Thursday, 4 January 2018 - Where I had taken the dinghy to get it to dry out was apparently verboten, even though I had asked where I could drag it out and that's where one of the marina employees told me. My mistake, I guess, was to actually try to get it out of the rain, so Steve and I put under the tiki hut, assuming, correctly, that since I've never see anyone use that tiki hut, and since it is so cold and blustery it would be alright. Wrong! I had to move it today while Steve was at work. I used a short section of piling or telephone pole as a lever and wheel and got it back in the water, then towed it over to the dinghy dock and left it there for the evening.
                    The batteries were a little low so I started up the Honda generator to charge them, but the charging system wasn't working properly and I noticed a warning light on my AC electrical panel was on indicating, "Reverse Polarity - Disconnect Shore Power Immediately." The generator plugs into and replaces the shore power cord when I'm away from a dock. That scared me. I certainly don't need a fire onboard or to burn up any of my electronics, so I shut it off as soon as I saw the warning light.

Friday, 5 January - Steve Monaghan's Birthday. He has to work a while tomorrow, so we'll celebrate after that.
                    I took Steve to shore then went into the marina office and paid for use of the dinghy hoist and a couple of days of storage in the marina workroom to let the dinghy dry out, then stuck around for a few hours, pumping the dinghy up about every 30 minutes to replenish the air in the tubes to get them to dry out. I must have pumped the dinghy up three to five times a day ever since I got back from avoiding hurricane Irma, which would make about 300 times, and today, it quit spitting out water. That seemed odd, but I hope it's true that the last of the water is out of the tube. On return to the boat, I checked out the Honda generator and didn't find anything wrong, then checked the boat's wiring diagram that I recently created to see if I could find anything that could cause the charging problem and the warning light to come on. I found absolutely nothing, so I called the manufacturer of the Xantrex inverter / charger to find out if they had any suggestions. The fellow seemed very knowledgeable and we went through some of the settings and readouts, explaining what was significant and why. Everything seemed as it should be, then he had me start the generator. Guess what? No problem reared its ugly head. Isn't that the way it always goes when you try to show a repairman a problem? He seemed pretty sure that the generator / charging system had merely had a quick hiccough that triggered the warning light and that the fact that I had shut the system down cleared the setting and, upon restarting, all was well. I certainly hope he was correct because a new inverter / charger would cost about $1800.

Saturday, 6 January - I took all my materials into the marina today intending to try to patch the hole at the joint at the hypalon tubing and the aluminum hull on the dinghy, but needed toluene to clean the area with before applying adhesive. I walked the mile to the Home Depot to get it and headed to the paint isle. They had everything there, xylene, paint thinner, acetone, and several others, but not toluene. In fact, they couldn't even order it into the store and had never heard of it. Xylene, acetone, toluene and a couple of others are basically the same compound, just structured differently. Toluene is the one I need to do this job, however, and the others won't do, so I called Steve and asked him to pick up a quart at the Specialty Hardware store on his way back from work this evening and he did. Later, we went out to dinner to celebrate his birthday since he had to work today, but doesn't have to tomorrow.

Sunday, 7 January - Steve and I spent most of the day cleaning some of the previous, unsuccessful sealant, Flex Seal, off the boat and cleaning a couple of areas to be patched with Toluene, then applying two patches, one in a very hard location to access, and the other, replacing one of the oarlocks. We left the dinghy leaning against the wall of the work area to totally dry overnight. In the process, we discovered a hole that has, at some point, been drilled into the inner hull of the dinghy in a spot that I thought was a single thickness. That's where a lot of the water is coming out of the boat, not out of the tube on that side. I can't imagine why a half-inch hole would have ever been drilled into that spot. It looks as if it was drilled in before the hypalon tubes were attached because afterward, there's no way to access that spot. At least now I know the water doesn't have to come out now. It can wait. If the patch job we did today wasn't successful, I may rethink replacing the dinghy. We did the best we can and if that isn't good enough, there will be no alternative but to replace it. Repairing this one hole won't fix the whole boat, but if this repair doesn't work, there's no use proceeding any further with repairs. If, on the other hand, it is successful, there are several other patches to apply and I'll need to apply an internal coating similar to Fix-A-Flat, or Never Leak inside the tubes. I'll also want to apply some patches not designed to repair leaks, but to add another layer of abrasion resistance in key spots where the strap I use to hold the dinghy in place while on the davits at sea abrades the tubes.
                    Later in the afternoon, Steve and I walked over to the city park and went to the Celtic Fest. It ran both Saturday and Sunday, but we nearly missed it. We were hungry and went over there to grab a bite to eat and listen to a few songs by a Scottish band while the glue for one of the patches dried, then returned.

