Building big ponds in the Caribbean. Part 2

Buccament Bay was in trouble. The guys on the ground in St Vincent in the Caribbean had started digging the first pond and because no one on site had ever dug a pond either large or small, there was a definite lack of confidenceThe hole was too big, too deep and not level.: The first job was to get the lads pumping out the water,but that was to prove to be the water table that had been breached. So another plan had to be devised. in the the direction in which they were going. In fact they were pretty sure that they were making a bit of a 'cock up' and when it is a 330,000 gallon pond you are digging a 'bit of a cock up' can easily turn into a 'God Almighty cock up!'

Despite sending innumerable plans and diagrams of techniques, and despite spending nearly £40 on telephone calls from my end, things still sounded as though they were drifting beyond a state of no return. There seemed nothing for it but to fly out to the rescue - Superpondman! As it was any way, they would soon get to a stage where a lot of decisions had to be made on site as the project progresssed into more complex stages, so it was a case of going out sooner rather than later.

The first step was to call in the level men, Nole and his crew, to get a precise water level established all around the site: Luckily the site site surveryor, Chris Schachner, had established a preordained level for all the ponds on site, so that they could all flow into one another and then into the river that flowed beside site. Somewhere there was a peg that had the pond leve When I got there it was the classic case of when the client digs the pond for themselves, it was too big and too deep and not level. The technique we had agreed to adopt was the simple conservation style technique for building wildlife ponds where the pond can have a variable outside edge with a beach effect or planting area that chamfers down to below water level where there is a hump that prevent the beach/pebbles/ planting medium from tumbling down into the bottom of the pond. It is what i call the 'V' trench technique, with the inside of the 'v' sitting between six inches and a foot below the water level.See: 'How to Build a Wildlife Pond' in the Beginner's Guide.

When I arrived at to Pond 1 several days after the SOS call, I could see the main difficulty we would have. The pond was dug with a flat shelf all the way round, which would have been ok if we were placing marginal plants in baskets around the pond and if that WAS the case, it would have been ok if it was level. The site manager Ken Picknell would provide me with the inspiration for the solution for this problem as he rapid-fired some suggestions to me when he was showing it to me on the previous Sunday before the start of the week's work. He knew there was a problem, he hoped I had the solution.

Buccament Bay

Buccament Bay is a premier holiday resort in the making in a sheltered bay on the Caribbean island of St Vincent and it is a place where you can actually buy your own piece of the Caribbean.Landscaping has begun in earnest in Bucament Bay; the big mature plants going in first: Many of the plants will have been rescued during initial clearance operations and will help to give the resort an established look just a few months after planting. Sponsored by Harlequin Properties in the UK and to be run by an upmarket hotel business, it will be a resort that panders to the holiday maker's every whim whilst providing an idyllic setting and perfect temperatures. It is just down from the bay where a lot of the scenes from "Pirates of the Caribbean" were shot. In fact keen observers may even spot remeniscent views from Buccament Bay itself.

One of the great things about the construction is that a lot of materials are fabricated on site. Building blocks are made in their own concrete plant, panels for the appartments, furniture and fittings are made on site or in the old sheds used by Disney for set and scene construction for "Pirates of the Caribbean". Another great thing is that most of the labour comes from the island, which since well over 400 people from the island at all levels  work at Buccament Bay, it means that the main contractor to Harlequin, Ridgeview, is a popular supplier of very well paid work.

The view of the site that will be seen from the Galleon restaurant when it arrives at the ready made quayside.The residential facilities will consist of cabanas that are small robust plantation style houses sporting all the mod-cons that you would expect from a sophisticated holiday residence and also plush holiday appartments. There will be restaurants, including one on a galleon that will rekindle the "Pirates.." theme, bars, saunas and and health spas, pools and quiet areas included in the whole gamut of facilities. What this really needed to set the scene was a high standard of landscaping to bring an element of genuine Caribbean nature right the back doors of the cabanas.

There are nearly two rows of cabanas already complete and landscaping has started in earnest in near the sea shore. It had been decided right at the start that the cabanas or 'chalets' that did not have a beach frontage might like to be looking out over a vast lake or pond. The decision was obviously a good one because interest in all of the cabanas with pondside aspects rose and continued unabated until they were all virtually accounted for by interested investors. The ponds will all be self cleaning and contain all the right ingredients to keep the water clean and healthy. In the rainy season, they will also serve to distribute the water that falls on the site, back to the river, to where they all ultimately overflow to. So as you can imagine, these ponds have to be right and getting a pond right means getting it right from the start.

