Chapter 2

All things considered, I think we had about $40K in each of the islands except the Rubi-Dee Lagoon. I have no idea what Rubi and Dani spent over the $40K I had in it, but I will say, that they are first class Scrounge Artists, and can talk their way into some amazing deals. If there was ever a Pirate Lagoon, I bet it looked just like theirs. When it's not rented they stay out there, working on the cosmetics of it. They no longer run the treasure boats, so we rent them to whoever comes along. They, along with Kate, are the maintenance crew for all the islands. They clean and change the linens, and keep the refrigerators stocked. I have no idea how they keep track of what they have and what a customer uses. I have heard them say that they stock a six-pack, per customer, per day, of beer. I don't know how that works. I mean, what if only two of the customers are drinking beer, and they have a total of 8 customers? Somebody could get their ass killed messing around out there drunk. Oh well, whatever they are doing seems to work. Clawdy has been keeping them rented, almost to capacity, and at $500 per couple per night, they had paid for themselves inside of two months. It almost seems comical, that we were out there looking for gold, and now we just set here and let the customers bring it to us. I think Leta had the right idea all along, figure out a way to bring more customers.

"Hey Clawdy!"

"Whhaaaat."

"Where are Rubi and Dani?"

"At Beach Island, raking the sand."

"They going to be there all day?"

"No, it only takes about 1 or 2 hours to get the sand back in shape. They are going to Huckleberry next, but you will need to catch them before they go there, because it has some guests."

"Do they rake the beach after each booking?"

"Yep, between the volleyball, football, and grab ass that goes on, it gets tore up pretty good. What do you need?"

"Oh nothing I'll catch them later."

I walked around the shop, and it looked like everybody, but me, had plenty to do. Linda had some books and paper figuring something or other. I wonder what she's thinking about cutting up now. I was looking over her shoulder to see what she was working on. "What in the hell is that?"

"Pontoons for a houseboat. Dani sold her Mothers little house, and she is thinking about building a houseboat to live on, and she had a lot of other ideas that she needed a little math done, to figure them out. She thinks, that with the cost of usable land on the island being so high, that a floating village might be a lot more affordable for a lot of the older residents. She said she sold her mothers place for 140K, and it wasn't much bigger than a dive boat. She figures that they could sell their property on the island, and retire, living on a houseboat permanently docked at a community pier, and it looks possible to me. I'm just basing that on how our islands work. So, I'm trying to design a two bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom, on a small houseboat, to see if we can build them and make money. The community dock will have the holding tanks, desalination units, solar panels, and stuff like that. The costs of the dock maintenance will be split among the residents. I want to have Herb build the pontoons out of metal, and to keep the price down, I have to figure the total load I need to float, and not build them any bigger than needed. One of the biggest problems is how much junk can you put in a house? That would throw my weight calculations out the window."

"Yeah I can see where a piano might cause a problem. Where in the hell do those girls come up with their ideas?"

"I don't know, but they do have a different approach to life than you or I."

"Yeah, have you ever gone swimming with them?" I asked.

"Of course I have, and you know I don't have any tan lines."

"No, you sure don't. I just wish that life could be as simple as they make it."

"And their answer, to you, would be quit making it difficult" Linda stated.

"Yeah, but it would be nice to have a good idea every now and then."

"It's not your job Levy, you listen to people, take their ideas and suggestions, then make the shit happen. You and Leta have the same mindset."

Leta wanted me to take the mosquito boat to Dani, at Huckleberry, so I grabbed a couple of gallons of spray, and filled the fogger, and went to meet them. We had to stay on the mosquitoes in the vines and flowers, because of the nude guests. You could just go around the fence, with the gas powered fogger pointed into it, and it would be good for a week. The girls would do the inside, and around the tree house, so I just traded boats with them and went back to the shop.

