Wednesday, 4 April 2018 - I made one more trip to the fuel dock to fill my last jugs with diesel and was given two twenty pound bags of ice for having purchased so much fuel. I returned to the boat and since I didn't need 20 pounds of ice myself, I got on the radio and offered it to the first person that needed it an got here first. A fellow immediately responded and asked if I would deliver. I thought, "I'm offering it to you for free and you want to know if I'll deliver it, too." He must be a Democrat.
                    In the afternoon, I went to the city marina and filled eight 5 gallon jugs with water and took them back to the boat, then went to the library and watched "Steam Boat Bill, Jr." starring Buster Keaton from about 1938; a silent movie. I'm not really into the Keystone Cops type of frenetic comedy, but Keaton was certainly an amazing athlete to pull off all the stunts that were performed for the movie.

Thursday, 5 April - I had found an aluminum pole in the water awhile back that would make a good handle for something, I knew not what. Today I modified it to be an extension for a fish landing net which I will use to try to snag things floating in the water that either go overboard or that I might see floating in the water. Unfortunately, most things that go overboard sink so quickly that this net will probably be of little use, but it's worth having it available just in case; besides, maybe I'll catch a big fish one of these days. I also transferred 40 gallons of water that I got at the marina the other day into the onboard water tank. Later, Patty and I went to the Hurricane Grill to celebrate her having finished removing the engine from her boat and met Kevin Vallee and Larry Baker there for a few drinks and some dancing to Ty Thurman's music. Unfortunately, both Patty and I had left one hatch open on our boats and it rained while were at the Hurricane. You know the rest of the story. Luckily, the worst for me was that it rained into a tool bucket; Patty's bed got soaked on her boat.

Friday, 6 April - I had intended to work on the dinghy today, but, luckily, before I even got started, I got a call from Patty saying that the mechanic that is going to do the work on the head and block of her diesel engine had notified her that she needed to get it to his ASAP. He's clear up in Fort Myers, about a 7 or 8 hour drive away, so she needed to leave immediately...she thought. I went to take her to shore, but by the time I got to her boat, she had heard from her insurance adjuster, saying that he needed to come to her boat before she left, so she couldn't leave until about 5 pm. I returned to my boat with most of the refrigerated food she had onboard, then went and took her and the adjuster to shore around 5 o'clock so she can deliver it to the mechanic early tomorrow morning.
                    Just after dark, and after I had already put the dinghy on the davits, a call came over the VHF radio that someone had had their dinghy's engine conk out on them and the needed a tow back to their boat, so I launched and went for a dinghy ride in the dark. Luckily, they didn't need to be towed very far.
                    I also got a call from a fellow in New York City that is starting up a nautical summer camp for youngsters, had seen my illustrations on my web site of the sailboat and sailboard with the parts labeled, and wanted to use the images to teach with in his classroom. That would involve having a high resolution file of each, so I stayed up until 2 am looking for those images on all my hard drives, computers, and backup drives. Couldn't find them. I couldn't even find the program, Adobe Illustrator, that I created them with on my computer. I can't believe I have erased them. I'll have to call him tomorrow and let him know I can't supply the images. I could recreate them in Inkscape, but with my friend, Scott Bushman, coming in this week, I really don't have the time. Too much to do before Scott gets here.

Saturday, 7 April - Virtually all of today was involved with re-re-re-repairing the dinghy that took such a beating in hurricane Irma. It took about two hours to remove the gas tank, then remove the outboard motor and hoist it to the deck and mount it on the aft rail, move the dinghy to the bow and rig a snatch block to pull it forward while I hoisted it up with a halyard. Lots of time was used up just walking back and forth the ten feet from the winch on the mast to the dinghy to push it away from the bow because it repeatedly hung up as I lifted it. That done, I removed the two patches up under the tube at the hull joint, cleaned off the remaining adhesives that didn't work wit acetone and toluene, then applied a very thick coat of 3M 4200 adhesive. I think and hope that the 4200 will be thick enough and strong enough without the patch material. I didn't put a patch on it this time because I believe the patch material is actually pulling the adhesives away from the tube before the adhesives dry, since the patch material needs to be creased but tries to straighten out. I had also tried contact cement, but I couldn't get the patches in place properly before they got stuck in the wrong position. I'm running out of ideas about how to repair the dinghy. If this doesn't work, I think I'm going to take Gary Powers' idea and run with it; fill the tubes with closed cell, pourable refrigeration foam.

