More house photos, running out of gas, Turtle Cove, fishing thoughts, underwater shots

Our Norwegian architect took these photos to email to me, since we are mostly out on Pine Cay this time of year ( when we are not busy running out of gas in the boat...more on that later) Not much new on the outside, although they were planning to start putting the metal roof on yesterday. We originally had an Ondura roof in the spec, its a corrugated fiberglass roofing, and it looks pretty good. Then our builder, Coralin ( pronounced "Curlin'") got us to thinking about a galvanized steel roof. His thinking was that putting a plastic roof on that house was like (quote) "wearing a two dollar necktie with a thousand dollar suit"...well...we hadn't looked at it QUITE in those terms before, but it got us to thinking. While I have proudly worn my share of two-dollar neckties, we saw his point.

Its not that this is a big fancy house. In fact, its pretty small by US standards. Our outside living areas are almost twice the size of the house interior. But the site makes the house look like more than it is, I think. A white metal roof does make more sense than a blue plastic one. Again, we listened to the locals in these things.

Well, truth be told, there's a little more to it than that. I am about as sensitive and nostalgic as a fence post, normally, but when Coralin was extolling the virtues of a metal roof..... I was tugged a little by a memory from long ago. My grandparents' lived in something called a 'dog run' cabin in the woods of East Texas when I was a little kid. It was hand hewn square logs, with plaster chinking between them. Two square, simple structures separated by an open breezeway, called a 'dog run'. They were covered by a common roof. One side was the kitchen and living area, the other side the bedrooms. The 'facilities' were down a path, and the 'bath' was a metal tub near the well. I remember the sound of a rainstorm beating down on the tin roof at night. I remember the sound of the thunder. Those are good memories. It made me realize, hey, I actually can maybe have a little of that, again. That just doesn't happen often in life, does it. So we went for it.

This is a far ride from a cabin in East Texas, but I'm looking forward to sleeping under a tin roof in the rain, again.

(The dog, of course, wants a bomb-shelter of a roof, steel-reinforced concrete with six inch armor plating. Something that would look at home in a WWII movie, But he's not paying for it, so his vote doesn't really count. I'll build him a storm shelter,or something. )

As of Wednesday,while waiting for the roof delivery, the crew was finishing up some concrete and plaster work on the outside:

This thing, called a 'pergola' is shaping up. I was a little sceptical about it at first, too many arches I was reportedly heard to grumble. Waste of money, etc.. But I admit, it's starting to grow on me. Its going to have 3x8 beams across the top, and lighting.

The end of it has a little roof over it. Looking this way, you see the island of Provo. If you turn around,its just the sea and the sky all the way to the horizon. Its going to be a private, sheltered place to sit, away from the house. Its going to be a good place to watch sunrises, and storms over the ocean. The inside is open to the patio. I been thinking it might be a good place for one of those hammock chairs built for two. People (including me) seem to like to take photos of it, its got some photogenic Escher-like quality, or something. Its peaceful. Serene. I think I like it.


Inside, our multinational crew is finishing up the drywall, what I used to call 'taping and floating'. Here they call it "mudding". This is looking across from the kitchen, which will have a little breakfast/bar thing on the right where the plumbing is:

That's the door to the little office on the left. It will have double French doors to keep the a/c in. It was designed so that we could knock out the interior walls pretty easy, and open up the living area more, if we ever build something else on the space above the garage. We tried to design this with a lot of add-on capabilities. The two guest bedrooms are through the far wall. Keeps sleep over visitors away from our bedroom completely.

And this is Mon. He is Coralin's partner, and took over the job after Coralin oversaw all the foundation and concrete work. Mon is the finish guy. This is looking back across the kitchen area, utility room, pantry,laundry room to the right, master bedroom through the door to the left. The pergola is outside our bedroom:


We just this week changed the appliances. They were going to be all white, but GE discontinued the refrigerator we want in white. Its a big one,48" wide and we wanted to stay with that, SO, we changed all the appliances to black, which meant we had to change the counter-tops as well. Basically, its all going to be this stuff:

(this is a photo from the GE website. That's NOT our floor. Our floor is intended to be coral stone slabs)
And our counter tops are going to be a darker color Corian knockoff with some kinda speckles in it that the architect tells me will 'pick up the coral in the floor', whatever that means. I trust him. I am the wrong guy to choose colors, and I have long admired people who can see them all. I am pretty good with blues, but I don't think I have seen 'coral' as a color since one weekend in the late 60's. The cabinet doors will also be clear cypress, same as the roof.

I hope to have some metal roof photos in the next week. Probably gonna cost me some more Heineken to get the architect to take them, but it saves us a 30 mile boat trip.

Know what this is?


Its one of the fishing/diving charter catamarans from Silver Deep dropping off a five gallon can of gasoline to a certain dumb ass Gringo who ran out between islands.


We spent about an hour watching boats, and Hawksbill turtles, and fish leaping out of the water. Digging the new sound system. Not a bad place to be stranded. We called Preacher on the cell phone. Did NOT want to get on Ch. 16 and say we were dead in the water. Preacher organized a little rescue, sent us some gas. When we got to the fuel dock, the usual crowd was waiting to give me a hard time. Dwayne ( Preacher's nephew) is the Dockmaster for Leeward. He knew we have two fuel gauges on the boat...and he asked me, "Well? How the heck did YOU run out of gas?". I told them, well, its a long story, but a pretty short answer....stupidity. They got a chuckle out of that. Actually, it was more like knee-slapping freakin' hilarious to them.

So, we bought Preacher breakfast at Gilley's, and turned it into a morning. Got some great running-out-of-gas stories. I liked the one where his tank leaked 40 gallons of fuel into the bilge before he figured it out. He even filled the tank again after it all ran into the bilge the first time.. I think he was trying to make me feel better.