By the time I got back to the shop I had thought of some questions about the floating village. "Hey Linda, what will you do with the gray water on the floating village?" "Simple, it had been assigned to two guys at the high school and they were looking into ways to treat it"

"Will it need a water tower?" I asked. "It's the easiest way, and would eliminate a lot of current draw for all the individual pumps." "Can the dock be covered, and the solar panels put on top of it?" "Yep, that's the way it will be." Linda said. "And I guess there are less waves on the west side of the island?" "Yep, it will be on the west side, probably at the end of the street on the north side of our building. and all of this will be right after we have enough information to get the permit"

"Linda, we never needed a permit yet, why now?

"We don't need one, but I'm going to make sure that we submit the plans and get them approved, stamped, and signed, because back in the USA, we couldn't get away with how we are going to do it, and I want to give them every chance to input whatever they can come up with. Then if I don't like what they say, I'll prove them wrong, and still get them to approve it."

"Do you know a girl named Anita? I asked.

"Levy, I'm busy, and don't have time for your bullshit. Go look on the Internet and find some fenders, airbags, or something to keep the boats from beating on each other. They will have to be there permanently so find some that can stand up to it. Then call Herb and ask him to come see us."

"OK, thanks for trusting me with the important jobs Linda."

"I'm just giving you what I think you can handle Levy."

"I stuck my tongue out, at her and went to call Herb."

"Hey Herb, you want to take a look at a job that we might be doing? Well, come on out and leave your foreman there"..."You fired him?"..."Fantastic come on out."

By the time that Herb came to see us, we had already had a meeting, with Leta, Linda, Rubi, Dani, and me. We were all in agreement that if the older folks didn't want to live in them, we would just rent them to tourists, using the websites to advertise. We explained it all to Herb, and told him, "He would have the pontoons, frame for the floor, wall frames, roof frames, dock, and the plumbing with two holding tanks. The pontoons could be long boxes because they were not moving once they were in place and would not have the stress of pounding into waves at 20 miles per hour. They would need to hold up a house and float." He thought that everything but the floor could be made with 3/16" sheet and 1" square tube. The floor would be made of rectangular tube and 1 x 8's. Metal roofs with lots of insulation. 2 windows with screens, and two doors with screens. I pointed out that the pontoons and roof were longer than the house so it would have a front and rear porch with a rail around it. We would use 1/8" plywood for all the walls using 1" Styrofoam for insulation. We are also going to need fence wire to plant vines and flowers on, to shade the houses. Solar panels on the roofs will knock down most of the sun hitting the top, but with only R 5 insulation in the walls, they are going to be hot. "Plan on two desalination units, to fill the water tower, and I will need an extra set of metal parts for Dani to build her house on. Try to figure it as close as you can, if you get hurt we'll make it up. Linda will work with you on the engineering, and Rubi and Dani will be in charge of the build from our end. If anyone asks this is for divers to stay in. If the word gets out we are going to have some pissed off real estate people down on us."

"Why would they be pissed?" Linda asked.

"Because they won't be making a commission on these houses."

The houses will be fabricated in flat sections, the pontoons complete, barged over to us and assembled at our boatyard. Once they were welded together Herb would be through with the structure and Marko would take over with a crew to finish the construction. The cabinets would be built in our shop with common wood, from the sawmills, on the mainland. We will still have to import the plywood, Styrofoam sheets, appliances, lighting, wire, solar panels, and a lot of trim and hardware. The metal, Herb got from a supplier, in Mexico, and got it cheap. He had someone in Belize City, making concrete pilings for him. He could have them made with a metal plate on top, to weld to, and I had not seen him break any of them driving them in.

I think Linda had learned a few tricks from her sister, and came back with everything stamped and signed. If anyone learned about the project now, it would be too late to stop it. Herb came back with a figure of $5K per floating frame, and we gave him the go ahead. Everything was on order and would be delivered by ship to Lupito. Marko and the boys had started on the cabinets, and there was a crew working on the docks.

