The changes in my life in the last two years were unbelievable, even for me. I guess you could say I have evolved from a little old fat man who retired to care for an ailing wife into owning half of a multi-billion dollar endeavor.
It all started when I placed an ad on a kinky site just to see what would happen. For over two years there was little activity, a few notes from other people who seemed to be doing the same thing I was, just looking. Then it happened; a serious sounding message from a gal named Sandy who lived about two hundred fifty miles away. We corresponded for several months before we were able to meet.
From that point everything went into fast forward. A chance meeting with a German high roller who went by the name of Klaus Gerber and within a month I was involved in developing a playground for many people with tastes that were frowned upon in the vanilla world.
A cover story was developed that deflected unwanted attention as a large amount of land was purchased and to all outward appearances it was nothing more than an agricultural experiment.
The number of people who wished to join our little group soon outgrew the existing properties and more area was added until it had become a city covering forty-nine square miles that included the farming activities.
The ability of Klaus to pick undervalued stocks had financed many millions of dollars in construction and equipment. A major stock market manipulation involving European corporations owned primarily by the Russian and French mafias had netted unbelievable wealth that totaled nearly a trillion dollars. It also created political repercussions worldwide. Many corrupt politicians were still hiding or had been killed, many large investment banks that held the stocks as collateral had taken a bath and some that were heavily invested in the corruption no longer existed.
After two years of hard work the Project and the City of Hopeful were both on a sound footing. The original cover story was now a fact; the farming activities were showing a small profit. The property taxes from the city had made the entire county one of the most prosperous in the state.
Never one to be satisfied, Klaus had purchased a group of three Islands a couple hundred miles from the Bahamas in April. I had studied all the tapes and photos available but they were not the same as being there. Now, the first week of August, I felt it was time to visit this new property.
Many purchases had been made to facilitate the development of the islands. A tugboat and a dozen barges were purchased as soon as the property transaction was completed and they had been making trips back and forth from the islands to Mexico and other South American countries for building supplies and equipment as well as fuel for the equipment.
Jim, the man who was in charge of all construction projects had relocated to the islands along with several hundred construction workers. They’d spent the last three months on the center and largest island building a runway and loading docks as well as temporary housing for themselves.
The center island was unpopulated and was considered Taboo by the natives as it had been used as the location for executions of runaway slaves in past centuries. It was a volcanic island shaped like a banana, about three miles wide by six miles long. The long axis was nearly north and south with the east side dropping off in fifty-foot cliffs to the sea. The west side of the island was mostly one hundred foot wide white sandy beaches with a large, protected cove in the center. An old eroded volcano occupied the center of the island and reached a height of three thousand feet.
The master plan called for the removal of the top of the old volcano to a height of only one thousand feet and to use it as the airfield. The rock that was removed would be used to provide a barrier around the shipping docks in a manner that would protect them from the tropical storms and hurricanes that were a part of the weather patterns in the tropics.
Housing would be on the western side of the island. The beaches would not be disturbed, as housing would be well inland from them. The cove would be developed as a marina for private watercraft and seaplanes.
Sandy and I left the city in one of the recently acquired planes, a piston powered twin engine Beachcraft piloted by Ron Bradford. The flight was slow but relaxing as we stopped for fuel a couple times. The airstrip wasn’t ready yet but we managed to land on a section of new road as Jim had suggested, without a problem.
Jim met us in his birthday suit with a four-wheel drive van for the short trip to the partially completed hotel where our luggage was put in a ground floor room and our clothes were discarded. He then gave us the quickie tour starting with the hotel.
The hotel was located about five hundred feet from the beach and fifty feet above the high tide mark. The building was huge, a thousand feet long and two stories high painted a pure white so that the sun actually reflected from it. It also was just a big box, there wasn’t a portico or any type of ornamentation or trim on it. Jim said that would come later as time permitted.
It was facing the ocean so that it would provide a striking view of the beautiful cove on the western side of the island. It was designed to be hurricane proof with eight-inch reinforced concrete outer walls and six-inch reinforced concrete walls inside. The double walls were separated by twelve inches of foam insulation.
