Blue Haven Marina

We thought this photo of the water was a little different.  Something about the various horizons  interested me.  There's the dark silhouette  of the land.   The wind is rippling the near  shore water, but just a few hundred meters out it transitions to a  smooth glossy surface, out to almost flat.  That continued out as far as the eye could see. 

And then it transitioned to a low lying cloud layer sitting on the real horizon, then some cumulus clouds and on to the clear blue of the Caribbean sky south of us.   Anyhow, it's slightly different from the usual sunrise shot.

If you actually like the usual sunrise stuff instead, how about a little 20 second time lapse video?



This post is about the newest marina on Providenciales, the Blue Haven Marina and Resort.   We recently decided that we'd treat ourselves to a late lunch after yet another day struggling with the Immigration Department here.  We'd just forced ourselves to be nice and patient and polite to a number of people who were not trying to be any of those things themselves.  It took us three trips to the police, one trip to the post office, two trips to a computer supply store, one trip to a passport photographer, one trip to the bank, one trip to the Treasury, and three trips so far to the actual Immigration department...... to renew a permit we've had for 8 years.  The process took up some part of every day for a week.   It was a very frustrating experience, again, for someone who appreciates logic and efficiency. This should have been one trip to Immigration.  Check the boxes, sign the form, write the check.  Five minutes, tops.   That's not the way it works here. And it seems to get even more frustrating every time we do it. More people, less common sense.  Well, since we were somewhere near the end of the process, and in that area between grateful to just be done with it again and wanting to strangle someone, we figured a relaxing lunch was in order.

La Gringa had  heard about a new lunch spot and bar opening near the site of the Leeward marina area.   This is part of the complex that used to be called Nikki Beach.  After several years of aimless drifting through the lumpy financial seas that surround this little country, the operation of the marina in the middle of the Leeward channel is under new management.   We decided to go check it out.

If you'll look, for a moment, at the lower channel in that Google Earth image above, you should see the floating docks at the recently renamed Blue Haven Marina.   To be honest, we've actively avoided the place.   We're members in good standing of the old expat retro-grouch community who really did not want to see  the old Leeward Marina torn down.  I know we wrote about it all here on the blog.  We've been ignoring the new marina, and figuratively holding our breath until we turned blue. It doesn't work any better now than it did when I was four years old, either. The new marina is here to stay.  

And a nice one it is, too.  Easily the most modern and well built marina in this country.   If you're interested in all the details, you can find most of those at the Blue Haven Marina website.   I know I've posted dozens of photos of the floating concrete docks here.   We pass by them every time we boat from Leeward out to the north west. They take up three quarters of the former Leeward Going Through Channel.

We figured it was time for us to take a closer look at the marina from the land side.   Look at it as a possible resource, for a change.

The Blue Haven marina office and the new Salt Bar and Grill are in what used to be called the Johnston Construction Company building at Leeward.  Everything has been upgraded and modernized.  It all looks and feels brand new.

We had a late lunch at the Salt Grill. It was a decent lunch.  My cheeseburger was ho hum, but La Gringa's chicken wrap thingy was delicious.  We probably picked a bad time to be there, at 2:30 in the afternoon on a week day.  Oh, it was a good time to be there for the construction crew who set up a power saw a few feet away, but not so good for a quiet lunch.  I'm sure that any other day, or during peak serving times (like, for example, noon) it would be a great place for a quiet lunch.  The outdoor dining area is certainly located in a nice place.  I could see whiling away a bit of afternoon here watching the boats go by.

The grounds have been completely upgraded and landscaped. I took a walk around to see what had happened to the old parking lot where we used to park while we were keeping a boat in the water here between 2005 and 2007.   There's very little left of what was here before.

In addition to the landscaping, the marina has brought in sand, and built a really nice beach volleyball court. This should be a great way to attract some attention if they can convince some of the pro volleyball groups to  bring a tournament here.

I'm probably going to whine a little bit more about the old days before getting on with my life and accepting that this is a world class marina with excellent facilities and great plans for the future.  As the last of the nostalgia trickled away, I walked out to a spot I estimated would have been where the old Gilley's Restaurant stood. See that far traffic cone in this photo, below?