Further up the island is Wallilabou where many scenes from "Pirates of the Caribbean" were filmed: Although there is a quaint bar here cashing in on the kudos of the bay, very little has been done to preserve the relics of the set.

The famous jetty that a lot of the action in the first film is centred around.

The office of Lord Cutler Becket in "Pirates 2": dilapidated on the outside..

..but the interior is still intact but very, very bare.

POND 1 Buccament Bay

First of all we needed a level edge all the way round.: this is when I discovered how lucky I had been in the UK with operators that really knew how to get the most out their machine. Most of the digger men here can move mountains with their machines, but they can't level them. The first job was to establish a level around the pond that would effectively be the water level. It would correspond to a level that had been ordained by the site'Shotcaller' in his big machine proved to the master of the slew the project so desperately needed.: Levi keeps close supervision. surveyor Chris Schachner when the plans were first laid out. This would ensure there would be enough fall from pond to pond to allow any excessive rainfall in the rainy season to run from pond to pond and escape via the river to the sea. There was already a level shelf cut some way below the water level and this had to be shaved to be a more regualr 300mm or 1ft below the waterlevel. This would be the marginal planting shelf. Also level areas at the same level as the marginal shelf that were going to be reed bed filtration areas, these had to be reinstated, since the whole pond had been excavated without any provision for this.

Intially there was a bit of difficulty explaining what I wanted, since firstly we seemed to be going backwards by filling in all the marvellous excavating that had already been done and also, although all the islanders can understand English, they find it difficult to understand concepts expressed in any sort of jargon at all. You must be direct and precise in the way express yourself and then hang around to make sure you have been understood properly. Once I got the hang of talking without any stupid expressions or high falutin' language we began to get things really moving. In fact by the end of the first week we had a team that really seemed to be looking forward to each and every stage of the project. A lot of guys really wanted to be part of the pond making for the whole of the project and to get really good at all the skills necessary and learn all there was to learn. When it came to big team efforts, like moving two and half ton liners into place, the whole operation worked with a harmony of a philharmonic orchestra. You did have to suffer the tuning up process that may have consisted of everyone yelling at each other for anything upwards of half an hour, but persuasion wasn't necessary. It was just part of the build up.

When it came to splicing the liners together for the first time, to make the waterproof joins betwen the vast sheets of EPDM rubber, everyone wanted hands on. People had to be persuaded to take a back seat just for a while. Then when the time came around again, everyone had established their role and it seemed like you just pushed the button on the MP3 player, and the orchestra played by itself. Well almost - there was a conductor. This was Levi or 'Stone' as he is known and he was the supervisor for this team and my interpretor and teacher.

Things got really rolling when there was two machines operating on Pond 1 and another big one getting to grips with Pond 2.	Even with the best machine operator there comes a point when the fine detail has to be finished off by hand:: 'Little Rasta' and his mates just doggedly plied away without grumbling until the job was done.	The base of Pond 1 had to be lifted above the water table and a fall established from one end to the other: This would allow and water coming in under pressure or gases from rotting organic matter to make their way to one end and out from under the liner. Nole and his team were back with the levels.	The pond base was raised and given a 'fall' by using a material that is abundant in that very valley.: It is like a hard compressed clay that has been formed into various sizes of balls by volcanic activity. It is rather like the material Hortag or Leica used for hydroponics in the UK. It also compresses to a hard clean pan, perfect for this job in hand.
The Manitou was useful for reaching to areas that other machines could not reach without sinking in.: Also Lynvol the operator could make that thing do anything apart from sing opera.	Once the hard material ('hard stuff') was spread evenly, it could be compressed with the wacker plate:: Lynvol, in the red hat, admires his handiwork.	The protective sheet of terram goes down.	The excavation completely lined with terram. This will protect the large sheets of EPDM rubber from stones beneath them:

Lining Pond 1

Lining Pond 1 was going to be a make or break adventure because the shape of it was most suited to using the largest liner sheet out liner material that was down in the storage area. Someone had ordered a 150foot by 50foot liner. This seemed to me to be the perfect size to fit along side another 35foot by 100foot liner, with one splice we could easily cover the 9375square feet of Pond 1. Being the largest sheet also made it the heaviest. If we could manage this then we could manage anything.