Coming back ( with a full tank) we trolled a bit. Fishing is still lousy. I hooked a small barracuda, figured I would take it back to the dock and give it to Preacher for lunch. But something else in the water had its own ideas about lunch:


Then we had to dodge squalls and lightning, again. Typical afternoon this time of year. We are having some spectacular thunderstorms, though.

While we were hanging on the hook waiting for rescue, I asked La Gringa Suprema if she felt like crawling back into the bow locker so I could get some photos of how contorted she looked when she was completely down inside it putting the cleat hardware on. She had an immediate two-word response, and it wasn't "Why not?", nor "Yes, dear"....

There are not a lot of 35 ft. plus boats here, but there are definitely some. Turtle Cove Marina usually gets the majority of the liveaboards, because its the nicest marina on Provo. Shops and restaurants and bars right there at the Marina, close to "town". Decent hotels and condos a few steps away if you want to get off the boat for a couple days. In the busy season, which is basically November through April, there are usually several 42 ft. plus sailing catamarans in there, and some monohulls. A trimaran or two. For boats that size, it definitely does tend to be multihulls because of the skinny water. But we have seen quite a few luxury boats in the 150 ft. range here, too. Some of them are amazing. We get a number of mega-yachts here in season, but most of the really good ones anchor over here off Pine Cay and run their boats in to Parrot Cay or Provo for supplies. Bill Gate's was here a couple years ago. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been here. A good friend of ours works for Parrot Cay and he tells us stories of running Keith Richard's kids out fishing, when they stay at his place on Parrot Cay.

There was a fishing tournament in July, and the marina was filling up with sportfishers:


Getting into Turtle Cove or the boatyard for something drawing over six feet is not a straight shot. Its more like an instrument approach to a small airstrip. Turtle Cove will send a guy out in a small boat to lead you in, if you just call them on the VHF.

There are also sometimes liveaboards at the Caicos Marina and Boatyard, where we keep a slip. Usually, people are there for repairs, and like to move on to nicer areas when they can. Its isolated, and there are no stores, restaurants, etc. within walking distance. Unless you are Gandhi. Slip rates at the boatyard are a lot less than at Turtle Cove, though. One family of four has been living aboard Manx Cat, a sailing cat, for the two years that we have been here:

He works as a plumber, and she works as a teacher's aide. They bought some land over on South Caicos last year. We asked them if they were going to build on it, but no. They are happy on their boat ( at least HE is). They just bought the property as an investment.

The people who are totally raping Leeward-Going-Through to turn it into an upscale marina and development are advertising "Slips for Yachts 65-200 feet". So, I guess times are changing down here, too. Had to happen with all the billions going into development. With one bedroom condos on West Caicos and Dellis Cay going for over a million, its just a matter of a couple years til we have the big boats and funny hat crowd here.

Looking through my pix, I am surprised I don't have more photos of the mega-yachts. I guess either I am not one to snap photos of other peoples big boats, or perhaps I just didn't have a camera with me when I was near them. We are around boats almost every day, and sometimes just don't think to take photos. However, now I am carrying this little pocket digital around, and I will make an effort to get some nice bigger boat photos to post here, assuming this thread goes on that long.

For people interested in the TCI, I found a pretty good writeup. Although its mainly about the Amanyara resort on Provo, the first page is pretty good copy on the islands in general:

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/fantasy-island-april-2006

Its over a year old, but its got some good info and its better than anything I could write. I am not sure what's shut down the fishing lately, but the charter guys on this side are telling us the same story....SLOW recently. They go bottom fishing for grouper when its this slow. Just a few days ago we were getting all kinds of hits on the lures like that one in the photo of the bit-off barracuda just two posts back. Something was really going for them, bit a couple off. So, wondering if going to wire was scaring the fishies away, yesterday I put two identical lures out, except one was factory rigged with heavy mono and the other one I had re-rigged with vinyl coated 65# braided wire. The cuda hit the wire one. But that was it. We only trolled for about two hours, then had to grab a clear window between two squalls and scoot for the island. The guy we met with on Wednesday told us that his boat is still catching YFT, but I think they fish on the other side of the Caicos Bank. We are going to have to give that a shot. We plan to tie it in with the French Cay trip, after we move back to Provo.

Yeah, watching the house come together is pretty exciting. The builder is hoping to get us in there in time to celebrate Christmas in it. That would sure be nice, after living in borrowed places for the past couple years.
-----
We troll with Penn 113H's on Star standup rods with roller guides, rated to 80# line. Its loaded up with 65# Power Pro. I dont know that the YFts here get all that big. I could be wrong, though. I have been going to sea my whole life, but I am new at this fishing stuff. I know that sounds funny, but its true.

Heck, we'd be more than happy with a few more of these:


Now, is that a YFT or a Bigeye? I don't know the difference, been reading about both.

I am not sure we could get a big one on the boat anyhow. Have to tow it in. And from what I have seen, they don't like being towed.

(and PS my son's face doesn't normally look like that. He was still recovering from a severe fistfight in that photo)

Well, I need to burn off some gasoline so I can work on the top of the gas tank this afternoon. Might be forced to go see if I can fool any fish. I don't think I can get much in the way of photos from that. And the rest is really just captions for the photos. Anything in specific you want to know more about?

I was looking at sat images this morning. I sure don't like those two big blobs of weather between here and Africa. I think the closest one is spinning the wrong way, it should be past us before it could get organized, but that one 1400 miles this side of the Azores worries me a little.
They don't even have to hit here to disrupt life on these little islands. In '05, after the series hit Florida, shipping was disrupted here for three weeks or more, for some things. Building materials for a lot longer than that. That's when we realized that we needed to design our own house, and make provisions to be as self sufficient as possible. Its a little different here than in the US. We have nowhere to run to.