That traffic cone is just about where I was sitting in this photo of the old Gilley's restaurant and the Leeward dock, back in the day. That's me in the middle of the photo, on the deck next to the window. Facing the photographer. Whom I married.

To compare the changes, this is a Google Earth image of the area back before it was 'improved'.   You can see that it was a much smaller operation than what you see in the first GE image up above.

While I was mumbling to myself about the good old days and grumpily kicking rocks around on the new pavement, La Gringa managed to find an old friend of ours.  She showed up in a golf cart driven by Duran.  He worked here at the original fuel dock back when it existed.  Then he worked at Walkin's marina down at the other end of the channel for the past several years.  And now, Doran is the dock master here at Blue Haven marina. Here's a photo of La Gringa and Doran the dock master:

And here's a photo of Doran and La Gringa, taken at almost the exact same spot on the earth, back in  2007.  A lot has changed in seven years.  Duran can no longer fit all of his hair under a ball cap, for example.

I have to wonder how long she's going to nurse that rum punch, though.

We had the rest of the day to look around so Doran took us on a guided tour of the  marina.    As you can see, the docks are extremely well built and so far, drastically underutilized.  We've never yet seen them filled with boats. But to be fair, the place has been in and out of legal limbo for quite a while.

Our interest in this as a marina isn't entirely academic, either. We are very much interested in any options as places for us to keep a 40 foot catamaran with  electrical and water hookups.   We were interested enough to go into the marina office and talk to the staff there about monthly rates.   We were happy to hear that island residents even get a slight discount compared to transients.   Hey, this could work.  I mean, we're very happy with Twisted Sheets being at South Side Marina, but it's good to have options.  After talking to Doran for a while, we seriously began to consider this a pretty good place to tie up a boat for a while.

See what I mean about Doran's hair?  He's got it all Rasta'd up here. Hope I didn't offend anyone, I don't know the right term for when a guy's dreadlocks are all bundled up in a knit hat.  Hey, you've all seen my image here often enough.  I obviously am clueless regarding men's hair styles.  Not having one, myself.



Doran gave us a great tour of the floating dock facility.  The more I looked around, the easier it was  to picture us here in Twisted Sheets. That's not a bad view, compared to some marinas we've been in.  I know I'd trade Riviera Beach, Florida for this any day.

I  noticed that the dock power and water stations were equipped with the big four prong connectors the mega-yachts would need to get shore power.  That wouldn't work for us.   I mentioned to Doran that we only needed 30 amps and I didn't have an adapter to get to the kilowatt connectors the big boys use.   "No problem" he told me, and unlocked one of the swinging covers.  Yep, that's the connector I need there on the left.   The dock also has internet at the slips.   This place is sounding better and better.

Doran mentioned that the marina also now runs a facility in the canal over behind what was once called the Nikki Beach resort.   That's the  building in the distance here in the next photo.  It's all now part of the new Blue Haven Marina....... and Resort.   We took him up on his offer of a tour of that  area, too.  I mean, we still had the afternoon, a guide with a golf cart, and most of a rum punch left.

Before I grow up and move on, I had one more photo of the "old days" to show you.  This is a pano shot showing the Leeward area after the Nikki Beach was built, but before the old marina and Gilley's was torn down. I'll post this, and then shut up about what was then. Time to take advantage of what is now. The current photo (above) was taken from about where the Catch the Wave office was back in 2007.

We had to stop and get a photo of this chess set at the resort.  What a fun idea.   You can have an intellectually stimulating game of chess and some upper body exercise at the same time. I bet those two-up-and-one-over knight moves are a clean-and-jerk workout.

And a full board, diagonal bishop sweep might require a few minutes in which to recover.

These are Blue Haven's  protected marina and fuel docks located on the canal immediately behind the resort.  Nice facility for a power boat up to maybe 30 feet or so.  Not big enough for the sailboat we're thinking about.  These slips are not wide enough for us.

We've been recently reading about the upcoming attempt of a group to kite board across the Atlantic ocean. It's called the Atlantic Kite Challenge, and the Blue Haven Marina has been selected as the destination spot on this side of the ocean. That's happening next month. You can read about that in this press release.  