Getting the liner to the side of the pond was easy with Lynvol and his Manitou and Levi wasn't taking any risks when he went in search of some extra help in handling the liner. I was convinced that we could move it with the men we had having learnt the magic techniques at the Firestone liner splicing course. Anyway the matter was unresolved when I went off to get the glues and equipment for splicing liners from the stores. To my amazement, when i returned, the thing was in place. Levi had found 'Flat Nose' and his team of incredibly strong plasterers and they had just hauled the liner into place and then disappeared. Unfortunately the liner was about 6feet out of line. If we wanted the other liner to cover the rest of the excavation it needed to come in by a couple of yards. Ah well that was for another day. It was time to go home.

The next day I showed them how to iron out the wrinkles in the liner by collecting them together and rolling them out to the edge. And once the water from the previous nights rain had been mopped up, I showed them how easy it was to move the liner by floating it on air. You just gently flap the sheet driving air underneath and 6 or seven men can get this vast sheet to float like a massive black carpet on thin air.

Bequie near left giving advice on moving big liners. Bequie knew the secret of the 'magic carpet technique'

Liners in place ready for splicing

People were queuing up to take a turn at liner splicing: Using this sort of splice tape and this technique technique is normally used for covering flat roofs, but the materials were already ordered and delivered. But in this situation it proved to be an easier method than the standard 'splice tape sandwich'.

The liner splicing completed late one Friday night. Final patches are going down on the cross joins:: The main splice can be seen running from mid-left diagonally to the right. Bequie in the distance is walking on the marginal shelf level that runs into the reed bed area in the foreground.

We start to fill the pond if only to stop the local cattle from wandering through it.: The water is pumped in from the river courtesy of the site plumbers. This proves to be perfect water that needs no aging and remains perfectly clear from the day it arrives.

Making the marginal planting areas in Pond 1

The problem is that although we have a marginal plant shelf, we dont want plants sitting in baskets on the shelf. They need to be planted in their own troughs so that they can run wild and rampant but mainly be secure and held in place. Ken had suggested sand bags in place to make the hump that I had wanted all along. For ease of splicing and getting the liner in place the sand bags would have to go on top andbesides there weren't any sand bags on the island. The site manager, John Chadwick, suggested someone go round all the bakeries in town and pick up as many flour bags as they could get their hands on -How many did I want? - 200, but they will be too fat and wide, they need to be like sausages -

"Get 100 and take them down to that little fella that calls himself a tailor and give him something to do. Tell him to sew down the middle and make two long thin ones out of each one."

And so that was that sorted. And that had been going on whilst all the digging was going on. Then when they arrived, they need filling and I had a cunning plan as to how we would keep them in place.

Little Rasta and his chums fill sand bags and tie them closed with a cable tie.	A layer of terram was laid all around the marginal shelf, with most of the strip out in the pond.: The sand bags were laid on the edge of the marginal shelf and the inside edge of the terram. The terram was then folded back over the sand bags...	The effect was of a long sausage along the edge of the marginal shelf.: When the planting medium goes down on this, it will effectively be locked into place. There aren't any good pics of this process since I had get into the pond and do it in order to show the men what I meant.	The new trough is backfilled with the same medium that went into the base of the pond.: It should make a perfect medium for the marginal and reed bed areas, allowing the plants access to the nutrients in the water. The reed bed are in the centre top did not need a sand bag edging since it was reinstated into the pond and the lump or burm was
Now it was time for stonework and the beach effect. There was plenty of stone on site that had come from the river.: To create a beach that looked like it was a beach but was solid required a special talent and a special man and his team..	....Tiger! - "The best stoneman in the Caribbean!" said John Chadwick.: Tiger and his team worked non-stop on the project until it was finished. He said it was because John Chadwick hadn't offered him enough money, so he was getting it done as soon as possible to make it pay... Stands to reason!	Now you can begin to see the desired effect. The soil/panting medium will be chamfered up to the stone: And the stone down into the planting medium. The water level will be above the bottom stones.	The keyman to this endaevour, the main supervisor to the team, its not Lennie Henry, its Levi:: A big man with just as big a personality.

Whilst all this was going on the excavations for Pond 2 were had started. Most of the time the team was split with hand work going on in one pond and machine excavation going on in another. On top of that there was another crew building the foundations for a very important stream between the two ponds. The draughtmans office was buzzzing with busyness on the filter chamber drawings and the level men had a bit of time mapping that out. I thought my drawings were fine, but they broke a few rules and although the men on the ground could understand them, the draughtsmen nevertheless thought that they should be more accurately drawn up so that a format might be established that could be repeated for all of the ponds. It would have been nice too if scores of plants were arriving from all quarters, but alas, nay. Aster, the site gardener, came up with a few from his travels around the island, but the landscaper commissioned to find a thousand was very unforthcoming. But more of that later and the adventures of Pond 2 too.