We took the boat out this morning around 10:00, planning to run off a few gallons of gasoline so I could get the sender out this afternoon. That did not happen. We just got back at 4:00. We trolled up closer to that shipwreck on the reef, got some photos a little closer than before. From maybe 500 ft. We caught a couple barracuda, a Cero Mackerel, and a yellowtail snapper. We decided to hop in the water for some conch. I took about 40 underwater pix with the new camera. Then we came back to the dock and I cleaned the conch, with critique by Harry. Oh, and we gave the barracuda to Punch, that was funny. I had put them in the livewell, and they were still very much alive when I grabbed them. So, I got new pictures of the shipwreck, some underwater shots, and some barracuda exchange and conch cleaning pix that La Gringa took. Unfortunately, she tends to get me in the photos. But, anyone interested in seeing any of the above?
Well, we took 78 photos today. Some of them are junk, of course. Problem is that La Gringa Suprema took a lot of them, and its just about impossible to crop myself out of them. I am working on some of those. While we were in the water I took a good look at the bottom of the boat. Its been in salt water continuously since the day we launched it, last day of March. I was pretty happy to see not one gouge in the anti-fouling paint. Not one scuff mark after almost six months of running in these waters. The paint is coming off the aluminum trim tabs, but I guess its not formulated for that. Its still real clean, though. I forget who on THT recommended this paint to me for tropical waters, but whoever did, Thank you. Its good stuff.

Here's what the boat looks like floating from the stern view, with the tabs and jackplate down. I can raise the motor six inches from this position for shallow water and running over reefs:


The scuff marks on the skeg are from us hitting a nurse shark the first week ( no fooling) and then getting into Bottle Creek;

Hey, most of the outboards down here have skegs that look sandblasted. I know my time is coming, but being able to raise this outboard up until the ventilation plate is right at the surface sure helps get over the skinny water.

More to come. These were easy, though.

North Caicos fishing trip, cottage pond

We hadn't been fishing in a couple days, so we decided to get a few hours in this morning. The fishing has been pretty flat. We had some good bites day before yesterday, but haven't really caught anything lately worth mentioning. We both have work to get done, so we decided to head out not long after sunrise.

Its really nice here this time of year. There are very few people around. I think there were four humans and one dog on this 800 acre island all weekend. We didn't run across either of the other two.

And the little marina is empty, except for our Andros, and the water was really calm at dawn. Its like having a really sweet hunk of the world all to yourself for awhile.


We trolled around for several hours, and the only things we really accomplished was feeding a couple ballyhoo to some barracuda that we didn't get to keep. However, we did get joined at one point by a pod of about six or eight small bottle nose dolphins. They came over to the boat, and were body surfing on the bow wave.


We finally had to head in just before lunch, the weather started doing it's normal thing for this time of year. The dog insisted we had "stayed a little too long at the prom", and were pushing our luck. I think he was exaggerating, but still, it was a good time to head home. Lightning on the water still makes me nervous, too. Although not as nervous as it makes the dog.

(Now, you gotta imagine both these little panos together in the middle. I couldn't get them to match up. This is actually four photos, but I discovered that panos don't work well when the series of pix are taken from a moving platform.... all the object relationships, angles, and distances are constantly changing from scene to scene,and just don't match up smoothly. duh... Well, now I know. Gotta learn, somehow)




But I hope that's enough for you to visualize this squall that was chasing us.
The dog is now sleeping in his favorite Presidente Beer Hurricane Shelter carton. It's a good indication of his concern when he sleeps with the storm flap down.


(This is bizarre. I just spent about a half an hour writing a post for this thread, and when I got near the end, it vanished. I don't know what keys I must have hit, but its gone. After I quickly try to recreate it, you will see why I think its bizarre.) Here goes, again:

Yesterday we got skunked fishing for just the second time since we launched our boat back in April of this year. We fish a fair bit. Yesterday morning we had two of our best and proven lures, tattered and scarred from all the times they have been hit. We had ballyhoo, we trolled deep, we trolled shallow. Nothing.

We were in an area where the fishing should have been good. Just off the northernmost part of these islands, where the local waters meet the expanse of the Atlantic ocean. Africa four thousand miles thataway. After we had reached our max distance and started home, we passed the very visible old freighter wreck off Pumpkin Bluff, North Caicos:

(note the distance photos don't blow up very well with this little camera. Sorry)

I blew up the chart on the GPS at this point, to see if there was any info, and was surprised to see that there is another wreck marked just off of this one, in deeper water. I have asked the locals about this old boat, and have only found out that they don't go there. They tell me it's got a lot of sharks around it. They tend to talk of things in terms of fishing, and not so much about history or other aspects.
Here's a Google Earth shot of it, with the lat/long on the bottom if you want to look for yourself. He had no chance of clearing, with that draft, through that false cut. I wonder what circumstances drove him to try. Most likely a storm. One of these days when its calm we will take the Andros panga in and see if we can get a name.


As we continued on our way home, I looked back at another spot on the beach, within sight of the wreck, called the Prospect of Whitby Resort. We had driven to this spot last year when showing some friends from the Bahamas around. Its a beautiful spot for a private resort. A great private beach. Tall Casuarinas trees whispering in the trade winds. I found a travel writeup on the resort as recent as five years ago.
But today, its in ruins. Deserted. The windows of the cabins are broken, the rooms ransacked, the pool cracked and filthy. The breeze moves around old magazines and receipts through the deserted lobby. I had to ask myself WHY would a nice resort in such a beautiful location fail? We have heard rumors of drug deals, money laundering, etc. But the truth is we don't know. I do know the receipts are in Italian.

I snapped a photo of the beach there last month on our trip back from Bottle Creek:

You can see the remains of the boat dock on the right, some ruined beach cabanas falling down on the left. The hotel itself is now hidden from view by the overgrown brush and casuarinas trees that have flourished with nobody to keep them trimmed.

Here's a GE image of the resort at Whitby. Judging by this photo I think the image is at least two years old. It was much worse last time we were there.