To my surprise there was a basement under the hotel; Jim described it as a bomb shelter with eighteen inches of concrete in the ceiling. The heavy construction wasn’t noticeable and the basement area was designed for conferences, the mechanical rooms and storage areas. The only indication of the real design was the exceedingly large and heavy watertight doors leading to the basement.
Jim explained that there was also a large section set aside for emergency generators and provisions storage but the equipment had not arrived yet. He also explained that all the floors in the building were concrete, even the roof was concrete. The windows were dual pane tempered glass that could withstand a blow from a large sledgehammer. The building was designed to survive two hundred and fifty mile per hour winds, as the islands were located in the path of many of the hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
Jim pointed out that all the rooms were actually small efficiency apartments with the living, kitchen and dining areas all combined with a separate large bedroom and shower area.
Jim loaded us back into the van and he drove along a newly cut road that was just wide enough for the van. He explained, "The roads will be finished as they are needed. Right now the ones needed to move supplies to the construction areas come first; we will make them pretty when the heavy construction is completed."
The roadway began to rise as it followed the contour of the old volcano. Soon the incline was very noticeable and the roadway seemed to have been carved out of the side of the mountain. The angle of incline was constant as we climbed up the side of the mountain. Jim said it was an eight percent grade that was over two miles long. A little calculating in my head and that seemed to come out at just about one thousand feet of elevation.
The road was only twenty feet wide and large trucks were using it also. There seemed to be regular convoys going up and down so the van was often forced to the outside of the road where I had a wonderful view of the beach and the shear drop of several hundred feet.
The road suddenly ended as we reached a flat and level area that looked to be a mile square. A large part of the volcano had already been removed. Sandy gasped as she saw the vertical rock that seemed to extend into the sky in front of us.
Jim kind of chuckled, "We are going to leave as much of the volcano intact as possible to act as a wind break from the tropical storms that often hit here."
As we were looking at the unbelievable amount of material he was proposing to move there was a loud explosion. A cloud of dust soon formed but it seemed to take a long time for any of the rock to move. The wind had blown the dust away before it was evident that the whole face of the mountain was in slow movement. Little by little I saw the bottom begin to move, then it just seemed to disappear and the whole side of the mountain came down in a heap.
A swarm of bulldozers and front-end loaders began to work on that pile of rocks. The bulldozers moved the rocks into a position so that the front-end loaders could manage to pick them up. To my surprise they didn’t load the trucks but turned and drove into what looked like a cave in the side of the volcano.
When the front-end loaders returned empty I asked Jim, "What did they do with the rocks?"
He laughed, "That is a tunnel which opens out on the other side of the volcano. The rock is dumped near the other end and then shoved out just before quitting time directly into the ocean to be used as a breakwater for the docks. During the day cranes and barges are placing it in position around the freight docks that have been built. When the removal is complete it will be closed off and used as a hanger for the smaller planes"
Okay, I knew that, it was just the manner of getting it there that surprised me.
The southern tip of the island was a couple hundred feet higher than the airfield and Jim explained that a larger cavern had been created to be used as fuel storage. Other caverns were designated as parts and equipment locations. Several large hangers capable of accommodating the 747s and the C-130 were also being constructed using the same type wall construction as the hotel but they would have external supports for the roofs.
A second set of storage facilities and hangers would be built on the northern end of the island also. Both of these raised areas would be covered with solar panels that were built to withstand the wind speeds that were common to the area.
Jim was ready to head back down but we had to wait for a loaded truck that was carrying reinforced concrete beams up the mountain; it was long enough that we would have a problem getting past it on the curves in the road.
While we were waiting for the truck to arrive I asked Jim where the administration offices were. He grinned, "We are using several of the apartments in the hotel right now. Many of the construction workers are married and their wives are handling most of the office stuff."
When we arrived at the hotel he drove right past it to continue along the beach. We soon were in an area of tropical jungle that extended almost to the high tide markings and again there was just a one-lane road that had been recently made.
