After some clearing and cleaning there's room for a small house, so up it goes: a concrete slab, a course of block and then wood construction, caulked and primed and painted inside and out. The north end of this first structure on False Bluff is open except for a knee-wall on the beach side to break the wind. Now this space is a small kitchen but it will later serve as a laundry 'room.' The well is just to the south of the house.
I get a constant stream of advice to build with block...cement and mortar and rebar and bags upon bags of small rocks. My brain locks up when I think about hauling large quantities of that stuff to False Bluff so I've decided that except where necessary for slabs and piers, construction will be of wood, most of which will be cut from the property.
An interesting bit of local history is that of the buildings in Bluefields that survived Hurricane Joan, many were very old wood houses, most of which are still standing. Buildings constructed of wood have a certain give and take in heavy winds. Perhaps I think about these things just to make my decision to build with wood more palatable, but wood is also the only logical choice for houses built on stilts.