S02.E09: The Madness

[seasick]

Just now, Joan Z said:

Didn't notice the dock. Interesting! Man, he really think of everything, didn't he?! 

I didn't either..so I looked for it.  Still didn't see it.  Maybe you can help me out here..something laying into the water?

 

Just now, Joan Z said:

I don't mind Justin. I kinda like him but i do think the gym is a waste of calorie. Didn't know he caught a fish with the hammock! Was it in earlier episode? Can't recall it. I still think not choosing gillnet and hook line as two of the tools is a bad decision though 

I'm pretty sure Justin caught a 'ratfish'.  Earlier ep..around 4 maybe?  I think it's so because I recall being surprised he caught anything w the hammock. Still don't think it was efficient enough to prove us wrong.  ITA he shoulda taken a gill net..and couldn't believe he didn't take fishing line and hooks! I didn't realize that.  He wasn't a bow and arrow guy was he?  

 

Just now, SRTouch said:

Excellent point. Not only does quitting without giving it your best, it also leaves the seed of doubt that the eventual winner deserves to win. If you're mentally at the end, own it - say, "I can't stand it anymore." Don't leave us with, "I could stay, but..." whatever.

I also thought QTPY  made an excellent point and so well put.  Not giving it your best and 'shrugging out' for lack of a better term (punk works too) just puts a damper on things. spoils my enthusiasm a bit.

[Quilt Fairy]

40 minutes ago, SRTouch said:

Excellent point. Not only does quitting without giving it your best, it also leaves the seed of doubt that the eventual winner deserves to win. If you're mentally at the end, own it - say, "I can't stand it anymore." Don't leave us with, "I could stay, but..." whatever.

The last person standing deserves to win. Regardless of why other people tapped out, they gave up, and therefore they didn't deserve to win. I can like or dislike the winner, I can wish that someone else had just given it a little more time, but that's besides the point. I won't have any doubt.

[SRTouch]

1 hour ago, seasick said:

I didn't either..so I looked for it.  Still didn't see it.  Maybe you can help me out here..something laying into the water?

Hmmm, now you guys have me wondering if I imagined it. What I'm remembering is what looked like a single plank  which rested in shallow water at one end and went out to a rock by the canoe at the other. Something he'd have to drag ashore every time or risk losing to high tide. I can remember, I'm going to have to catch it on the next deeper cut.

1 hour ago, seasick said:

I'm pretty sure Justin caught a 'ratfish'.  Earlier ep..around 4 maybe?  I think it's so because I recall being surprised he caught anything w the hammock. Still don't think it was efficient enough to prove us wrong.  ITA he shoulda taken a gill net..and couldn't believe he didn't take fishing line and hooks! I didn't realize that.  He wasn't a bow and arrow guy was he?  

I remember him catching the fish, and him saying he didn't know what kind it was. No, bow and arrow. I think we only had one archer this season, and that was Randy. At least Randy brought fishing line, though IIRC he brought the bow instead of any e-rations. I remember thinking it would be interesting to see what Justin planned when he talked about all his choices having two or three uses during the intro episode, as he made some unusual choices. One odd choice we'll probably never hear explained was his down sleeping bag with sleeves - first the often questioned choice of down anything in a rain forest, but also why the gimmicky sleeved sleeping bag.

[SRTouch]

57 minutes ago, Quilt Fairy said:

The last person standing deserves to win. Regardless of why other people tapped out, they gave up, and therefore they didn't deserve to win. I can like or dislike the winner, I can wish that someone else had just given it a little more time, but that's besides the point. I won't have any doubt.

Well, you're right of course. The point is to outlast everyone. I suppose I should have said, when someone gives up without giving it their absolute best effort, the win wouldn't mean as much to me if I were competing in pretty much anything. 

[Ina123]

I guess I will be OK with whomever wins and I think Larry is definitely a contender, but I don't find the cursing entertaining. Nicole is high on my winner list. I'm anxious to see how she's doing.

[cooksdelight]

With all Larry's whining and bitching, I'm still going to give him a high five if he wins, what with the experts who built the mega-shelters, kayak, whatever. And hope production takes note and gets a bunch of people who NEED and WANT the money next time.

[LocimusPrime]

If you're going to tap out on days 22-35 why not stay another 30 to win the 500k. Do these people really have that much stuff to do that another 4 weeks isn't worth 500k, that's like 125k a week. 

I think most of them just say it isn't about the money, when they can't take it anymore. Kinda like the losing in a poker tournament and then saying I wasn't trying to win. Yeah right. 

[candall]

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 2:20 AM, mythreecents said:

Weighing in on the "seeding the beaches" theories: I don't know what the producers are doing, obviously, but I can attest to the fact that with the changing of the tides, an unbelievable amount of stuff can show up on the shoreline. We're on a small cove, and everyday the beach looks different.  In the past few months alone, I can recall enough articles of clothing to open a thrift shop, part of a canoe, a seal carcass, a beach ball, an anchorage buoy, a blue bag of recyclables, several boat fenders, a half dozen gas/water jugs, and enough giant logs to outfit a midwest US state park in cabins. Never saw the same quantity and variety of flotsam and jetsam in a lifetime on the east coast, but here on VI, it's crazy pants. So, the amount of "found goods" doesn't surprise me at all. 

WOW!  Sometimes my dirt lane has a case of empties, presumably tossed out by jerky teenagers.  So, how do you deal with all that stuff?   Do you do a daily beautification sweep or does it all eventually just float back out again? 

