Mañana doesn't mean tomorrow ..... it's just means not today! Updated Oct 2018

2014 Oct 7th, buoy headed our way

At sunrise, on October 7th 2014, I noticed a small green light blinking on the ocean just south of our house, flashing on and off at regular intervals.  

Well, that needs to be investigated. My camera has a decent lens so I zoomed in for a better look; it was a huge marker buoy drifting free, and bobbing its way north towards our beach. 

2014 Oct 7th, buoy down and rolling across coral

Fifteen minutes later it ran aground, tipped over, and ponderously rolled in the waves until it was stuck about twenty feet from shore. We emailed a friend who knew how to contact the naval base to advise them of the problem.  

A group of marinas (sailors) arrived, a non-commissioned officer and his crew, to check out the buoy.  

Then the sleek navy cutter arrived cruising back and forth in the deep water on the other side of the reef, unable to hook a line on the buoy due to the increased size of the waves, and the shallow water inside the reef. 

2014 waiting for a decision   

The weather turned foul so we invited the guys to take shelter on our patio, offering them coffee and snacks while they waited for a decision from higher-up. 

The navy bosses were in communication with the harbour master and two employees arrived mid-afternoon to check the situation.  

2014 Oct 7th, removing the valuable beacon

One lucky guy was designated to retrieve the valuable GPS beacon.  The ocean is very warm in October, but dressed in protective gear it was a bit of a struggle for him to wade into the thigh deep water and remove the heavy beacon, still transmitting its location at 21 14.5 N and 86 44.1 W.  

It is good thing the beacon was removed, or we could have had ships trying to take a position reading off of our house.  We envisioned an unscheduled cruise ship visit, similar to the Costa Concordia that ran aground in Italy in 2012.

2014 October 7th, Marinas and Lynda

By noon we were serving ham or chicken sandwiches to the on-shore crew complete with a choice of coffee or pop and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. It was a pretty good gig, hanging out with us while the jejes decide what to do with the marker buoy.  Around three in the afternoon the officer in charge flashed us a big friendly smile and said that the weather had become too rough and the cutter was not going to be able to pull the marker buoy back out to sea. 

2014 Oct 7th, Sparky on left Tommy on right 

“We’ll come back mañana, or when the weather calms down,” he assured us. 

“Si, claro. Okay, no problem.”
  

Smiles and handshakes all around, and everyone departed: October 7^th 2014.  

Yep, four years ago last week, and we still have a huge piece of rusting scrap iron rolling around in our neighbourhood. 

2015 October 11th, still waiting for removal

Back in 2014, I started taking annual photos of the life and times of the navigational buoy.

For the first few weeks the air stank of rotting sea creatures, until our neighbours helpfully hired a young friend to scrape the dying barnacles and mussels from the exposed bottom.  

So how big is this thing?  It has a six foot diameter, and without wading into the water with a tape measure to get the exact measurements, we think it is about fifteen to eighteen feet tall.  It’s big and it’s heavy.

2016 October, pointed straight at our casa. 

We had considered decorating it up for various holiday celebrations:  Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Independence Day. 

We have had friends offer to paint it with cool designs. One graffiti 'artist' did add his tag, but thankfully the weather removed the mess within a few weeks.

No one was allowed to remove, or move it, or even consider cutting it up.  It is federal property, but the feds don’t want it, the navy doesn’t want it and the harbour master doesn’t want it.  

2017 rolling in big waves from Hurricane Irma 

The first week or two that the buoy was here it moved around a bit, a little to the north, a little to the south, ever closer to shore until it is now half out of the water and stuck between two rocky outcroppings.  Our biggest concern is not esthetics, but of safety.  A big storm could turn this thing into a missile and shoot it straight at our house, knocking out walls and ripping down support columns. Or, conversely it could be swept out to sea during a hurricane becoming a dangerous navigational hazard, unlit, unmarked, and big enough to punch a hole in a large ship.

