GETTING GOING

THE PLANNING STAGE

After returning from Little Cayman in July '98, I knew it was just a matter of time before I would get the permit to build.  After all, the Development Control Board had given its final approval and the Planning Director had agreed in principle with all of the changes to my plans.  With this fortunate turn of events, I dived into detailed planning for the whole adventure.  Up to this point I had just been studying how to do the construction.  Now the challenge became one of trying to itemize every little piece part I would need--and how many of each.

Part of what makes building on Little Cayman so difficult is that there are almost no materials which can be purchased locally.  The Village Square store does stock a large number of items the homeowner is likely to need, but both quantity and variety are severely limited.  Worse, the price is easily three times what one would expect to pay in the US.  Thus the only reasonable path is to buy everything you will need in the U.S. and arrange to have it shipped to Little Cayman.  I had considered the idea of buying in Grand Cayman and then shipping it over, but finally realized it was cheaper if I bought  in the states and shipped it from there.   So now I found myself trying to count every nail that would have to be driven, estimate how many pieces of lumber of each size would be required, how many shingles for the roof, etc., etc.  I had been given some "rules of thumb" by people I had met on Little Cayman, but that was a long way from covering everything.   (Example:  one famous saying is that "No matter how many 2"x4" you buy, you will never have enough."  I never could figure how to translate that one into a spreadsheet entry.)  Probably the most helpful advice I got was to get 10% extra of everything, and in the case of stick lumber to get 20% extra.  As things turned out, that was to be a lifesaver (and not always adequate margin, by the way).

As the dog days of August dragged on, my pile of spreadsheets grew and grew.  The most nagging worry was not that I would miscount something, but that I would omit something crucial entirely.  I went through the building scenario even in my sleep, rehearsing each tool that would be needed and just how I was going to do the job by myself.  Finally I decided to translate these envisioned construction scenarios into detailed written instructions.  I gave each part it's own inventory control number, then cross-referenced the control number in the instructions with a like line entry in the material spreadsheets under the same control number.  It was boring and tedious detail work, but I knew that once I got to Little Cayman I was going to be totally dependent on that detail work.  As things turned out, I was later thankful to the point of tears for all of this planning effort.  When confronted with a pile of 2"x12"x18' down on Little Cayman, I could look up exactly where each one of them was supposed to go and how it was to be used.

I tried to talk my wife into letting me take the van we had bought a few years ago down to Little Cayman, but she wouldn't hear of it.   The van has turned out to be too convenient for the long trips we take touring around the hemisphere.  Thus I had to find a new vehicle to take to Little Cayman.   This was easier said than done, because there were some unusual considerations.   First, the CI government charges import duty of something like 35% on the blue book value of any vehicle imported.  Thus I wanted something with the lowest possible blue book.  Next, I understood there to be NO auto repair capability on Little Cayman.   Consequently, anything I took down there would have to be something I could maintain completely by myself.  Any vehicle which had any kind of computer control, or which required a $300,000 analyzer in order to tune the ignition, was absolutely out.   Of course, the vehicle needed to have a large cargo capability, so I began by looking for used pick-up trucks.  What I quickly learned was that any pick-up fitting my requirements which came on the market was quickly snapped up by construction workers.  The only trucks I could find were junkers in imminent need of engine and transmission overhaul.  (Or worse, ones which had been overhauled recently by owners who didn't sound like they understood the use of a torque wrench.)  Eventually I began looking at older vans, but again found that my competition was the local construction force.  Finally I discovered an old (1972) Volkswagen campmobile which had been rebuilt several years ago by a college student who was operating under the close supervision of his father, a bona fide mechanic.  The price was right, and the blue book value on a 26 year old vehicle was about as low as I was going to find.

I had about a month after buying the van to go through it and replace all the items likely to need replacement in the coming couple of years.  I just wish I had done more of that.  Then I began making more checklists of what was to go into the van.  I figured I had one opportunity to take "stuff" from my home in California, and this was it.  But how to decide what to take from here and what to buy along with my building materials?  It almost felt like I was leaving for ever as I decided to take a lifetime collection of tools and spare parts.    Very quickly I realized I was thinking of taking way more than the van could ever hold, so I realized I would have to plan the van loading just as if I were outfitting a space shot.  I gave myself a weight and volume budget for the van, and then began the painful task of allocating that budget.  Every candidate for shipment had to be weighed and measured, then evaluated for priority against all the other stuff I wanted to take.  Still today I question some of those decisions.  Why couldn't I have found room for a printer?  Room for a TNC?  It was all a question of priorities.

THE JOURNEY EAST

By mid-September I had gone over these planning lists so many times that I practically had them memorized.  In other words, I could no longer evaluate them with a fresh eye.  After many phone calls, I finally secured the place I wanted to rent on Little Cayman and was ready to kick off.  Phase I was to drive that 26 year old Volkswagen, loaded completely to it's maximum capacity, all the way across the U.S. to Tampa.  Wesley and I said tearful good-byes on September 23, and she watched the overloaded beast lumber down the driveway.  I knew she questioned whether I was going to make it to the other side of town, let alone the other side of the country.   I did too.