I've got to admit that the place looks pretty good. You know I'm softening up when I start spending money there. I did pay for lunch, although La Gringa got the rum punch on the house as compensation for the table saw background music.  I think I've now gotten over my seven year snit about the destruction of Gilley's and the old Leeward.  This is better from a cruising standpoint.  We are planning to bring Twisted Sheets over here at some point to determine if this is a good place to base the boat when sailing out to the north and east.   Who knows... maybe Johnny Depp will tie up his boat here again..  That would be worth a blog post, for sure.

Okay, for a complete change of direction, this next part of this post is about the other stuff we've been up to lately.  You know, the non-glamorous day-to-day mundane stuff it takes to live here.  And the challenges are everywhere.  I don't know exactly what it is about this tropical environment, but it seems to change just about everything it touches in some way. I know we've changed. The other people we meet here have changed.  And these rubber gloves from my sandblasting cabinet.... they've changed, too. Ya think?

These are the long gloves you slip your hands into when you are working with a sand blaster.  I unpacked mine from where it's been stored for the past two years since the last time I used it. These gloves were attached to it. They were actually inside a clean, dark ABS plastic cabinet.  It was stored under a blanket, on a shelf, under a workbench, inside a garage. They have never had any kind of solvent on them.  They have never been exposed to direct sunlight, even for five minutes.  So..... what ate them?

And what's it doing to La Gringa and ME???   

I can see what's happening to the dog, of course.  That's easily observable.  He hides from dark clouds and weather forecasts that he doesn't agree with.  He sits inside the house for hours trying to establish some kind of mental telepathy with the local lizard population.   The lizards, of course, are cautious enough not to buy into anything Black Jack Russell the pirate dog tries to tell them.

We've been putting a LOT of time in on the sailboat.   It's back in the water on a Cruising Permit and located just down the road at South Side Marina again.  The location makes it real handy to work on and the Cruising Permit allows us to import repair parts and supplies duty free as long as they're destined for the boat.  South Side Marina is a peaceful place to work on one's boat, too.  This is looking in the direction from which most of the weather approaches.  Nice and protected here, tucked down behind this ridge.  That notch is the spot where we've been putting the kite up for some aerial photos of the area.

We've got a long list of jobs to do to get the boat ready for some cruising this winter.  I've been rearranging the lazarettes.  We have lots of storage room on this boat. This is one of the starboard hull's lazarettes, showing the steering linkage and the top of the rudder post. I took this shot to help me design something to attach the small outboard dinghy motor to.   I think this would be an excellent place to store it. 

We've been  stripping the vinyl wall covering off the inside of the boat.  In the process, we are uncovering numerous small water leaks that have not been repaired in recent times. Or apparently in recent memory.  

For example, we have two of these hatches over the forward part of the main accommodation cabins in the boat.  Notice that the hatch was installed flush with the deck?  In a good installation, the hatch would be raised somewhat off the surface that would be awash in sea water or rain during a storm. Many boats have places for the hatches raised up in the mold so there is a higher , flat place to install the hatch.  This installation tells me the hatch maybe was added later.  Perhaps when the boat left the North Sea and made it's way down to the tropics.  The hatches work great for ventilation flow through the boat.  But they leaked.

I cut two  thick "gaskets" out of the plastic Starboard we found over on West Caicos.  Man, I have sure gotten some mileage from that little salvage operation. 

I re-installed and re-bedded the hatches with these gaskets under them.  Now, they're well sealed and raised up off the deck.

It's a slight change, but one that can make a lot of difference when the deck has a quarter inch deep layer of water from a wave or squall on it.   We just want to make that water go around us on it's return to mother ocean.   Instead of taking shortcuts through the boat.

You can see the gasket/spacers under the forward hatches here:

We've got a boat load of these little projects.  I hope you don't mind them, because I'm very likely to be consumed with Twisted Sheets fixes and upgrades for some months to come.  The boat has a long way to go, but is looking a little better now...

... than she did when we first bought her, a thousand miles north of here. Either the boat is getting better or we're getting used to its appearance. We're presently looking for a US based aluminum window manufacturer who can help us either fix or replace most of those windows. There are 21 windows, and 13 hatches on this boat. Welcome to the world of old sailboats.