Monday, 8 January - Today was certainly an interesting day. I took Steve in to go to work then returned to the boat. I hadn't been back aboard long when I got a text message from Steve saying he was back at the marina. His boss had called him to say not to come in till noon. A little late, I think. I finished my breakfast and listened to the Cruiser's Net, then returned to the marina. We started working on the dinghy again. We discovered the patch we applied at the inside bottom edge of the hull was holding fine, but there was need for another right next to it. While we were working on that, a crane barge was working to lift one last boat from the parking lot and started raising one last sailboat from the channel in the marina. It was a small sailboat, about 27 feet long, We could see it laying on the bottom of the channel at low tide. We took the opportunity to watch them raise that boat, but we shouldn't have. By the time it was set on the barge, it was so late in the day that we couldn't finish sealing the tubes of the dinghy with the internal sealant. During the four hour period that the sealant takes to dry, the dinghy needs to be flipped top to bottom and end to end about every thirty minutes to make sure every interior surface is coated with the sealant. The marina workshop would close before we finished, so I suggested we go kayaking instead.
                    As we were about to leave Island Time in the kayaks, I noticed another stray boat between two of the mangrove islands near us, so we paddled over, got it and returned to the boat. I was a very nice row boat set up for two oarsmen with two sets of oars in it, one set with straight blades and the other, curved. As we approached our boat, a power boater approached us and wanted to see the row boat. When he saw it, he said he thought he knew who owned it. Steve and I thought we knew who this one belonged to, also, but I told the man not to send anyone for the boat since we would be off the boat kayaking. I wanted to announce that we'd found it on the Cruiser's Net in the morning. We headed out to explore the mangroves, hoping to find a channel through the island that I know exists, but don't know the location of. I see paddlers come out from behind the small islands frequently, and I know where the other end of the channel is over in Sister Creek, but I don't know exactly where the paddlers exit from. The small islands hide their location. We headed out, following several dead end routes, and in the process we found several more lost items: one nice large boat fender, a good, but very short aluminum oar, two rubber dinghies, one that was deflated and bundled up and the other, a rigid inflatable that had two totally deflated tubes and one that was still totally inflated, and one kayak paddle. I had the fender, the oar, the kayak paddle and large fender all stuffed into my boat and each of us tried to tow a dinghy back to the boat. We got about a third of the way there and realized it was going to be a lot easier and quicker for one of us to go get Steve's dinghy to tow everything back, so I left him with the two dinghies and headed back to Island Time. Guess what. The row boat was gone when I got back to the boat. Someone had untied it and taken it. I suspected it was either the fellow that showed interest in it, or the people we though owned it, but detaching it from my boat and taking it without my being there is a strict no-no. That's theft, even if it belongs to you. They should have either waited until I returned or if they thought I had stolen it, called the sheriff, but they should never have just come taken it. I believe that's strictly against maritime law, and certainly poor etiquette.
                    Since I didn't really know who took it, I got on the radio and announced that it had been stolen from my boat and asked if anyone had seen who took it or knew anything about it. Several people responded including the suspected owners. They said that the marina manager had sent them a message saying that I had it, so they called me and I didn't answer, then they came over and and knocked on the hull of the boat and no one was home, so they just took it. If I didn't answer the phone, that should indicate that I'm probably not available, so why even leave their boat to come over to mine, and if I don't come on deck when they knock on the hull, they should certainly have come back when I was here, not take something attached to my boat without my permission while I'm away. That's called theft any way you look at it...even if they have papers saying they own it. If I acquired it legally and it's in my possession, it's mine until I willingly relinquish it. As you can see, I'm not happy something was taken from my vessel. It will be interesting to hear what is said about this on the Net in the morning. It'll probably turn out to look like I'm the bad guy; that's the way it usually goes.

Tuesday, 9 January - Steve took another day off to help me and we made quite a bit of progress on the dinghy. We re-glued a section or hypalon on the lower edge of the hull where water was coming in, and poured sealant into the tubes and spent about 5 hours turning the boat over end to end, side to side, and top to bottom every thirty minutes to spread the sealant around evenly. Unfortunately, it was a bit cool today and I don't think the sealant dried totally, but there is no doubt that the tubes are holding air much better than it was previously. We also cleaned the hull much better, so much better that it is tempting repaint the boat, hull and hypalon, too.
                    We took the dinghy that was deflated, rolled up and bundled to a dock and inflated it this morning. It looks almost new and is holding air perfectly. It has Florida registration numbers on it that the harbor master used to track down the owner, but the owner has left the area. This is sad, according to the harbor master, it is illegal to use it, because it is registered to someone else, unless you report it to the Florida Wildlife Commission, pay them $250 to run advertisements as a found item and no one claims it, then you can claim it, acquire a new title, and register it. Those conditions make it not worthwhile to most people, me included, since I don't plan on being around that long and certainly don't want to spend the $250 hoping no one claims it. What a waste, a perfectly good dinghy that no one can use. It will probably be trashed.
                    Since the dinghies are verboten, Steve, while back at the boat to retrieve his car keys, cut the other dinghy we had found loose, expecting to have it drift or blow away. When we got back to the boat, it was tied to the swim platform, so he released it again. An hour later, the fellow on the boat next to us hailed us. He'd noticed the dinghy had gotten away again and brought it back! We released it again. There's no wind and now, four hours later it is still about 30 feet off our port beam. We can't get rid of it!