Scarlett and 'grumpy-pants' Violet find the remains of the lighthouse, and what looks like a concrete bunker underneath it. They'll investigate further tomorrow, with more hi-tech gear.
Sailing is fun! Even if I do have to spend my time with grumpy-pants sister and her love life issues. It's still fun! We spent last night in the little seaport of Great Lancewood. It's a cute town, all the houses face down to the shore and there are even little 'heritage' fishing boats you can take out to explore the harbour with real oars and everything. I wanted Violet to come out on a boat with me, but she just grumped a bit more and said she had some "research" to do. I think she was on her key moaning to Kurt for two hours while I was out rowing my boat all the way round the bay, getting all salty from the sea spray.
This morning, we rented a proper boat though - a self-steering yacht with a little cabin and galley below and all the latest key-port gadgets. I can even play my music and watch my vids on the boat! That is, when Vi's not telling me to keep the noise down :-(.
The thirteenth island (which apparently has a name, Hobbs Island, which I think is kind of a shame, because it was cool calling it 'the thirteenth island') is marked on the maps as being "completely uninhabited" with no interesting features or heritage. Because we've been doing this for a while now, Vi and I just looked at that information, looked at each other and programmed the destination into our yacht's navigational systems. You know, maybe to find the Third Power you guys should just go to every place in the world which has "nothing interesting about it" and is "utterly deserted", because that's how these things seem to work.
It's been a perfect day for sailing. The sky is a light china blue and the wind is high and for a few miles a pod of dolphins was following the boat, rolling over and looking as if they were smiling. You're supposed to get special permission to land on Hobbs Island, because the sandbanks are dangerous but we managed to navigate it safely with the map Vi got from her bestest Recon friends. (She doesn't like it when I tease her about that either. She doesn't seem to like being teased at all these days.)
So now we're on Hobbs island. It's teeny, only about four miles across by maybe a six along, and very flat - no trees or anything. Vi's borrowed Kurt's clever tent and various other handy gadgets. Luckily, the tent automatically expands to accomodate more people, or we'd have to share a sleeping bag! I suppose we could sleep on the boat if we wanted but we thought we might find ourselves too far away while exploring so it seems sensible to have the tent.
We haven't had to look far to find something interesting, though. About a quarter of a mile inland we found a huge circular set of foundations. Just as if, as Violet said, there used to be a lighthouse here. And at the edge of the foundations there's a set of steps down into... well, at the moment it just looks like a bare concrete room, like a bunker or a storage cellar. But Vi's going to bring some of the proper scanning equipment Kurt gave her tomorrow and we're going to see what else might be down there.
