Thursday, 24 March 2016 - When I was in Ft. Myers Beach I tried several times to get an appointment with a dentist to have my teeth cleaned, but each time I was told, "We can get you an appointment in two or three weeks." I never thought I'd be there that long, so I declined. Of course, I was there way longer, but never thought I would be. Now that I am in a new location for an indeterminate time, I thought I'd better set up an appointment first thing, so I found several dentists here locally and started calling. The first one I called I asked, "How soon can I get into have my teeth cleaned?" The lady on the other end of the phone said, "We just had a cancellation, can you be here in an hour?" "Absolutely," I said, "By the way, how close can I get to your office in my dinghy?" "You can tie it up right in back of the office," she said. Amazing! I launched the dinghy, loaded up the bicycle for use exploring the town, and in I went, half way across the bay, into a channel, under a bridge, turn right, follow the channel to the end. Right to their back door. Perfect! Made it right on time!
                  Later, I started exploring the new locale. I hit Walgreens, a hardware store, one of the marinas, West Marine, and a grocery store, and also located a nearby Wells Fargo Bank, so when I need it, I can go right there. Several of those locations, I won't even need the bike for, only the dinghy. I also stopped into the Chamber of Commerce to find out what I should be seeing and doing while I'm here.

Friday, 25 March 2016 - Another thing I need to do is renew my Open Water Scuba Diving Card. Actually, I need to take the course again, I'm sure. Not only do I need a total refresher, but I lost my dive card years ago, along with my wallet and everything in it, while hangliding at the south side of Point of the Mountain near Salt Lake City. The cards are supposed to be good for a lifetime, but I took the course through the military recreation program and no record of it can be found. I know I'll be wanting to dive once I reach clear, blue water, so I might as well retake the course, and it might be cheaper hear than in the islands. I contacted Scuba Marco and they actually said that they'd try to track down the records for the card, too. I hope they get back to me quickly. I don't really have much I need to get done at Marco Island, so I'd like to be ready to sail further south as soon as I get more north breezes. The next leg is about 55 miles to Shark River and that will be a long day, even with favorable winds.
                  After contacting them, and since I had perused the brochure that the Marco Chamber of Commerce gave me, I wanted to see their local museum. I was told it would only take about an hour to see, but I knew myself better. I was about to go to the museum when a very large boat must have gone by on the river. Very few boats create big enough wake to cause me much trouble, but this one did. I had the dinghy still tied up at the stern of the boat and one side of the dinghy slid under the swim platform and got trapped as the boat started bouncing. It almost flipped the dinghy several times and the extension handle for my outboard motor got flung overboard. I thought I stood no chance at all of finding it, but, if I could it might save me a lot of time making a new one. When the wake hit, I quickly noted where the boat was in relation to several things on shore that lined up, so I thought I could snorkel back to that spot and, maybe, find it. I got out my fins, face mask, and snorkel, then donned my shortie wetsuit and got in the water. The water here looks clearer than any anchorage I've been in, so I thought there was at least a slim chance I might be able to find the extension, after all it's bright white PVC pipe. As I dove head first into the depths (about 10 feet), I learned a few things. One, I can't see a thing in this water. It's not dark, I just couldn't see anything. I almost hit the bottom with my face mask. The bottom was about 4 inches from me when I saw it, barely in time to stop. Second, I can't hold my breath nearly as long as I could in the past. I think that will come back with practice, but this is a good reason that I need to get my dive card renewed. All this ate up about two hours of the time I had hoped to spend at the museum, so I rinsed off in the shower, loaded the bike onto the dinghy, and off I went. It was about a ten minute dinghy ride in and about ten minutes of biking to the museum, but I did arrive a bit sweaty.
                  The museum covered the Calusa and other American Indian tribes that lived here, the early settlers, and then, the recent development of the island. Virtually all the island was purchased by a real estate group held by three brothers as an uninhabited wilderness/swamp in 1962. For two years, they planned and got permits to build, but hadn't even broken ground eight months before they were to have their grand opening. It was to be the biggest and grandest totally pre-planned development ever. In that eight months, they moved tons of dirt and muck to create the canals in three of the six development areas, built about 20 model homes and their office/headquarters and a hotel. Most of the lots were being sold sight unseen, and many of the lots were actually underwater at the time of the sales, sold on trust and belief in the developers. They really pulled off a virtual miracle against almost unsurmountable odds; no fresh water or sewage, only a couple of roads and one swing bridge to start with, lots of mosquitos and gators, and millions of tons of dirt to move. It's amazing what a determined group can accomplish with creativity, ingenuity, and a desire to get richer. It turned out pretty darned good, too. Three out of four homes on the island are on the 90 miles of concrete retaining walled canals or waterfront that they created.
                  I had just enough time to see the whole museum before it closed at 4pm.
                  There have been flowers blooming here in Florida all winter, and even more now, so I took pictures of a few on the way home from the museum.

