Friday, 1 June 2018 - I headed to West Marine this morning to buy some stainless steel 1/4-20 carriage bolts for the swim platform. I've needed them ever since Irma, but they aren't critical, so put getting them off or forgot them numerous times. They had 1" or 1 1/2", but not 1 1/4", so I decided to wait and get them at Home Depot. On the way back, I decided a Subway sandwich would be a good lunch and I happened to meet Nick from the sailing vessel Wind Shadow. My one hour errand turned into four hours. Nick is the fellow that followed me out of Boot Key Harbor to run from Irma. When he saw I was outrunning him, he decided to go to Little Shark River instead, which turned out to be a good choice, too. Upon my return to the boat, I once again attempted to repair some of the leaks in the dinghy, then, later headed to the Hurricane Bar to listen to Randy, the fiddling half of the duo Fiddle Rock, playing with another band. They just aren'n as good. With this group, Randy is accompaniment instead of a featured artist or equal. It's not a good fit for him and it's too bad.

Saturday, 2 June - I was off to Home Depot this morning to get the carriage bolts that West Marine didn't have yesterday. Home Depot didn't have the right size either, so I got the ones a quarter inch too long and will saw them off. Their price was less than half the price of West Marine, but they didn't have the locking nuts to go with the bolts. Arrgh!
                    I turned the refrigerator off last night so it would start defrosting and took everything out of it this afternoon and finished the job by putting a 12" fan inside it to melt the remaining ice. That strategy worked well and only took about an hour to melt the remaining ice.
                    Now that the sun has come out and the wind has quit, it's getting pretty hot down here. Either way, it gives us something to complain about; windy and cool, but rainy, or sunny, but hot.

Sunday, 3 June - I planned on cleaning the hull of the boat today, but after fixing the swim platform, which I need to do so I could work from it, it was a little late in the day to clean the hull. Instead, I went to Publix to buy groceries.

Monday, 4 June - Although scraping the hull only took about 3 hours, it's still more than a one day job. It takes a couple of hours to get the generator and hookah all set up and get my dive gear on before the job, then the tools and dive gear have to be rinsed and set out to dry and the hookah gear put away, so I'll let things dry tonight, then put them away tomorrow. The water was a bit clearer today than most, so it was nice to be able to see what I was doing most of the time and I'm sure I did a better job of getting all the growth off this time.

Tuesday, 5 June - I moved things around today trying to get them to dry out, which they eventually did in the late afternoon. Around noon, a power boater that lives on a large trawler across the channel from me used his dinghy, which is about a 25 foot power boat, dragged a capsized boat about 22 feet long past me and over to the grass flats that I am anchored near. When the capsized boat hit the flats, it hit bottom and stopped. He had to flip it right side up, and in the process, his tow line broke and got tangled in his propeller. He had to get in the water to get it unwrapped from the prop, then towed it a little further and abandoned it. When I saw where he was headed, I knew that's what he was going to do. That's the second derelict boat in my backyard. The first one simply floated there, but since I saw this happen, I called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to report it. There's no sense allowing the anchorage to become a junkyard.
                    Upon getting my dive gear put away, I tore apart one of my 6 inch fans to find out why it wasn't working. It had a broken terminal inside it. I don't have a tiny spade connector that small so I had to hard wire it into the circuit board and solder it.
                    This evening I installed a crotch strap on my buoyancy compensator to keep it from riding up on me while I'm diving on the hull to clean it. Without a strap, it rides up so high on me that I can't turn my head. Until now, I've just been using a small cord to hold it down, but it is starting to abrade my wetsuit. Perhaps the strap will stop that.

Wednesday, 6 June - My lifelong friend, Charlie Broom, called from Ft. Lauderdale this morning and said he wanted to come for a short visit. He still lives in Texas, but is here because his wife has had death in the family. Sometimes something good does come out a bad situation. When I was in the Houston area, he visited me there, too. He left Ft. Lauderdale about 1 o'clock and arrived here in a rental car about 4:30. I gave him a quick tour of the marina and its facilities, then we headed to the Overseas Restaurant and to Keys Fisheries for a beer at each, then, in order for him to get to see the boat in daylight, we headed to Island Time. After a short tour of the boat, we headed back to the Overseas Restaurant for dinner, then to the Hurricane for a little musical entertainment.
                    Back at the boat and after we had been in bed awhile, we were both awakened by a girl nearby asking for help finding her boat. I went on deck and spotted a girl out it the dark waters swimming. She said she had been swimming "for hours" trying to find her boat but, in the darkness, was disoriented and couldn't figure out which one was hers. I don't know why, other than the fact that she had obviously been imbibing, but she had decided to swim back to her boat from shore a few blocks away. I brought her on deck, then launched the dinghy and started the search for her boat, which she described as a dismasted sailboat with a blue hull. It was only two boats away; probably only about 150 yards, but in the dark and from water level, and after being in the water for a significant amount of time, I guess it might as well have been a hundred miles. All's well that ends well.

Thursday, 7 June - Charlie is significantly taller than I am so I had put clean sheets on my berth in the aft cabin and I slept on the starboard settee in the boat's saloon. I was awakened about 7:30 am by a light sprinkle coming through the hatch directly over my head. I gave Charlie a short tutorial about the navigation electronics onboard, then we listened to the VHF Cruiser's net at 9am. Charlie needed to get back north today so we made a quick visit to Sombrero Beach, then he headed back to Ft. Lauderdale. It sure was good to visit with him. I wish he could have stayed longer. After he left, I went back to the marina and washed clothes.

I'm already a day later getting this chapter out than I had intended, so I'll send this out, then call it a night.

            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