Thursday, 19 January 2017 - The company that made my mainsail reefing system is so flakey that I went ahead and tightened the inner stay on the system this morning even though they hadn't returned my call from yesterday morning asking how to determine how tight tight is on it. Again today, they never called me back. Since there was also very light winds this morning, I lowered the mainsail and rebent the retaining wire on the sail's head, then raised and refurled the sail. I'm pretty sure I won't be having problems with it catching on the halyards anymore as I unfurl and furl the sail. That could cause real trouble in an emergency and is a pain in the butt anytime.
                  Around 11 o'clock, Steve brought his friend Aileen over to the boat. She's a photographer that is just embracing digital and wanted me to teach her Adobe Photoshop. Of course, all I could do was show her a few of the basics and a few of the more advanced features that she'll need to learn, but beyond that, my best advise was to get the tutorial off the Abobe website and follow it step by step, learning the basics first, then moving on. Following the tutorial seems boring, but if you try to jump to more interesting images and techniques too quickly, you really waste tremendous amounts of time trying to figure out how to do what the tutorial would have taught you in the first place. I can tell you this, she has no idea what she's up against. Photoshop is one of the most complex programs there is to learn that there is. It will take her years to master even parts of it. It has been created for photographers, printing houses, graphic designers, and illustrators; each using different parts of it and different tools within it, and I dare say, nobody knows how to use all of it's features, even the "experts". Luckily, you don't need to know how to use them all, but the more you know, the better. She doesn't even know the basics of photography like how to control depth of field, even though if I understood her correctly, she has taken college courses in photography. The new cameras are too automated, doing it all for you, but not letting you know how or why they do what they do. For instance, she said that her camera will focus on 17 things at one time. What it really does is let you pick 17 spots in the field of vision and then average the distances and set itself to the point that will get the most of those 17 spots into the best focus it can, but it is still only truly focused in one plane. Closing the aperture down then MAY bring the others more into focus at a sacrifice of having to have longer shutter speeds. I don't think she even knows what an F/stop is or how it relates to shutter speed and exposure. I wish her luck. I wish her all the luck in the world.
                  After we went to lunch, I headed back to my boat, then decided to take a detour down one of the side channels from the river I'm anchored in. I killed my engine and rowed maybe a mile further into the mangrove labyrinth. I think if a hurricane were headed this way, I'd just move my boat back in there as far as my keel would let me go, anchor and tie into the mangroves. All that would be sticking up above the mangroves would be my mast. I bet very few of the boaters here in the mooring field know what it's like back in there, and there's room for quite a few boats to take refuge back in it. I also passed a very large manatee that was feeding on the bottom as I rowed in. They are shaped and look about like a huge, 8 to 15 foot potato with a single big horizontal paddle for a tail; ever so slow and graceful.

Friday, 20 January - Today I finally announced myself as a newcomer to the yacht basin on the VHF. Each morning at 9 am on channel 68, the marina has about an hour of informative interaction with the residents of the mooring field and surrounding area. They start off with letting newcomers introduce themselves, then let the people leaving say good bye. Next is about 10 minutes of announcements about happenings in the marina; swap meets, tai chi, yoga, baseball at the park, basketball, plays at the civic center, etc. After that comes about 30 minutes of various sailors trying to buy, sell, or trade items they have and people needing to get help doing some project. Almost every person that needs help or to borrow a tool finds someone that will help them out. I was one of those this morning. I needed a little advise about how to go about repairing this 12v refrigerator, and within an hour, there was a plumber from one of the boats on my boat listening to me tell him what my problem was and what I've already tried. Basically, he said that the manner I have been going about it was correct in able to avoid soldering up under the fitting, but that the JB Weld was the wrong product to use. It's too runny. He suggested Water Weld, a puttylike repair stick that you tear off, ply with your fingers until it is well mixed, then mold to the fittings and tubes. Now all I have to do is purchase some JB Water Weld, remove the JB Weld, and re-clean the surfaces of the fittings. That'll take awhile.
                  Later, the holding tanks got pumped out by the pump-out boat, then I put chafing gear made from fire hose that Steve Luta gave me months ago on the two lines that I have the boat tied to the mangroves with. I hope to get a couple of more lines into the mangroves on Sunday, before the predicted strong winds arrive later in the day.

Saturday, 21 January - This morning started off with a trip to take the bike to shore and get 22 gallons of water for $1.10 at the marina office. The boating community here also had a swap meet today. I went by and checked things out, but didn't find anything I couldn't do without. After that I headed down the street to the Home Depot for the JB Water Weld Epoxy, a large shackle, and several sizes of ferrules and thimbles to make eye splices in cable. They had everything but the thimbles. I can't believe they have cable and ferrules, but not the thimbles to form the loop in an eye splice. Actually, they do have one or two sizes, but for every thimble you get, you have to buy several other items that you don't need or want. On the way back to the marina I stopped into a dive shop to see if I could get a new velcro watch band for my watch. No luck.
                  Upon getting back to the boat I added two more lines to the mangroves, making a total of four, and took out my large danforth anchor in the dinghy and dropped it about 150 feet in front of the boat. When I pulled the anchor line tight, I was surprised to see how shallow it was, so I attached a small mushroom anchor to the line to act as a kellit and pull the anchor rode down. After pulling it out away from the boat it sank the line down pretty well, which should keep anyone from catching it on their propeller. Now I have two anchors out in preparation for the strong winds predicted for tomorrow night.