2017 September waves Hurricane Irma in Florida

We know it is not the fault of the folks that work for the navy or the harbour master. 

We have the greatest respect for them. They are willing, and helpful. 

The decision came from higher up the pay-scale ladder.It was just not in the budget.  

2017 October TS Nate now at Punta Piedra

In September 2017, when Hurricane Irma turned away from us, towards Florida, we had several days of big waves. 

We watched with trepidation as the buoy pounded against the three-foot high ridge of coral and sand protecting our house from the floating hunk of metal. 

At sundown it was pointed like a missile right at our casa. When we checked again at sunrise, it had bounced over the rocks moving north and stopping on the beach in front of Maravilla Caribe. 

2017 Oct - Amy, Punta Piedra having fun with buoy

A short time later Tropical Storm Nate moved the buoy a little further north to Punta Piedra's beach. 

Amy Canto decided to have fun with it, instead of obsessing over the unsightly hunk of metal. She made a 'man' by stuffing a pair of pants and a shirt with sargassum seaweed. His head was a round white fishing float, with a sombrero plopped on top.

Juan sat in an old beach chair inside the buoy with his bottle of tequila and a plastic Halloween pumpkin. He provided lots of chuckles for her guests, until another storm washed him away. I found pieces of Juan all along the beach, pants, hat, and head. Amy reassembled him, but the winter storms just wouldn't leave the poor guy alone. Eventually he disappeared. 

2018 Oct 8th moved again during Hurricane Michael 

Then on October 7th 2018 the weather forecast predicted that Michael, a Category 1 Hurricane, would pass between Isla and Cuba. The worrying and wondering started again. Where would the damn buoy land this time? 

Fortunately for us, Hurricane Michael skidded past Isla Mujeres doing very little damage, but it was a category 5 by the time it battered the Florida panhandle. All we can do is hope everyone is safe, healthy, and only a little wet. 

The remnants of the navigational buoy are a tattered shell of the heavy structure that arrived four years ago, but it is still capable of floating. We currently have a disturbance forming just south of Mexico, and Tropical Storm Nadine in mid-Atlantic. Hurricane season doesn't end until November 1st, and then we can breath a sigh of relief. 

In the meantime, Mañana, doesn’t mean tomorrow, it just means not today.

~

Isla Mujeres Mystery series

A big thank you to one of my favourite authors, Jinx Schwartz for her review of Tormenta Isla, Book #3 in the Isla Mujeres Mystery series:

Jinx Schwartz author of the Hetta Coffey series
Author @JinxSchwartz
Reasons I enjoyed this book: Action-packed, Easy-to-read, Entertaining, Page-turner

Tormenta Isla: Murder and mayhem on a tiny island in paradise (Isla Mujeres Mystery Book 3)
Lynda L. Lock
.
Crime Fiction, Action and Adventure
A mysterious disappearance of a local man and the looming threat of hurricanes headed towards the peaceful Caribbean island of Isla Mujeres create havoc in the lives of Jessica and her rescue mutt, Sparky.

Available as e-books on Amazon, Nook, Kobo, iBooks

Available as paperback on Isla Mujeres or via Amazon

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Caribbean Sea - Lost & Found

Lost sole

It’s astounding.  The stuff that floats in from the Caribbean Sea is downright fascinating.  

From huge to tiny, boats to drift seeds, wood to rope, all sorts of weird and interesting junk gets tossed up onto the sand.

In our life BD, Before Dog, I combed our neighbourhood beach on a regular basis looking for fun stuff.  

Oars from Cuban refugee boat 

Now that we are WD, With Dog, my short, terrier-cross, walking partner doesn’t have a lot of patience for my frequent stopping and poking at strange items lodged in the sand.  Walks are all about him!  

It’s probably not a bad thing as our house was getting a bit crowded with the treasures I have dragged home. Our casa resembles a hut owned by castaways, salvaging anything that might be potentially useful.