With all the weight I had in the van, top speed on a straight and level highway was about 55 mph.  That's a road hazard in itself, but the way east from the Bay Area is far from straight and level.  In fact, it's a serious uphill climb for just about any sort of car.  Many, many times I found I could not go above 25 mph, nor get out of second gear, and all the while I kept a good-look out for big rigs fast approaching in my rear view mirror.  I had thought this was going to be a leisurely sightseeing trip across the continent, but instead it turned into a nerve-wracking ordeal.  One time, out in the plains somewhere (I think it was Kansas, but don't really recall--those states all look the same when viewed from the interstate), I looked up to see an 18-wheeler not more than one foot off my rear bumper.  The cab was bobbing up and down violently as the driver stood on his brakes in an effort to keep from turning me and my little van into just another bug on his windshield.  I'll never forget the look of terror on that guy's face, and that was a good clue of the impending disaster.  There wasn't even time to brace, as though that would have done any good.  Somehow, though, he managed to keep his rig under control and he never hit me.  I'm not a lip reader, but I do know from his expression that what he was yelling was unprintable.

On one of my stops to call home to Wesley and report progress, I mentioned to her that the van was doing fine but that it had developed a disturbing "noise".  This was a definite "uh-oh", and I knew it.  Whenever I depressed the clutch, there was the grating sound of metal dragging on metal coming from the engine compartment.  I couldn't visualize what was happening, but I knew from the squeals and rattles that this situation was not going to improve with age.  Well, I reasoned, there would be time to deal with that when I got to Tampa.  Wesley was reassuring on the phone, but she did also mention that perhaps I shouldn't hurry too much to complete the trip.  "Take your time and enjoy the scenery," she advised.  "Besides, there's a hurricane that's made its way into the Gulf of Mexico now and they're predicting it's going to turn and head north."  I was much more worried about those grating sounds of metal being ripped away than I was about a storm thousands of miles away.

On and on the highway went, mile after boring mile.  At each freeway exit there was the same conglomeration of service stations and franchised fast-food outlets.   Each of them has its trademarked logo high above the horizon to scream for the traveler's attention, and yet the sense-jarring impact of this blight impels the visitor to avert his gaze and wish only for the long-ago days when a rest stop meant a chance to sense and enjoy local color.  If at all possible, I kept on rolling right through.  That meant I didn't have to depress the clutch, and so I didn't have to listen to those awful squeals.  I had a cardboard box in the cabin stocked with canned food, so meals were taken with the same grace and relish I remembered enjoying when eating C-rations on patrol in Viet-Nam.   Besides, a can of cold beans eaten straight from the can probably provides more sensory delight than the latest McDuckberger Grande could ever hope to deliver.  

By the time I got to El Paso, I figured I was nearing the east coast.  After all, this was Texas, and I've always thought of Texas as being virtually on the east coast.  But Texas just goes and goes and goes.   Forever!  As I rolled through the barren landscape of west Texas, I couldn't help but chuckle at the story of the IRS auditor who became so enraged when the person he was auditing told him his accounting skills were so weak that he was only qualified to be serving up chicken-fried steak somewhere on a west Texas interstate.  No wonder the man was so insulted that he plotted such revenge against her!

Eventually I got to the outskirts of Dallas, and that meant my first shopping trip of the journey.  For located among the sprawling suburban communities surrounding Dallas is one of the few Meccas for ham radio:   Plano, the home of Texas Towers, Inc.  I had been receiving their catalogs for years, and had always dreamed of browsing through what I knew had to be acres and acres of merchandise on display.  I finally made my way through the maze of highways to Plano, then followed the map to the street name etched into my memory since my first ham license came in the mail.  But wait!  This street was only a couple of blocks long, and it contained nothing but light industrial garage-shop storefronts:  plastic injection molding here, custom awnings over there.  No giant expanse of free parking was to be seen, nor was there even the imposing storefront I was expecting.  I went up and down the street several times checking storefront numbers until I finally located it.    The place was tiny, and most of the merchandise on display seemed to be the latest version of miniaturized HT's for the shack-on-the-belt crowd.  But the clerk said he had the Real™ Ham's stuff in the back storeroom, so I wheeled my van around back around to the rear to pick up the tower parts I needed for Little Cayman.  By now the clutch was just screaming every time I depressed it.  The 1/4" wall carbon steel mast almost fit into the neat little compartment I had carefully left running from the rear to the front of the van, through all of the boxes of antennas, tools, and stuff.    One good slam of the rear hatch to snug it forward and..."Crack!" went the front windshield.  Ahh...battle scars on the VW already!

After loading up with goodies, I got back on the freeways of Dallas.  Ugh.  The clutch squealed madly each time I depressed the pedal, and when I let it out the van jerked madly as the clutch and pressure plate sought to align themselves with each other.  How many miles to go?  Too many, it seemed.  Next stop:  Shreveport, then down Louisiana to the gulf. 

