Thursday, 3 March 2016 - As I start this week, I'm starting to realize why people seem to like Florida's warm, fair, winters. Another day in the 70s for temperature, light wind, clear skies, warm sandy beaches, etc. Of course, you do have to put up with the rock and roll, bikinis, jazz, excessive displays of skin, country music, thongs, blues, gyrations of wild, frantic dancing, extremely good seafood, etc., but other than those few items, it's pretty nice here.
                  Not a breath of breeze today so it seemed to be the perfect day to wash clothes. Now I'm not sure. There are only two washers here in the boater's lounge at Moss Marina, and in one of them, my clothes came out much dirtier than they went in, so I'm running them again. Washing is going to take a lot longer than I had planned. At least I brought my computer with me to take advantage of their WiFi. I wanted to renew my charts again. I noticed that the program has Sonar charts also now, so I decided to see if they will show up on my chart plotter. I don't have sonar, but I think these previously recorded views may show up on my screen. Before I started the download, there was no way to tell how long it would take. As soon as I clicked on "Download" a warning came up to say, "Download in Progress - DO NOT CLOSE OR REFRESH THIS PAGE". Then it proceeded to show that the download would take four HOURS! Yikes! I'll be here all day. I guess my computer sensed that I was having washer problems and wanted me to have something to help pass the time. I've been here about an hour and a half and it says it's downloaded 17% with 2 hours and 45 minutes left for the sonar charts, then, after that there's another download of Community Edits, which are comments and corrections made by sailors using the charts. Argh! The connection was just lost and I'm back to 10% downloaded and 4 hours and 33 minutes to go on the sonar charts. I'm afraid to abort. I might lose everything. I had other things I needed to do today, too. Not anymore, I suppose.
                  Okay, I finally pulled the plug on the downloads after it lost the connection again. I headed back to the boat with my clean clothes, the got back in the dinghy and headed over to Bonita Bill's where I had seen another CSY44 at the dock. The boat is terribly run down and I doubt she'll ever sail again, but it does have a couple of trail boards that mount up the bow that have at sometime in the past been removed from my boat. I was hoping to purchase them from the owner if he happened to be on board. All the teak on his boat is dried out and splitting, the exhaust on the engine has a wooden plug in it, sails have been removed, all the lines are mildewed and rotting, and the boat is filthy. The fellow does live on her though. I hailed her from the dock and the owner stuck his head out. I asked him if he'd consider selling the two boards. "Oh, no. I'm gonna fix her up and sell her when times get better", he said. "Good luck with that", I thought. The boat is in such bad condition that he'd never recoup the fortune it would cost to fix just the teak, much less everything else, but he couldn't be convinced. Well, it was worth a try.
                  After that, I headed back over to the topsail schooner "Lynx" to see if Leanne Buse was there so I could get a back a program for the '76 tall ships gathering to mark the bicentennial. Missed her again, but perhaps that was a good thing. While I was there, the captain of the ship, Alex, invited me to go out on the boat for another sail tomorrow.

Friday, 4 March - Steve Luta called and invited me to go with him to the hardware store here on the island. They didn't have enough of the U-bolts that he needed, so we got on the trolley and went off-island to another store where he bought the rest of his U-bolts and I bought a couple of solar powered yard lights that I put in the fishing rod holders on my safety line stanchions to light up the boat at night. They will complement the masthead light at night to make my boat more visible in the dark without draining my batteries. Sometimes when you're looking at water level, you miss the masthead light because you're too close to see it up 56 feet in the air.
                  We got back about noon, I had lunch, then headed over to "Lynx" for another great day of sailing. Winds started out light, but picked up nicely and we had a great sail. They maneuvered the boat through several tacks and a couple of jibes and, although they have picked up a couple of new crew members, they really meshed as a team putting the boat through her paces. It was nice to have a second time out on the boat and I was able to get a much better understanding of what was happening or about to happen and why as they eased one sail, backed another, then sheeted in yet another. All the crew that I asked questions of were very knowledgeable and helped me with the nomenclature of the boat and how everything related to other parts of the rigging. Several of the items I asked about were, when I knew what to look for, included in my Sailing Page, but I hadn't been able to relate the actual item with its name. I put all those definitions and illustrations on that page, but that does't mean that they are imbedded in my brain and ready to use. I wish they were. I had a great time anyway and got yet another invitation to sail on "Lynx" again. I don't know why they are being so nice to me!

Saturday, 5 March - I spent the majority of the day reviewing some non-electronic (good ole paper charts with parallel rulers, dividers, and a pencil) charting and navigation techniques, then went out to a lunch of shrimp with Steve Luta and his friend Stephen Monaghan, an owner of a new CSY-44 years ago. After that, I headed over to the "Lynx" to deliver some photographs that I took while out on the boat the other day, but realized that it was their dinner time, so I returned to Island Time.

Sunday, 6 March - Much of the morning and part of the afternoon was spent reviewing and organizing some of the instructions for the Single Side Band radio and other devices. There were duplicates of many pages and everything was totally out of order. Around 1pm, I headed over to the "Lynx" to take them some of the photographs I took on Friday. Unfortunately, LeeAnn Buse wasn't there. I had delivered the last set to her and knew that her computer would be compatible. Captain Alex tried to download them onto his computer, but it wouldn't read my SD card. I'll go back over there tomorrow with images on two different memory cards, an SD and a USB Thumbdrive.
                  While at the dinghy dock, I went ahead and filled my three water cans, then returned to the boat, but stopped to visit with Steve Luta. He's anchored very close and was on deck installing solar panels on his bimini frame. Around five in the afternoon, we headed over to Bonita Bill's for about an hour to hear Two Hands One Man Band play, but he finished his set at 6pm, so we didn't stay long.

Monday, 7 March - This morning I decided to scrape the bottom of the dinghy. I have been too lazy the past few weeks since I have been in the same spot for a while. I haven't been raising the dinghy on the davits, so marine growth has started attaching to the bottom of it and it was time to get rid of the growth before it got too thick. I think I'd better start raising the dinghy so the bottom can dry out at night.
                  Upon finishing that, I headed into town via the bus, then my bicycle to register my dinghy. I keep getting conflicting information about whether or not registration is required, but decided that if it ever gets stolen, which is common, I might need real proof of ownership. On returning, Stephen and I headed over to an evening and the Monday night jam session at Bonita Bill's.

Tuesday, 8 March - I got some things done here on Island Time, then headed over to the Lynx to deliver the photos I had taken last time I was out on her. I had been re-invited by the captain to go out and decided since there was a good south breeze to take him up on his offer. It was another great day and this time they raised all the sail that they had, a total of seven sails. I had also been wanting to take some photos of several items on the boat that I don't have illustrations for on my sailing page like the cat, the jaws, grape shot, chain shot, bar shot, which I hadn't even heard of, and some others, and I got that done, too. Of course, I also took as many shots as I could of the crew that I'll take them tomorrow or the next day.

Wednesday, 9 March - My boat's stereo's port side speakers haven't been working, so I dove into that today. I traced the wires to the one in the saloon as far as I could, but couldn't find anything wrong. I'll have to get back to it. I don't have the installation instructions for the stereo, so I had to figure out what wires did what and where they went. It looked like one set of speaker wire weren't connected to anything, so I finally decided to take the speaker off and see where the wiring went or stopped. There weren't any wires connected and apparently never were. It took all the rest of the day to find a route and run the 25 feet of wire behind cabinets, into the engine room, through a lazarette, and over to the speaker. I finished at 6pm, but still have to fix the one in the saloon. The stereo sounds much better now, so that one may have to wait awhile.