We soon came to a clearing where heavy equipment had been carving out an area for private cottages and homes. They were a good distance from the actual beach and at an elevation that would protect them for any storm surge.
I checked my watch to see that it was two in the afternoon but no one was working; they were all clustered at the southern side of the clearing. Jim drove over to them with a scowl on his face as if someone was going to get a good ass chewing.
We got out of the van and followed Jim to the group of men. He asked the foreman, "What the hell is going on here?"
The foreman turned to him, "We have discovered something."
Jim moved past him and into the edge of the vegetation and I was right on his heels. Something that was a dull gray color could be seen a few feet further into the bushes and small trees.
Jim had one of the bulldozers come up and remove enough undergrowth so that we could get to it without chopping the stuff out of the way. Slowly the bulldozer uncovered the remains of an old seaplane.
Ron, the pilot, moved forward and pushed his way even further towards the wreck. The rest of the crew began to chop everything out of the way and it became evident it was a fairly large plane. There was some damage to the leading edge of the left wing and the propeller blades were also damaged but the fuselage seemed to be intact although it was hard to tell as it had settle several feet into the soft ground over the years.
Ron turned and yelled, "It’s what was called a China Clipper" and was operated by Pan American World Airways in the mid ‘30s. He continued to push forward until he could see the side of it more completely. He turned and said, "The paint is almost completely gone but it can only be the Hawaii Clipper that was the first aircraft to ever be highjacked.
Jim was not impressed, to him it was just another unwanted problem but Ron was excited about it. "What do you mean highjacked? This pile of junk has been here for at least fifty years."
"Closer to sixty years as far as I can determined. I am very interested in aviation history and there were only three of these Martin Model 130s ever built, all of them in 1935. Two crashed and one ‘disappeared’ over the Pacific Ocean, the Hawaii Clipper. It was highjacked by the Japs in 1938 and was seen in Japan after the war. I don’t know how it got here but I’ll bet a month’s pay this is it."
Jim instructed the bulldozer operator to hook a couple chains to it and pull it out of the way. Ron immediately disagreed with this, "That plane is an antique and represented the first major step forward in Transcontinental air travel; it needs to be preserved."
I asked Jim if it would be possible to remove it without damaging it further. "It will depend on how badly it’s corroded. It may fall apart when we try to move it."
"See what you can do. It would be nice to have a big flying boat."
Ron looked at me in surprise, "You mean you want to restore it?"
I laughed, "Sure, why not? It shouldn’t cost any more than the 737s we bought."
While Ron was thanking me for saving the plane Jim was mumbling about scrap collectors.
Jim soon relented and instructed the crew to clear the area around the plane so that the recovery operation could begin. He turned to Ron, "How much does that thing weigh?"
"I think it is in the range of 80,000 pounds."
Jim thought for a couple minute, "About the same as a fully loaded semi truck and trailer then." He turned to the foreman, "See if you can find some wide web straps that are long enough to go around the wings where they attach to the fuselage and get a crane in here and lift it up enough to see how badly it is damaged. You may have to do some patch work on it to make it float. I want it up and out of here in the next couple days."
Ron was still in shock but I felt I knew who would want to be the pilot of the renovated plane.
When we returned to the van I borrowed Jim’s cell phone and called Bill back in Texas to have him locate a company that would be able to rebuild the Hawaii Clipper.
I had noticed that the men didn’t seem to be concerned about being bitten by snakes or rodents and I hadn’t seen any flies or mosquito either. Finally I had to ask Jim why. "I had the island sprayed several times while we were getting ready for the move. Now if it isn’t green and growing out of the ground it is dead except for the birds. An ultra sonic beacon was set up to broadcast at a frequency that drove them away"
Boy oh boy; the environmentalists are going to have a field day if they ever find out about this.
The hotel had much more to offer than Jim had shown us earlier. There was a cafeteria-style restaurant with a full menu as well as an indoor swimming pool.
While we were eating Sandy brought up the subject of a playroom. Jim said, "First things first; we needed some housing before play areas. However the roof of this building is being used for that on a regular basis."