Sunday, 8 April - The 3M adhesive takes at least 24 hours to cure, so I didn't do anything to the dinghy today. There's a BBQ onboard and Patty recently mentioned that we ought to put it to use, but since I had never even removed its cover, I thought I'd better check it out first. Good decision. I did that today while I was waiting for the adhesive on the dinghy to cure for twenty four hours. I cleaned it up and tried to light it, but couldn't get one of the two valves to push in and turn. I did, however, get one side to light up, so it is at least useable. It will soon need a new burner and grill, too, however. This salt air destroys everything, stainless steel or not. There's been very little wind for the last two days, so I had to run the auxiliary generator for a couple of hours this evening. Another feature on the boat that I had never tried and didn't know if it works is the satellite radio receiver, Sirius Satellite, so I fooled with it till I got it working even though I don't have a subscription for the service. It receives the satellite signal, then retransmits it to my onboard stereo on an FM station.

Monday, 9 April - I realized this morning that I only dealt with one of the leaks in the dinghy on Friday and that I should have replaced another patch while the dinghy was deflated, so I did that this morning. I peeled back another patch that had blistered and was leaking, cleaned the surface and applied a fresh coat of contact cement to each surface, let it set for about 40 minutes, and re-adhered the patch. I then waited about another hour and inflated the dinghy and started the process of re-splashing. It was easier to get the dinghy out of the water and on deck on Friday than it was getting it off the deck and into the water again. The difference was that while bringing it aboard, since the halyard that I was lifting it with is attached to the mast over the center of the boat, the dinghy, once lifted out of the water wanted to swing onto the boat by itself. While reversing the procedure, the boat still wanted to stay in the center of the boat, so I had to force it overboard while controlling two lines, one to pull it forward away from the mast, and the other to raise it high enough to clear the safety lines around the perimeter of the boat and then lower it over the side, back into the water. An easy two man job, but I got it done. I then reinstalled the gas tank, seat, and lowered the outboard motor into place on the stern of the dinghy from its storage spot on the aft rail of the boat. Another hour and a half was spent putting away all the tools, toluene and adhesives, and coiling the ropes I used to control the dinghy on deck.
                    Scott emailed me today and has moved his arrival date up from Saturday to Wednesday. There are some things that I had intended to get done, but won't, but that will give us more time to sail while he is here.

Tuesday, 10 April - The highlight of the day was the 1st Annual Boot Key Harbor Rumbrella Regatta and its accompanying pot luck dinner. The race had very few rules. Any vessel allowed, only propulsion allowed was an umbrella, and you must pass between the correct two buoys, which were the finish line. I didn't win, but I did make it across the finish line between the buoys. Only five of the vessels out of fifteen did. They had cooked up about 60 lb. of chicken for the group of 50 people that signed up for the party. Another great pot luck dinner party in the harbor!

Wednesday, 11 April - Scott Bushman arrived today about 12:30. I went ashore and we went to Publix and bought a few groceries, then back to the boat for a little liquid refreshment and conversation. About 4:30 we got in the dinghy and took a tour of the harbor and out Sister Creek to East Sister Rock. We saw lots of schools of fish jumping out of the water to avoid tarpon and porpoises that were feeding along with pelicans. The whole area in front of Sombrero Beach must have been full of six inch fish and their predators. I've never seen so many fish jumping. Next we head to his car and went to El Molcajete Mexican Restaurant and had a great dinner and margaritas. Back at the boat we discussed what the seemingly unstable weather might do for the next few days and where we ought to venture off to.

Thursday, 12 April - Had intended to sail to Looe Key to dive today, but spent all day trying to make the charts on my electronic plotter display properly.