The traffic died down by the time I got to The Sportsman's Paradise, and soon enough I found the road south.  It was late afternoon, and the scenery was decidedly improved from the barren vistas of west Texas.  It was green!  In fact, I felt like things were starting to look up.  There was little traffic, I was going through beautiful countryside, and as long as I didn't have to change gears the van was humming along nicely.  By dusk it seemed to me that there was no traffic, and just about the time I noticed that something else clawed its way up to my consciousness.  The lanes headed in the opposite direction were bumper-to-bumper.   Now, what could that possibly mean?  There's no town of any size between Shreveport and Baton Rouge, so I knew all those cars had to be coming from some place at least as far away as Baton Rouge.  Hadn't Wesley said something about a hurricane when I was back there in New Mexico?

The car radio was of absolutely no use.  I could find Billy Bob crooning about his lost love and I could find commentary on all the college football games in progress, but news?  There was none.  I scanned up and down the band, over and over, trying to find some explanation for all of the northbound traffic.  It was dark by then, and I reasoned it was time to stop and look for a motel room anyway.  When I did find an exit, and pulled up to the first motel in sight, the scene was of near chaos.  The parking lot was jammed with cars...the doors to the motel office had handwritten signs with the warning "RESERVATIONS ONLY!" scrawled hastily on them...and inside were hundreds of people screaming at one harried clerk behind the desk.  Not a good sign, I thought.  The next motel I visited presented the same scene...and the next and the next and the next.  Finally some kind person explained to me what was happening.  Hurricane Georges (yes, this hurricane had a name) had devastated Puerto Rico and the Florida keys, and now it was headed straight for New Orleans.  The governor of Louisiana had ordered an evacuation of the entire gulf coast area surrounding New Orleans.  That is 5 million people, all of them frantically fleeing the killer storm bearing down on them!

It took no imagination to realize I was not going to find a motel room in that little burg, so I turned around and headed back the way I had come.  I knew that if I continued south I would just run into a police barricade somewhere along the line and then I'd really be in a jam.  So back to the north I went.  I tried a few little towns along the way, but the scene was the same everywhere I went.  I accepted the fact I was going to have to go all the way back to Shreveport.  But Shreveport was no different, and by then it was 1 a.m.  I studied the road map, trying to put myself in the place of a refugee from New Orleans, and decided to head east through the hinterlands to a place where the crowd streaming northward would likely not venture.  This brought me to the sleepy little hamlet of Monroe, LA.  But the scene there was no better than it had been along the other highway.  One of the motel clerks finally told me that there were NO vacancies in any of the surrounding five states.  After all, 5,000,000 refugees take up a lot of space.  She did tell me the Red Cross had set up an evacuation shelter in the local high school, and gave me directions. 

That shelter became my home for the next three days, and it was simultaneously a heart-warming experience and a grueling ordeal.  We were all crammed into the high school cafeteria, sleeping on cots spaced about 3' apart throughout the giant room.  Every 5th person seemed to be a screaming baby wailing away into the night.  Despite all the discomfort, or maybe because of it, the good people of Monroe, LA emerged to me as the kindest and most warm-hearted salt of the earth I could imagine.  All day long, streams of the local folk came by to drop off pies and cakes and casseroles they had baked for the weary band of refugees.  The Red Cross volunteers, of which there were many, were unfailingly polite and helpful.  I felt almost guilty!  They wouldn't let me pay for anything, and if I grabbed a broom to help keep the place clean a volunteer was sure to snatch it from my hand and tell me to go rest.  I told one of them about the clutch problems I was having with the van, and she said I should take it to a local shop she knew.  There were a couple of fellows there who specialized only on Volkswagens, so she said, though they had started accepting work on Japanese imports since the Volkswagen population began dying off in the US.   She took me out to the shop to see for myself, and it was just what she had described.  There were three mechanics there who had spent their lives working on bugs and they seemed like honest fellow to me.  That character judgement turned out to be 100% accurate.  They fixed the van in a couple of days, let me stand right with them as they tore everything apart, and in the end charged me less than half what I knew the rate would have been in places like my home in California.   So let it be known:  there is an honest mechanic (in fact, more than one) in the backwoods of the south down in Monroe, LA!

The state of emergency was lifted after a few days and the order was given to close the Red Cross shelter.  The evacuees piled into their myriad cars and vans, each one stuffed to the limit with their most precious family memorabilia, so they could venture back to their homes and see what was left.  We had all been glued to the television news coverage of the storm for days while we waited in the shelter, so many of these people knew they were going back to real devastation.   More than one family already knew they had no home to which they could return.   It was not a happy scene.  I couldn't leave yet, though, because my new-found buddies were still working on the van for me.  I became one of the Red Cross volunteers and helped pack up all the blankets and cots and then take them back to the storeroom in the center of town.  The van was ready to roll by the time we had finished all the clean-up work, so I prepared to continue the journey.  Somehow the whole adventure in Monroe, LA felt almost like a scene from the old Highway 66 TV series.