The docks would be a long center going out from the land and have cross-docks with about 42 feet between them. The houses would be parked in what looked like double carports. The wire fence material was of the type made on 4" grids, with a framework of 1" square tube. The frames had racks for planter boxes welded to them. We had plenty of extra girls from the city to help, and I worked with them for a while on dipping the boards for the floors. We had trouble setting them on their edge because they were only 1" thick. Andy and Linda came up with a rack, made of heavy wire they had bent together. We had put down plastic tarps, before we started, and it is a good thing, because we had polyurethane all over the place. Just not a neat way of doing it. We had a lot of things made before the barge with the first of the house frames came.

We set up the pontoons in a row of the boatyard, and it was only taking them about four hours to weld the assemblies together. They would just set the floor framework on the pontoons, square it up, and start welding. Then the wall frames were welded to the floor, and the roof trusses welded to the top of them. There is no way we can even start to keep up with them. I have a feeling that we are going to have all 25 of them setting in the boatyard before we lift the first one into the water. As it turned out, we had a few days between the barge loads and they brought four at a time. It took Linda, Marko, Buddy, and Russ to get the girls where they could saw, notch out, and screw down the floors, but they would be able to do it by themselves. The wall crew of four girls, started out a bit rough, and took two houses for them to get them as neat as we wanted. We had them do the ceilings first, and then the inside walls. Then we would cut holes for switches and lights, run the wires, put in the Styrofoam sheet insulation, and then cover the outside. We were gluing the 1/8" plywood to the square tube frames and gluing the Styrofoam sheets also. The problem came when we installed the small screws through the plywood and into the square tube frames. It was just damned hard to make it look neat and get them spaced right. Buddy wound up running this crew, and did most of the hole drilling.

Our building contractor let us hire two of his men, to install the insulation in the ceiling and then put the metal roof panels on. They were installing the solar panels and running all the wires to a common point at the back of the house. When they caught up to us they started working on the plumbing and would alternate between the jobs. The contractor called and asked if I could use anymore of his people and I told him to send all of them that could do this type work. I think he slipped in a couple of guys from his concrete crew, but they worked on the roof panels, and did a good job.

Herb's crew finished the dock, sewer lines, and holding tanks. The water tower held 1,000 gallons, and sat on a combination of concrete slabs, and cabled to pilings. It was about 18 to 20 feet up to the bottom of the tank. I hope that's enough water pressure. The houses hooked up to the water and sewer with quick disconnects. They had built an enclosure for the desalination units and they were just waiting on the electricity for them and the pumps. Solar panels on top of the covered dock would take care of them. A month after the first house frames were unloaded, we had 3 houseboats in place, with the others following at one every 3 days or so. I made sure we had people that could do all of the jobs. Some of the paint jobs were a bit wild for me, but everyone else thought they were beautiful, and they were colorful for sure. The climbing flower vines had been planted a month ago and were covering the wire. Some help was needed to direct the vines into the bare spots but we had a lot of experience with them.

When we got through, including the dock, we had about $17,000 in each house and Dani got hers for free. She's a smart girl, she had looked at every board that went through the shop and her floors and cabinets were beautiful. Most of the houses had painted cabinets but hers were clear polyurethane. When it was finished, she pulled it over to our dock and tied it.

"What are you going to do with it Dani?" I asked.

"Well, when Herb finishes my island, Rubi and I are going to live in it."

"What island?"

"Levy, Herb had to dump the sand he hauled from dredging, for the new dock, somewhere, so I showed him a place that was close by."

"Well that was mighty sweet of you Dani. I hope he appreciates it."

"He does. He gave us a big discount on our pilings, fence, and tree house, so we told him he could come over for a visit sometime."

"You are going to invite me, aren't you?"

"Yep, but we do have a few rules you will have to comply with." Dani said.

"Like what."

"No clothes will be worn on our island, Levy, and you can bring any of the girls that you want with you. The tree house will be the same, as at the Lagoon, except our lookout will have a telescope, table and chairs, and a flagpole for our Pirate Flag. We plan to rent it to a few guests selected from the Lagoon customers. It won't be competing with the other islands, and Jimmy is looking for just the right girl to work for us. By that, I mean, one that is beautiful and not offended by nudity."