I looked around the large dining room and recognized many of the same men that had worked on the construction projects in The City but this time they were with their wives. No one was dressed and there were many modifications to be seen with pierced nipples being the most prevalent followed closely by hood piercings.
Sandy had received a lot of attention when we entered the cafeteria due to the decorations she had. Her nipples were pierced and stretched and she had a shiny coil threaded through her clit and multiple lip piercing.
There were many young people from the groups that Jerry had organized from the colleges in the States. Some had graduated and were permanent members and employees while others were here to earn extra spending money for the fall term. Jim said he was impressed with the way they worked together and followed orders. Several of them were engineering graduates and had made some good suggestions from time to time.
Jim was busy pointing out the various projects some of the people had worked on in the city and it seemed that a few of them had been on almost every project.
I asked where Paul was staying, "He is on the north island where the local government is located and is in the middle of negotiations with them." I made a mental note that I would spend several days with him going over the legal aspects of the transition of these poverty-ridden islands into a major asset.
The meal was concluded and the people were drifting out of the room a few at a time. Jim saw his wife, Lucy, with a group of other women and asked her to join us as we walked out of the hotel and strolled toward the beach.
The sun was low in the sky and there was a soft breeze coming off of the ocean as we made our way across the white sand to join several other people. Caribbean style music was playing from a boom box someone had thought to bring.
Several people were swimming near the shore while others were relaxing and enjoying the beautiful evening.
I asked Jim about the safety of swimming in the ocean. "It’s about as safe as we can make it. There’s always the possibility of a jelly fish or a sting ray wandering into the area but even that would be unusual."
"I was thinking more about sharks."
He grinned, "I don’t think there are very many left in this area."
Interesting comment, "From what I was able to find on the internet there have always been sharks in this area."
"There may be a few drift in but they will be handled also."
"Handled how?"
"I put a hundred dollar bounty on them with the locals on the other islands."
Here we go again, the environmentalists were going to be all over us but it was reassuring to know that ‘Jaws’ would not happen here.
"And just how did you account for the money?"
He grinned, "As local food purchases. That big steak you had for dinner was shark."
We watched the younger people swim and play until the sun had set. As they were building a bonfire we slipped away to our rooms. We showered together then cuddled on the bed as we fell asleep. It had been a long and tiring day.
I woke up wondering where I was for a few minutes before I remembered, must be getting old. Sandy was still asleep as I made a pot of coffee that seemed to take forever to brew. A better and faster coffee maker was going to be a definite requirement. Finally with a full cup in hand I ambled over to the windows that provided a wonderful view of the beach and cove to discover the whole area seemed to be in the shadows. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, it was eight so why so dark?
We had arrived at midday with the sun high in the sky, it never occurred to me that the hotel was on the evening side of the mountain with a beautiful view of the sunsets but sunrises were hidden from view. This would explain why the apartments were designed like a fifteen-foot wide mobile home that was sixty feet long; no one would want to stay in the shadow side of the hotel. I guess you can’t have everything.
Sandy was lying on her back and was still sound asleep. Her nipples were standing up asking for attention due to the stretchers that had increased their length by almost a half inch and were still in place and doing a wonderful job. Her legs were spread displaying the shiny coil threaded through the piercings in her lips and terminating in the piercing through her clit.
I gently and quietly moved back onto the bed but this time it was between her legs rather than beside her. I ran my tongue over the tip of her clitty to see if there was any reaction; there was. She opened her legs wider and moaned. I continued to tickle that little nub for several minutes without waking her as she began to push her pussy up for more attention.
Just as she began to open her eyes I sucked her clitty between my lips and flicked my tongue back and forth across it as fast as possible. I moved my hand into position and began to run a finger back and forth along the side of the coil producing sensations in her lips and clit at the same time.
She was suddenly was wide awake and screaming as a giant orgasm racked her from her head to her toes. Being the nice guy I am I continued the stimulation until she experienced several more orgasms and was nearly in subspace.