Just a bit further down the beach from the wreck and the ruined older hotel, there sits a new venture, the Royal Reef project. This is a modern, resort and condo being built between Pumpkin Bluff, and not far from the highly successful Parrot Cay resort ( where Bruce Willis, Donna Karan, Michael Douglas, and Keith Richards all have vacation homes, among others):



You can see, it's not finished. There were some financial problems, and we read in the papers that the developer owed the contractor over a million and a half, and after negotiating for months, the contractor finally cut his losses, packed up and took his crew out to work on the new resort going up on Ambergris Cay. The Royal Reef, as of yesterday morning, sits growing weeds, deserted.

When we were researching the TCI prior to moving here, I came across reference to a small freshwater lake on North Caicos called Cottage Pond. It's very small, only a couple hundred feet across. Theres nothing around it, and its on the end of a short dead-end road.
It's about two miles due south of the Prospect of Whitby resort. It's also about two miles from the Royal Reef.

In my reading about it, I found references to reports that years ago the locals considered it "bottomless". They are not used to lakes where they cannot reach the bottom. I found at least two references to the "legendary mermaid of Cottage Pond". I also found, to my surprise, that a local friend of ours ( Mark of Big Blue Diving) had participated in a technical diving expedition to find out what was in it.
Cottage Pond is over 250 ft. deep. The divers talked about finding tunnels in the sides of it that they think connect to the open sea. They passed through murky fresh water into crystal clear seawater 75 ft. down. They laughingly refer to strange sensations, and disorientation during the dive. Now, I am a diver myself, for about 42 years now. I KNOW there are always logical and physiological explanations for strange feelings. Always, right?


The white line I drew south of the pond is 180 ft. long. The pond is 255 ft deep.
Its a steep cone in the island. And its over two miles from the nearest ocean, which is surrounded by reef. Where do these tunnels connect to this seamount??

(Mark wrote up the dive, and for those interested in this kind of stuff, its a good short read. Please note the references I mentioned, though:
http://www.caicoscaves.com/cottage_pond.htm )

So, yesterday morning, after a total failure of a fishing trip, I was thinking about all this. And for some reason, our location seemed a bit coincidental. If you erected a small tower on the shore at Cottage Pond so that you could see the horizon, and if you gazed straight ahead even further into the heart of the Devil's Triangle you would be able to see the snakebit Royal Reef on your left. You would see the ruined Prospect at Whitby hotel on your right. And you would be looking straight ahead at the freighter disaster. And you would see them all without moving your head.


It occured to me that people sure seem to have a lot of bad luck when they get between this pond and the middle of the Triangle, and I ain't just talking about our fishing. Coincidences are a funny thing sometimes, aren't they.

(Like, when I wrote this the first time a little while ago, suddenly the whole post disappeared, and I still don't know why. Are my posts THAT bad?)

(Lucky for you, I just realized that this re-write is a lot shorter than the original)

I was searching for some photos online of that shipwreck. I have been thinking about it, but more specifically, about the other sunken wreck marked on the Garmin Bluechart, which is shown behind this one. This one is linked on Google Earth, a really nice aerial, I went to the original. Loaded it up into Paintshop, and cut the haze and sharpened it a little. I think I can make out the site of the other wreck below the surface, and I can see how we can take our little boat out and around, and come up alongside this one.


I can only wonder what the Captain was doing when he grounded here. I am thinking it was intentional, because there is no way he would have thought he could pass between the reef and the shore at this point. There has never been a channel there. Maybe he was just trying to save the crew and the cargo. I'll see what I can find out.

You can see why we will have to pick our days to get in there, I think. And I want to dive on the other wreck, the one you can't see from the surface. The locals talk of sharks does concern me a little. We have tiger and bull sharks here, and they bear some respect.
One more thing on the list of places to investigate a little deeper...(pun intended).

I see on the sat views the East Coast of the US is getting weather today. Good thing Ingrid broke up when it did.
We are trying to put together a trip over to the ruins on East Caicos, but house related things keep insisting we go back to Provo. Weather permitting, we are shooting for sometimes this weekend. It's a long trip, we would boat down to South Caicos and then up the outer reefs to have the seas behind us til we duck into Jacksonville Cut. I better do my homework if I am going to put any words with the photos. I know I get a lot more out of stuff like that if I read up on the history before I see it in person. Kinda lets you know what you are looking at.

East Caicos has 18 miles of supposedly beautiful beach facing the Atlantic, and it's totally uninhabited. I am looking forward to seeing that, a tropical beach in its natural state. No people,no developments Getting hard to find in this modern world. At least it is in this hemisphere.

Yesterday was slow, I have been working on the boat. I had mentioned to Andy at Andros Boats that the panga really needed two more cleats up forward, as we tie up to a lot of crumbly concrete docks. We needed a couple more places to hang fenders, and tie lines. So, he sent me two new pop-up cleats. (What a great little boat company . I would buy another boat from them in a heartbeat. )

Anyhow, first I crawled into the anchor locker head first myself, to get the washers and nuts on the underside of the cleats.. Big mistake. I wriggled in, and then got jammed upside down in the locker, trapped. Could NOT wriggle out easily. My legs were flailing in the air, couldn't reach the deck with my feet. No ventilation, fiberglass fumes, anchor stuck in my ear, I was getting perturbed. It wasn't pretty. I finally managed to kick my legs hard enough to essentially yank myself out a half inch at a time until I could touch the deck with my toes again, leaving skin on the fiberglass edges of the anchor locker. I left some choice words in that anchor locker,too.

While I caught my breath and looked around, I saw Brother Mac, an elderly local Baptist minister, who paints houses when he's not preaching. He was standing on the beach watching this show, his eyes as big as saucers. I don't know what shocked him more, the sight of these two white legs kicking at the sky from the hatch of a boat, or the language he must have heard coming muffled from within the boat hull.
He just shook his head at the stupid American, and walked away without saying a word. There was nobody else around, thank god. I am especially glad there was nobody around with a camera.