When people found out they could buy a brand new house including utilities, on Caulker, for $50,000, we almost got killed in the stampede. We had to get the owners to sign a contract where they paid $75 a month into a maintenance account to maintain the dock, solar panels, batteries, water and sewer. When it reached an amount equaling a years' cost of maintenance, the fee would go down. When the fund needed money, it would go back up. They would be putting a total of $21,600 a year into the account for the first two years. Hell I guess it would work. Leta, Linda, and Clawdy worked it out. It took 6 weeks to sell all the units and we banked 792K.

I called a meeting of every one of our employees, that worked on the project, to ask their thoughts on how we did it. Could we have done it better, faster, easier, things they would want to change if we did it again? Any changes to the house or pontoons? Linda, Leta, and Clawdy were writing, as fast as they could. I took a stack of hundreds, and gave each of Jimmy's kids two, and told them "We were taking them to the city, for a shopping trip tomorrow." "I want you girls to know, that we couldn't do any of these things without help. You may never want to build a houseboat, but knowing you can is worth a lot." Lila, Jamie, and Tessa were off this cycle, and said they would take the girls shopping.

I called Herb and asked if he came out alright on the deal and he was happy with it, so I asked if he wanted to do it again. He was ready, I told him it may take me a few days to line everything up but I was pretty sure we would do it.

"Clawdy have you talked to Anita lately?"

"Yes, I talk to her almost every day."

"Would you call her, and see if she and the Morrison's, can come over for a meeting? I may have an idea that would make them a lot of money."

Two hours later, Linda and I showed them the floating village, and explained about the dock and utilities. I told them, "We could build and install them one, for 1.2 million, or $50K per house, and they could sell them for whatever the market would allow." Now Anita had sold a hell of a lot of 28' catamarans for that price, and I could see the wheels turning. I explained that they were not setting on catamaran hulls, they were just floats. The only problem they had with the deal was money, they had just bought out the Turners for a lot less than he had paid, but were still short. Anita must have put her money in the deal or she would have jumped on the houses fast with or without the Morrison's. 'Well, what would you think about us putting up the 24 houses, and when you sell them, you pay us 55K per unit. I know 5K on a small loan that might be very short is a lot, but then you are not putting up anything but the time it takes to sell them."

Doc Morrison asked, "Why would you do this?"

"Because we are in the boat business, and at the moment it sucks."

"We had a deal, it was written up signed and everybody was happy."

When they left, I had Clawdy and Linda asking "How I kept a straight face, while making more money than the last boats, and I didn't even have to sell them."

"OK you know what needs to be ordered, let's get on it. I'll call Herb, and get him going."

"Hey Herb, it's a "Go" on the village."

"Any changes from last time?"

"Nope, do everything the same."

This time we built a few jigs and fixtures to aid in the build. One of Jimmy's girls took two 2 X 4's and put long nails driven about ¾" deep in the edge spaced about 1-1/4" apart, these became the drying racks for the 1 X 8 floor boards. They made 4 of these racks 10 feet long and we could do 360 boards at a time. We had all of them ready before the shipment came in. Marko had most of the cabinets made and had picked up an airless sprayer to paint them with. We had sheets of 1/8" plywood that we rolled polyurethane sealer on leaning against anything we could find. Herb had 12 boat frames, setting in our boatyard, before we got the rest of our materials. We built scaffolds, to lean against the walls, so we could put the metal roofs on faster and easier. We had a new girl helping with the walls, and she could drill as fast as Buddy. She said she had never held a drill before, but it just looked easy so she did it. Rae and Rachel helped when they were not busy, and some of the dive girls helped. I did have to borrow the guy who had done most of the plumbing. The fittings were crimped onto the PEC hose, and the girls couldn't use the crimp tool very well, and they were having problems with putting drains in the sinks, along with a few other things. Nothing got broke, and nothing got left out. These houses looked as good as the first ones. Herb was finished with the dock before we towed the first house over and he had the house hooked up in an hour. I was finally in the boat business but it was not quite what I had in mind. We delivered a house every other day.