We figure we've now removed over two thousand pounds of excess weight from the boat.  She's floating almost four inches higher these days, too. Some heavy stuff has come off, like the microwave, a large flat-screen television, a dockside-only refrigerator, a washing machine. And we are replacing and upgrading wherever we see the need.

A typical small job was the wooden anchor pad that was attached to the hull of the boat when we got it.   You can just barely see it here.  It's the rectangular piece of wood that is the only thing between that sharp metal anchor tip, and our fragile plastic hull.

I just noticed the nice reflections on the underside of the bridge deck.  That photo is from back when the boat was in the yard, about to be hauled out of the water.

This is what's left of that wooden board after I took the screws out of it.  The anchor had worn a hole almost all the way through it, and it was cracked.   I had to use a little bit of leverage to get it off the boat.  The glue was some good stuff.

And of course after I got that piece off, I replaced it with a bigger, wider, thicker piece of.......
Starboard! Ta Daaaaaaa!   

A brief word about wood.  We no longer use it to replace anything of any structural importance here.  We have now learned a lot more than we ever wanted to know about termites. We do still use wood of course, but only where we can easily see it, and inspect it, and replace it.  And it has to be coated with something termites won't eat.   The past year has been an expensive introduction to Termite 101 for us.

Speaking of ugly things... I was so flushed with my victory over the hatches that I decided to take on the marine toilets on the boat.  We have these heads - and by "head" I mean the seagoing term for a toilet on a boat and not a new agricultural entrepreneur from Colorado -  that are as old as the boat, and to put it simply, they were getting a little bit ugly. I promised La Gringa I would see if I could fix them. I started by taking them apart to see if perhaps a fifty cent o-ring might be all that I needed.  An o-ring, a full body scrub down with solvents, and a lifetime supply of anti-bacterial soap...  Those stains are just rust, by the way. In case you were wondering.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

Well, an o-ring wouldn't do it.  Oh no. I kept taking things apart until the entire toilet was in pieces back in my workshop.  The inside of the pump housing was chewed up.  I don't want to know what was flushed into this that would do that.  I really, really don't. BUT I knew how to fix it.  I bought a cylinder hone from the local auto parts store and polished it up well enough that new seals would seat well.  I  knocked the loose paint off and discovered the whole thing is bronze.

And then I looked into ordering parts for this toilet.  I found out that this is called a "Baby Blake".   A set of rubber gaskets for it and a few bits of hardware would cost over $200.  A seat hinge is $70.  A new pump for it is $1300.   I found out we could take a completely new approach, and for less than a pump to repair a 30 year old toilet, I could buy a complete new, composting toilet. This has some advantages for us. We can get rid of a bunch of hoses, pumps, and a 30 gallon holding tank on the boat. This makes the boat lighter. We also get rid of spare hoses, clamps, pump rebuild kits, and the weight of holding tank contents and chemicals.  It means I can close up some holes in the hull.  There are some other advantages. Cost, for a big one.  We decided to go for it, and last week we ordered a brand new, never used as a reading chair by anyone else... Nature's Head.    In preparation for its arrival, we spent this last weekend removing everything associated with this old toilet from the boat.  My nose hair turned gray overnight. I am not going to post those photos here. So you can relax. I know I will.  Eventually.  Maybe some short-term memory loss can be a useful thing under some circumstances.

Spending a lot of time working on the boat has meant that some of my traditional house and yard duties have fallen a little behind.   A person has to keep an eye on that stuff in a place like this, too.   As a quick example, yesterday I noticed that in the past two weeks the weeds have staged another coup attempt and invaded the patio. Again.



I went to grab my handy home-made patio weed tool and caught the crafty foliage attempting to hide it. They camouflaged it as a bush. This makes me wonder what the bugs have been up to while we've been spending all our time on the boat.



I just realized that this post has gotten a lot longer than I intended.  It's a good thing I stopped myself before continuing your education into the world of old British toilet innards.  Did you ever find yourself suddenly knowing things you really wish you'd just remained ignorant about for the rest of your life? It's  going to take me a few days to get over this one.

Maybe a half dozen Happy Hour sunsets at the South Side Marina will do it.  I was scrambling to get this photo before that boat coming in from the left wrecked my mirror.