SO, after I explained what happened, ( and after she stopped laughing herself silly) La Gringa climbed down into the locker in a more sensible way ( feet first) and being younger and more limber, she put the hardware on the cleats and tightened it up for me;


Then I moved on yesterday afternoon to installing a new little amp and speakers so we can play MP3s on the boat, While the demented dog hid in the console from passing thunderstorms. I told him they were at least five miles away, but he has now declared his personal safety zone to be somewhere over the horizon where lightning is concerned. This dog will hide at the very memory of past thunderclaps he has known. He refused to even watch the Weather Channel at ten minutes before the hour, he knows its Tropical Update time.


So, this morning I hope to finish up the stereo installation. Used a roto-zip tool to cut the holes for the speakers, now just need to run wires. Pretty boring day, but now the Missus knows how to use an adjustable wrench. I think it's a good thing to cross-train the crew. Especially if it means I don't have to get wedged upside-down in hatches with my butt in the air and legs kicking. Man, am I ever glad certain ones of our local friends didn't see that. I would never live it down. I am hoping Brother Mac thought it was a vision, or a portend of something better left unspoken.

And so far this morning, it's looking pretty good:


So, another cup of espresso, and back down to the marina to finish up. I hope to have some more interesting photos to post in the next few days.

Yeah I did mention it, I thought. She wasn't there when I stupidly stuffed myself upside down in the hatch. When I explained it to here, she laughed herself silly at the mental picture of me trying to kick my legs hard enough to jar myself loose. And she knows Brother Mac, so when I said his eyes were as big as saucers she thought it was hysterical.

We just made it back from Provo before dark. We ran over this afternoon, to meet with our architect, and ended up at a little Spanish cantina talking to the guy who is going to be making the pavers for our patio. He does concrete and stone work, runs a cantina, and a restaurant, and a commercial fishing boat, and a fish market. He was born in Kentucky, grew up in Tampa, and moved here 12 years ago. Wealth of information.

Then we stopped by the Pakistani underwear/cigarettes/electric guitars/big screen Sony TV/refrigerator/camera/Cuban cigars/diesel generators/rugs/ and furniture store cause I needed some speaker wire. We ran into wildman Steve, the redneck Canadian, who is always a trip. We rent storage space from him.

Stopped at boat and fishing tackle store for 2 stroke oil, lures, a switch and boot. Then at the marina we ran into Hayden the Texan and Stephanie living on their catamaran. And Roger the Brit and his Canadian wife and their kids living on their catamaran. We had to talk to everybody, of course. Man, that's the most expat people we have seen in a week. Oh, had to stop for groceries, too. ran into Avianne, who has been home in Guyana for the summer. La Gringa and her had to do the woman hugging catching up thing, ya know. tick tock tick tock..

By the time we made it back to the marina it was too late to buy gasoline, especially after we had to rescue the dog from three mutts who are determined to kick his butt. They always chase him, I think its kinda like "lets gang up on the mouthy little terrier from Joisey..."

Anyhow, since it was late and we couldn't fill up, we decided to go straight over the Caicos Banks to stretch what gas we had. Its really shallow with a lot of sand bars, and I have never done that entire trip in the dark, so we hadda honk on it while we still had a little light. There are things like a bunch of unlit,unmarked little limestone islands sticking up all over the place. But it's a couple miles closer that way, and quicker if you don't run aground. If you do run aground, it takes longer, of course. Maybe all night. La Gringa did get a couple good photos as we dodged squalls, though.



Made it into Pine Cay right as it got dark, ZZ Top blasting through the new setup on the boat!! yahoo, y'all

Pine Cay, Root canal

Well, we were planning to pack up and hop on the boat and go out to Pine Cay today. I got jigging rods to rig, and stereos to install, new lures to troll...a new camera to play with... However, Dr. Donald Keith is on the island, and has asked if we could get together with him, and also meet the new Director of the Turks and Caicos Museum. Dr. Keith is the guy who found the Molasses Reef wreck, which is still the oldest wreck ever found in the New World. We met him last year, and have stayed in contact. Also, I have been talking with my brother in Houston ( who works for an aerial magnetic survey company) about whether it would be feasible to turn a small aircraft into, essentially, a "flying metal detector". We could cover a whole lot of ocean if we could do it from the air instead of from a boat. I just got a quotation for a Cesium vapor magnetometer from the manufacturer. (anybody got $ 23K they want to donate to a good cause? ha ha...yeah, I thought so... so you WONT be on the list when I find those pieces-of-eight..)

We really do want to get off Provo ( ain't cut out for this 'big city' life ) and back on the boat, but this is a good opportunity to meet with Dr. Keith and the new Director. They are planning a new museum on Provo, and I am hoping that they might be convinced that we could be a good resource for them here, since we are here full time and are interested in marine archaeology, and I have a whole bunch of experience in finding things on the seafloor. Plus, we own a boat, diving hookah setup, etc. Seems like a good match up, might be some adventure in it, and it might let us do something good for the islands. Why not?

Heck, we are already finding old shipwrecks on our own....might as well do the right thing. After we strip them of all the treasure and cannon, of course. Well, not all of it. Not all the cannon anyhow. Well, maybe none of the cannon...

We finally got away from the dock in Provo yesterday afternoon. Fueled up the boat in Leeward. We spoke with some of the guys working at the fuel dock there. Everybody is pretty bummed out about what developers are doing to the area. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs the end of this month. It's an ugly thing. This is something new to them, having their livelihood taken away.

