The raft was there two weeks ago and was falling apart then. It looked like it had been there for quite some time.

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I have been to barefoot beach before and seen it completely covered in trash. Someone told me that when the wind is coming toward the beach that it brings trash - mostly from Cuba. It occasionally gets cleaned and can look very nice, but over time it trashes again. At least, that's what a local told me.

The mostly plastic trash comes in from all over, although the bulk of it is local trash. What isn't local is blown in by the trade winds from the eastern Caribbean and the Caribbean Sea currents bring stuff in from the Atlantic, eastern Caribbean and South America. Anyone that told you that trash blows in from one specific place is simply making stuff up and the conditions needed to move trash Southward in the Caribbean are rare. If you want to see how trash accumulates, go to Barkers and see all the flip flops and plastic bottles that go overboard on SRC tours. All that tourist trash washes up on the beaches and mangroves west of SRC.

The raft sounds like a cool find to me and as a child my vivid imagination also led me to also conjure up fantastical stories about things that washed up. If the raft has been there for weeks then I'm sure many local kids and teens have been using it for their own adventures. As far as the property next door, Ivan destroyed what was left of it and the shack is likely the occasional home of a local crack head.

After having conducted an in-depth study of the labeling on the trash that has washed ashore at Barefoot Beach, I can assure you the bulk of it appears to have originated from Hispaniola.

This video about plastic wastes in the oceans is on the Weather Channel site:

http://www.weather.com/series/uncharted/video/you-cant-imagine-how-much-plastic-will-be-in-the-oceans-10-years-from-now

We also tried to venture to this beach but after walking down and seeing the rusty oil drums and "raft" remains we changed our mind. There was a lot to trash and we have 2 younger kids so it just didn't feel like a great place for them to play and hang out. We will definitely try again next time.

A property developer has just acquired Barefoot Beach

http://www.compasscayman.com/caycompass/2015/07/30/Dart-buys-Barefoot-Beach-property/

We visited Barefoot Beach earlier this month. Not a ton of trash when we were there but it wasn't really clean and you couldn't go barefoot. The raft was still there along with a lot of conch shells.