Fort Saint George Cay

This post is about a recent skiff trip over to Fort St. George Cay.  Most people here leave the "saint" part off and just call it Fort George.  I was surprised at how little information I could find about it.   And rather than  just regurgitating things I've read like I was coasting on someone else book report, I'll provide you with some Fort George history links and anyone interested can quickly find out what's available.  And those who are not interested can hopefully just enjoy some of the photos.

Last weekend we had a lucky break in a  period of intermittent squalls. We've been having periods of intense rain over the past couple of weeks.  We grabbed the chance to get out of the house and out on the water.

This is a Google Earth satellite image of our destination,  Fort St. George Cay.  This  image from 2004 so it's now almost ten years old.  There have been quite a few physical changes since 2004.  Mostly in the exposed shoreline to the north and west. 

The fort was on the northwest bulge of the cay. It apparently was there for at least a decade, and there were as many as 200 British troops stationed there. The houses on nearby Pine Cay give you an idea of scale.

I bet the tropical thrill of being stationed on this little island and away from England got real thin, real fast.  "What?  Fish stew, AGAIN??"  

I wonder if they knew about conch? And lobster.  They must have.  It would have been an excuse to get out of those wool uniforms.  Surely the locals clued them in.

Anyhow, we wanted some better aerial photos than this.  In fact, I couldn't find anything useful on the internet.  I know that local veterinarian and pilot Mark Woodring has published some aerial photos of these islands in a hard cover book, but I don't have a copy of it. Besides, this easily justifies going for a boat ride in these amazingly transparent waters with a beautiful woman for company, a deranged dog for amusement, a new kite to play with, and a great excuse to take photographs.  Sounded good to me.

This was the first time we've hauled the skiff down to Leeward with the little KIA.  If you've seen photos of our previous car and boat setup, you might get a chuckle out of how far we've downsized.

We got the boat down the hill, five bumpy miles to the nearest pavement, and then down to the boat ramp in Leeward without any trouble at all.  We've decided we like automatic transmissions for towing boats, by the way.  Sure makes life easier on slippery ramps.  Starting on hills, too.  We paid our $5 ramp  charge to Kilo at the marina, and took the boat up along Water Cay as we've done so many times before.  We've made this trip so many times now I think I could do it in my sleep.  We've certainly done it in the dark a few times.  So it's easy on a sunny day.  We snapped a few photos along the way, noticing recent changes in a landscape  constantly being remodeled by the sea.

This picnic spot is relatively new.  In a few years, or storms, whichever comes first, this will be another little sandy cove with a pile of broken rocks that were once an arch.  But for now, it's some nice shade.  If your name isn't Damocles, I suppose.

And this spot which was once a cliff now has become a cave.   We'll stop and take a closer look at this on an upcoming trip.   We thought seriously about it on this trip, but the afternoon weather was getting spotty on us, and we were already on a mission.   In the past, we've done well when we stuck to plan.  And we've had a few near disasters when we didn't.  Unprepared deviations can be problematic.

Did I mention the weather?  As we  approached Fort George we saw a series of squalls moving over the area.  We had packed a lunch, and decided to duck into the marina at Pine Cay to wait out this one. There was lightning involved.  We don't like lightning any more.  Dooley never did, and La Gringa and I have come around to his way of thinking.   It is a bit annoying to have to put up with a Jack Russell Terrier with an "I told you so" attitude.  And I am continuously surprised how  many attitudes will fit inside such a small dog.

Once ashore and under shelter, we didn't venture far from the marina.  We were just looking for some shady spot to eat our sandwiches and wait for the weather to clear over Fort George.   We sat in  a little hut that the Meridian Club uses for arriving and departing guests.

I bet you thought this next photo was just a bunch of palm fronds.   Not entirely.  Yes, they are palm fronds, but they are not just palm fronds.    These are replacement shingles for the hut we were enjoying.

The shingles were there, the ladder was there... I suggested maybe La Gringa might want to climb up there and learn how to make a palm roof. Her response was brief and to the point, and I don't think I need to repeat it here.  While colorful, let's just say it was, in general, negative about the roof idea.  We decided to just wait for the weather.

