Thursday, 10 March 2016 - I spent about three hours this morning tracking down the rest of the wiring for the left stereo speaker in the boat's saloon and could find nothing wrong, then, finally, decided that I was waisting too much time on this project when other things needed to be done, too. I headed over to the island at Fort Myers Beach, delivered the last set of images to the "Lynx", filled my three jerry jugs with water, then headed over to the nearest hardware store on my bike, where I needed to buy two sets of three inch registration decals for the bow of the dinghy. That done, I bought a Dr. Pepper at the 7-11 and headed over to Times Square Park to sit in the shade and watched the bikinis and thongs, er, I mean people, go by. That accomplished, I returned to the boat, installed the numbers and my Florida registration decal on the dinghy, emptied the water into my onboard 200 gallon tank, then joined Stephen onboard "Asilomar" for dinner.

Friday, 11 March - I did some minor maintenance on the dinghy today, then, around two o'clock, Steve Luta and I went over to the Ft. Myers Beach Times Square. A band was supposed to start at five o'clock, but when it looked like they wouldn't actually get started till much later, we monied down the beach and I got a Polish hot dog at the Lani Kai. It seems that is where most of the "spring break" activities occur. Lots of hormones flowing and skin showing in that area. Back to Times Square by the fishing wharf for music until 9pm.

Saturday, 12 March - No wind last night, so my house batteries were below 50%, but wind is predicted to be near 15kt today, so I'll hold off on getting the auxiliary generator out until I can see if the wind generator will recharge the battery bank enough on its own.
                  I went over to the "Ft. Myers Beach Shrimp Festival Parade" about 10am to experience this small town's festivities. Their parade was much longer than I had imagined. I guess there is no shortage of people and groups that want to participate in a parade. They also had over 100 vendors selling souvenirs and crafts, and, of course, shrimp and other foods.
                  Later, I picked up Steve Luta from his boat and we met Steve Monaghan to go over and listen to music at Times Square in Ft. Myers Beach. Unfortunately, the band wasn't to our liking this evening, so we retired to Steve Monaghan's boat and cooked up some weiners and bacon on the grill.

Sunday, 13 March - Steve Monaghan had invited Steve Luta and me over for breakfast on his boat, but Steve Luta had gone off sailing north to meet some lady that had contacted him on Facebook, so I went on my own. I arrived late because I forgot to set my clock for the change to daylight savings time, but Steve was waiting for me and we had a good breakfast and conversation. He decided at a very young age that he wanted to be a sailor, and at age 13 managed to get himself enrolled in a marine academy in England where he grew up and spent several years training to be a naval or merchant marine officer. He's been a sailor ever since, and his first "big" sailboat was a CSY like mine, in 1977.
                  After breakfast, actually around noon, I returned to the boat, then, later, went over to listen to "Two Hands", the singer/guitar player from Budapest at Bonita Bill's.