But they still have their sense of humor. They kidded me about my eyebrows, said they've only seen eyebrows like mine "in the movies". Black guys don't have bushy blond eyebrows that stick over the top rims of their sunglasses. I had never considered it, but yeah, they're absolutely right. My eyebrows would seem remarkable to them. I am glad they feel they can kid me about them, actually. Its a real comfortable feeling. Especially for a guy like me, who was raised by a pack of wild rednecks.

Today was half work, half play. We decided to run the boat out for a few hours, try our new jigging stuff. Went out through the cut in the reef, and on out to a few hundred feet of water. On my very first cast, I picked up a small yellow tail snapper:

These are good eating. Not what we normally fish for, but hey, it was a start.

In the next half hour, we both had good strong hits, but didn't get anything else on the jigs. Then it got really slow. Couple hours of jigging, but nada. So, we took the jigs off and put a couple lures on, tried trolling our way back. Followed a flock of birds for a half hour, but no hookups. We were getting sporadic bottom returns, but enough to see we were out in 3200 ft. of water. Right after we headed in, I got a hit from something that ripped the skirt right off the lure, and there are fresh teeth marks in the fluro leader about five inches in front of the lure. Must have been a good 'un. Ten minutes later, La Gringa got a similar hit, but she didn't hook it either.

The dog kept an eye out for anything we should know about. He's good that way:

I'm sure you can tell he's totally comfortable on boats. Actually, I think he was contemplating a swim. Two miles offshore. He absolutely hates it when we throw a fish back. We have had to fish him out of the drink on more than one occasion. He WILL go after them.

The water was incredibly clear today. We could see the bottom pretty well out to about 100 ft. depth from on the surface. We didn't dive today, but I am sure underwater the viz would have been 150 ft. plus. Just for grins, when we were jigging in 60 ft. of water, I stuck the new camera over the side and snapped a couple shots to see what it would do. Not a great shot, but talk to anyone who does U/W photography....getting anything back from sixty feet away is pretty dang clear water by any standards.


Here's another after we drifted a little closer to the reef. More sea life here. I looked at the fat ho and the depth was 55 ft. here. Again, I just stuck my arm in the water and pushed the shutter button, no flash. lot of air bubbles from the surface. These fish are about 45-50 ft. away. Its gonna get better when I get down amongst them I think:


We've been working on this butterfly jigging thing. If we can make it productive, it'll save money not only in bait, but also in not running the outboard all the time trolling when gasoline here is $ 5/gallon. The wind has been a problem. The panga wind vanes very fast, and because of the shallow draft the wind pushes it pretty well. Its not practical to anchor in these depths, so we have been using a sea drogue. its just a parachute thingum, tied to the bow cleat. Really makes a difference, slows the boat drift enormously. It also keeps her pointed into the wind and seas. Most of you hardcore fishing guys already know about these things, but for anyone who goes offshore who doesn't have one,...I would say its a real good thing to have on the boat. It would really make it easier to work on an engine or prop problem, for example, by holding the bow into the waves.


We gave up on the fishing after a few hours, headed back to the island. We did manage to snag a small barracuda on the way. Our fish inspector cleared it.

We knew we would find someone who would want it, so we threw it in the cooler with our one small yellow tail.

these are some rocks on the way into the channel at Pine Cay, just me playing with the camera. You might be able to see how clear the water is here, too. And this is in a channel. Its better on the reef.


On the way back to our slip, we passed a whaler full of local people on their way to Provo (hey, its Friday night). They gave us the universal shrug, like "Well, wheres the fish?". I held up two fingers and pointed at the cooler, so they did a quick u-turn and came alongside. They knew we would have kept anything they might want. These are all friends of ours.

(See the looks of anticipation on some of those smiling faces?) Left to right, this is Ube ( pronounced "Ubie"), Scrape, Kim on her cell phone, JR driving, Sara in the red, and Carnetta.

I missed the shot of La Gringa handing them the fish, dang it. But we did make the "transfer at sea". We gave em both fish. Kim is at least off her cell phone, to look at the barracuda behind her.

You wouldn't believe the impact cell phones have had here. This country went essentially from marine VHF radio ( the taxis still have them) to cell phones. They skipped land lines totally. Now, everywhere you look, someone is on their cell phone. Some people carry two or three of them. They'll grab a new pre-paid ones when there's a promotion going on, and still have minutes on their last one...its hilarious sometimes. A phone will go off and someone will have to search through their pockets to see which one is ringing.

So, we came home empty handed. But hey, an afternoon on the boat is a good thing, right? Nothing exciting or historical to report today. Really, just a pretty typical Friday afternoon for us.

JR ( the guy driving the whaler in the photo) did tell us he's going fishing on the Banks tomorrow, and he asked us if we wanted to go. I suspect we will, weather permitting. We don't miss a chance to watch the locals. There's a lot to be learned.




(Since I read the topic on eating barracuda to the dog, he has repeatedly suggested that we are in a position to feed some to the neighbor's cat as a test for ciguatera. I never would have thought him to be a proponent of animal testing, but he says that, in this case, he is reluctantly willing to risk the cat's health in his capacity as "man's best friend". What a dog.)


We didn't go fishing with JR this morning. Discovered bright and early that we had left some stuff over in Provo that we need, so decided to grab the rods and troll over. Didn't catch any fish, but something bit a new lure right clean off. I still have the 200# fluorocarbon leader, bitten through. We have been getting a lot of bites on these particular lures lately. Two yesterday, one today. I am going to re-rig a couple of them with wire and go see whats up with that. I suspect wahoo. Hot dang. Also saw a YFT leap right out of the water after flying fish this morning. But other than what ate my new lure, not a bite.

We talked to Ed, owner of Catch the Wave charters. He told us its been real slow fishing this week, he was out with a charter yesterday and didn't catch anything. That made me feel better, I mean, he's a professional who's been doing this all his life in these waters. If Edward got skunked, we are in good company. Not our fault!. I feel better because even though I didn't catch anything either, I didn't pay someone $ 800 for the experience. He yelled something about what's causing the fishing to be slow, but I didn't hear it over the outboard. He was running one of the local mechanics out to his 'party barge' to look at the Hondas.