Things were pretty quiet at Pine Cay, in general.  It's still a bit early for their busy season, as it is for most islands in the Hurricane Belt.  We had plenty of choices of where to park the skiff.  There it is,  tied up with empty slips on either side.   Now I'm wondering if Twisted Sheets would fit between two of those floating docks.  It would be fun to bring the catamaran over and stay aboard while visiting here.

All of the Parker boats are Meridian Club boats.  They've been using them for some years now, and have standardized on the brand so I think they're pretty happy with them.  There were several in the water at the fuel dock.  Next to this suspicious looking golf cart.  I wonder if Fidel is on the island?

I thought the fishing pole holders and the trailer hitch were nice touches.

Golf carts are the only wheeled transportation on Pine Cay.  They get used for a lot of things.   Hauling the K9 security team around, for example.   Hey, I wonder if this had anything to do with the Cuban cart...

We watched the squall dump its water over the islands to our north.  Once it started changing over from lightning to lightening we resumed our trip over.  Dooley argued about the spelling for a while, but he was over ruled on this.  If he was calling the shots, we'd never leave the house with a squall like this anywhere in sight. Jumpy little boogers, these Jack Russells.

As usual we had to order Dooley the Delinquent  out of the water at the marina in order to continue to Fort George.  I think he has some theories  on being grounded during electrical storms.  He's been asking me a lot of questions about SCUBA lately.

We got him onto the boat and zoomed around the point to the little cay, where he promptly jumped overboard back into the water.   This is Dooley the Detachment, single pawedly storming the beach at the former British garrison at Fort St. George:

Looking at this next photo, one would be unlikely to realize that there is a small body of water located  just on the other side of that low spot. In reading up on the place, I saw that proximity to fresh water on both Fort St. George Cay and Pine Cay was one of the reasons the English chose this spot to built a small fort here over 200 years ago. I know, I know, I said I wouldn't go into all that.  BUT.... if you're interested, our friends from Ships of Discovery did a bit of a survey of this area just a few years ago.  Dr. Don Keith put together a team, and they produced an interesting blog about their adventures.  If you read that blog, please notice the underwater photo of the cannons.  More about this later.

Dooley the Devious didn't wait for the rest of us before swimming ashore. We were not planning to go ashore, just yet.  I wanted to try this new, light wind kite I picked upr recently. It's got more surface area than my other kites, and is supposed to be able to fly in 3 knots of wind.  That doesn't mean it will lift the weight of a camera in 3 knots of wind, but on this day we had  mild gusts of 5 or 6 knots and I was hopeful we could get something from it.  This was also the first time we tried flying the kite rig from the skiff.

Dooley eventually noticed that we were not following him in his mad charges into the underbrush, and he resignedly swam back out to the boat to see what we were up to.  I think he was worried about getting left on the island.

We had to explain to him that we were staying in the boat.  That he was included in the group who were to stay in the boat.  He didn't like it. The squalls were still in the area and he had a lot of unwanted advice on where we were the safest.  I don't think it's ever been unanimous in his mind as to who exactly is the alpha dog in this little pack of ours. 

The new  kite took off in the light air as hoped.   If you're interested in these kites, I've gotten three from a kite shop in Boulder called Into the Wind.  I now think I have the wind speed spectrum covered from about 5 knots up to over 20.  And I'm using woven Dacron fishing line for string. 

This is the view from the boat of that little area between the cut and the inland pond.  Nothing much in the way of clues here to indicate that there's a pond in there.

We managed to inch the kite up, pulling the weight of a GoPro camera and my little rotating rig up with it.  It took a while in the light wind. It was gain five feet, lose two.  Gain three, lose four.  But eventually we got it high enough to start getting some vertical perspective.  The water in the interior is easily visible.  And suddenly I can imagine that little garrison built out on the crowded end of the cay.  Picture 200 troops living on 8 acres.

Part of this little experiment was to see if there were any unexpected hassles in flying the kite from the skiff.  There were not.  We'd envisioned driving the boat slowly and pulling the kite behind it.  We quickly realized that in this one particular case that wouldn't gain us much.  In order to get good views looking down onto the shore using a kite, the land needs to be down wind from the boat.  Or it won't work very well.  Once we figured this out, we decided the best bet was to just jump off the boat and go walk the perimeter of the beach.   Of course this was Dooley the Discoverer's plan all along.   So we hopped out of the boat and waded ashore.