Sunday, 22 January - I am confident that I have the boat secure enough for the big blow tonight, so I spent the day taking all the JB Weld off the brass fitting on the Isotherm refrigeration water pump and replacing it with the JB Water Weld, as suggested by the plumber that came to my boat the other day. The new epoxy sets up faster and seems to be holding well. Have I said that before? Yes, I have. Only time will tell, but, as always, I'm optimistic. Now all there is to do is wait for tonight's big winds and see what happens and who's boat ends up somewhere other than where it was anchored tonight. I think two boats, one sailboat and one power boat, here in Sister Creek have dragged anchor, and winds are barely above 20 knots. That was easy to recover from in daylight, it'll be different in the darkness of night. The boat next to and upwind of me worries me a little. It is a large power boat with lots of freeboard and only one anchor off his bow. Lots of the powerboats have rather small anchors relative to size of the boat. I didn't see his anchor before he dropped it, so maybe I'm worrying about nothing. It's about 10 pm and I'm starting to hear the wind pick up.

Monday, 23 January - Well, as predicted, for once, the strong winds really kicked in about 3:30 am. I could see hundreds of lightning flashes, too, but heard very few. They were all cloud to cloud. A bit of rain, hard for a little while, then sporadic. I think all the boats near me, except one powerboat that had been pulled out of the mangroves yesterday, stayed put overnight. The one power boat was getting pulled out of the mangroves again this morning shortly after I got up.
                  I had breakfast this morning, but when I tried to wash dishes, I discovered that I was out of water again. How could that be? Yesterday I checked and had about 120 gallons. This is the second time this has happened. The first time, I couldn't find how it went away or where it went, so I assumed that something in the system had sprung a leak and the water flowed to the bilge and was pumped out by the automatic bilge pump, although I thought I had that pump turned off. Today, I KNOW I had that pump off. My best clue was that I've had the 12V refrigeration off for several days, but turned it on yesterday after fixing the leak in the heat exchanger. I thought that since today was going to be stormy out, it would be a good day to map out the plumbing on the boat and in the process, probably discover where and how the water was disappearing. Mapping the plumbing is going to take more than one day. Some things disappear under flooring or through bulkheads (walls) and reappear after a splice has been made in the tubing, making identification almost impossible. I did, however, figure out what's happening to the water. In the process of disconnecting and repairing the refrigeration, I had to turn off two valves, one on each side of the pump and heat exchanger. I hadn't noticed, but the two valves don't merely turn on or off, but are actually three-way valves that enable the circulation of either fresh water or salt water for the cooling. I had turned the exit valve from the position to send the water back to the tank, to the position to dump it overboard. That's where my water went - overboard! One hundred twenty gallons or 7 trips to the water dock. Oh, well. Now I know. I bet it will be a long time before I make that mistake again, especially since I marked the valves.
                  On returning from the water dock for the first 22 gallons of replacement water, the boat looked as if it were aground. The boot top, which marks the normal waterline on the hull, was about 8" out of the water. I assumed that my anchors had drug and that my keel, or worse yet, my rudder might be on the bottom. I immediately got out my lead line and measured the depth. No, I still have nine feet of water under the boat, even though the stern is only six feet from the mangroves. With a sigh of relief, I then realized that I had approached the boat from the windward side and that the wind, still blowing quite forcefully, was holding the boat in a semi-permanent heel to starboard, making it look as if I were aground when I wasn't. I emptied my jerrycans into the water tank, went and got 22 gallons more, returned, started the refrigeration again, and voilà...the water pump works fine and so does the refrigeration, with no leaks!
                  My friend Steve Luta who was here in Marathon when I got here, has headed to Miami in his sailboat, Asilomar. He's about 2/3 of the way there and pulled in behind Rodrigues Key for protection from the wind and seas. He called earlier today to say that one gust was so strong that his boat heeled over almost 60° and when he looked out the back of his boat, his dinghy was suspended in mid-air for a moment. It flipped and landed upside down with the engine submerged. That'll take a bit of work to clean up and get the salt out of it. He's safe though. His anchor is holding well. Gene Ramos, back in Ft. Myers Beach on his powerboat, Star, says he's still experiencing 40 kt. winds there with two to three ft. waves, even after dark. Meanwhile, here on Sister Creek in Marathon, the winds are still quite gusty at around 15 - 25 kt., but there's barely a ripple on the water...and I'll bet none of us are being bothered by mosquitos or no-see-ums.

Tuesday, 24 January - I spent most of the day unsuccessfully trying to determine why three of the indicator lights on my breaker panel and my stern light stay dimly lit even when the circuit breakers are off. The main suspect was the photoelectric switch that I installed a few weeks ago, but even after totally removing it from the circuit, the lights remained on. I think I'll take my brother's advice and consider them inconsequential, at least for the moment.
                  The winds have subsided and here on Sister Creek the big blow was a non-event, but that's fine with me. This time was a good rehearsal for the next one. I'll pull in one anchor and maybe a couple of lines to the mangroves in a couple of days to make getting under way a little quicker and easier when the time comes.

Wednesday, 25 January - Nothing unusual today. I went to replenish my water twice again today. That's 44 more gallons. I also went to Home Depot to take some of the ferrules, for making eyes in cable, that I got the other day back. While there, I bought some PVC gloves to use when pulling up the anchor. The barnacles, rust and seawater really do a job on all the gloves I've tried so far. Leather gloves soften too much when wet and the cotton in most other gloves stretches, making the gloves way too loose. I only bought one pair, but will get more if they work well. I need something that enhances my grip and won't stretch out or soften and wear through so fast. I think I need rubber or PVC impregnated carbon fiber gloves, cheap. Gotta be really flexible, sticky, and tough as nails. Is that asking too much?

            Until next time.
                        "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S. Thompson

                                          Rick