Inter-Island cargo

We stopped in the very protected Hatchet bay for the night and dinghy into town just as an inter-island freighter arrived.
The ship was built of wood that had been fiberglasssed over at some point in the past. It looked to be at least 80+ years old.
The captain and crew unloaded the cargo from the cargo holes one box and bag at a time to the waiting trucks.

It was stacked so high that the trucks just groaned under the weight. It was something right out of the 1950’s.

We are in royal Harbor, at the top of Eluthra Island. On the island
are the ruins of a resort that a hurricane destroyed back in 1992.


The resort was built of cement and iron rod yet the trees are growing right through the cement walls in places.


Even the bathtub was built out of cement.

The community building had a huge fireplace and a arched cement roof.

There were a lot of fireplaces throughout the complex many used to heat hot water by running the water through a series of pipes within the fireplace.

Now, the jungle is slowly reclaiming the buildings with trees and flowers growing inside of the buildings and even in the cracks of the cement.


Back on the remains of the jetty, you could see that cement was
expensive so they used anything they had on hand to backfill the cement with. An interesting place to visit.

Dinghy ladder

I need a way to get Anna and others back into the dinghy when we go snorkeling. I can use my fins and pull myself over the side of the boat but she can’t so another cruiser suggested a ladder. They had taken an old, small boat ladder, (the type that ends at the top with large curving hooks) and cut off the hooks and tied it to the edge of their dinghy. It worked great so, I went to the store here in Marsh Harbor and there on the shelf was an identical ladder for $80.00! Way too much. As I walked out of the store I looked up at the hardware store across the street and the design for a ladder came to me. All I needed was some 1 ¼ inch pipe and a few tee connectors.


A bit of glue and the new ladder came together.



I put some “S” hooks on the rope to make it easier to install and for less than ¼ of the price of a store bought one we had a ladder for the dinghy.

Pancakes

This is what cruising is really about. Yesterday we met the couple from the catamaran, Peace, It’s a 46 foot Warrum Catamaran, and they invited us over for rum raisin pancakes the next morning. They had also invited about another 8 people over! On their wide forward deck, on a sunny morning we sat and talked and had tea and pancakes for breakfast (it’s a British boat). The instant friendship and sharing is typical of the cruising lifestyle and one of the reasons that I enjoy this lifestyle so much.

The Plastic Age

We are on a small distance island and I’m dismayed by what we found on the beach today, well, on every beach that we have been to. Bits and pieces, chunks and parts, sheets, rods, extrusions, barrels, bottles, shoes, rope, nets, balloons, bags, toys, and every other kind of plastic thing that the mind can conceive of. We are on Manjack Cay where there is only 1 full time resident family and they have been living there for about 20 years. They’ve cut a trail across the island to the ocean side and we walked over to see the beach. It was a beautiful, breath taking view of the ocean and a beach sweeping away into the distance with multi hued water lapping up onto the sands, just don’t look too close. Half buried in the sand was the remains of a throw away civilization... our civilization, spewed across this sandy beach. I walked ¼ of a mile down the beach and I could not take one stride without encountering plastic either to my left or my right. It grieved me to think of what my throw-away, consumerism culture (now spread throughout the world) has done to our planet. Here, standing on one small beach, on a remote island, in one (not so big) ocean of this vast planet I found it covered in our waste. If this is any indication of the other oceans around this world than I believe that the bio-sphere that we depend upon for life itself could be in peril. It was a sad day in paradise.
In the future, say, 10 million years from now, archeologists will remark on the ages of man. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Steel age and then the final age, the Plastic Age. For they will find that the earth was covered in a fine layer of plastic that destroy the base of the food chain and most of live itself.
I know, it sounds grim but damn, if you were here, you wouldn’t believe the extent of the plastic waste that I walked by. I believe that if any person could come down here and see this stuff they would think twice before thoughtlessly using plastic (water bottles) or of tossing plastic away again. Plastic waste is everywhere, absolutely everywhere. It doesn’t evaporate or disappear it just keeps breaking down into smaller and finer pieces until it begins to replaces the photo plankton in the food chain,,, it’s scary to think about and it just makes me sad to see it.
Sorry for the rant.
These are just a few of pictures of the uncountable bits of plastic that I passed.






PS Here is what the albatross now feed to their young.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1193130/Pictured-The-astonishing-collection-everyday-plastic-items-swallowed-single-albatross.html

Wreck bay

I personally call this area “Wreck Bay”. It’s a little bay just off from White Sound (where were anchored) and it is filled with wrecks! Here are some pictures.

This one was floating and didn't look too bad.

A little sailboat.




Someones dream, this one was home built.

This one is the best of the lot and if it could be flipped over it might be salvaged.