Part 1 We went Crazy

May 2014
Seems we went crazy and bought land in what is regarded as one of the most dangerous and unstable countries in the world. But it seemed like a good idea at the time, real estate being so cheap due to all the crime and everything.
The new property has no power, no well, no road. But it does have a really great dock and 2 lots each with 80’ waterfront and about ½ acre each of steep bush jungle with a flat strip 20’ wide behind the mangroves at the shoreline.
We haven’t moved far in the last few years – from the Resort across the Bight (Where we were) to Turtlegrass (Where we are now) to Where We Will Be. It is all just a 2 minute dinghy ride away from each other and all within sight of each other. We’re pretty familiar with the neighbourhood and that’s what finally settled on us acquiring this piece of property.
Diamond Rock landing is up the Bight (to the left of the Google photo) and the little town of Oakridge is through the cut near the right center of the photo and about 5 minutes away by dinghy, which is where we leave our car when we’re not using it. Between these 2 places are where all the materials have to come from (by boat) since there is no road. The good thing is we can get to ‘town’ without going out in big water which can be scary at times in a small boat.

The plan is to run power, build a concrete bunker bodega for the fridge &freezer (for the business), and tools for construction, in time for rainy season which starts in October. It’s May, and things move along slowly here. If we can, we’ll plop a little house on top of the bodega with a deck out over the mangroves. This is most likely hopelessly optimistic though.
Mon May 12, 2014
First Official Day of Housebuilding.
Our boat crew Mansen and Alex worked all day cleaning up the incredible amount of filthy old plastic garbage out of the mangroves. They filled 16 55-gallon drum bags and just a little over halfway done. At the same time, they chopped stray mangrove roots and reclaimed 5 feet of land in spots. We will be straightening out the shoreline behind the mangroves this way.
Ed walked the property with neighbor Derwin Dilbert. Derwin says no fruit will grow on the east (windward) side of the property because of the salt breeze. But everything will grow on the lee side. Trouble is that uprotected, we will never see any fruit – all the neighbours will! So that is not going to happen any time soon.

On the floating homefront, I finished painting the port aft bathroom and getting ready for varnishing and putting the room back together. A bigger job than expected (as all boat jobs are) for such a little room.
We paid off the guys today seeing as how they are so broke right now, and they suggested they get paid weekly on Fridays – good for us not to have to struggle to find cash every day.

Tues
Waterfront cleanup continues. We decided to straighten out the low rock wall edge along the back of the mangrove roots, using the old rocks from what had previously done. About 5’ of flat land reclaimed! It’s hard, dirty work.

Ed got a load of ‘blue rock’ ordered, to make the wall about 1’ higher, with the intention of backfilling the low strip along the waterfront which is damp and full of crab holes – with land dug out from the hill behind. It is supposed to be here Thursday (ahem), and he’s arranged for a dory and crew to pick it up at Diamond Rock landing and bring it to the lot.
Also arranged for Smiley (Luven’s dad) to have Darren (Luven’s brother) come over in his Big Fishing Boat and blow out the dock area to deepen the water there. A kid came over and collected 1500 Lemps for fuel.They will bring the Big Boat here, tie it to one of the solid dock posts and position the big props to blow out the soft muck to make our water deeper at the dock. Enough for us to be able to get our catamaran in.

Wed
We are continuing the cleanup and straightening the rock wall along the south lot now.
Ed cut a chunk out of the dock to allow the catamaran to fit in.

Surprisingly, the Big Boat never showed up to blow out the dock – Ed is driving over to Fiddler’s Bight to find out WTF. Intelligence revealed that the kid who collected the 1500 Lemps did not get it to Smiley – perhaps Darren has it. The Big Boat is now supposed to come on Thursday.

RECO was supposed to come Monday to survey and see about getting power hooked up – we can’t seem to raise them by phone, but got them finally by email. So now are supposed to come Thursday now. I think the words ‘supposed to’ will be repeated often during this process. The promised Blue rock is to come tomorrow, too. Oh, and our friend and neighbor Mike, an experienced building contractor, said he would come over and have a look at the lot and plans etc. I think it’s going to be a busy day.
Ed is busy running around – the dinghy is just like a little fly zipping all over the place.

