Let's Build An Airplane

My daughter's father-in-law is a doctor on Treasure Island. It has some other Spanish name that I can never remember. Rumor has it that it was the model for the island in the book Treasure Island. I liked the book, so that's what I call it. Treasure Island is part of Cuba, and Cuba, being run by the commies, is impoverished. So I was thinking that the next time somebody goes to visit, they should take a package of medical supplies, you know, stuff that would actually be useful as opposed to trinkets and cute clothes and other such clap-trap as people see and want.

Catamaran Ferry Iris, Cuba

But then I realized that the contents of the package were immaterial compared to the difficulty of getting it there. You can fly to any number of cities on the main island, but getting to Treasure Island is kind of a pain. There is a ferry (a French catamaran, above), but space is limited, tickets are hard to get, you might have to wait a day or two to get on board.

Antonov AN-2 at the Rafael Cabrera Mustelier Airport

There is a semi-regular air service, but the plane is old and small and not all that regular. With demand as high as it is, they obviously need more capacity of some sort.

Now the first world solution to this kind of problem is to buy a ship or an airliner from an established manufacturer and then extract a continuous stream of cash from the sale of tickets. On one hand this makes good economic sense, but on the other, Cuba is impoverished. I'm not sure ticket sales would be enough to pay first world prices for first world equipment. I don't know how they paid for the ferry. Maybe somebody gave it to them. Or maybe I know nothing of communist finance.

What Cuba, and every other impoverished nation needs, is an industrial base so they can build their own stuff. Building airplanes might be just the ticket. Obviously they wouldn't be able to compete on the world market, because the world market wants stuff that is certified safe by the great government bureaucracies that certify such things. But for the parts of the world that are not part of the first world, a home grown aircraft might be just the ticket.

When I first started writing this diatribe, I was going to go off now on how it should be a simple matter for Cuba, with its highly educated workforce, to go into the aircraft manufacturing business. I mean the biggest part of building an airplane is putting the fuselage together and that's just a matter of sheet metal and rivets. Back in WW2 we put a nation of farmers to work building a glorious fleet of aircraft, and by glorious I mean enormous. I suspect that the USA produced on the order of 100,000 aircraft during WW2. So it really shouldn't be that difficult for Cuba to start building their own aircraft, especially since most of the 3rd world could use a nice cheap, sturdy, small airplane.

But then I read about the fastest ship on the block. Turns out it is made in Tasmania, an island off the south Coast of Australia, an island with no industrial base, no coal mines, no bauxite mines, no giant power plants. How could they possibly hope to compete on the world stage? What's wrong with these people, don't they know you can't do that?

Supposedly one of the reasons the USA has been so successful is because of its industrial might, and we were able to develop that because we have big iron and coal deposits. Tasmania doesn't have any of that. I'm pretty sure their aluminum is imported, maybe even from China, and they were still able to develop a successful industrial scale operation. And it is successful, they are selling their boats all over the world.

Maybe I'm thick, but I can't see any reason why Tasmania should be so successful and Cuba should be such a frigging disaster, other than the fact that the Castro brothers are made-men in the mafia founded by Stalin. It's enough to make you a commie hatin' redneck.

Update January 2023 Replaced a stinky link with better one and a dead link with a good one. See the whole story here.

Isla Aves

Venezuela Protest

Came across a report about Internet access being blocked in Venezuela. Not surprising given the situation (zillions of people protesting the tyrant Maduro). Looking at the list of websites being blocked and I notice https://crimenessincastigo.blogspot.com/ They've blocked somebodies blog? It must be really radical to get the attention of Maduro's thugs. Let's go take a look, well, we'll take a look at Google's translation. It starts out with a piece about the financial clubs the US government is using to beat on Maduro's supporters. It's all rather complicated, but it might be having some effect.

The next story is completely different:

-On December 26, three Navy personnel assigned to the Simón Bolívar scientific-naval base, on Isla de Aves, went to sea in a small inflatable boat. Soon after, they lost sight of them, and since then nothing else has been known about them. The zodiac-type boat-equipped with an outboard motor-was manned by the first sergeant Víctor García Navarro, and the second corporal Gustavo Fuentes Vera and Yohander Bravo Colmenares. The first known part about this situation indicates that the military went out to do a "sea trial", and that at approximately 4:30 pm the visual contact between the crew and the base, which operates in a palafito-type building, was lost. 

Aves Island with research station

Isla Aves (bird island) is not much more than a rock (it's about 500 yards long), but since Venezuela claims it is an island, they can lay claim to a 200 miles economic zone around their rock, which brings them into conflict with just about everybody else in the eastern Caribbean.

Analysis of the case of Maritime SAR of Isla de Aves made by the Humboldt Rescue Organization.

There was some kind of search mounted for the sailors, but nothing was found, so they might be lost. Or they might have motored over to another nearby island. Guadeloupe is 125 miles away, which is a bit of a stretch for a Zodiac, but with good weather and enough fuel they ought to be able to make it. I think the above map shows they would expect a boat drifting from Isla Aves to wash up on the Yucatan peninsula after two or three months. This is the opposite direction from Guadeloupe, so if our intrepid sailors were trying to escape, the Search And Rescue team would be looking in the wrong place.

Some places that have made it into this blog before.

Top to bottom:
The Dry Tortugas (links to Amazon)
Scorpion Reef
Treasure Island
Swan Island
Isla Aves (this post).