Although the evacuation order had been lifted, the most important highways had not been reopened.  I learned that a section of Interstate 10 had been washed out completely, and it was likely to be many days before the route along the coast was reopened.  That meant the only way open to me was to continue moving eastward through northern Mississippi and Alabama, then cut diagonally to the southeast through Georgia.  Eventually I did drive into the remnants of Hurricane Georges as I plowed through the driving rain and wind in southeast Georgia.  The weather reports I heard on the radio had all but pronounced this storm a dead issue, but it sure didn't feel that way where I was.  Later I had a chance to see and hear what this storm had done when it was still very much alive, and it was frightening. 

TAMPA

A couple of days later I pulled into Tampa, the end of the road for me.  It hadn't been a fun journey, but it was certainly an experience I won't likely forget.  There was no time to reflect on it, though, because now it was time to kick into high gear and go on a mad shopping spree.    But before delving into that whole experience, it may be time to digress a bit and address the question of "Why Tampa?"  After all, Miami is closer to the Cayman Islands and is a much larger seaport.  I had asked that same question myself during my earlier fact-finding trips to Little Cayman, and the answers I got were only superficial explanations.  On the one hand, so I was told, it was easier to arrange shipping from Tampa.  Also, as it was explained to me, "inventory shrinkage" at the hands of the unionized stevedores in Miami was a major problem.   But the real answer seems to lie in the story of one of the most colorful personalities I have ever encountered:  Linton Tibbetts.

Linton was born and grew up on Cayman Brac many years ago.  I would guess Linton is now approaching or may have even crossed into his eighties, so it was definitely many  years ago.  He came to the U.S. when he was 18, eager to escape what was then wrenching poverty on Cayman Brac and to make a bigger life for himself than would have been possible in his homeland.  The story from that point onward is material just waiting for an enterprising biographer to explore, because Linton is one of those larger-than-life people one only occasionally chances upon.    I don't know the whole story myself, and it's difficult to separate fact from fiction and unravel the myths and legends surrounding this fellow.  I do know that he went to work in the construction industry somewhere along the way and found a niche market just waiting for exploitation.  He bought a little hardware store and reoriented it to serve the export market.  He made it easy for people to buy building materials from him and have them shipped on to Caribbean islands, most particularly the Cayman Islands.  That little hardware store developed into Cox Lumber Co., which today has 23 major outlets scattered all over Florida (plus one very large outlet on Grand Cayman).   Cox Lumber now includes a door manufacturing plant and a truss plant, and the empire is growing all of the time.   Linton built the Brac Reef resort on Cayman Brac, and today it is one of the largest dive operations there on the Brac.  About 6 years ago he built the Little Cayman Beach Resort, and I know it has also turned into a tidy little money-maker for him.  (On a typical day he has about 60 or 70 people staying there paying $200+ per person, double occupancy.  Just do the arithmetic!)   Linton owns the Village Square store on Little Cayman, the only place on Little Cayman you can buy groceries or building supplies.  I know Linton was instrumental in bringing commercial electric power to Little Cayman, and legend has it that he is still involved in the ownership of it.  Legend also has Linton involved in the ownership of Cayman Islands Shipping, the company which runs the barge back and forth between Grand Cayman and Little Cayman.  I can't sort all of these stories out myself, but it's a safe bet to say that no one goes to Little Cayman without Linton reaping some profit out of the visit.  All of this has made Linton Tibbetts a very wealthy man, and with that wealth (plus the fact that he has childhood ties to virtually everybody of importance in the Cayman Islands government today) has gone a lot of political influence.   As is almost always the case with people who have amassed great wealth and power, Linton has scores of detractors.  Some of them are decidedly bitter, but never once have I heard accusations of dishonesty or lack of integrity.  Linton is simply a shrewd businessman who built a big empire through his own intelligence and hard work.   Personally, I like the man.  He can be crusty or charming as the occasion demands, but you cannot help but respect what he has accomplished.  Despite all of his successes, Linton is as unpretentious an individual as I've ever encountered.  He is just as likely to be pushing a broom down at the Little Cayman Beach Resort as he is trying to arrange financing for the latest business he's trying to buy.  He's truly an a fascinating character, and I think he's the real reason Tampa became the port of choice for shipment to the Cayman Islands.  His vast holdings are vertically integrated, and he has made it convenient for people to obtain materials in the U.S. and get them shipped to the Cayman Islands (or anywhere else in the Caribbean, for that matter).    

One of the first things I did in Tampa was to make contact with the export manager at Cox Lumber, and it was no time at all before Linton Tibbetts dropped by to check how it was going for me.  He invited me out to lunch with him, and over lunch he gave me some of the best advice I received.  This covered everything from how to build a cistern so it wouldn't leak to how to deal with governmental pettiness.  The man knew what he was talking about, because he had been through it all.  I solicited bids on the major construction items from several different outlets in Tampa, but in the end decided to stick with Cox Lumber. 