I turned her onto her side and slowly and gently began to enter her back door which was a new experience with the apadravya piercing. Finally after several tries I got the door open enough to let me in. I continued to enter her until I was completely imbedded in her. I slowly withdrew most of the way and then returned to full depths as I started a series of long (as long as nature would permit) slow strokes. I reached around her and rubbed the tips of her stretched nipples and to my amazement she came again and then another time too before I managed a strong ejaculation.
We lay on the bed for several minutes as we both returned to the here and now. Slowly the urge to get a cup of coffee overcame my desire to stay where I was a little longer.
I poured two cups of coffee and brought one of them to her as I returned to sit on the side of the bed. She sat up, took a sip and said, "Wow that was a wonderful way to start the day."
I had to agree. We showered and made our way to the cafeteria for a little breakfast, a cup of coffee and a roll for me and bacon and eggs for her.
I noticed she was a little unsteady as we walked to a table. I asked her if there was a problem. "Yes, I am still sensitive enough that the coil is driving me crazy right now."
"Good, then it’s working just as it was designed to do."
She made a face, "It’s working too well. I’ll be glad when it is time to remove it and go to rings or barbells there."
I let that comment go by. The change could be made anytime now; it had been several months and the healing was complete.
After breakfast we ambled around the hotel determining where everything was. I found the main office and asked if there was such a thing as a motor pool. The pretty, naked girl with pierced nipples sitting behind the desk said there was and there was still one vehicle available. As she stood up to get the key from a board mounted on the wall behind her desk I noticed she also had a hood piercing. Nice. We walked out side to a big surprise; the available vehicle was my old van I had disposed of by shipping it out of the country. It was dirty but still drove just fine. I headed toward the wrecked plane to see what was being done there.
I parked before I got into the soft ground around the plane. There was a crew cutting small trees down and trimming them to make a sort of road up to the plane that would be needed to prevent the crane from sinking.
A large area had been cleared completely around the plane and it was in full view now. I hadn’t realized that it was so big, it must have a wingspan of a hundred fifty feet and there were four big engines attached to those wings. Considering the time of its construction it was indeed a very large plane.
Several men were installing a three foot wide webbed belt around the base of the left wing and had a large support beam between the ends of it to prevent the weight of the plane from crushing the wing. As I watched they moved to the other side of the fuselage and began working on the belt there.
As we watched I heard something moving slowly down the road toward us but it wasn’t visible as the road had a slight curve around a grove of trees. Soon it came into view -- a large crane moving on its own power. There weren’t any trucks and trailers available that could haul it.
It was moving at about two miles an hour and had probably been on the way here since dawn. I watched as it slowly began to run up onto the improvised roadway of tree limbs; it seemed to be holding the huge machine up just fine.
The web belt had been installed on the other wing and as the men came down I recognized that Ron was directing them. The plane was in as good a pair of hands as possible with him in charge.
He made a point of coming over to thank me again for saving the plane from the scrap heap.
The roadway was apparently completed as all the men moved to the side as the crane lumbered into position close to the fuselage and just behind the left wing. Ron said the plan was to lift it straight up and slowly swing it in a clockwise direction on to more solid ground where a complete inspection could be done.
The attachments were completed and the slack was removed from all the belts, chains and cables. As more tension was applied the crane began to tilt slightly forward and then tilted some more. When the rear of the caterpillar treads were a foot from the ground the operator stopped trying to lift it. As he shut the engine down to idle, creaking noises could be heard coming from the plane.
The operator climbed down out of the crane and walked over to Ron and me, "This is a fifty ton crane but it isn’t moving that thing."
Ron was getting upset and said to give him a few minutes to think. We were standing beside the rear of the crane and I noticed that over several minutes the height of the counter weight on the rear of the crane seemed lower. I looked at the treads and they seemed to be getting lower also. It wasn’t obvious yet but the plane was slowly being pulled from the muck it had settled into so many years ago.
Ron was just standing there with his head down, still thinking. The crane operator was leaning against a small tree waiting for a decision as to the next move. I ambled back to the van and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and returned; the crane operator bummed one of them and continued to wait for instructions.
Finally Ron walked over to me, "I don’t know what to suggest now."