This is another friend, "Pump", getting in some early morning fishing as we were leaving the dock. He'll probably hand line up a mutton snapper for breakfast. Nice clear skies, no wind..:


We lashed La Gringa Suprema's bike on the boat. Plan was for her to ride it over to the house when we got to Provo.

That didn't happen. Our friend Preacher was at the dock, and he gave her a ride to the house while Dooley and I hung with the boat, shooting the breeze with people at Leeward.

Ed ran one of the local mechanics, Derek, out to his boat. An outboard mechanic who makes house calls.... Actually, that's usually how its done here. Its very rare to see a boat on a trailer. I think the problem here was a lower seal, or maybe impeller problem, from what Derek was looking at there on the work bench:

Notice the sky turning ugly? It started getting REAL ugly a little while later;

Our route back, we need to zip around the bow of the trimaran on the left, out through the cut, then about seven miles back to just under where the right side of this photo is. Squalls all the way:



Noticed "Captain Ron" left some windows open and laundry on the line. Guess a little fresh water won't hurt anything:

The squalls almost enclosed us by this time. We rarely run the boat WOT. It'll do about 47 mph or so, but its usually too choppy to be comfortable. Or it will launch off a swell and that's kind of jarring, too. But man, when you are cutting between squalls, its nice to have the reserve horses.

We dodged all the squalls and made it back dry. I thought this was a potentially interesting development, this dark twisty thing coming down from this cloud. The picture is blurred because we were doing about 40 mph at this point, trying to stay dry between squalls.


So that was our Saturday morning. Not that different from our Friday, in retrospect. Except the weather is getting a bit funky. Of course there's a tropical storm out in the Atlantic, and we expect some sea state increase from that.

While I was waiting for Preacher and La Gringa to get back, I did another one of my attempts at a pano series from where I was tied up at the end of the dock in Leeward. That multi-colored monstrosity on the left is new. Its going to be a resort, and they are kicking all of the local businesses out of Leeward. They are filling the channel here with slips for "yachts from 65 to 200 feet". That's not us. That's not anybody who lives here. Guess Leeward's gone Hollywood, like Parrot Cay and soon, Dellis Cay.

That means everything from the new resort, all the way across this photo, to the right hand edge is going to be demolished, starting Oct. 1. Its going to change a lot of people's lives here, plus its going to change the character of this place enormously. I know progress is inevitable, and I am grateful to have gotten to spend a couple years hanging around here and getting to know people. Still, its a little sad, in some ways.

We're going to miss this place. I doubt very much we will be hanging out in Leeward after the end of the month. We'll find a new place, and that's got some adventure potential. We're ALWAYS up for some new stuff. Life does go on. So, if you come to the TCI after the next two weeks, don't look for Gilley's Restaurant or Catch the Wave or Sail Provo at the Leeward Marina. They will be moving on, too.

But we'll know where they are....that's the good news.

And yes, I am very much aware of the fact that we are part of the problem, dozing off the top of that hill over on the South side to build our house on. So, I got no room to gripe. As they say down here..."It's all good."

As I am writing this, the storms have surrounded us, and its raining and blowing with lightning and thunder. This fearless Jack Russell Terrierist, who will jump overboard in a thousand feet of water after a barracuda without batting an eye, who will take on any three dogs five times his size and run them off most of the time, who once killed six large rats in a morning....is hiding under my chair shivering and shaking and asking just why the hell the big guy just doesn't make that mean old scary thunder GO AWAY!?!?!


I am pretty impressed with the little Olympus so far. There's obviously a learning curve, coming from a series of Sonys. Only aspects of it not totally positive is that there's a lot of button pushing to do, and It just doesn't have the glass for good low-light shots if its handheld. But its so versatile, and so easy to carry around, it makes up for it. Its already starting to get some scuff marks, and I wonder about the little waterproof door latches over the batt/memory and the I/O connectors...could I accidentally open one of those underwater if I snagged one on something like a watch band, etc. However, I have seen something advertised called "skins" for it, its like a form-fitted silicone case for them, for something like $ 15. In the online photos of them, it looks kinda like one of those fitted keyboard covers, it only exposes the lens and LCD, and you push the buttons through the 'skin'. Its not clear from the online photos if it covers the 'hatches', but maybe it does.

No chance of me finding one here, of course, but I plan to try to pick one up next time I am in the US. So far, though, for boaters and beach go-ers I highly recommend the camera for its ruggedness. Its got good specs for low temps, too, so I think it would be a good choice for skiers. Take some knocks ( if you ski like I did) and not mind being dropped in the snow.

Its now Sunday morning, and I thought I would stick up some photos for those who have gotten the impression that our life here is all blue water and fishing every day. This is about how I spent my Sunday morning in the tropics. This is gonna get ugly before it gets better..be warned.. But there's some clear water pix, here, too. These were all taken in sequence this morning.

One of the showers in the house we are staying in has been slowly clogging up. It still drained, but slower and slower. The showers here drain outside, and the water is for the plants around the house. Everything else goes into a septic tank. I tried taking the shower drain cover off and running a small plumbing snake through, but no luck. There's a 90 deg. bend under the shower stall floor and the snake wouldn't get around it. So I took a look outside, and lo and behold, at some point in the past someone had damaged the PVC drain pipe. Probably a gardener or something, will never know. Anyhow, they had dented the PVC, and put a small hole in it. Now, what happened was a root fiber made its way up, following the drip of moisture, until it came out of the ground and grew into the hole in the PVC. No kidding. It wasn't obvious, until I started looking closely:


Now, at this point, having found what I suspect to be the problem, (MAYBE the problem, I don't know at this point, I mean, its a little bitty root and the hole in the pipe is smaller than a pencil, just a crack, really) back in the States I might have waited til Monday and called a plumber. But here...well...for starters, I would have to find a plumber who could dedicate an entire day to my little problem. If he's a good plumber, he's busy. What plumber can schedule an entire day to one little project? Well, the answer is we would have to wait probably weeks, and then of course ....the cost.