Getting these major items covered--the lumber, the rebar, the cement, the concrete blocks--was the easy part.  The hard part was the pile of spreadsheets with the long, long list of small piece parts.  For most of that, I became a virtual resident of the St. Petersburg Home Depot.  Home Depot also had an excellent export office, and it was easy to do business with them.  They supplied me with a clipboard and a stack of order forms, and all I had to do was to write down the Home Depot inventory control number (called a "SKU") and the quantity of each item I wanted.  After I turned in the order forms, they would pack it all up for me and deliver it to the shipper in the Port of Tampa.  This way, I could avoid paying Florida state sales tax.  I spent six days in that store, each day starting about 7 in the morning until they closed at 10 p.m.  By the time I was done, there were 18 order forms, each containing about 50 line entries. 

There were a few other items I had to go search out on my own.  One of them was a concrete mixer, another the swimming pool plaster I wanted to use on the inside of my cistern.  My forays about took me the length and breadth of the Tampa-St. Petersburg area several times.  It was all pretty boring stuff, but the boredom broken by a visit to the White House outside Tampa.  For those who don't recognize this term, it is the home of Ellen (W1YL) and Bob (W1CW) White.   I went down with son Jim (K4OJ) for the nominal purpose of putting yet another beam up on the tower for the OM, but that soon turned into an afternoon of pleasant socializing and a wonderful dinner.  What truly grand people they are!  I hadn't been around Ellen for five minutes before I felt like I had known her my entire life.  It was the first time I had been around real friends since leaving California.

With all of the shopping for building materials out of the way, it was time to fill every cubic inch of space remaining in the van with food before turning it over to the shippers.  I located a Wal-Mart and made repeated trips through the store with a pair of grocery carts in hand.  I kept going back until I couldn't squeeze another can of chili nor bag of noodles into the van.  There was barely room left for me to get into the driver's seat to take it down to the port.   I thought surely I had enough food in there to last me the intended six months.   I gave the van up on October 9, and the next day caught my flight on to Grand Cayman.  It was time to get ready for the next phase.

LITTLE CAYMAN

As our plane neared Grand Cayman, I dived into my carry-on bag to get all of my papers in order.  On the last trip to Little Cayman, I had made a side trip to the Immigration Department to make sure there would be no last-minute surprise when I came back with all my building materials.  Normally the CI Immigration officers will only grant up to a 30 day visa upon arrival in the airport, and even that requires that you produce a return ticket to document the fact that you have a prepaid way out of the country.  They will grant more time if your passport shows you are a repeat visitor to the islands and you have a good reason for needing a longer visa, but I had never asked for a six month visa.  Because of this, I asked the Immigration officer if I shouldn't apply for a visa in advance of my return, since I knew it was to be for an extended stay.  "No problem at all," went the quick reply.  "Just show the Immigration officer your building permit and receipts for your building materials in the airport when you return."  So now I dug deep to get all of this ready to present, along with my brand new passport and return ticket.   The ticket was marked April 10, exactly six months hence.

None of this cut any ice whatsoever when I finally got to the passport control desk in the Grand Cayman airport.  I got a stamp for a 30 day visa and a warning that I would have to return to the Immigration Office when that visa expired.  I tried arguing, but it was futile.  Of course, there is no Immigration Office on Little Cayman.  You have to spend an entire day traveling to Cayman Brac to get to the nearest Immigration Office.  I resigned myself to this, and made note that as soon as I got to Little Cayman I should make plane reservations to the Brac for November 10.

Late on October 10, I finally made it to Little Cayman and found my way to the apartment I had rented.  Such a deal!  It was about 1/4 mile away from my lot and my driveway was in full view of the balcony.  The apartment had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, on two stories, and it was clean and well-built.   It was actually a duplex, and the other half was where the owner-landlord lived.   Curt, the owner, was a builder and a friend.  Not only was he a good fellow with whom to enjoy a few beers, but he was a veritable gold mine of information on construction techniques.  He had been a general contractor in Phoenix before moving to Little Cayman, and now he made a good living doing repair work around the island.   I would have loved to sign up Curt to build part or even all of my house, but he was making way more there than I would ever be willing to pay.  If you owned a home on Little Cayman and needed to have major repair work done on it, you had two choices:   hire Curt or do it yourself.  His services were always in demand.

For the first week I strung up antennas around the apartment, played on the radio, and put in some more time clearing brush around the building site.  But basically I was just enjoying a week's respite before all of my materials arrived, because I knew there would be no rest for months to come after they arrived.

Fortunately, I was saved at this point by Sam McCoy, the patriarch of Sam McCoy's Dive Lodge.  Sam saw what was going on and sped onto the barge with his pick-up.   He and son Chris helped me quickly throw the 50# bags of lime into the back of his truck, and then Sam took me over to my lot so I could unload them.  By the time we got back to the pier, my van was sitting just off the barge.  Chris explained they had started to drive it off, but the stevedores in Tampa had drained all but a few ounces of gasoline out of the tank.  We couldn't even start the van to get it out of the way of the remaining containers!  This time it was Chris who sped me off to get a gallon of gas, and by the time we returned the barge captain was in an even more unpleasant mood.   He was late, and it was somehow all my fault.  But with the van out of the way, the delivery truck could now pick up my other container and haul it over to my lot.

