I am not sure if that is still the operative name. We still do see the Coast Guard down here from time to time, reportedly intercepting things that must need intercepting. Just a thought, but they could start with the Haitian sloops if they're not too busy looking for drugs.

Okay, we are through the pretty photos for this post. Now, it's time for the ugly ones. The DIY section! If you don't care about nuts and bolts type stuff, this would be a good time to leave.

The major and ongoing DIY projects on my calendar these days are the two Land Rovers. The smaller, soft top one is in the worst shape. I've used this photo before, but it says so much about a basic fact of living in a place like this. Exhibit A:




Looks like something left over from an "Indiana Jones" movie, doesn't it? Check out the nice expensive canvas top. How 'bout them rusty headrest supports? Can you believe this is a 2005 Model with only 20,000 miles on it? These things are supposed to last fifty years! Reminds me of an old joke about the best ax an old farmer ever had... lasted fifty years. (He only changed the wooden handle four times and replaced the ax-head twice..)

Well, the top's gotta go. It's going to rip off some day and drape itself across the windshield of the vehicle immediately behind us doing 50 mph and things could just really, really go ugly for a while after that. I also shudder to think of the drama of it separating from the Land Rover, and it's effect on Dooley the Delerious. Bet that would make more noise than a flappy kayak sail, too. Lots more.

So, I have started the first major rehab for the rag top Rover. The problem with the interior is that the sides of the top have been rolled up for a year and a half, and that's what happened. We needed the ventilation and access to the back. Corrosive dust and salty air have had their way with it:




I am planning to make a truck cab out of it. With a roll up rear window. Hopefully this will keep the salt out of the inside and give us access to the back. Moved the rear hoop forward, got rid of the middle stuff:




I cut the middle parts out of the part I removed, because they have some welded, galvanized attachment points on them. I have a bunch of photos of that procedure, but will bore the guys over on the Land Rover forum with those (They're really into this kind of stuff!)




The new top will come that far back, with a clear plastic window between the cab and the spare tire. And although you can't see it in that photo, the two hoops (they call those 'hood sticks' in the UK. No kidding.) were not equally bent. Probably from me carrying a load of 2x10 lumber on top some months ago. But bottom line is that I had to push the rear hoop up to match the curve of the front hoop. Okay, front hood stick. I found that a properly-braced, six-ton (tonne, for some of you) hydraulic bottle jack worked just fine for that:




Hey, living here you gotta improvise. I took the old top completely off and found out that the material used for the top itself is perfectly fine. It has survived the climate really well. The problem is that the nylon material used to cover seams, and finish the edges, and to make the straps has totally disintegrated in the tropical conditions:



And not only the nylon, but the thread used to sew the top has totally fallen apart. It is literally coming apart at the seams.




My "Plan A" was to just cut the top and sew the back portion with the clear window to the shortened version and voila, a modified truck top. Then I ran into the realities of sewing this material by hand. It is slow and laborious, pushing a big needle through this stuff one stitch at a time. I took a piece of wood and drilled it out to make a sort of an awl:



It looks strange in the photo because the needle in one hand is lined up with the awl. They are two seperate pieces. The sharp part of the awl is actually an unpopped pop rivet, sharpened on a grinding wheel. It's cheap and replaceable.


I know someone must make a device to sew this stuff, but for one project like this, it's probably not cost effective to buy one. Maybe if I started making canvas covers for things it would be worth the investment. I am using 30 lb. nylon kite string for the thread. It's ugly and white, but boy, is it tough.

When I realized that I was going to have to re-sew every seam on the top, I went to Plan B, which was to just buy a new top. I contacted the leading maker of these tops in the UK and explained what I wanted and my concerns. The problem here is that they cannot guarantee me that they don't use the same materials that fell apart here in four years. So, Plan C is to buy a new top from the UK, and still fix this one as time allows. I figure at the rate I am going, it would take me a week to finish this one. And I still might do that. I haven't ordered the UK top, just yet.

I finally received the first part of an order for Land Rover replacement parts after weeks of trying to put the order together. Both vehicles are showing the stress of the constant corrosion here. I have decided to take a more aggressive approach to rust prevention, and am planning to buy a small compressor, a sand-blasting enclosure, and some spray paint guns. I will just have to remove rusty parts, blast them shiny smooth, and then paint them properly. I see no other way unless I just want to continuously buy new repacement parts from companies in the UK who are TERRIBLE at customer support. Sorry, England, but that's been my experience so far.