And there were plenty of things to see from the beach, too.  Some interesting debris here and there.

About a million squadrons of large dragonflies zipping to and fro, and fro and to.  And up and down and all around.   The sky above the bushes here in the lee of the very slight wind was literally humming with these flying mosquito hawks. And we like anything that eats mosquitoes. While I was busy trying to walk and fly a kite at the same time (how's that for a straight line?) La Gringa was snapping photos down at sea level.  She got a pretty good representation of the dragonfly density here.

Their business is mosquitoes, and business is good.

Continuing our little kite walk around the point, we got a good view of distant squalls over some of the jumbled ruins of this tiny military base.  I haven't been able, yet, to find a verbal description of Fort St. George.  It's probably a good assumption that they used the soft native limestone for most of it.  There's no lumber here to speak of.  Pine Cay has had a grove of small trees on it in the past, and it's entirely possible that they could have cut some rafters or the like from that.  But as for the native stone and with the way this stuff crumbles, I'd have little hope of being able to identify much in the surf zone from 200 years ago. Nothing made of limestone, anyhow.   But I bet the view to sea hasn't changed a bit in 200 years.





This is an aerial view of that very same stretch of shore.  Six or seven years ago we did find some sections of walls and foundations inside what's now a dense thicket of vegetation.  I see no evidence of those hand cut blocks in these images.  It's possible that the bluff I remember is now submerged in the rubble.  Anything left ashore here would be pretty well buried by the plant life, in any case.

We've learned to look for   unnatural formations or lines when we search for old sites and artifacts.  Straight lines, square corners, perfect circles or portions of any of these things are often indicative of the worksof people.   Nature rarely uses straight edges.  We weren't seeing much of that here.  It gets a little complicated in that the natural stone formations themselves are good at camouflaging loose rocks that may have once been part of a wall or gun emplacement.   Here in this next photo, for example.  We can tell that the curved bedrock is natural.  But what about that rectangular block sticking up in the middle of it?   I don't think that piece eroded to those angles in that location. 

Some evidence is, well, self evident.  This is a piece of iron wedged among the stones in shallow water.  The iron oxide catches the attention immediately.

While we were looking around for artifacts of the old fort, we couldn't ignore some of the more natural elements of the shore here.  Some of that included interesting marine life, like this little invertebrate monster.  This is called a chiton.

Here's a photo of another one.  Notice that  the  portion of this critter under cover  isn't nearly all of it. It's surrounded by some kind of foot or tentacle bed similar in appearance to an abalone.  That photo above makes it appear that these things are eating the limestone.    Not sure why, but that makes me nervous. Living on the limestone, and all.

I read in the Wikipedia article from the link that people in the Caribbean eat these things.  The foot is prepared similar to abalone.  Which basically means to beat the heck out of it until it's tender enough to chew and then boil or fry it.  I can't see me out rustling up a pot of these for dinner under present circumstances, but it's nice to know I could if I needed to.

Now this next one I do know.  This is a semi-fossilized conch shell, sticking half out of the rock.  It strikes me as somewhat odd that the shellfish are tougher than the rock here. 

And speaking of the rock here, this little cay sure has some interesting patterns.  We got so carried away exploring the little crevices and marine life that we almost forgot about those Englishmen walking all over this place back in the late 1700's.  But they did.



Remember up near the beginning of this post when I included the link to Dr. Keith's blog about the cannon?  I wanted to provide you with some background so you would understand what they look like from the air. There are two cannon distinctly exposed on the seabed here, in about four feet of water.  You can just barely make out exposed portions of at least one more to the right of the exposed ones.  The cannon are just to the right of the  middle of this photo. lying in the edge of the rubble  between you and that rain squall.  They're the dark objects that are pointing out to sea like, well, cannon. Tell you what, I'll send this photo to Dr. Keith and see what he says about it.

We went back and forth along the rocks.  Me with my kite, La Gringa with the pocket Nikon, and Dooley the Detached with whatever baggage he carries in that hairy little head of his. That Nikon Coolpix AW100 has worked out to be a great little camera, by the way.  If you're interested in those things.  We've been averaging a camera a year here. This is the best pocket point and shoot digital that we've had, by far.