One of my best finds was a set of long wooden oars used by Cuban refugees to land their insubstantial, home-made craft just a couple of hundred feet north of our house.  The boat was equipped with a diesel motor hooked up to a tiny plastic propeller.  The oars were necessary as a backup for the motor, and as assistance when landing the boat eighty-five miles from Cuba on Isla Mujeres.  Not a leisurely cruise, but a dangerous uncomfortable struggle towards a better life.

The start tangled and heavy. Small spheres under bench.

More recently I entertained three young workers with my valiant struggle to drag four hundred feet of wet, sand-saturated, seaweed-encrusted rope out of the water and up to our house.  

From their vantage point at the top of our ocean-side palapa they could chart my painfully slow progress.  They were still giggling when they joined me on the beach to drag my newest treasure home.  

Six hours later - a bit of fun for the patio

It took me six hours of untangling, and re-winding before I was satisfied with the results.  A large pale-blue rope ball now sits on our patio along with a collection of smaller spheres all made with various bits of rope scoured from the ocean.

We usually leave the various fishing net floats, solid pieces of lumber, or bits of netting out on the street.  Someone, somewhere on the island will find a use for these bits and pieces.  

The plastic bottles, old toothbrushes and other plastic junk we collect fairly regularly and toss into our household garbage.  It’s all part of living on an ocean shared by billions of people.

Prettier treasures include jars, boxes, and bowls of shells and fascinating seed pods in every size, shape and colour.  

Monkey Hearts (Sea Hearts) and Deer Eyes drift seeds

There is a sun-bleached turtle skull that I found several years ago, perched on the top of our microwave alongside a bowl of the fragile husks left behind by sea urchins.  

Another bowl holds a collection of volcanic pumice gathered from the beach.  It’s useful for scrubbing calloused feet and I have a thirty-year supply, just in case. 

And sea glass, oh, my goodness, sea glass.  White, aqua, royal blue, pale green and even a few bits of lavender.  

My favourite pieces of sea glass

I collected so much that I finally set it free - salting our beach with twenty pounds of sea glass that I didn’t need. 

It’s amazing how many visitors find sea glass in front of our house.   

I kept a few choice bits for me to eventually have turned into a necklace or a bracelet.  

Eventually.

Moto-helmet washed up on beach

There is always an abundant supply of shoes on the beach, never a matching pair just lonely, mismatched, barnacle-encrusted shoes.  A number of the lost soles have found their way to a shoe-tree built by a guest at Punta Piedra.  The shoes decorating the tree come and go, depending the whim of passing dogs who take a fancy to this one or that one as a good chew toy.  

Along with flip-flops and stilettos the occasional moto helmet floats up on the sand, or a set of keys.  Questions like: Why? How? Who? Flicker through my mind when I see them.

Lawrie repairing fiberglass moon

The most useful bit of flotsam and jetsam that hit the beach several years ago was not found by us, but another islander.  

It was an eight-foot tall fiberglass crescent moon, a very old remnant from an out-of-business bar in centro.  

Lawrie’s sister’s house is called Casa Luna Turquesa so as a surprise fun gift for Linda and Richard we purchased the moon.  

Garry - airbrushing on paint

Lawrie repaired the battered fiberglass shape and an artist friend, Garry Sawatzky, airbrushed on a new paintjob.  The moon has become a focal point of the large swimming pool at Casa Luna Turquesa.   

But the biggest bit of beach junk, was and still is, the navigational light buoy that drifted in over a year ago from the channel at the southern end of the island.  It’s huge.  Unwanted and unclaimed by the various government agencies it is slowly beginning to flake away, bit by rusty bit.   

We aren’t allowed to remove it, or cut it up.  Nature will gradually take its course and in twenty years’ time no one will know it was here.

Slowly, slowly rusting away. 

In the meantime, I really need to convince our little rescue mutt, Sparky, to enjoy beachcombing.  

There are some pretty cool treasures to be found out there.

Hasta Luego

Lynda & Lawrie