I sat down on the ground and leaned back against a tree, "Well, I’m just going to sit here and see what happens."
I asked the crane operator, "What were you intending to do if you were able to lift the plane?"
"Just swing it around to a more solid area so they could look it over."
"How were you intending to get it into the water?"
"Jim mentioned something about digging a channel from the beach to it."
I turned back to Ron, "I think you need to get the crew busy getting the area cleared for the channel."
He looked at me as if I were crazy, "If we can’t get it out of there we won’t need a channel."
"It’s coming out; in fact it is up a few inches right now."
He turned and looked at the plane, to discover it had slowly overcome the suction of the muck and was showing about six inches of badly stained shin. The crane operator climbed back into the machine and soon had it revved up. He slowly put a little more tension on the cable and the crane began to tilt forward as before. He shut it down and just sat there waiting for the additional lift to take effect.
Slowly, over the next hour the plane was lifted free and slowly swung ninety degrees, which positioned it over more solid ground.
Ron was the first man to approach the free-swinging plane to inspect the bottom for damage. He was soon covered with the remains of the muck it had been lifted from as the residue continued to drop from the plane. From my vantage point beside the crane I didn’t see any heavy stream of muck or water falling, which would indicate to me that the bottom was mostly intact.
Ron returned after a quick trip to the shore to rinse the crud off and reported there was some damage but it all seemed to be dents and scrapes. He hadn’t found any holes.
I asked the crane operator to call Jim on his cell phone and request a water truck to wash the goop off of the plane. The truck arrived in a few minutes and the plane was clean within an hour. Miraculously the paint on the bottom had survived in most part and the structure appeared sound.
Everyone’s attention turned to the problem of getting the plane those last hundred feet to where the water would be deep enough at high tide to help support it. A man with a long steel pike was jabbing it into the ground every few feet to test the thickness of the soil which was determined to be about a foot deep and held in place by the roots of the carpet of vegetation.
The sinkhole the plane had been in seemed to be the best place to start, as it was apparently an indentation in the base lava that had formed the islands.
The crane was released from the plane, moved over beside the sinkhole and a dragline bucket attached. Soon there was a pile of muck beside the hole and the contour of the depression was becoming evident; about seventy-five feet wide and twenty feet deep. Water was filling it as fast as the decaying vegetation was scooped out.
It was well past noon when I decided they were headed in the right direction and returned to the hotel for lunch. The cafeteria was almost deserted and the serving counter was bare; all that was left was some salad. The cook let me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t do special orders and I could have a salad or go hungry. This was not a good time for a confrontation so I settled on a cup of coffee and a dried up roll left over from breakfast. Sandy had a salad.
After that hearty meal I decided to investigate the cove. Sandy thought it was a good time for a nap; back in the City I would have offered to help her but I wanted to see the rest of the island.
The cove was now a marina with all the docks and piers that would normally be expected. Several small boats were anchored there which appeared to be private craft belonging to the members. There were also a couple small, single engine floatplanes there.
The only person I saw was a young man, actually he looked more like a kid, sitting on the fuel dock. I walked over to him and asked, "Where are all the people?"
He glanced up at me as he dog-eared a page in the book he was reading, "Most are working. There are a few women out fishing though."
He continued to look at me as I scanned the open ocean to see if the fishing boats were in sight, I didn’t see anything out there.
He broke the silence, "Did you want to use one of the boats?"
I hadn’t expected that, apparently some of the boats belonged to the soon to be established government but it sounded like a good way to explore the area. "Yes, I would like one for a few hours."
He pointed out a sixteen-foot outboard boat that seemed a little small to be in the ocean. I inquired about a larger craft and pointed to a thirty-five foot cabin cruiser with a flying bridge.
The young man shook his head, "Can’t do it, that one belongs to the boss."
Hmm, "Who is the boss?"
"I think his name is Jim."
"Do you have a cell phone?"
"Sure."
"Then get him on the phone."
"Are you are going to get me in trouble?"
"Nope, I’m just going to ask him if I can use his boat." He dialed the phone and handed it to me.