We knew the Go Pro on the kite was most likely getting some aerial images, and so La Gringa continued to concentrate on the close up stuff.   Years of constant wave erosion have made for some interesting formations.  If someone told me this was an aerial drone photograph of some mid-eastern desert wadi in Kuwait, I would probably believe it.

But we know it isn't.  That photo is of the rock here, from an altitude of about one meter.   So is this next one.



Of course it's pretty obvious when we find one of nature's mortar and pestle setups.  This might make an interesting video at high tide, with the wave action grinding these rocks around and around and around.  Making sand.   Wonder what would happen if we dropped a few of those chitons in there.   Abalone paste?

As near as I can tell, this next aerial shot should include just about all of the area that was the ocean side fortifications of the old Fort St. George.  The land would have extended out much further back then than it does today.  But we know that the heavy iron cannon must have pretty much stayed at their original locations, which would have been some distance above the seabed back in  the day.  So I'd assume that the outer bulwarks and cannon ports were about that far out, before the sea reclaimed the property.  So much for the sanctity and permanence of Crown Land on a small tropical island.  The water eventually wins any disputes.

Speaking of water, I think I mentioned up top that we've had tons of it falling on us lately.  So much that it literally leaps over the gutters as the force of it bounces it off channels already level full.   Now that's some rain right there.

And as much as we need the fresh water, it also causes some issues here with we get this much of it at once.  This is a spot along the Leeward Highway where a man drowned in his car after running off the road  into  those trees on the right during a similar storm pattern the year we moved here, 2005.     That was in October, too, come to think of it.



And that's not the only spot that floods.  We could fill a post with nothing but flooded Providenciales photos after one of these storms.  Without trying to place any blame, let me just offer one uninformed opinion that the weather sometimes overwhelms the engineering here. There's no place for this water to run to.  The curbs trap it on the roads.   I look at the bright side.  It washes the salt off the undercarriage, momentarily.

That's pretty much it for this post.  We've got a lot of DIY stuff going on with our elderly sailboat Twisted Sheets presently back in the ocean undergoing more repairs. And being at the end of the growing season presents its own challenges here.  The plant life is all growing at a rapid clip.  The bugs are loving the fresh water puddles, as evidenced by a bumper crop of mosquitoes and termites.  And the dragonflies and lizard populations are growing in response to the food supply.  And I've just lately noticed how many of the plants around here are armed.    The agave cacti are obvious, of course, but until I moved here I never really realized that the bougainvillea are also thorny little bundles.  The flowers are colorful, for sure.

And up close, those branches look like this:

And I've found these  next things to be quite a nuisance, and very difficult to eradicate.  They're easy to spot, and to pull up, but they grow amazingly fast.  And even if I pull all them at one time, within two weeks we have more.   Sand spurs, stickers, whatever you call them, it hurts to step on them barefoot.   They come in on vehicle tires.  And they are prolific. 

Lately I've been trying some new types of herbicides on them.  I figure I spray an average of four gallons of chemicals on this hilltop a month.  Three of insecticides, and now another gallon of herbicides.   I was stocking up at the local grocery store last week, in fact.   When I got to the spot over by the light bulbs and dog food where I usually find my 'cides, I was surprised to see that   they're now  apparently stocking something new.  I don't even know what an 'intesecticide' is, but I started worrying when I realized that Aisle 9 is where they keep the pharmaceuticals.  Ah oh. This isn't looking good for the old digestive tract.  I hope they have it in vanilla, or strawberry.  Wonder if it works on weeds and bugs, too.

Okay, that's it for this blog post.   I don't have a recent sunset photo to show you, but this is what the full moon looked like over the water a few nights back. Well, that's not actually true.  It looked a lot better than this.  It reminded me of that Alfred Noyes poem about The Highwayman.  You know the one... 'the road was a ribbon of moonlight'.   In this case, the road was a glittering path to the south east.  To people like us, it says 'follow me down through the Caribbean'.   Some day.  Hopefully, sooner than one might think.

 

We haven't yet managed to get a really good full moon photo.  But we'll work on it.  It's on the list.