Anita was off to sell houses, armed with pictures of everything. She had contracts ready and I knew they were short on money so I expected her to sell the shit out of them. She called two weeks later and told Clawdy to have me order the materials to do it again. I had already ordered them to build some more for us. I just called Herb and told him to do it again. We went over and asked Doc where to build them. He was so happy I thought he would do the wizard skip out to meet us.

When I got back to the office, Clawdy was talking on the phone, in German, and I thought maybe something had happened to her parents. Nope, but we were going to have two German couples for a boat tour. We couldn't let Clawdy go, so we decided to send Brende with Lena and Raine, to act as interpreter. Hell, Brende would have them skipping on the decks, singing the wizard song, but there was nobody else available. All 3 of the girls are small so they could sleep in the same bed easy enough. It was just 4 days and 3 nights. Brende would have to go with the girls to the airport and get them. If she screws it up I'll bust her ass. I'll get Ireni and Joci to talk to her and explain that it was serious business.

The Morrison's have a deal with a resort located 5 minutes from the International airport and by association with them we also had use of their dock while picking up passengers. They had a long golf cart for picking up people so Brende and Lena went to the airport and Raine stayed with the tour boat. Brende held a sign with "Weber" on it and the people walked right to her. I guess to them, Brende spoke German like a hillbilly, and they took to her like ducklings to mama duck. They were very hungry, so the girls decided to stop at the bakery to eat. Lena drove and the Germans chattered fast and loud. Brende got them squared away in the boat while Lena took it to the bakery.

Brende explained that these buildings belonged to her Guardians, and that we had a dive school, where she normally worked, and a boat shop, and on and on. The young Germans first thought that Brende was slave labor, and then they met Heidi, Elke, and Jimmy. While Elke fixed them all some food, the people visited and learned that we took in street children, and that Jimmy was pretty much in charge of that. And they were told about the Shussler family, and how they had gone from rags to riches in the length of time it took to introduce them to Levy. Brende went to visit the motor shop for a few minutes. Heidi told the Germans all about the different businesses, of "L Team Marine". Jimmy introduced his helpers and explained that they were also orphans and only spoke Spanish with a few words of English. He told them of the difficulty in finding jobs for all the street children and trying to home school all of them. That we had a better set up for the girls out at the island and had a lot of willing teachers among the divers. They wanted to visit the girls on Caulker, so Lena loaded them up and headed home.

They went by Chapel, and Brende explained that we had built the floating village for them, and that we had another one on Cauker, but had sold all the boats. They got tied up just before the dive boats came in and were amazed at the number of divers, instructors and boats. They wanted to meet Clawdy, and they all talked to her for a while. Lena took them to the dining room, and they looked everything over. Joci turned on the Karaoke machine, and sang a few songs. The Germans were interested in everything going on, and Clawdy and Brende were answering questions as fast as they could. Then Joci and Ireni sang Spanish Harlem, and all talk stopped. The two German girls wanted to sing it so Brende told Joci to replay the song. They sang it as Das Ist Die Frage Aller Fragen" and they could sing extremely well. Lena and Clawdy were deciding what to cut out of the tour to make up the time, when the Germans said "They wanted to visit the rental islands." They all had customers, but Dani said they could visit their private island, but her rules would apply. The Germans didn't seem to mind so the next morning Brende, Rubi, and Dani took them out on the taxi boat, and Dani talked to some of the customers at the Lagoon, and got them in. Brende told us they just stripped off and jumped in the water so she did too. I think Brende enjoyed it a lot more than the others, but I couldn't say she did wrong. Right after lunch they loaded on the tour boat and headed to Chetumal.

After they left, Leta told me that they would be back in two days to start dive school. I asked if there was room for them and she said "Yes, but she had to switch things around, where they could go out with Brende and Suzie Q."

"They were fun, but a lot of trouble, with the language problem."