Friday the 13th - About midnight last night I thought I had the chart plotter problem narrowed down to the Navionics card being bad but a call to them convinced me that even though that might be a problem, the real problem lies in the fact that the chart plotter won't recognize the microSD cards to allow me to update the software. That means that updating isn't going to happen for a while so we might as well go sailing, so we did. We left the harbor about noonish and headed for Looe Key, arriving just in time to duck into Newfound Harbor for the evening. We'd had a great downwind sail with very few crab and lobster pots to avoid and a few porpoises to accompany us for awhile, not a cloud in the sky and 11 to 18 kt. breezes. We used the Navionics Boating app to guide the boat; not as good as a chart plotter, but it worked.

Saturday, 14 April - We sailed out to Looe Key today. I was here with my brother and parents about 45 years ago. It's a "Key" that is almost never above water, just a high spot on the ocean floor at the edge of the reef and it's still incredibly beautiful. It's totally underwater, is about 5 miles from shore near Newfound Harbor, is about 15 feet deep at its inside edge and gets shallower at its outside edge, where it drops precipitously into deeper ocean. The reef also has finger canyons that run perpendicular to the length of it and it has depths that range from about two feet at the top of its outer edge where it drops like a cliff into the Atlantic Ocean, and the finger canyons vary from about 10 feet to 30 feet or more. It's pretty looking down from above, but the real beauty isn't seen until you dive to the bottom of one of the canyons and look horizontally or upward. Now the light has changed from flat to side or backlighting and the canyon walls are covered with beautiful corals, sea fans, and fishes of all kinds swim around and through holes and hiding places in the walls. Absolutely spectacular. The one thing that I really noticed different from my visit years ago was the lack of spine, black sea urchins. When we were here years ago there were thousands of them, in fact, the bottoms of the canyons were almost solid urchins, apparently because they can't swim and are captive of the canyons if the fall off the edges into them. This reef or key is far superior, in beauty and variety and numbers of fish, to Sombrero Lighthouse Key near Marathon's Boot Key Harbor and I really glad I had the opportunity to return after all these years.

Sunday, 15 April - Weather forecasts were predicting winds up to 45 mph for this evening with significant rain, too, so we decided to head back to Boot Key Harbor since our anchorage in Newfound Harbor had very little protection from north winds, which is where the storm was coming from. We actually had a beautiful day of sailing of south southeast winds coming back and had blue skies and beautiful green water with 4 to 6 foot waves on an almost beam reach all the way back. We arrived back at the entrance to the harbor right before low tide so I decided not to come in right then. We had a beer, killed about two and a half hours, then realized that all we would gain on the higher tide was about one foot if we waited till 9:30. I certainly didn't want to wait that long for two reasons. One was that I didn't want to be trying to find a location to anchor in a full harbor in darkness and the other reason was the storm was about to hit us. We came on into the harbor without dragging bottom and proceeded to anchor. We tried twice to anchor and at each location it looked as if we would be too close to another vessel when an appropriate amount of rode was let out, so we moved again. By now it was dark and the rain and wind had started. We tried again and the anchor dragged causing us to have an ever so slight bump of our bow pulpit with that of another boat's bow pulpit; no damage done. On the fourth try, after coming around again, the anchor dragged again. We raise anchor once again, pulled forward and finally got the anchor to hold on the bottom. Thank goodness! Time to dry out and relax.

Monday, 16 April - We headed out to Key West this morning about 10 o'clock and spent the day touring Mel Fisher's Nuestra Señora De La Atocha Museum, Fort Zachary Taylor, and since Scott is an artist, several art galleries, arriving back at Island Time right before dark.

Tuesday, 17 April - I took Scott to shore after breakfast so he could get a good start on his trip driving back to Utah.

Wednesday, 18 April - Silent movie, popcorn.

Thursday, 19 April - I spent a considerable amount of time trying to track down a Micro SD Card Reader for my Raymarine chart plotter today and, also, calling over twelve dentists to see about getting my teeth cleaned and the filling replaced that I broke out last evening. There are apparently only two left on the island. One seems to be on perpetual vacation and the other, the one I went to last year charged me at the rate of $400/hr., which I think is outrageous and refuse to pay again. I made an appointment for next month in Key West. That seems to be the best I could do at this time, but I'll keep trying. There will be about 4 hours of travel to get there and back and all they will do on a first visit is take X-rays and perform an inspection of my teeth, no clean or repair the filling. I really don't want to travel that far twice.

