Another nice day here in middle Florida. The sun shone and the sky was nearly clear and the temperature was up in the mid 70's. I spent the morning normally with reading of email and checking out facebook while eating breakfast. Not much new going on in any of it, so the comics were actually more interesting.
    By late afternoon I had finished all my chores for the day and had decided to drive into town and take in a movie at the theater. They were still playing a movie that opened several weeks ago called 'The Finest Hours', all about a famous rescue that some guys in the Coast Guard did way back in 1952. Four enlisted men at a small boat station in Chatham MA, went out during a blizzard in February of that year and rescued 32 men off of an oil tanker that had split in two off the coast. They did all of this on a wooden hulled 36' Motor Life Boat (MLB), that was designed to hold no more than 12 people in addition to the 4 crewmen.  The story was pretty familiar to me having served for 4 years in the Coast Guard back in the late 70's. It is a rather famous rescue and we even heard about it while in boot camp. Of course it was even more dear to me since my first station was at a small boat station along the Oregon coast. Depoe Bay had two 44' MLB's as well as the very last 36' MLB, just like the one in the movie, to be on active duty. I remember becoming qualified to be a crewman and then later a coxswain, boat driver, on both types of boats. I also remember that I didn't particularly care to run the 36 footer. Having only a single screw, propeller, it was much harder to maneuver than either of the 44's which both had twin screws. That being said, it was fun to take it out once in awhile and to use it on routine 'calls' where we would most often had to go out and tow some type of boat back in, either because they broke down or were sinking or just ran out of fuel.
   So the movie was fun in that I could somewhat envision what the crew must of been going through, even though I never had to take the 36' out in weather like that. ( Not so with the 44's where I was out several times in weather that was just as bad if not worst). I did think that some of their CGI work was a little off in that it seemed like they had the boat going through the water way faster than it ever did in real life. When I was on it 9 knots was it's top speed, and that was only in flat, nearly calm seas. In waves like the ones in the movie, it would never have been going that fast, except maybe if it was surfing down the back side of  a wave. That being said, it was a pretty good movie overall and I certainly felt proud to think that I had a link to those men and all of the others that have served on small boats in the Coast Guard.
   I ate tostadas and burritos at Taco Bell after the movie. Maybe not the best Mexican food around, but its cheap, easy and sometimes I find myself craving it. From there it was off to Home Depot to find some ant traps for the trailer. The last couple of days these large black ants have been showing up in the trailer, especially on the counter where I keep my bananas and avocados. I'm not sure this stuff will work on these larger black ants, but it has worked before on smaller sugar ants. Thankfully I haven't been invaded by fire ants.... that would not be a good thing.
   Today's photos are still from the week I spent contra dancing on St Croix in the Caribbean. These deal with an old sugar plantation that was named 'Little Princess'. It is located within walking distance of the resort condos where we were all staying and it is now administrated by the 'Nature Conservative'.  I always try to walk over to it at least once during my stay there just to see how it has changed over the year. Most of the time it hasn't changed much because there doesn't seem to be a lot of money allocated for this project. But this year it was a pleasant surprise to see that there had been some actual work done, including some general cleanup of the area and some actual remodeling going on in the main house. It will be fun to see what else is done between now and next year.

St. Croix's Little Princess Sugar Plantation - February 8, 2016
Part I

The walk to Little Princess starts from the beach in front of the resorts and moves west along the shore. It is always interesting to see if I can find the trail to the plantation that starts at the beach. This year it took me a couple times up and down the beach before I realized I hadn't walked far enough.

I seem to have pictures of this scene from every year I have been down to St. Croix. My best guess is that I will have many more as it is just so worthy of a picture every year.

There are several storm water drains that run down and into the ocean near the resorts. We really don't want to think about what kinds of bad stuff they are carrying into the sea where we snorkel every day. But one of them has this breakwater to help protect it from the waves and often has native Crusians fishing from it, including these two younger guys using a toss net to see what they can catch.

They didn't seem to be catching a whole lot, but they did seem to be having fun at it.

The 'Big House', or main house of the plantation where the owner would of lived. It was often located on a high point to take advantage of cooling breezes and nice views. It usually had an open floor plan with large windows and doors that could be opened for cross ventilation, as well as large, deep porches to keep the interior cooler.

One of the side entrances. Most of the living spaces were located on the top floor with bottom spaces being for storage and living quarters for house slaves.

A frangipani tree. It has delicate, sweet smelling white flowers that come out at the end of the branches while the rest of the tree is still bare of leaves. 

A local tree.

Many of the sugar plantations had their own windmill to run the cane grinders that ground up sugar cane to extract the juice. Most were built to the same design with the bottom being made up of a conical shaped base made of coral blocks mortared together. The wood and cloth windmill vanes and drive mechanisms were mounted on the top and drove the gears that turned the iron cane grinders near the bottom of the base. There are still quite a few of these structures located around the island including one on the grounds of Sugar Beach resort where we danced.

It was really fun to see papaya trees growing in yards around the island. How nice it would be to be able to go out and pick one for breakfast or dinner.

Down hill from the main house, as well as the windmill, are the rest of the plantation buildings including the actual sugar mill. All of these buildings have fallen apart and are scattered throughout the forest that has moved in and started to reclaim the land. This is the top of the smoke stack from what had been the main mill building.

Near the Big House on the top of the hill is another building that functioned as a storage building as well as offices for the original plantation. It also contained a hospital that took care of the slaves from this plantation as well as from others. Far from being humanitarian, they had a hospital so that they could keep the slaves healthy enough to work.

The back side of the hospital.

Looking at the front facade of the hospital.

More pictures of Little Princess tomorrow.

*brk