Leta said, "Not really, and they told us that we would be getting a lot of customers from Germany, as soon as they updated their website."

"What kind of website do they have?" I asked.

Clawdy said, "They have a Travel website, and tell Germans where the most fun for their money is. They tell about places, people, and food. We need to get Brende's Instructor certification and get her a Menonite assistant."

"Is there an age requirement for instructors?"

"I don't know, Chuck can tell us. Maybe we can find a girl old enough."

I called Jimmy and he knew of a few girls, working in stores, and other places, that he could check with and would do so right away.

Jimmy called back in a couple of hours and told me to "Come and talk to a girl where she works. She can't get off for anything, and the guy will fire her if he finds out she is looking for a better job."

Linda went with me and said she would wait at the motor shop, and pick up some parts for Andy. Jimmy and I walked about 6 blocks to a clothing store. We went in and Jimmy started looking at clothes. There was a man in his 40's setting at a desk and a girl hanging clothes on a rack. The man yelled at the girl to wait on us so she walked over to the corner, where Jimmy was looking.

As she walked up Jimmy said, "Levy this is Uschi. She speaks better German than most of us, and she needs to know that the job offer is real. She knows about the dive school from Heidi, Elke, and Brende."

I asked her if she wanted to work for us

"When can I start?"

"Right now." I said

"I'll take it, I'll be right back." She said.

She went into the back room and came out with a backpack, walked up to us and said, " I'm ready, let's go."

"Are you going to tell him you're leaving."

"Yep." She walked over to the desk and told him," I've decided not to take you up on your offer, but you can kiss my ass. I quit."

We had to detour, to where Uschi was staying with some people that her family knew. She went in and got a suitcase and a cardboard box and handed them to us and we walked back to the bakery. On the way she told us that the guy was demanding that she live with him, or find another job, so her decision only took about two seconds. I learned that she had gone to high school and studied German language as one of her courses. She had grown up speaking the local dialect which was the hillbilly German of the Mennonites. She could also speak Spanish as well as English. She knew most of what we did and the business' I asked her if she knew about the rental islands, and she said she didn't have any problem with what went on at the islands. She may or may not join in with the German tourists. She would have to think about it, and see how it went. I asked if her name was short for something else and she said "Nope just plain Uschi, like ew-she." She said it was an old German name.

When we got to the bakery, Linda had her parts and a box of goodies from the bakery. I got a fried pie and a coke and Uschi did the same. Heidi and Elke told her she was lucky to work for Leta but they were not so sure about me. Linda gave me a kiss and said that she liked me just fine. When we got home, Leta and Clawdy took Uschi and got her paperwork done, then Clawdy took her to see Ireni and Joci. Uschi looked damned fine in a bikini and got my approval. The next day Lena, Raine, and Brende along with the Germans came in almost too late to eat. Brende spotted Uschi and asked her if she was working here

"Yep, Levy said you needed a baby sitter and told me to spank your ass if you didn't mind me." They hugged each other and Brende introduced the Germans, and they all got together with Clawdy and jabbered away. Ireni took them one at a time and got them fitted with dive gear. Brende went to translate. Suzi said it would be interesting tomorrow when she tried to teach them all to dive. I told her to "Drive the boat and keep an eye on Brende, and she could teach them. If she worked with Uschi then they would have two people to ask." Suzi Q was OK with having Brende and Uschi both, as assistants, until one of them had an instructors rating and understood they would then be working as the German language team. I asked her if she had a preference of the girls for an assistant, and she said any of them that could do the wizard skip would be fine, then she told me how Brende would have the divers skipping off the end of the boat while she sang "You're off to see the wizard." "None of the students are nervous or scared, they think it is perfectly normal to skip off the end of the boat while she sings, and it makes teaching a lot easier."

"Well, she's going to have to get a bit more serious, but if the wizard works, it works. I think Uschi will be good for her, she seems to be pretty much all business." Lena, Leta, and Linda were headed to the apartment. Clawdy was still talking to the Germans, and I decided to call it a night