When we got to the driveway, the driver became irate.   The way up the hill was too steep...the gravel in the driveway was too loose...there wasn't enough room to maneuver.  All this guy did was complain.   Still, he managed to get it up the driveway somehow, though he did exact revenge by dropping it approximately as far away from where I wanted it as he possibly could have done.  That meant everything in the container--over 20,000 pounds of it--would have to be carried by hand an extra 100 feet.  The instant the truck left, and I found myself in the inky blackness of the new moon, I felt the first drop of rain.  Then more and more, and soon it was a steady drizzle.  The stuff in the container was safe, but my worry was that pile of paper bags of hydrated lime that Sam McCoy and I had stacked an hour earlier.  Somewhere inside that container, I knew, were four 100' long rolls of 6 mil plastic. It took almost an hour of crawling around in there with a flashlight before I finally found them.  Naturally, they were at the back and on the bottom.   After covering the lime with plastic and weighting it down with rocks, I headed back to the apartment.  The next day I would go into pack mule mode, pulling stuff out of the container item by item and trying to find a place for it. 

When I got a chance to see the container in the daylight, I couldn't help but wonder what it had endured between Tampa and Little Cayman.   It surely must have been a rough ride!  I tore right into the mess, though, and began unloading.  That effort took six full days, from sunup until sundown every day.  Probably the worst part of it was the cement.  I had 131 bags of cement in there, each one weighing 94 pounds.  It was sweltering hot, so I was shirtless and dripping wet with perspiration from the heat and humidity.  I carried the bags to the opening of the container, then jumped to the ground 5' below.  I would put a bag on my back, bend over, and lug it to my staging area a couple of hundred feet away.  The bags leak, naturally, and in no time I was covered with cement.  Now in case you've never handled this stuff, let me tell you it is one of the most caustic substances you can buy without a special permit.  It is highly alkaline and can eat away even the toughest skin.  I could only carry a few bags before my skin just felt like it was on fire, and then I'd have to run into the ocean to wash the cement off.  This continued through all 131 bags.  Then I got to the 80# bags of pool plaster, all 80 of them.   Same story!  And so went the unloading.  Each night as I dragged myself back to the apartment I wondered if it was possible to be even more sore and tired than I was at that moment.  The next day usually taught me the answer was yes.  I began to be haunted my distant memories of Viet-Nam, 30 years ago.

On the day I finally I finished unloading the container and stacking all the materials on the ground, the barge again arrived for its weekly visit.  Once again it was late afternoon, and this time the manifest list showed I again had only two containers.  This time they were flat racks of lumber.   Let's see...last week I nearly died unloading just one container.  Now there were two to be unloaded in the same time frame.  Oh joy!  I was beyond griping about the still missing containers.

HURRICANE!

The next morning was surely an ugly day.  The wind was howling at about 35 knots and it was pouring rain out.  That was the day I got to begin unloading lumber.  Well, it had to be done, so I tore into the task anyway.  Every bit of this lumber was pressure treated pine, the only kind of wood you ever use in this termite-infested land.  That is lumber which has been soaked in a bath of delightful chemicals rich in ammonia, arsenic, copper, and chromium.   Besides making the wood about 50% more expensive and 50% heavier, it makes it slick and slimy when it gets wet.  Now I was unloading in the rain.  The base of the container was about 5' above ground, and the stacks of lumber were about 10' high.   Thus I had to use an extension ladder to get to go 15' up to the top of the stacks.  I will say the view was nice when my eyes were 20' off the ground, though I couldn't see much for the driving wind and rain. 

It was an accident waiting to happen, to be sure.   And it did.  In the middle of the afternoon I started down the extension ladder just as I had been doing all day, but somehow my foot found only thin air to support it.  I slid all the way down the ladder and landed in a heap on the rocks below.  It was instant pain through both legs and both arms.  Something had to be broken, and badly.  In agony I checked all four limbs to see if there was any white bone protruding, then breathed a sigh of relief when I found none.  Still, I couldn't move and was ready to scream in pain.  Of course, there was nobody around to hear me so I really should have let loose with my thoughts on the whole situation.  I forced each hand and each foot to respond to a command from the brain, then agreed the spinal cord was still intact.  So I dragged myself over to the sand beside the driveway and tried to rest a few minutes.  After half an hour or so I pulled myself up into a chair and thought about it.  I was in way too much pain to continue and it was pouring rain anyway.   Then I limped over to the van so I could go back to the apartment.

When I saw Curt back at the apartment, he told me there was a medical center on the island with an attending nurse.  He convinced me to go get help.  I went straight to the aid station, and the "nurse" turned out to be a physician visiting for the day from the hospital on Cayman Brac.  By this time my right foot was beginning to swell uncomfortably, and she wanted me to go check into the hospital on the Brac.  "No way!" I answered.  I had one week to unload those two containers of lumber, and I couldn't do that lying flat on my back in a hospital bed.  Against her strong protests, I staggered out of the aid station to go back to the apartment and lick my wounds.  Before going back, though, I stopped at the store for some groceries.  It was there that I learned about the newest threat:  Hurricane Mitch.

