THE CACHE
You are looking for a “TREASURE CHEST”. It is a modified ammo
can painted to look the part. Inside are some items specifically
for decoration and are NOT ordinary or routine swag. They are items
you might expect to be pirate booty: coins, pearls, gold, and
silver. Matter of fact, the only items intended for trade are going
to be Travel Bugs and GEO-Coins. If you happen to find a booty coin
that you simply must have, then replace it with only coins of
similar nature. Of course there is the log to sign. And, for the
First To Find there is the Pirate Trophy Travel bug, but that has
to be given up per the instructions. The item I’ve designated for
the First To Find to actually keep is a special beaded necklace. I
suppose it could be hung in your Geocaching Trophy Room if you are
not into wearing necklaces. The TREASURE CHEST is locked to prevent
it from floating away in high water. The combination is a guarded
secret at N35*16.697, W089*46.019, which is also a good place to
park.
THE SERIES:
This is the ninth cache in an ongoing series that will spark a
friendly competition amongst cachers across the entire GOWT region.
The basic idea is patterned on the First To Find Championship series of caches,
which has enjoyed a successful three-year run in the Houston
area, and which is now up to the 52nd cache in the series. The
premise is pretty straightforward: the first finder of this
cache can take this custom-engraved FTF Pirate travel bug trophy
with them to enjoy for awhile — snapping pictures and gloating a
bit along the way, I would imagine:
There are, however, some key stipulations:
NOTE CHANGE: “STIPULATIONS” has been changed
to be “SUGGESTIONS”. Explanation at the end of the
text.
- Within 30 days, the FTF cacher
may hide a new cache, title it "FTF Pirate #10," and place
the trophy inside for the next lucky FTF cacher to
enjoy.
- The new cache must be hidden within a 100 mile radius of
Jackson, Tennessee, which seems like a reasonable distance that
will cover most of the area catered to by the Geocachers of West
Tennessee organization.
- The hider must mention the series in
the cache description, and must provide clear instructions so that
the next winner of the trophy will know what is expected of them.
Feel free to cut-and-paste the text from this description, if you'd
like.
- Follow the normal travel bug rules by
retrieving the FTF Pirate trophy from this cache and dropping it
into the inventory of your new cache hide (the travel bug tracking
number is affixed to the back of the trophy). And while it's
permissible to carry the trophy to events, and to otherwise show it
off before moving it along to your new cache hide, nobody but the
actual FTF finders should log the travel bug. The travel bug page
will thus serve as a handy record of everyone who has nabbed FTF on
one or more of the caches in the series.
- Have fun and be creative on your new
hide!
Whoever grabs the trophy next time around may do
likewise, and so on ad infinitum. The trophy is six inches tall, so
it should fit in most regular-size cache containers, including
small ammo cans and medium or larger Lock-n-Locks. The same person
can grab the trophy more than once, of course, but hopefully the
series will encourage some of the newer cachers to join the
excitement of the FTF hunt.
While there are no restrictions on the type or difficulty of each
new hide, if the Houston-area series is any indication there will
likely be a good percentage of challenging puzzles and multicaches
in the mix, with each new hider trying to come up with some
off-the-wall twist to stump their fellow cachers.
Since this FTF series began, there seems
to have been a rule change that prevents this cache from
“REQUIRING” the First To Find to hide a new cache. So, I have
changed some words in the original text to indicate permissiveness
rather than a requirement. This means that you really DO NOT HAVE
to go hide a new cache, or keep the Pirate Travel Bug on his quest.
You, in fact, may horde the Pirate and end this series right then
and there. No one will delete your ‘smiley’ from your record. To my
knowledge, there is no curse going to be placed on the final holder
of the Pirate (no one has held it long enough to find out).
If you, however, would like to keep this series going then you may
participate like the ones before you and play the game. IT IS
CERTAINLY VOLUNTARY.