The Dry Tortugas is on this list because I read a book that was set here. I thought I had put up a post about it, but evidently not. The book is Flashback by Nevada Barr, who has written a whole series of murder mysteries, all set in National Parks.

Passport Rules

Treasure Island in the foreground,
Mainland Cuba in the background.

The kids are going to Cuba to visit Osmany's folks over Christmas. They have been planning this trip for months, looking for airline tickets they can afford that won't have them spending umpteen hours in Atlanta, arranging for accommodations, travel to Treasure Island, deciding what to take and figuring out how to pack it all into bags that won't incur an excess weight penalty. We're looking good with only a week until departure and then dutiful daughter gets red flagged on her passport.
    It seems that if you are going to Cuba, you need to have two, full, blank pages in your passport. Daring daughter has used the stuffing out of her passport and if you combined all the blank spots that are left you might get two pages, but that won't cut it. So she needs a new passport.
    She might be able to get one if she drives up to Seattle and pleads her case. And then we might have to drive back a second time to pick it up. No telling. Plus, you need an appointment. Would she even be able to get an appointment? Once again, no idea.
     There is an outfit that claims to be able to get your passport renewed in one day, but they charge $300, and that is on top of whatever the government wants, which is somewhere north of $100. I hate being put over a barrel like this, but it might be the best solution. I'm wondering how they are able to do this, and then I realized that the appointment might be the gating factor. If they book an appointment every day then they can be sure of getting in. So their business model is basically paying for one person to hang around passport central all the time. Or maybe they split their take with the secretary of passport control and he sees that their clients get taken care of. Who knows? In any case, it's a stink load of money for something we shouldn't have to pay for at all, but like I said, this new rule has got us over a barrel.
    On the other side, if you count the missed time from work and the time and effort to drive to Seattle (possibly twice), the $300 begins to look almost reasonable.

P.S. No glasses in your passport photos anymore. Another new rule. I'm thinking we need a subscription service to tell us whenever they make a new rule, which seems to be every couple of months ever since Homeland Security took over.

Alacranes Reef

Alacranes Reef Trip - Robbie Gomez
Music - Tamacún by Rodrigo Y Gabriela
My friend Ned is down in Mexico, off the coast of Yucatan. They're running the Bolder Won out to Alacranes Reef for fly fishermen and scuba divers.

Alacranes Reef, also known as Scorpion Reef

The reef is a protected area, so designated in 1971 by a convention in Ramsar, Iran. (Iran? That hotbed of mad muslim bombers? Well, 1971 was before the revolution.)
    Up until now I thought the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico were synonymous. They aren't. The Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba separate the two. The Caribbean Sea is to the south and east and the Gulf of Mexico is to the north and west.
    There are several other places of interest that could be marked on this map, like the Dry Tortugas, which are about as far west of Key West as Alacranes Reef is north of the Mexican coast. Then there is Treasure Island, site of the pig farm (it's the pinky-nail sized island south by southwest of Havana with the city of Nueva Gerona).

Communist Toadie

Cuban Toad from Treasure Island

Treasure Island

View January 2013 in a larger map
In case you were wondering just where it was. Isla de la Juventud, Cuba

Elephant Ranch

Elephants are having a hard time these days. Every since the international ban on ivory eliminated all sources of legal ivory, the poachers and black-marketeers have been having a hay day. I'm thinking we need an elephant ranch, a place where elephants are protected from poachers. Of course being a ranch, they are going to come to a bad end, but all animals do eventually. Having a ranch might ensure the continuation of the species. I mean if your livelihood depends on having a constant supply of live elephants, you are going to make an effort to see that they do not go extinct. Likewise, if they are your property, you are not going to take kindly to anyone trying to make off with your elephant, dead or alive.
     My kids have all graduated from college, they are looking for work and not having much luck. I'm thinking that maybe I should start some kind of business, and an elephant ranch might be just the thing. Of course there is going to be some god awful politicking involved, but that's something my kids with their liberal arts degrees should excel at. Treasure Island is pretty empty looking, and much closer than Africa. I wonder how elephants would do there? I wonder what Castro's Party would think about such an enterprise. They might really like it, give 'em an opportunity to irritate good ol' Uncle Sam, who is being a king size jerk to pretty much everyone.

Children's Books

I am reading The World At Night by Alan Furst, a really excellent tale. Mr. Furst has written several books about life and espionage during WWII. This one takes place in France. I am reading along and this pops up in the middle of the page:

Seize hommes sur
le coffre d'un mort,
yo ho ho
la bouteille de rhum

Boisson et diable
ont tues les autres
yo ho ho
buvons le rhum

Yo ho ho? Hommes is men, mort is dead, bouteille sounds like bottle, rhum sounds like rum. Um, could this be 15 men on a Dead Man's Chest? Yes, it could and it is. I haven't heard this in like forever, so I went a Googling. I found several recordings on YouTube, but none that I thought really captured the flavor of the song, so you will just have to sing it yourself. And for that we have the lyrics (from Midi Melodies). It was never a real authentic sea chanty. It started as just a couple of lines in Treasure Island, but then it took on a life of it's own.

1. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

2. Fifteen men of the whole ship's list
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

3. Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a yawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

4. Fifteen men of 'em good and true
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev'ry man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

5. More was seen through a sternlight screen
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
'Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin' maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

6. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight,
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!