I won't bore you with more Land Rover photos just yet, but I just yesterday added front mud flaps to the longer one. And I am replacing the headlamp bezels on both of them. When was the last time you had to replace the steel rims that hold your headlights in place? I have never had to replace one in my life. I find myself replacing four of them on four year old vehicles. That should tell you something. If I can sand blast, prime, and do a good paint job, it might work to keep these things running a while.

I won't go into all the appliance and other DIY stuff going on at the house. It would be an exhaustive and never ending list. This week alone I fixed a dishwasher and refrigerator. The fridge had a spring break on the little door that keeps ice in and warm air out. Took a couple weeks to get the part. I didn't photo that.

Now the problem with the dishwasher was a new one for me. I never realized that you cannot mix two different types of dishwashing detergent together in these things! There are enzyme based detergents, and bleach based detergents. Well, now I know, but at one point a few weeks back the local store was out of our usual brand and so I grabbed another brand thinking 'soap is soap', right? Well, actually, no, it isn't. Mixing the two together produces this strange conglomeration of blue and white glops full of hard little crystals. It will totally clog up the soap dispenser on the dishwasher. I had to finally disassemble the thing and remove the soap resovoir and clean the whole thing out.

This is what the inside of the front door looks like on one of these things:




And after you finally manage to remove the detergent dispenser resovoir, you have to shake, break, rinse, scrape, and get all the congealed soap out of the thing. It's not just a simple dump it out and rinse it deal:



THIS is what was left after most of the liquid drained away. You can see the hard lumps and globs in this stuff. None of this washed down the drain with the hot water, and those top pieces are hard and crunchy. Can barely break some of them with your fingers.




And believe me, it will clog up your dishwasher big time. If my experience has saved even ONE other mystified DIYer the grief, it will have been worth it. Bottom line, DON'T mix enzyme and bleach dishwashing detergents. Nope. Don't do it. Read the manual. Of course I didn't read the manual. We don't have the manual. The people here who install things like to throw away the manuals, we have found. I guess either they are embarassed by not being able to read it, or perhaps they see it as job security. But it's a real hassle.

(Not that I would have read the manual even if I had it. I mean, that's almost as bad as stopping to ask a complete stranger for directions! Real men don't do these things with manuals and asking directions! )

Okay, I have whined about the vehicles and appliances, but the DIY thing going on now that concerns me the most is the boat. The outboard has been fouling spark plugs, and I finally managed to locate the problem. After taking this expensive big motor apart WAY more than I ever wanted to..




(Pretty, isn't it? Nothing wrong on this side of the motor) I finally found out that this thing called a water control valve cover had failed, allowing seawater to get into the exhaust ports of the Yamaha. This is the little busted metal piece sticking out on that spring like a maniacal Jack-in-the-box head..





(I probably over anthropormorphized that a bit. But this has gotten personal now)

I managed to get that part off, and to say I was somewhat dismayed would be a huge understatement. This part, with less than 150 hours on it, has completely fallen apart:




While getting some online advice from one of the boating forums, I found out that all of the bigger two stroke Yamaha motors have the same part on them. I suddenly remembered the motor from "Cay Lime", last seen lying forlornly in Preacher's yard. I called him up, and asked if he still had the motor. He did, and invited us over to take a look and also to eat some fresh conch and turtle. So we went.

Here's the motor from "Cay Lime" that was wrecked during Hurricane Hannah. It kinda hurt to see it, actually.




But there below the center of the photo, peeking out from behind a vine, is a ussable water valve cover! I took it.

Also, Preacher showed us something else that amazed us. After nine months in the ocean, he spotted the front anchor locker hatch from "Cay Lime" on the rocks in Leeward last week. He recognized it, and brought it home to have a copy made locally. I am not sure I even would have recognized it myself, despite having opened and closed it a thousand times:




And no, those are not my feet. I am not nearly that tan. Yet.

Well I was pretty excited about having the part to fix the boat, or so I thought. When I returned to the marina the next day and really looked into it, I discovered that the mating surface for the corroded part was just about as corroded as the part itself:




I have ordered all the parts to replace this, but it will require me to disassemble the motor even more than I already have. I am not looking forward to it.

But at least we got to enjoy another good meal with Preacher. And we got to see the flamingos that congregate in his back yard almost every day:



And this post's final sunset photo is also from Preacher's house:




Next post: photos of the Bottle Creek Lodge on North Caicos, even MORE Kayaking! (oh boy!), La Gringa's conch chili! (yummy!) and probably, if your luck runs out, even more DIY stuff. Plus whatever else comes up in the next few days.