Friday, 20 April - I received a return phone call from Raymarine about the Micro SD Card Reader this morning and was glad to hear they had found one. I ordered it and it's on its way here via FedEx truck. I suspect it will take a week or more to arrive from Iowa. The afternoon was consumed working in the engine room testing the diodes in the start battery alternator, which seems to be fine. Thank goodness, it's almost new.

Saturday, 21 April - At the marina today, I picked up my mail which included the three inline fuel filters that I ordered over a month ago from China for $4.95, tax included. I've wondered how they can sell and ship them so cheaply and, in part, I discovered how. Whereas you and I have to pay 50 cents just to send a letter, they only had to pay the US Postal Service 22 cents to deliver them to me once they came into the states in New York. No wonder the USPS is loosing money! After I picked those up, I walked the mile to Publix, bought groceries, and rode a taxi back to the marina.

Sunday, 22 April - This morning on the Cruiser's Net on the VHF radio a fellow said he and his wife were headed to the Big Pine Key Flea Market and had room for a couple of others in their car so, since I'd never been there before, I jumped at the chance. I didn't really have anything in mind that I really need except, perhaps, a couple of LED lights for the saloon and galley. I did, however, end up with several things, as you might expect; several small carabiners, another good diving snorkel for $2, a squeegee for the shower, and a stainless steel scraper for cleaning the hull for about 1-3 the price I've been paying at Home Depot for ones that rust up instantly after the first use. I visited the boat of the people I was riding with on the way back to mine to see their solar panel arrangement and visited for awhile. Very nice people that have been sailing a long time, but are now simply on a power boat because hurricane Irma took the mast off their catamaran. It's still a very nice boat; it just doesn't sail.

Monday, 23 April - The Chaco sandals that I wear daily were the focus today. They are only about a year old and the soles on them have already delaminated numerous times even though I have reglued them using Shoe Goo and contact cement several times. Today I fixed them for what I believe will be a long time; I sewed the soles onto them. I took me all day but I'm sure it will be worth it. No more wondering if I'll make it back to the boat before the sole starts flapping or falls off.

Tuesday, 24 April - While helping Odie, the fellow on the boat next to me recently, I discovered that one of my scuba tanks was empty and we used some air out of the other to inflate his dinghy, so today I wheeled the tanks on my collapsable hand cart over to the dive shop and got them both filled, free! My lucky day! I also received a call from FedEx saying that I had a package waiting for me at the marina. It was the Raymarine Micro SD Card reader. I wasn't expecting it until about Friday. My lucky day again! I installed it and, voila, the chart plotter updated and I got my charts back. I had, however, reset the unit, so all my preferences, tracks, waypoints, and routes were deleted. I can re-acquire some of them from a backup file, however. There will also be other things I need to do to get the chart plotter running as it should, too. It will take awhile, then I'll have to recalibrate the compass, wind indicator, auto pilot, depth gauge, and more, since they are all tied in together.

Wednesday, 25 April - Today I put out several little fires, so to speak. I dealt with the US Postal Service about a lost package from my brother, Mike; wrote to the company in China that sent me the wrong fuel filters; repaired several snap retainers for the bimini top windows; and discovered what may be a very significant breakthrough on the leaky dinghy, the seam at the tube / hull joint seems to be holding air! I had about given up and had been contemplating filling the tubes with closed cell foam. There are at least four small leaks other places in the bow and starboard tubes, but I "think" those will be easier to patch. Thank goodness. I also made contact with the manager of a fleet of sailboats that the Boy Scouts sails out of Islamorada, an island just up the chain from Marathon. The fleet has three or four CSYs in it. I hope to be able to sell my spare mainsail to one of them, but won't hold my breath on that deal.

Thursday, 26 April - I spent a couple of hours resetting the preferences and restoring some of the waypoints and routes into the chart plotter. I think I've lost the tracks forever, including the course I ran during hurricane Irma. I'll have to reset a waypoint where I was at my furthest from Marathon. I know it was 309 miles due west of here. That's as far west as the Yucatan peninsula, but further north. This afternoon I motored to shore and got 40 gallons of water for the boat and siphoned it into the tank when I returned.
                    It's easy to see that summer is just around the corner, the evening lightning storms have started between Marathon and Cuba or over Cuba again. They must get a lot of rain over there in the summer.