Thurs.
Ed picked up the crew 7:30AM. Lindy is working today so now we have 3 guys digging. The crew has completed moving the existing rock wall out 5’ to sea and are now digging the hill behind – pickaxe, wheelbarrow and shovel – and filling in the watery areas. They’re also going to reclaim some additional watery area at the south end of the south lot which will be a base for a deck/lookout area over the mangroves.
The fancy blue rock promised from Sterling Lucas turned out to be lousy muddy gravel, so luckily he hadn’t dumped it out of the truck at the Landing. We had to send it back. Sterling seems to understand what we want now…..so later this aft at 1PM we should have rocks. The dory with the crew to move the rock was putt-putting along to get the rock, but we had to turn them back also. They were ok with it, SNAFU being the operative word around here.
While we were finishing with the dory crew, got a phone call – amazingly and unexpectedly, the RECO guy is here at the dock as promised, to do the electrical inspection. When he’s done we will need to get into Oakridge for food, phone cards (Internet is suddenly and somehow expired), the bank for yet more money, and tools. There is no wind today but luckily it’s cloudy otherwise it would be pretty damn hot.

So RECO did the survey and provided a list of materials required – a pole for the meter, wire etc. Next step is for us to install the 16’ pole. Then dig a big trench down the hill and stick some wire into a conduit. Having learned from past experience ourselves and others, we’re going to bury the wire 2’ deep in a trench, with concrete poured in the pipe at the ends and probably along the center, so the well-known crack thieves in the neighbourhood can’t strip the wire out and sell it.

The rock never did arrive. At 2PM Ed phoned Sterling to expedite……ummmm….Sterling is not sure what is happening, and maybe we can still get it done. Ed says let’s try again tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, Ricky and Darren arrived with the Big Boat and started  blowing out the silt all around the dock with the big diesel and props.
Lindy, Alex & Mansen dug up a dead dog during the excavation process – the neighbour’s dog, died a little while ago, and seeing as there was nobody living next door, buried Rover on our land and boy does he stink now!

Mike came over and lended his sage advice for the construction process. And while we were in Oakridge today to get money from the bank – except the lineup was so long, seeing as it’s the 15th of the month and payday, and besides, I forgot the necessary ID so it really was hopeless from the start.

Fri-Sun May 16-18
It was time to get off the Ranch, so we went down island for groceries and stopped by BJ’s for a beer and to see what is happening in the outside world.
The rocks finally arrived, and the guys hired to move them in the old wooden dory took 3 guys 2 days and 8 trips. An awe-inspiring horrible hard job.
We went over to the property and marked the tentative outline for the house – 25 x 30 for the house and with 15’ wide deck making the total footprint 40 x 40. Spent a lot of time learning SketchUp – Ed did the drawing for the footprint to show the Muni and hopefully this week we have building permit in hand.

A new guy, Randy is starting on Monday. He is supposedly a contractor (has the card anyway), we’ll give him a try for the retaining wall. This part of the project has gotten modified from a stone wall to some footings in a 2’ trench and lots of rocks – the intention is to build the property along the shore up 1 or 2 feet higher than it is now.
On the boat – the aft port bathroom is completed, and Ed worked on getting the toilet working again.

Mon-Tues May 19-20
Making great progress on the land-leveling. Randy the Spanish contractor is fitting in fine with the rest of the island crew. All digging their guts out – made a 2’ deep trench along the back of the mangroves which will be filled in as a retaining wall.

We went in Monday to see about getting a building permit – we actually had almost everything we needed! But we had to go back Tuesday with the copy of the property tax receipt, our personal tax cards, drawings of the interior layout and front-side elevatons. We brought Randy with us, and we renewed his contractor permit and his personal taxes. All is well – they charged about $1 per square foot – for the bodega and for the house. 