Figure at least an 8 hour day, at (conservatively) $50 an hour. So, I am into it for $ 400. up front. Then figure two round trips to Provo in the boat to pick him up, bring him here, take him back, and return. That's 30 miles, figure maybe 12 gallons of gas, at these prices another $ 60 in fuel, and two hours transportation time. So up to near $ 500. And is he going to have what he needs to do this when he gets here, some weeks from now? Probably not. Could easily turn into two days of plumber. This is no joke, by the way. Get a plumber here to evaluate the problem, that shoots a day. Get the plumber back to fix the problem, shoots another day. I am looking at $500-$1,000 to fix this danged drain if I hire someone.

So, bottom line, its worth it to me to bungle through, once again. I tried several saws, before finding one that I could cut around the pipe with. Know what finally worked? The little saw blade on a Swiss Army knife. (Thanks, McGyver.) So, I cut it:

The photo isnt that good, but I could tell the root went way up. I couldnt pull it out, and didnt want to pull too hard. I came up with a plan, but I needed something to slide up inside the pipe to separate the root fibers from the inside wall. Here, that meant heading out on a scrounging mission. Me and the dog took off down the "road" to check the local dumpster, nice break from 20 minutes of sawing with a pocketknife, though:


The dumpster was no good, nothing useful. I was looking for something I could scrape up inside the pipe, do a 'root canal' without jamming up the root or breaking it off. I didn't know just what it would be, figured I would recognize something useful if I found it. We ended up at the marina, and the dog immediately hopped in the water for a dip:


hey, I don't blame him. This is hot and sweaty work, ya know. Have to give my assistant a break from time to time.

It was quiet down at the marina. Only thing going on was Harry G. He had been out this morning diving for conch, and he did pretty well. He was sitting on his boat cleaning his catch. Thats a pile of cleaned conch in the foreground on the dock, some still in the shells behind the bucket.

He offered me a couple, but I told him I was planning to go get some myself later in the week. It takes Harry about 45 seconds to clean a conch. It takes me five minutes. But, I figure thats the only way to learn.

Harry is from North Caicos, and he tends to stay out here away from the "big city". I think the only time he goes to Provo is when he absolutely has to, like for medical attention if a bush doctor can't fix it. He has had us pick up prescriptions for him several times and bring them back out with us. Harry speaks a vanishing dialect of North Caicos English thats really hard for me to understand. Its really fast, and uses idioms you dont hear anywhere else, even here in these islands its unique. I think I knew him for a year before we were able to start conversing. He fishes a lot, and he's well up into his 60's. Last year he was out in his boat diving for lobster, and while he was in the water a couple of Jamaicans came up in a boat next to him with a shotgun and robbed him. They took his weekly pay($300), his watch, his cell phone, and his spare gasoline. Piracy is alive and well in the TCI. When lobster season opened in August, Harry told us he was pulling up 300 lbs of spineys a day. He probably gets $ 5 a lb for them. Nice. keeps him in gasoline, anyhow.

While at the dock, I grabbed the two remaining lures I have similar to what's been getting bit off this week. I told Harry where we were fishing, and what was happening, and he grinned and said "Dat's big wa-HOO, mon). That's what I thought, too, but its good to have a second opinion from an expert. So we discussed what I am gonna do, which is replace the flurocarbon leader with wire, and go back out.

Water is still really clear, typical summer visibility. This is off the end of the dock, and this water is near six feet deep here.


Then, rumaging in the bushes next to the old Russian hydrofoil, I found the perfect root canal tool. A seven foot piece of thin wall aluminum tubing just exactly the right diameter to fit inside the pvc. Man, how lucky can you get? Sometimes, the gods still smile on me.
I took the tubing back to the house, and drove it up inside the PVC, around the root:

(What, you thought I was gonna hang around the marina shooting the breeze with Harry all morning?)

Pulled the aluminum back out, and man, it worked just like I knew what I was doing or something. The root came out in one piece, cored right out in the aluminum. How often does THAT happen??
This sucker was about six feet long, and dense little roots that just about totally clogged the pipe. I am SO glad I didnt just tie a piece of line to it and pull.

Hard to believe this all grew through a hole maybe a quarter inch or less in the pvc. But it did.

So, that was my Sunday morning. Saved a bunch of money, and got the drain working just fine. Patching a new piece of pvc in is a piece of cake. But now, more squalls have moved in, and the dog is shivering and shaking under the sofa doing his best to imitate floor wax. Oh well....I got a Penn 113H reel with a totally stuck drag that needs taking apart. So I will just load up Lyle Lovett's "Road to Ensenada" CD and see if I can figure out something complicated for a change. Oh, and re-rig them lures. I just know somewhere out there is a wahoo with my name on it, laughing at me. The squalls will pass. The sun will shine. The dog will breathe again.

This is turning into a parody of Peter Mayle's book "A Year in Provence" isnt it? Not his writing, for sure. But I got more photos.

I like Southern France, but I think I will stick with this place for a while. Besides, Harry is easier to understand than the French.
twentynine, you mean like to spin the aluminum pipe back and forth?? I turned it with one hand and tapped it with a hammer lightly and it wasnt too bad, but if I understand what you are saying, string woulda been a good idea. Hey, go easy on me, I aint no plumber and it was my first time...

Now, anyone know if I really need all this many funny looking cloth washers, and is it worth while trying to figure out which way those three little springs went?


(just kidding, it all made sense, even though a manual woulda been nice. Was so much fun, I did em both. And I even got stuff left over...)