What I learned then was genuinely chilling.   Hurricane Mitch was a major hurricane headed in our general direction.   Although it was over 600 miles away, it was packing winds exceeding 180 knots.   What we were experiencing that day was one of the minor storms spun off from the hurricane.  Hadn't I already had enough of hurricanes with Georges?

Back at the apartment, with my foot now about 50% larger than normal, I realized it was going to need at least a day's rest before I could continue with the unloading.  The rain by now was so heavy you could not see through it, so that was just as well.  It was a Friday afternoon, and as luck would have it it was the beginning of the CQWW SSB contest.  While I had entertained no thoughts of doing anything with that contest, it looked like that was going to be the only way to get my mind off the pain in my foot.  I only had some low wires strung up outside, plus my R5 vertical.  It was a marginal setup at best.   But with no TV, no Internet, no books, and an aching foot it looked like the only game in town.     

I gave it a half-hearted effort, but all it did was remind me why I had earlier abandoned sideband contests.  Still, I think I had made about 5000 contacts by Sunday morning.  That was when Curt brought me the news that Hurricane Mitch was now bearing straight down on us.  People were leaving the island by any means available, and those who were still there were working frantically to prepare for the storm.  I hobbled over to my lot to see what I could do to prepare.

The first thing I saw was that the wind had shredded the plastic I had used to cover my bags of cement, and they were now exposed to the rain.  I covered them with fresh plastic and then put as many rocks on the plastic as I could in order to keep it from being blown away again.  Then I began tying down everything in sight.  I had brought several spools of rope with me, so that afternoon was spent lashing my tools and building materials any way I could.  I knew what hurricane force winds can do, so it all seemed kind of futile.  But at least it was more productive than fighting on the radio in that sideband contest.

Monday brought even bigger winds than before.   The whole apartment building shook as each blast of wind rocked it.  I kept a safe distance back from the sliding glass doors, because they were visibly pulsating with the shock of each heavy blast.  Then we saw the crash of the surf on the beach throwing water 30' or more into the air.  By now the only questions that concerned me were where that hurricane was and where it was headed.  I could find no information anywhere.  I tried getting on the air, but quickly discovered that hams were useless in this situation.  "What hurricane?" was the usual response I got when I asked for information.  I did manage to find a few literati on the air, but they didn't seem to know much more.  Finally I learned that I could get a bulletin off WWV at exactly 8 minutes past the hour, so then I began listening every hour.  Unlike the solar report, where the announcer enunciates clearly and slowly, then repeats everything, the hurricane report was given exactly once by what must have been a remedial speech center dropout.  The announcer mumbled one time the latitude/longitude coordinates of the eye and gave a velocity report for it, then droned on interminably about the winds in each quadrant at different distances from the eye.  What I wanted to know was where that eye was, and where it was headed! It was only about one time out of three that I could understand the critical information, and as I plotted it on my map the picture became clear.  The hurricane was now 350 miles south of us, headed straight toward us, and the wind was reaching 200 mph.  At that rate, not even the shrubs would be left standing on Little Cayman after a direct hit. 

By late afternoon, the storm surge had pushed the sea level up about 6'.  The waves rolling ashore were easily 25' or 30' high, and the crash on the beach sent water high into the air.  It was terrifying.  I had already heard the news that the waves had destroyed every dock and pier on the island.   I think along about this point I ceased worrying about my piles of lumber and began to think about my own hide.  There wasn't much I could do about it by this point but worry, since the opportunity to get a plane on or off that island had long since passed.    Now the only thing we could do was wait...and listen to that announcer on WWV mumble through his script.

To make a long story short, I was far from done unloading the lumber by the time my week was up.  It didn't matter, though, because there was no operative prediction of when the next barge would arrive.  The seas were churned up badly, and Mitch was still moving back and forth in the southern Caribbean.   I just kept on plugging away at my stacks of lumber, now trying to make sense of the tangled mass that resulted from the overturned trailer.  Somehow or another I got to the bottom of it all, and within a few weeks I had all the lumber and rebar neatly stacked around the lot.  I made a map as I went--my "lumber locator"--so I would know where to go to find each piece as I needed it.  Hurricane Mitch went on to devastate Honduras and Nicaragua.  As the news reports slowly trickled out, my worst fears of the impending disaster were realized.  A friend on Little Cayman flew his plane over Swan Island, among the Channel Islands of Nicaragua, and came back to report what he had seen.  This was an island very much the same size and topography as Little Cayman, and similarly inhabited and developed.  He told me there was not even a blade of grass left standing on Swan Island.  We had been exceedingly lucky to have escaped that killer storm, and everybody on the island knew it. 