Word has apparently gotten out about work on the property – there’s a steady stream of dubious-looking characters showing up and hanging around. Having to chase them away without being too much of a prick is always a delicate thing. Si and Carlos the crackhead  brothers are lurking around, paddling their surfboard and having a good look, and they are known theives, so Ed had to have a little chat with them.

Next on the spending agenda is cement, sand and gravel to start on the retaining wall. We sent Mansen in to buy sacks (sacks, it turns out are not burlap bags like we think of it – they are actually just old dog food bags or chicken food bags). We sent Mansen in so that we would not get a Special Gringo Price. And we’re going to use Mansen’s boat instead of the sky high price of that cheating islander who charged us $50 per load for moving the damn Blue rocks. Instead of the 3 loads quoted, it turned out to be 8. Quite a shock – moving the rocks cost more than buying them in the first place. We had agreed to paying by the loads, so they brought small loads. This is how you learn.
It is raining off and on, and the job site is pretty sloppy muddy. Mansen also checked on the price of buying work boots – cheap at 225 lemps ($13) a pair….worth a try so we’ll buy the crew some boots. Maybe they’ll not fall apart as fast as their sneakers. Money is pretty tight with the crew since nobody has been working for awhile – Alex needed some pay for food as did Randy to send down island to his wife – she jumped on a taxi with the two kids and moved right in with her parents for the duration. So now at his residence there is grandma, grandpa, 3 sons, 1 daughter and 2 kids all in a two bedroom rough shack complete with outhouse. Cozy!

Wed May 21
Steps required to get sand/gravel to the job site: Sand/gravel is to be delivered to the Diamond Rock landing at 8AM.
1. 7:30AM Pick up crew and drop off at job site to continue digging.
2. Grab the spare 15hp Yamaha and move it over to Mansen’s, where the barge is.
3. Find out the barge has a few little holes so won’t hold water.
4. Come back to the catamaran and load up on fiberglass repair supplies.
5. Back over to Mansen’s and repair the barge.
6. Drop repair materials off back at the catamaran, on the way go up to Diamond Rock Landing and supervise the dumping off of the sand.
7. Return to the job site. Pick up Mansen & Alex & Lindy. Go over to the barge and see if the fiberglass is hardened. (It isn’t). So Alex is going to use his barge to start with, and when Mansen’s barge is hardened up will tow Alex’s behind Mansen’s.
8. Pick up the whole crew at the job site, with water, cookies, shovels, bags. Drop off the boss back at the catamaran and go get two more big gorillas of their choice to help move the materials. Take Alex’s barge to Landing to fill up.
9. Meanwhile gravel has also arrived at the landing. Crew of 6 guys there shoveling and bagging. Make up receipt and take cash to Landing for driver to sign and receive payment.
Start filling bags, move to the job site, unload bags, empty. Take empty bags to the landing and repeat. All day

Thurs
All the sand (4 meters) got moved yesterday but we ran out of time and energy to move the 3 meters of gravel. It had to be left on the Landing overnight and incredibly, it didn’t get stolen.

So the day started off good. Repeating the process of filling sacks and barging them over to the site. Now we needed concrete, so away Ed went to Oakridge. Miss Claire’s store had 33 bags left, so Ed bought it all, and brought 12 bags to the job site, leaving the others in Miss Claire’s bodega so they won’t get stolen.

Fri
6 more meters of gravel got delivered to the Landing and the guys worked all day, and managed to move 5 meters. 1 more to be done Sat morning. When we went into Oakridge to get 14 more bags of cement we found out that somehow 25 bags of our 33 had gotten sold, so we only have 7 to work with today. Nobody in Oakridge has cement, or sacks right now…..maybe Tuesday next week when the ship comes in from the mainland.
Never mind. There’s still plenty of digging to do.
Here’s the SketchUp drawing for the possible new house. Quite the little program to learn! Turns out the house looks kinda like our little house in Omemee Ontario!