Saturday, 26 March 2016 - Today I took a suggestion from my brother, Mike, and rigged a snatch block above the anchor locker and pulled the anchor line into the locker from below, by myself. It still took quite awhile and was very hot and uncomfortable squeezed into an awkward position in the forepeak, but this method probably cut the time involvement to a small fragment of what it would have taken otherwise. Next on the agenda was to make a replacement outboard motor handle extension to replace the one lost yesterday. I had a piece of 1 1/2" PVC onboard, but getting to it, drilling four holes in it, sawing it to length, sawing four lateral cuts to the holes, finishing it, and cleaning up, took up most of the rest of the day. About 4pm, I headed in the dinghy over to the dive shop, hoping to arrive before they closed, and then visiting the Snook Inn for happy hour and some music. I had the wind and current at my back, so I made good time crossing the bay...then ran out of gas. By the time I rowed into the wind and current getting back to the boat and refilling the gas tank, I determined the dive shop would be closed, so I abandoned the trip. Maybe tomorrow. I also need to find a place I can get rid of my trash and, now, buy gas. This dinghy isn't getting nearly as good mileage as I think it should. Maybe I'm just traveling further in it than I realize.

Easter Sunday, 27 March 2016 - A really beautiful day here at Marco Island, perfect for an Easter Egg Hunt. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any on Island Time or in the water surrounding her. What I did find was sting rays, quite a few of them. I'd been hearing something breaking the surface and, a couple of times, seen what I thought were the dorsal fins of snook at the surface. Today I had several hit the surface hard and got to see them before they dove again. The real give away was the parallel wing tips in pairs. Some of them weren't in any hurry to dive, so I got to see them well. They weren't really large, but they do make a pretty good splash on the water.
                  I worked from 10am to 8pm on enclosing the main cabin with a mosquito net. I had to partially disassemble the hatch, cut a groove in each end of one of the boards for a heavy wire to go into, then measure, cut and sew the netting and install two fiberglass rods, one at the top and one at the bottom. I also needed a couple of weights. I had everything I needed already on the boat or this would have taken much longer. It looks perfect, but has yet to prove itself by keeping out mosquitos. I'm sure a few can still make their way around the edges, but it should keep out the hordes. Time will tell. The hard thing about designing it was making it so it can be quickly opened and closed from inside or outside the cabin.

Monday, 28 March 2016 - Today didn't work out as intended. I had intended to make a mosquito screen for the aft companionway and to do so, I needed another piece of solid copper wire, which I keep in the engine room. After I removed the engine room hatch cover and started to descend toward the engine, I happened to notice a drop of water fall into the bilge under the engine. I'd really been wondering where the water was coming from that makes the automatic bilge pump come on occasionally throughout the day and night. My searches hadn't discovered it...until now. I dug out the copious volumes of information about the Perkins diesel sitting there dripping salt water and started trying to determine what it was that was growing salt stalactites and leaking. The illustrations identify it as a heat exchanger. The engine has two cooling systems. One cools the other. The engine heats up as it runs and has antifreeze/coolant running through it. That hot coolant then runs into the heat exchanger which has cooler salt water from outside the boat running through it, then transfers the heat to the salt water which is then expectorated out the back of the boat with the exhaust. It takes the place of an automobile's radiator. Okay, but how do you repair or replace it? It doesn't say. Does that mean that it is so simple that no explanation is necessary? We'll see tomorrow when I remove it.
                  In the meantime, I got invited over to the boat next to me for a gin and tonic with Dave and Barbara on Podjo, some boat-talk, and dinner. A very nice evening. So nice that I didn't arrive back on my boat until 10pm and am now killing a little time because I'm having to run the auxiliary engine to recharge the batteries, which I intended to do earlier. The batteries were down to a 50% charge when I got back to the boat. That's as low as I should ever let them get and overnight they would have lost another 15% running the refrigeration, so I need to run the charging system till they reach about 67%. They'll be back down to about 50% in the morning and I can charge them some more, or, if the wind is blowing hard enough, let the wind charger and solar panels recharge them for me all day. The wind needs to blow about 10kt. all day to stay even, or about 20kt. to fully charge the batteries.
                  Wow! That was quick. Barely an hour has passed and the batteries are up to 70.3%. Good night!

