The turtle returned to a shack in good shape. The sink made it without a dent and the truck started
right up. Wilson was a little upset traveling in steerage but he likes his new digs.
As usual, to ease back into work mode, I started with something left unfinished when I left for SF. The lower bathroom floor. This is how it last looked. Reasonably level, given the circumstances on how I had to lay each stone individually, and the color was what we hoped for--basically off white.
In a break for the good guys I finished the floor with six, count them, six stones left over. I don't want to even think about it had I come up short. Next step was grout. Jumped over to St Thomas for a few bags, food, and a muffler. Second muffler since I have been here. They told me the cheap one would last four or five years and it did. Went and got another!It's good I always worried about getting busted on a humbug, that way I didn't. I don't know why I have gotten lazy. The floor jumped up and bit me on the arse of course. How? While sitting outside for years in the sun and rain the stones remained impervious to everything including the thinset. But not the grout. Our beautiful floor changed from a creamy white that would virtually go with every décor into a mélange of many colors. Worse still I had no matching stones for the shower.
The picture doesn't do the color change any justice. The stone tiles from Home Depot will no longer work. Too much gray. A tighter stone pattern would be great for the shower but the samples looked really bad against what is now a tan/brownish floor.
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| we had hopes that these would work in the shower |
Well, I'll have to put the rest of the floor on hold. I checked everywhere on St Thomas and there are no alternatives at the moment. I'll wait until something turns up. If not, back to Berkeley at xmas.
Tis' the season...our first, no rest for the wicked. Only 10 days after I got back. Hurricane drill for house and shack, waiting to the last moment of course.
Lots of rain and then the unexpected the following morning. If you are one of the few that has read this blog it is a legitimate question, as Sartre asked, "why haven't I killed myself by now?" It seems that when we installed all our pass through pipes in the cistern walls for our plumbing and the overflow outlet pipe, the interior pipes to the pump were about 1/4" lower. In the real world no big deal. The interior pipes would be going to the pump when the utility room was completed. The problem never faced before---the cisterns filled up before the pipes were connected. Never has 1/4" meant so much.
The fatal flaw...first it flooded the unfinished utility room. Then it migrated through the fiberglass sheet rocked stud wall into the closet free flowing into the bedroom. On the positive side I had most everything critical up on strips of wood so some damage was mitigated.
The slight slope built into the floors saved the day keeping the high water mark to less than 1". The 8' doors suffered no noticeable damage as the water passed under. The real pain, I had to clean out the entire downstairs. All the plaster and concrete went bad along with all the cardboard boxes holding everything. Later on a lot of the sheetrock screws showed. Welcome to paradise.
My feral cat free loaders had no sympathy. You can look but not touch. An uncle with two nephews.
With downstairs drying out and no stones to finish the bathroom/shower floor I went back upstairs to work on the kitchen counters.
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When last visited.
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We tried every possible combination of tiles. With six being totally different than the rest, color and pattern, it presented some real difficulties. Ultimately we decided on one group on the sink side and only two of the six on the stove side. We would have to come up with a backsplash behind the stove. Options included stainless steel. There was a fabricator on St Thomas and the prices were very reasonable.
I used two of six tiles to make the bullnose. The difference in pattern won't show. Nothing goes to waste especially when there are no other alternatives.
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It's coming together. A lot of different whites have to merge. Under that blue is a high gloss white.
A possible nightmare begins, always innocently. As happenstance would have it on a cab ride to the airport last July in route to SF, I sat next to guy around my age. We got to talking, my living on St John, his being here on business, blah, blah, blah. Nine passenger van with a couple of guys of front. Anyway it got around to sailing back in the day--the mid 70's with everyone up to no good, Jamaica and the like. Fast forward, he says he ended up in the marina business and that's why he had been on St John, specifically Coral Bay. I laughed about the fabled "marina", a long whispered affair, 30 years long. He laughed along and then leaned in surmising a supporter and said it was a "done deal" all the way to D.C. through all the appropriate channels via the Governor's office. As we departed I wished him all the luck as I to was in favor of a small marina for locals and transient sailors alike--nothing like a hot shower after a long transit. They help make the world go round.
When I got to SF, I made some phone calls to see if this person actually existed. He did in deed. I left it at that and figured we might have a slip if we ever get a putt putt. In very fast fashion stories started to appear about a new marina.
http://newsofstjohn.com/2014/07/22/happening-marina-coming-coral-bay/
No worries it might even be a good thing. Then we got a look at some drawings. This wasn't a small cozy marina, this was a mega marina that was going to take up the entire bay for "super" yachts.
If that wasn't enough there was yet another on the north side which overlapped this one. The one shown was called Summers End Group and the other T-Rex. I kid you not. Suffice is to say all my free time is being spent trying to put a stop to this madness. Thankfully I'm just one of many, otherwise I would be buried in a piling. In an all hands on deck moment we have started a FB page, crafted a web site and started a Go Fund Me page. The Daily News on St Thomas is printing our letters as editorials. My letter was the first published. Very disconcerting to be honest. I don't like popping up on radar especially in this neck of the woods.
Without boring you too much, this will be take many years.
Here's what a hearing looks like on St John. Summers End Group makes their pitch at the first Coastal Zone Management committee. We flooded the meeting. Here's the chief perps making their case to a bought membership. They shall go unnamed. I don't need any searches pinging back here.
Ex Senator, very well connected, another is a grifter and his wife, who I first thought was his daughter, and lastly the guy I rode in the cab with. I think the grifter and his wife were hired strictly to take the heat in the community while the principals could hide. Another not shown actually sits on the CZM committee, a five person body that only has three members with one recused. The two remaining will profit from the marina. Governing, island style.
Like everything else there had to be some personal drama. I sat in the back row, from where these pics are from, of the assembly building owned by the ex-senator in question. Thank god that's where I sat. Unbeknownst to me until early the next morning my wallet slid out of my back pocket (long pants were the recommended attire in the Assembly hall) and fell on the floor against the wall--there was a space between the seat and back like some church pews. At least that was my hope or I had been picked in the tight crowd waiting to enter. All night I freaked out. My world was in that wallet. It is the same feeling if you ever lost yours travelling in a foreign country. I drove to the hall at the crack of dawn and explained my plight to the desk clerk. She agreed to accompany me into the assembly hall. Praise the lord, there was my wallet found before the cleaners came in. Perhaps the contents would have been turned in but I suspect the crocodile part would have disappeared!
I admit over the next couple of weeks home building was pushed to the back burner consumed by meetings, texts, emails etc. If this marina goes through paradise will be ruined. I'll move. There is no way I can live through a ten year construction phase with 1300+ pilings being driven into the seabed. One road in filled with an endless number of construction vehicles, strip malls and the like. Buh bye...