Monday, 14 March - Much of today was spent cleaning up the boat a bit, then I went via dinghy to check out a marine hardware store that I had heard about right on the water over by the shrimp boats. Unfortunately, I arrived at 4:15 and they closed at 4pm, so I went exploring the local shoreline, then went over to Bonita Bill's to get a good seat for the jam session. The place was already almost full at 5pm, but, since I was by myself, I still got a good seat that was bearably loud and got to meet one of the aspiring drummers for the evening by sharing a table with him as he waited for his turn. Actually, he was the first guest performer, but the house band, led by "Ghost" always plays a set first before handing over the mic to anyone else. As always, there was some awesome music to be heard, but tonight, there were a couple of lemons in the batch. Luckily, Ghost makes sure they are given a good round of applause, then replaced with the next in the lineup after only one song. I also learned a little about Ghost; he started playing as bass guitar with the Del Viking at age 16 and went on to play with many other groups including Chubby Checker and Rick Nelson.
                  Speaking of trivia, I actually won an official Bonita Bill's Bandana tonight for being the first person to answer the question, "Who had the 1935 hit "I Want To Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart"? I'm sure you all know the answer, too, so I won't be a name dropper. The first night Steve Luta and I went to Bonita Bill's, he mentioned that they had a trivia contest and asked if I knew much music trivia. I told I knew some, then proceeded to actually answer the very first question, "Who made his singing debut along with Clint Eastwood in the 1969 western "Paint Your Wagon"? I yelled and yelled the answer, but was too far away from the stage for them to hear me, so they moved on to the next question. C'est la Vie! Everybody should have known that was the famous actor and singer of the song, "I Was Born Under A Wandering Star", tough guy Lee Marvin. What a horrible voice, but, hey, it fit his usually drunken character. Eastwood was his partner, Partner in acquiring a beautiful, extra wife from a Mormon that was strapped for cash during the California Gold Rush. An excellent and hilarious, semi-musical movie.
                  If you tell me the date that something is going to happen, I rarely know when that will be until it's over. If you tell me two Wednesdays from now, I get that. Monday is the day off for the crew of "Lynx", and after giving one of them my best sales pitch for good music at Bonita Bill's, I hoped to see some of them there...at least their cook. He says he was there the last two Mondays, but I never spotted him. They usually don't sail on their day off, so I was surprised to see them head out of the pass around 4:30pm. I thought maybe something special was happening or that some of the crew actually decided to just go sail for fun, since it didn't look like they had any passengers. They blew their horns and waved as they went by. I didn't realize until none of them showed up at the bar that they were actually saying good bye as they passed. They were headed out for an overnight sail to Tampa for a week teaching there, then back around Florida and up the east coast to teach up near Nantucket for the summer season. I'll miss them. They were all really friendly and nice to me. I don't know why. I wish it had sunken in that this was the day they were leaving, I would have gone over to their pier to see them off and wish them as safe and fun journey. Good-bye guys, you're doing a great job and I wish you well. I hope we meet again.

Tuesday, Ides of March - Fogged in this morning with a moderate amount, then it cleared, then returned again. It finally cleared off completely about noon, so I explored two of the local marine hardware outlets today, which is something I should have done when I first got here, but it takes connections with local knowledge to find out where they are. I also discovered a welder, referred by a welder that was referred by another fellow, that said he might be able to weld my swim platform that broke my first night out at Long Boat Pass. I'm supposed to check with him tomorrow morning to see how busy they are (with more important jobs.) That done, I walked a few blocks to the closest gas station and bought a gallon of milk, since my last one had gone bad. Since I've been eating oatmeal instead of my cold cereal for breakfast, I wasn't using up my milk fast enough to keep it from souring.

Wednesday, 16 March - I finally accomplished something I've been needing to get done for quite awhile; fix the swim platform. I went over to Gulf Marine Ways at 10am to check to see if they could work on it today and to see where they would want me to dock, if they could. Yes, they could and dock on the outside end of the pier. Yes, the easiest place. No backing out of the channel. All went well till I tried to get away from the dock. Luckily, no current, but a light wind was pushing me up against the dock. I thought my propeller walk, tendency to move the boat to starboard (right) in reverse would pull me away, but it would not. After trying that, I had them hold the bow to the dock and put it in forward. That pushed the stern away far enough to then let me back away. Now I have a complete swim platform for getting on and off the boat again without worrying about stepping through a hole. Yahoo!!!
                  The tide was on the rise as I came back to the same spot I had left this morning. I tried to swing right behind the fellow that had been next to me to assume my old anchorage and ran aground. I was within yelling distance, so he asked if I needed help. "I told him no, not yet." I immediately got a call on the VHF radio from another sailor in the anchorage. "No, I don't need help. I'll get off somehow." "Okay, I'm coming over anyway." Just after he showed up, another dinghy appeared. I'd never seen the guy before. Then, the first guy got in his dinghy and came to help. They tried pushing me and that didn't work, so the guy I'd never met said "Give me your anchor." He took in his dinghy and put it about 200 ft. off my port bow, exactly where I wanted to be in the first place, then the guy that had been on the radio came aboard to run my engine while I winched the anchor rode in and pulled the boat to deeper water. Within minutes I was anchored exactly where I had wanted to be. That done, the fellow next to me said "Come have a beer", so we went over to his catamaran and had a beer and talk anchoring and sailing a bit. What a great day!

Okay, time to get this week's report out.