IMMIGRATION

On November 10, as planned, I flew to Cayman Brac to get my visa extended for the rest of my six month stay.  It was galling to have to do this, but I had no choice.  That put me face to face with the only force on earth capable of worse destruction than a killer hurricane:  Government.  It doesn't matter whether it's "ours" or "theirs".  I'm convinced they are all the same.   This is a long story, and one I probably shouldn't put into writing in detail as long as I have interests in the Cayman Islands, but here is the bottom line:  I was working on my house illegally.  They could not grant the visa I wanted, because the law required that I have a work permit if I was going to work on my own house on my own land.  In order to get such a permit, I would first have to have a prospective "employer" sponsor me, and that had to be a Cayman Islands construction firm.   Then, I (or rather, my prospective "employer") would have to submit the following for review:

• a stack of pictures of myself taken from various perspectives;

• three letters of reference from people who had known me for at least three years;

• a medical report showing I didn't have any communicable diseases and showing no evidence of drug use;

• an official statement from the police agency in my home town attesting to the fact that I had not no criminal record and that there were no charges pending against me;

• a long application form that would explain why I should be hired for this "job" instead of some more deserving Caymanian;

• a pile of money based on the assumed skill level of the job for which I was being "hired".

I imagine people coming to the US face similar indignities when they first confront the INS.  In fact, I know they do, because I used to be the employer who had to help them jump similar hurdles when they sought a green card.  Knowing that didn't make it any easier now that the shoe was on the other foot, though.  I had to make multiple trips over to Cayman Brac to put all of this together.  Each trip cost me around $100 and a day lost on the job.  Probably the hardest requirement to satisfy was that one about the police report.  My wife went out on this little errand for me, and that gave her profound insights into the workings of Government that she wished she didn't have today.  The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office first insisted I had to come apply for such a letter in person, and that sent her into the labyrinthine maze of bureaucracy as she tried to find somebody with whom she could reason.  I know she spent many hours in the county courthouse cooling her heels.   She finally worked her way up to a supervisor who said she could grant such a letter if I submitted a notarized letter requesting it and included a notarized copy of my passport information sheet.  Since there was no notary public on Little Cayman, that meant another   $100 and another day lost to go over to Cayman Brac just to get a notary stamp.

One interesting experience I had while gathering all of this documentation was when I went for my medical examination.  The only feasible way to obtain the medical report the Immigration people wanted was to spend the day in the hospital on Cayman Brac going through their weekly "employment physical" drill.  There must have been 20 of us going through that exercise the day I did it, and we were shuffled from office to office as one after another lab technician searched for evidence of a decadent lifestyle.  Finally I was called into the supervising physician's office, and it turned out to be the same lady with whom I had argued about my foot when I went to the aid station on Little Cayman.  This time she had me, and I couldn't escape!  She sent me to the X-ray lab to verify what she already knew, and the X-ray proved her correct.  I had completely fractured one of the bones in my foot in that fall about a month earlier.  Although it seemed to be healing correctly, she insisted I should have a cast put on it.  This led to another long argument, and in the end I had to just walk (well, hobble) out on her.  I knew I couldn't work on the house while my foot was in a cast, and at least this way there was a chance she wouldn't oppose my work permit application.  She didn't, fortunately.     

This whole process dragged on and on, each step becoming absolutely more unbelievable than the last.  Eventually my work permit was approved on January 15, 1999.   It is valid until January 15, 2000.  I'm told it will be a simple matter to renew it when it expires...but it was also the Immigration Office that told me "No problem" when I asked about this sort of stuff ahead of time. 

THE SHED

Most of the time while I was enduring this rigmarole over the work permit, I was still in that phase of unloading containers.  The sea did finally calm a bit, and life slowly began to return to normal.  Finally, the first barge in many weeks managed to make its way to Little Cayman.  It brought beer for the bars, fresh vegetables for the store, and more containers for me.  This time it was containers of concrete blocks.  It was supposed to be about 1600 of them, though I suspect there were more.  Yes, 1600.  One at  time, I moved them from the 15' level down to the 10' level, then from the 10' level to the 5' level, then from the 5' level I carried them over and stacked them up.  I did get help on one container of blocks, and it probably saved me a week's worth of agony.  I managed to hire a fellow with a backhoe with forks on the bucket and he could move whole pallets at a time.  Each time he took a pallet off the container, I realized it was at least 4 hours of back-breaking work he had saved me. 

By mid-November I was through unloading, and could finally start doing something constructive.  I rented a backhoe and dug two giant holes in the ground to use for guy anchors for my tower.  (See the section on the "Station on Little Cayman").  After building forms for the concrete, I set up a form for an 8' x 12' slab as the base for my tool shed.  The two guy anchors and the slab took exactly 5 cubic yards--the minimum order from Scott Development without a surcharge.  Then I turned to with hammer and saw to build the tool shed.  It only took a few days to do, but what a delight it was when I was finished.  Finally, I had a "home" on my on lot.  It was a place I could use for the ham shack, and it could store all the tools and materials that up until now I had been carrying around in the van.  It's a humble abode to be sure, but I was just ecstatic when I completed it.  Now I could set up my station without worrying about TVI to Curt's apartment, and I could organize tools and materials such that I could actually locate what I needed when I wanted it.  But better yet, I could actually start work on the house.   After all, it was now nearly two months since I had left California and so far all I had been doing was preparatory work. 

back to "The House on Little Cayman"

Copyright�1999 Bruce B. Sawyer