Awesome, awesome, photos!! I am sitting here in cold, windy Philadelphia wishing I was where you are! I usually take a winter trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas but after seeing your photos, I am reconsidering.
I'm thinking a SPF.com road trip to your location..... ......I'm sure we could round up a coupla hundred SPF.com-ers!
Thanks for posting and hope you will be a regular on SPF.com!!
......I'm sure we could round up a coupla hundred SPF.com-ers!
Thanks for posting and hope you will be a regular on SPF.com!!
You guys got a couple hundred? I thought I was leaving the big impersonal forums for a smaller one run by boaters.....you know...kinda like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. Well, the names of those not in the Witness Protection Program, anyhow.
As for the photos, I take a lot of them. Its a hobby. I was intending to post some of the boating/ocean related ones here and not too many of the ones on things like the house we have been building the past year, little historical things about the TCI, etc. But we have LOTS of tropical things. I think I figured out the max you can get from the ocean in this country if you worked at it would be something like a couple miles.
Heres some more photos of the TCI:
wreck off Little Water Cay on a choppy day.
I guess when you run a 22 ft. CC it's ALWAYS a choppy day.
Fuel dock, Leeward-Going-Through before they tore it down in October:
Blowbo' no-go no-mo'
Thats alongside a canal in the Cooper Jack Bight section of Provo.
My in-laws vacation home on Pine Cay from the balloon cam. We spend a lot of time there. I have a lot of photos of Pine Cay related things.
one of my contributions last summer was totally rebuilding that 24x24' deck, and raising it about four feet to the same level as the boardwalk. That's not such an easy thing to do on a remote island, working alone, when yer old, decrepit, a procrastinator, in the tropical sun, and just basically lazy. But I did it.
La Gringa, Dooley the demented dog, and me, working the controls on our RC camera hanging above us on a helium balloon. That's the shadow of the ballon on the sand. So I guess this is a self-portrait.
I like the view of the sand and the water, and one of the things we really like is that you can always find a stretch of beach to yourselves here. There's just something about being the only people making footprints.
I love the photos from the balloon!! I saw something on TV about people doing that from remote controlled helicopters, but the balloon idea is much simpler and cheaper. Other then the wind issue you mentioned earlier.
We looked into RC helicopters for aerial photos. But they are expensive, and supporting them in a place like this would be very frustrating, waiting for parts. Paying $ 100 for a small FedEx package...Hassles shipping nitromethane fuel. And most of the good shots are from over salt water. Its a recipe for frustration and disaster. There are a lot of moving parts in those things. Fifteen or twenty grand a splash? naaaah...
We bought an ultralight aircraft a few years back, with the idea of using it for aerials. But we sold it before we left NJ. Wouldnt mind picking up a small airplane one of these days. I would have to get current.
This is the one we owned:
Anybody recognize Jump Field, in Newton NJ?
And this is what I intended to move into once I made the transition from Cessnas etc. to weight shift:
But then we decided to sell everything and move to the tropics. Set my flying back a few years.
So far, the helium balloons seem a good idea. I just need to get a torpedo shaped blimp instead of a round balloon, to handle a bit more wind. Its on the wish list. We just bought an underwater metal detector, so the next balloon will have to wait it's turn. We have two round ones, already,just need to pick our days.
Sorry for getting off track...talking about flying does that to me. Anyhow, to make up for it, here's a boat story, of a different type.
A Russian guy named George Neponich was one of the first people to establish a house on Pine Cay. A refugee from the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. He and his young bride from Paris moved to these islands, which were pretty bleak. Basically a few hundred locals living on fish and homegrown veggies.
Back in the day, to get supplies they had to boat to South Caicos. Providenciales was just another mostly uninhabited island in those days..no stores. South Caicos and Grand Turk were the only two places with food and fuel to buy. Sometimes they ran aground, and depending on where and how bad, could get stuck for at least a tidal cycle, but sometimes days!! Until another boat came by with enough people to pull the small sloop off the sand. Even if everything went well, the trip to South Caicos took them 4-5 hours each way, plus a night. So it worked out to usually be a two to three day round trip for supplies. The small wooden sloop could only carry enough for a few weeks.
The Russian company that did these hydrofoil boats had brought several over to an expo in Canada trying to sell them. They were not very successful. George found out they were attending one more trade show in Miami before shipping the unsold ones back to Russia. He went up and made them a low offer for one. They accepted, and he arranged to ship it down to the TCI.
They had a lot of success with it once they found out how to run it. You see, you have to start and stop in water deep enough for the hydrofoils to be submerged. That takes careful planning. Once up on the foils, the boat would haul butt over the shallows, and make the trip in less than an hour. His widow told us they shaved the tops of many a coral outcrop. It took the balls to keep it up on plane no matter what. If you chickened out over a shallow spot and let it sink back to hull float depth, you were good and truly screwed. She told us they once spent four days on the hydrofoil, stranded, living on raw conch and rainwater, until someone went and found the gear they needed to raise and support the boat until they could get it out to deeper water.
What finally happened to the boat is that George wanted to replace the zinc anodes on the hull, and had to leave on a trip. he left it with some friends to do while he was out of the country. They didnt think it through, and the zincs were bolted directly to the hull through holes with the nuts and washers on the inside. The guys unbolted and removed the anodes one afternoon, and then took off for the day. Next morning, it was sunk. The inboard was underwater. It sat like that for a couple weeks until George got back and they raised it and hauled it ashore.
Its still sitting here in the weeds. The engine is out of it, but the old V-drive is still in it. Its aluminum, with (I think) stainless hydrofoils. they could be bronze.
I found some photos of one in good shape doing a search online for Volga Vingen. There are something like a dozen still in operation, mostly in Sweden, etc. I thought they were pretty cool boats...:
I toyed with the idea of making her an offer for it, and refurbing it. I always liked those classic old wooden Chris Crafts etc. and thought this would be a cool boat to have. She is selling her house here and moving to a condo in NY. She's quite old now. Great lady, with a lot of great stories to tell of a young french girl and her explorer, inventor husband living here with no modern conveniences. We became friends with her when we were thinking seriously about buying her house here...we backed out because we needed to be on an island with more of an infrastructure full time.
So, here sits the Russian made hydrofoil in the weeds. Its only about 100 ft. from where we dock when we are here:
The hull is pretty good. I would have to learn to weld aluminum, but thats a useful skill here, anyhow. . The engine compartment is big enough to set any kind of engine in, I was thinking maybe a Ford 302..the originals had around 90 Hp. But with the V-drive you could put anything in there..and theres a lot of woodwork, etc. I think a lot of the pieces are still in George's garage here.
Ah, here it is. I knew I had this photo, and now I found it. This is the dock at Pine Cay's little marina. That Andros boat "Cay Lime" is our little skinny water scooter.
If you look in the bushes to the left in the background, there sits George Neponich's experiment in fast, shallow water transportation. The guy was ahead of his time for these islands.
Well, it got down into the low 70's last night. Well, maybe the mid-70's. I am going to have to go looking for my winter t-shirts. Those are the ones without holes in them.
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I usually take a winter trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas but after seeing your photos, I am reconsidering.
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Originally Posted by Phillyfisherman
