Pirate Party Compete with Ship, Desert Island, and Booty

For two of my friends' combined birthday party, they decided to throw a pirate themed party.  I took this as a challenge to make as neat of a cake as I could to appease some pirates when the rum was gone (the rum is always gone).  Overall, I think it came out well, but I ran short on time with my pirate ship and didn't have time to put all the details that I wanted to on it.

I started out making a bundt cake for my island.  I decided on this both for its shape, but also to try to make a studier material for the palm tree to stick out of since we've had problems with that in the past.

We ended up filling the center with a couple cupcakes.

I sprayed blue food color mist around the bottom of the cake to act as the ocean.

I covered the cake with a mixture of brown and white sugar to give the appearance of sand.  I didn't break up any chunks of brown sugar to help give the appearance of rocks.

While I worked on the cake, my trusty cake making buddy John worked on making a sugar palm tree.

We made the trunk around a skewer to add some support and make it easier to add to the cake.  We dyed the trunk brown and the leaves green.  We used toothpicks to apply the color to the leaves which also helped add texture to the sugar as it cooled.

John used extra heated sugar and his roommate's compressed air (intended for computer keyboards) to cool the sugar quickly to help the leaves stick faster.
(We told no one to eat the tree if they had a latex allergy after using latex gloves)

Here is how the tree looks on its island.  We also made a coconut out of leftover sugar to add an extra little detail

I got started on the ship.  It took quite a bit of cake to complete and, since I use box mixes, you can see that I ran out of chocolate and had to use a different flavor.

I carved the front of the ship and added to the top.  It was at this point that I was tired of dealing with cake and frosting, so I convinced John to frost the cake with some nice chocolate frosting.

John had been working on a treasure chest, so I took over with his work when he started to make the frosting.

We thought it would be a good idea to try to incorporate a threadless design into the cake, so we made some "Booty"
http://www.threadless.com/product/2637/Booty/tab,guys/style,shirt

We put the treasure chest on the desert island.  Yes, it is in plain view and not buried where X marks the spot, but it's difficult to bury a cake treasure chest in another cake.

Booty.  Enough said.

It was at this point that I ran out of time.  Our island was finished, but the ship was missing a lot of details like a mast, wheel, anchor, pirates, and it isn't even in water.

When I returned for the party, I added a mast made out of a pirouette cookie and some fruit leather.  I also happened to have a plastic pirate that I added to the cake.  I need to stop procrastinating my cakes if I want to keep making them intricate.  However, I happen to really like the island.  ARG!