Adjacent to Motu Logan, Tuamotus 5 June 2010 17.7686S 140.6737W

Our back deck looks like a junkyard – Frank and Kennan’s own paradise. They’re back there now, taking apart an old defunct fishing buoy with a VHF transmitter and antenna. I’m trying to get Kennan to write an article for “Make Magazine” about “Makers in Paradise.” Yes, the beach combing here is incredible. Yesterday Frank found an old glass float – probably over 100 years old. He’s also collecting the egg shaped hard foam buoys, to make a beaded necklace for Silver Lining (protection for the nasty old concrete and wood docks and piers we see here, designed more for really big ships – our inflatable fenders are jello when they come between SL’s 20 tons and one of those quays). Kennan found two toothbrushes and a camping sleeping pad, which he delivered to “Motu Logan”- supply donations for Logan’s abandon ship adventure. At one point I said, “Boy it would be nice to find a bucket that didn’t fall to pieces in the sun” (we’ve broken a few). Lo and Behold, Frank comes back with an intact bucket. As we were walking through the coconut groves a gust of wind gave Kennan worries, and he decided an essential item for motu explorations was a hardhat – voila – today I found him a hardhat. Ask and you shall receive. This must be where all the rainbows land; there are treasures galore and an abundance of squalls.

The downside is that not all of this stuff is healthy for a reef. We’ve decided, based on the evidence we’ve seen, that scientists take a close second to fisherman in the creation of beach trash, maybe vying for first since their devices have bigger more lethal batteries than the fisherman’s. We’ve found an incredible number of little aluminum boxes with damaged weather instruments (pressure, temp, etc.) Probably dropped around the oceans of the world by balloon – each with it’s little solar panel, each with it’s little battery pack. Their graveyard is here. Frank picked up one giant flying saucer-like beast that we think may have been used to transmit ocean current information. If so Kennan is keen on getting the GPS sensor out of it. But beach-combing is not exactly finders keepers. International Maritime law has specific rules about who owns what, anything of value and you can be sure it would get complicated. So we’ve asked our correspondents to research that particular buoy for us, and let us know if we should relaunch it back out at sea or leave it.*

We did discuss a potential career as fishing buoy retrievers. Many of the buoys are nice expensive ones, we thought that, like the guys that go around collecting shopping carts in L.A., then returning them to the stores for a fee, we could do the same with buoys. That would be a sight to behold, Silver Lining arriving in port with a deck load of brightly colored round gum-balls. All we need is a good cargo net – hey I think I saw a big fishing net that would fit the bill.

xoxomo

*Update: the flying saucer was a fishing bouy of some kind probably outfitted with a transmitter, to allow fishing boats to find there nets, or their rafts. But it looks impregnable, so it will stay where it lay.