Jim answered quickly and when I asked about the boat he replied, "Just stay put, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Have it fueled and ready."
I relayed the message to the kid who hesitated for a few seconds before actually beginning to move. The cabin cruiser was about three hundred feet away but at a different pier so he had to walk almost a quarter of a mile to get to it. He started it up and very expertly maneuvered it into position to be fueled.
While he was moving the boat I glanced at the book he was reading, a college textbook on mechanical engineering; one of Jerry’s kids apparently.
Jim arrived before the fueling was completed and thanked the kid for being prompt. When it was complete he signed a ticket for it.
"Does that ticket mean you are actually going to pay for the fuel?"
"Nope, just a way of keeping track of where it goes so I can determine what to order and how often."
As we got into the boat he asked if he should assume the role of Captain or let an old duffer like me drive. The kid on the dock laughed and asked if I was his father.
In a much louder voice than needed I asked Jim, "Can we use him as an anchor?"
Jim laughed at that but told the kid, "Nope, no relationship except that he is the boss."
The kid was a lot gutsier than I expected, "You mean for the construction?"
Jim chuckled, "I guess you could say that since he is in charge of everything, The Project, The City and now The Islands."
The kid looked stunned but didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t bother to correct Jim, I was only one of two men in charge; he hadn’t mentioned Klaus.
Jim expertly maneuvered the cabin cruiser away from the dock and into open water. He set the throttle at a fast idle and we moved along the shoreline at about ten miles per hour, or should I say ten knots?
We were about a quarter mile off shore and with the sun well past its zenith the hotel was a brilliant white against the green background. Very pretty.
We were headed south and soon came to the area where the big seaplane was located. By now the crane had cleared the channel and it was obvious that the plane had been using the little inlet as a base. The damage to it was probably from a hurricane.
Further south the white sand beach gave way to a rocky area and then to shear cliffs several stories high. Jim explained that as time permitted there would be considerable tunneling and large penthouse-type living quarters would be made in them. It sounded good but was going to be a lot of work.
At the southern tip, below where the hangers were being constructed, the sandy beaches were again in sight but only about fifty feet wide and again terminating against the cliffs. Jim said that high tide would cover all but about twenty feet of them.
As we started back in a northerly direction he pointed out the southern most of the islands that appeared as a small rise in the horizon; it was fifteen miles away. He explained that for the time being the islands were known by their locations until proper names were assigned to them. The northern island was North Island, the center island was Center and the southern island South Island. Not very imaginative but would serve the purpose for the time being.
The curve in the island’s east side prevented a long range view as only a mile or so of the coast was in sight from the short distance we were offshore; just high cliffs as far as could be seen. The further we went the higher the cliffs seemed to get.
After about 15 minutes of this unchanging view a large pile of rocks at least fifty feet high was encountered. Jim checked his wristwatch and put the boat in neutral and suggested I watch the opening high up on the cliff face.
I lit a cigarette and relaxed in one of the captain’s chairs on the flying bridge and took in the scene now visible. Some distance further to the north of the rock pile was a crane mounted on a barge. There was a second barge secured to the first and a tugboat attached to both of them. Jim handed me a pair of binoculars and I focused on the barges and tugboat for a couple minutes.
Soon there was a rumbling noise and I quickly lowered the binoculars to see what else was going on. There were tons and tons of rocks falling from the opening above. This continued for several minutes.
As the dust settled the tugboat began to move and slowly put the barges up against the rock pile. The crane began loading the empty barge. When it was filled to capacity it was moved a little further out to sea and aligned due east of the rock pile but several hundred foot further away from the cliffs.
Suddenly the water around the barge began to churn. Jim explained that the barge was equipped with bottom doors that opened to let the rock fall. He also said the rocks were the base for a thirty-foot high seawall that was being built around the area that was going to be the freight docks for the island.
He started the boat again and we continued the tour up the east coast. The cliff gradually diminished to a white sand beach just before the northern tip was reached. The beach continued back to the marina. All in all a very nice little island.
I decided that I would have my house constructed on the northern end of the island where the sun would not be blocked by the mountain.