Has it really been 2 years? Yes!!! Sorry about that loyal readers. I’ll strive to be more prompt in the future. To recap, both Buttercup and I joined the ranks of the retired. Our Day jobs made us severance offers we couldn’t refuse. Good thing too, we were going to quit anyway! As always time is our most precious resource. Now we have time to do the things we always wanted to do. Turns out having a lot of time to fill isn’t that big a problem when you’re an idiot and take on too many projects. It’s been a fun last 2 years. Funny thing is we did none of things you’re supposed to do when retired although we did add a mandatory daytime nap after lunch. No travel really. I think after 30 years of riding around in airplanes I finally had enough (not to mention Hotels and travel in general). Only now 2 years in are we thinking of a Fall vacation to Spain. But only if it’s not too much work!
So back to the building business. At this point in Early 2021 we had completed most of the deck foundation. While waiting for a buddy to help with the last monster deck posts we decided to do some smaller projects. First was the “Carport” or really what was a place to mount the solar panels for our off grid power system. I’m really dead set against putting absolutely anything on the roof of our house. Too many bad outcomes resulted during the last “Big One”, Irma and Maria. And as I usually do I made it much more robust than needed.
Even though the panels are mounted flat for the “Big One” the power production matched expectations. Later we added another 3 panels to the array to make it around 2.5 KW. This is enough to run 2 refrigerators, lights, and fans but probably not enough to power the air blown septic system. Later on when the deck awnings are complete we probably will add more panels to keep up.
Next is to complete the soffits on the house. A curious thing about the Virgin Islands is that Hardi Plank is not available. I’m not sure why, you’d think with all the termite problems here people would use it instead of wood. So an online shopping section with the Home Depot in Hialeah resulted a couple of weeks later in a load of Hardi products. Hardi planks, soffit, and trim.
I hadn’t tried to do this before because it was too scary from the top of a ladder. With most of the deck joists in place I could now use a rolling scaffold. Still scary, but not terrifying!
One thing that happens when you spend all day on the scaffold is that you look around a lot. This time was fairly early in the Pandemic. A lot of the Caribbean Islands had closed to visiting yachts, so for about a year all of them were in St Thomas. Thanks to Marine Traffic.com you can tell which ones you are looking at. We saw a lot of them and waved to Larry Ellison, Alice Walton, and Mark Zuckerberg as they sailed by.
Some other distractions occurred while we were messing about. We decided to get rich by making jewelry for the local “Art Cart”. This is a gallery/snowcone operation run by fellow residents for the tourists. So we fired up the laser engraver/cutter and made some stuff.
It turned out to be an unprofitable venture. My image of desirable earrings was flawed. So from now on it’s going to be coasters and key rings. We did sell enough to cover costs though. Another side line was reading a lot. This is an excellent book about Water Island. It is especially good in references to other history resources. The Danish government digitized all the early maps and municipal records of St Thomas and this book tells you where to look for them.
We finally ran out of little stuff to do and decided to put the monster deck posts up ourselves. When done they will support the “Star Deck”. This will be a widows walk with an astronomy dome and telescope. The posts were 8x8s that were 16 feet long. Each one weighed about 300 lbs so we were more than a little worried about potential accidents. Luckily our buddy lent us an electric winch that made it a little less exciting than ropes and pulleys. There were a total of 6 posts, 3 next to house, the others a distance away. For the near ones I drilled a hole in the house and used an eyebolt to pull those up.
The first three posts went up non eventfully. The problem with the outer row was that we didn’t have anything up high to pull off of. So I had to make an arm for leverage, as well as a ground anchor to pull off of.
For the last post we called Cliff to help. He’s a rigging genius!
A few more things happy and sad happened during this time. We had no doors on the house so the local feline otherwise known as “OG” decided to stay with us for 2 weeks. She just showed up and demanded to be fed. She turned out to be the best cat ever! Hours of fun and no trouble. Unfortunately after 2 weeks she decided the neighbor’s house was better and lived with him for a month. Then she set up with another couple on the far end of the Island. I think she has commitment issues…
We also had our annual “Shortest 4th of July Parade” on the Island. As is true every year, our buddy Stewart was looking good on his tractor.
Shortly after this picture was taken Stewart passed unexpectedly. He was such a good friend and an excellent human being! Everyone misses him terribly.
That’s about all for this installment. I still have about a years worth of building stuff to catch up on, we’ll do that next time.
Every now and then we need to stop and remember why we’re doing all this. So here’s why…
