Jaybeee

I've emailed contact@geocaching.com. Dropping the issue would be the mature thing to do, but I'm appealing it on principle.

Well said! Thank you for putting this into perspective. You are right.

It is definitely a controversial cache. Labadee is a private area owned by Royal Caribbean, so all visitors are cruise ship passengers. I was disappointed when I couldn't find it because I'm not likely to get another chance. It was actually a valuable learning experience, and I now have my own personal set of rule regarding geocaching while on vacation. I tend to go for virtual caches instead of traditional caches, and I promised my family I will not spend more than 15 minutes searching for a cache!

The cache was missing at that time - that's why someone else replaced it. My DNF log says, "No luck this time, but a great excuse to take another cruise." Nothing rude, controversial, or critical. Simply my own record of having tried and failed to find it - that's all.

There is a vacation cache on Labadee Beach (GC8D0). I tried to find it in May 2010 while on a cruise, but had no luck because it was missing. A subsequent visitor to the beach has since replaced it. The CO (Todd & Tracy) will not allow me to post my DNF. The CO doesn't "like" me because I was critical of the cache when I initially posted my DNF. It was frustrating to spend valuable vacation time searching for a non-existent cache. Anyway, to make a long story short, the CO and I despise each other, which is fine because we don't actually know each other. I just want to log my DNF and be done with it, but the CO keeps deleting my DNF log. As everyone knows, posting finds and DNFs provides us with our own record of where we've been and what we've done. This was my only chance (so far) to geocache in Haiti, and even though I wasn't successful, I want a record of having been there. In the big scheme of things, I know that this is a relatively minor and extremely childish issue. Has anyone run into a CO like this one? If you look at the CO's history, you will see that they are not active geocachers and all but two of their caches have been archived for lack of maintenance or violation of geocaching.com regulations. They aren't even the owners of the current geocache at Labadee Beach, but they still hold the "power."

I'm happy to report that today we found it. Turns out the first set of published coordinates is wrong. The original owner told us where to find the clues for stage 1. Thanks to everyone for their advice. Perhaps it was because of our "lack of experience" that we believed the published coordinates would actually be correct.

Our problem is not with the actual cache - although we are new at this, we are reasonably competent. The problem is that there are so many number possibilities at stage one that we can't be sure we are finding the right spot for stage 2. We have tried many possibilities, all of which take us out of the disc golf park to areas with no obvious numbers to solve stage 3. I'm sure if we could get to stage 3, we would be able to find the cache.

I did - I haven't heard back.

I emailed the owner - someone else set it up and transferred ownership to her, and she doesn't know how to find it. I emailed the person who set it up - haven't heard back. I emailed the most recent finder - haven't heard back. I once had a sudoku puzzle that I could not solve, no matter how long I worked on it. I finally ripped the puzzle out of the book and shredded it. Maybe that's what we need to do with this particiular geocache! I appreciate everyone's help.

The problem with the first stage is that there are several numbers to choose from. This location is a disc golf course, so there are numbers on the baskets (several of which are visible from that spot) and the tee signs (two of which are visible). Also on the tee signs are the phone numbers of the businesses that sponsor each hole. We've tried using just the numbers on the baskets, just the numbers on the tee signs, with and without the sponsor's phone number, and so on... I love a challenge, but this is pissing me off! It was designed for a geocaching course for beginners, and it is supposed to be an easy find. If this was my first attempt at geocaching, I think I would throw out my GPS and find another sport!

What about the geocache you simply cannot find? We have looked for GC18ZW9 several times. It is a three-stage geocache. We can find stage 1, we think we solved the location of stage 2, but that's as far as we get. I emailed the cache owner, but she said someone else created it and then transferred it into her name, so she doesn't know how to find it. I emailed the most recent person to find it, but haven't heard back. Any suggestions? We are new to geocaching, and thoroughly enjoying it, but this one cache has us stumped! Jaybeee