P.S>I'm guessing "trash disposal" is a major headache for you as well as for me, or anyone else off the beaten path.  (People, cherish your weekly trash pickup and your handy recycle bins.)

[SRTouch]

On 6/27/2016 at 8:59 PM, SRTouch said:

Hmmm, now you guys have me wondering if I imagined it. What I'm remembering is what looked like a single plank  which rested in shallow water at one end and went out to a rock by the canoe at the other. Something he'd have to drag ashore every time or risk losing to high tide. I can remember, I'm going to have to catch it on the next deeper cut.

Ah ha, there's Jose's dock. You don't see it until he puts on his outrigger. Just a couple minutes left, but it's in the last couple scenes at the end of the episode. And again in the opening scene tonight. Like I said, nothing complicated, just a plank to walk out to get in the kayak. 

[mythreecents]

12 hours ago, candall said:

WOW!  Sometimes my dirt lane has a case of empties, presumably tossed out by jerky teenagers.  So, how do you deal with all that stuff?   Do you do a daily beautification sweep or does it all eventually just float back out again? 

P.S>I'm guessing "trash disposal" is a major headache for you as well as for me, or anyone else off the beaten path.  (People, cherish your weekly trash pickup and your handy recycle bins.)

Actually, the tide either takes it back out, or every few months, there's "beach sweeps" by intrepid boaters looking for treasure, so the garbage isn't ever there very long. The cove is not easily accessible from land, so we don't get down to clean it out ourselves before either waves or other boaters take it away. 

[Liberty]

On 6/25/2016 at 7:50 PM, cooksdelight said:

.... David and his digestive issues were borderline funny due to the way he told the story. I didn't need to know he had a good poop....

Totally agree.

Someone must have suggested the Bull Kelp remedy during a weekly welfare visit.  If David knew of the magic properties why wait so long to consume the Bull Kelp to help with his digestive issues.  If the problem existed, it would seem sensible to eliminate it ASAP rather than ater.

[beatu]

Pretend that a foot square of old sheet or shirt (not a t shirt, a button up shirt ) is a 1 sq ft  of tarp. Make a 1"  cut every 1/8" along one edge, once you know which way the weave is oriented.  grab each little strip with a multitool's pliers and pull.  Once you get a 6" long piece, you can use your bare hands. With a big chunk of tarp, you can stand on the rest of the tarp and tear off 10 ft long strips. Each sq ft of solid sheet material becomes  96 ft of 1/8" wide cordage in this fashion. A  20x 20 tarp is 400 sq ft.   400x 96 ft is 38,400 ft of cordage. If you want  2" mesh,  you need 12 ft of cordage to make 1 sq ft of netting. divide 38,400x 12 and you're going to get over  2000 sq ft of 2" mesh netting, even allowing for the loss due to tying the knots. You can bet that the tarps that the Alone show leaves in the bush, covering your camera gear and other stuff, are the cheapest sylnon tarps available. Such tarps tear quite readily, once you start the tear with a cut. So you CAN make a LOT of netting, enough to make 2 big seines (for shallow water) and several baited net-weirs. Thus, you have  very little risk of losing much of your netting  to a flotsam log coming down the river. 

 

Stretch a seine across as much of the river as you can handle.,  with a weir at the junction of the seine and the shore. using a net bag full of rocks to anchor the end of the net, if you can't drive stakes into the (shallow)  river's bottom.  Go upstream 100m, use vertical stakes to help you walk another seine down to the seine-weir.  Set the first seine at quite a bit of an "upstream" angle, of course. You''ll catch a lot of fish, guaranteed. Especially if you bait the head of the "v" formed by the first seine and the shoreline.   Any fish caught can be put on a stringer or in a small net "pen" that you leave in the deepest part of river, until you're done seining for the day. Then the seine that you're walking with COULD  be converted into another  net weir ( baited with fishheads and guts). .  A  15 ft diameter weir, with 100 ft of "wing"  (the shore forming the other "wing" )can be  set up in an hour or so, if the stakes that give the weir its shape are already driven into the river bottom and your net already has floats along the top line and rock weights along its bottom line. If your net floats, get more rocks, and bigger ones. It aint rocket science, folks.  

Put your bait into bags made of chunks of the tarp or chunks of the hammock, so that the fishhead/guts  bait doesnt just dissolve or get nibbled away. Ditto, small bags should be used to bait your trotlines, for the same reasons. All this makes FAR more sense than building "cabins" or hauling lots of firewood.

You dont really need the 5 qt skillet and lid, (amazon) you know.  You can stone boil food in a chunk of tarp, lining a hole in the ground, with sand/gravel lining the tarp, to protect it from hot stones.  If you make a seep well, with  2 ft tall, v like walls around it, (to keep out critters) and a tarp cover, to keep out bugs and bird poop, you can then make a sleeve sized tube out of hammock or tarp material, and fill it with layers of moss, gravel, sand and charcoal, with a bit of t-shirt keeping the charcoal from falling into your water. Seal the same by sewing it,  and using pitch (or the tape). This filter need not hang vertially, so the seam does not really have to be waterproof down its full length, but it DOES have to not drip any leaks into your "filtered" water-container.

 

The sleeves of the rainsuit will each hold over a gallon of water, you know. So you dont have to carry or go get water more than once every  2 days. Unlike with a silly  1 pint wooden bottle that takes you an entire day to make, the sleeve can be folded, tied off and taped in 2 minutes flat. Do NOT cut the sleeve off of the jacket! there's no need of that, and you can need that rainsuit to be intact. Just choke it off at the crotch or the armpit with a hunk of cordage.

Edited August 3, 2018 by beatu