Tuesday, 29 March - I got up this morning with full intentions of removing the heat exchanger but ran into a brick wall when two bolts have refused to come out. It doesn't really surprise me. The engine and its parts are pretty rusty. None of my sockets seem to fit the heads of the bolts. Perhaps a small amount has rusted away. A 12mm socket is too small and a 13mm and 1/2" are both too large. I've tried breaking them loose by tapping on the heads and have squirted them well with penetrating oil. I'll let that soak overnight and try again tomorrow. If that doesn't work, maybe heating them up with a torch will help. I really don't want to twist the heads of the bolts off. The front one especially would be VERY hard to access to drill out because of its location.
                  After a hot and windless day, around 4 o'clock I noticed that I had received a call from Steve Luta a few minutes earlier. I called him to see what was up. It's a good thing I did. He's still up at Ft. Myers Beach and had just been hit with very strong winds that made everybody but him and his big new Mantis anchor drag, so he was calling me to tell me the storm was on its way to me. I hung up, looked at the weather on several weather apps and was surprised to see that there were no predictions of bad weather, only rain on the radar and two stationary fronts, one well north near Tampa and the other to the south of me. Well, I heeded Steve's advise anyway. I couldn't afford not to. I started rigging another anchor to take out with the dinghy. Normally, I would have just motored up to a point parallel with the anchor I already had out and dropped a second one, but remember, the engine can't be started. Several hoses are off and it has no coolant in the system. I had to hang a second anchor from the bow and tie a knot in a line that, once I came around in the dinghy and had the anchor aboard, I could pull on a line from the dinghy to release the anchor line, then motor out about a hundred and fifty feet and drop the anchor overboard. By the time I got the dinghy launched, the wind was already howling and waves were about 3 ft. high. I had a hard time controlling the dinghy in the wind and waves while dragging chain and line out, but finally got it done. I had to immediately get back to the boat, dock with the boat and tie the dinghy up and run to the front of the boat to haul the anchor line snug and cleat it off. I got the boat stopped about 100 ft. from the seawall in front of the homes here on the east shore. A little excitement in an otherwise hot, and frustrating day! Thank goodness for a good friend, Steve. He really saved my butt and my boat. If he hadn't warned me, I would probably felt totally helpless and hopeless as Island Time crashed into the seawall as my anchor dragged across the bay. I guess it's a good thing I couldn't unscrew those bolts, too, or I would have been ashore trying to order the parts I need to repair the heat exchanger when the windstorm hit.
                  The storm was pretty short lived, only about an hour or so, then the winds died back to about 8kt. again, so even though the wind generator was really making up for the windless 80% of the day, it wasn't enough for the batteries no make it through the night. I started up the Honda generator and let it run for about 45 minutes, the just at sunset the winds picked back up to about 15kt out of the east again, so I shut it off. That's good because I'm so much closer to the homes than I was last night, I really didn't want to run the generator for long. The batteries can make it through the night and if the wind keeps up, maybe I'll gain a little more. The winds of the storm were out of the north, but the storm track was west to east. It seems odd that now the winds are back out of the east. Maybe the storm is coming back for an encore.
                  I see the Key West Express and the Marco Island pirate ship "Black Pearl" have just returned. I'll bet the storm was pretty interesting for both of them, especially the pirates. It's not really much of a seagoing vessel and has lots of freeboard, not good for high winds. The Express is pretty high, too, but at least it has plenty of power and the passengers can get inside out of the storm.

Wednesday, 30 March - I fully intended to get this episode posted early today but life interrupted. After letting the penetrating oil soak into the bolts all night, I tried them again in vain. My next idea was to try heating them up with a propane torch, but before I did that, I thought I'd ask for advise from the clockmaker, Dave, on the boat behind me. I went over to ask some questions and he immediately insisted on coming over to take a look. We heat the bolts up as I had planned and they still wouldn't budge. Success finally came when he hammered a 12mm socket onto each one. After removing them, it was evident that someone had really mangled them previously getting them off and then instead of replacing them, screwed them back in. They probably new they'd not be the one to have to take them off next time. I spent much of the afternoon trying to find replacements for the bolts and the end cap for the heat exchanger. I'm going to attempt to repair the heat exchanger myself. There is some pretty serious corrosion and pitting, but I'm hoping I can fix it with JB Weld or something similar. I haven't found a supplier for a replacement, but Dave said he suspected that a new one would be in the $600 - $700 range. That's enough to inspire me to try pretty hard to fix the one I have. The only place locally that anyone thought might be able to order the parts for me is NAPA Auto Parts, of all places. I'd have never thought to check there. There's one not too far away, so I check there tomorrow.
                  When I returned to the boat in the dinghy, Dave was dragging the bottom of the bay with a grappling hook near the stern of his boat, so I detoured over there and helped him look for a side cowling for his outboard motor that he dropped off the back of his sailboat while trying to work on the motor. I returned to my boat and got my sounding lead to help, but no luck. I knew from my own experience looking for my outboard motor handle extension that we'd never be able to find it diving, but if we could happen to feel it with our lines, we could mark the spot, then dive right down to it. No luck! I think it's in Davey Jones' locker for all eternity.
                  I guess I'll be hanging around Marco Island for a few days more. I can't run the engine to get out of here without the heat exchanger.