Thursday, 1 September 2016 - So far, a very gusty, breezy day out on the water today. The wind generator shouldn't have too much trouble keeping up with the energy drain today, even though the solar panels won't help much because of the overcast skies.
                  A few minutes this morning were spent changing the wires on the refrigeration thermostat from where the expert told me to install them, to where the the wiring diagrams indicate and --voila, the unit turned off. Yahoo! The next two hours were spent tweaking (Oh My God! My spell checker just changed "tweaking" to "twerking" twice. Not good!) the thermostat sensor placement and attachment, then finishing the installment while dropping screws almost into the abyss and retrieving them more than once. All of you that have worked in small spaces, upside down, using a mirror, can relate, I'm sure.
                  Now, I think I have a fully functional 12vdc refrigeration unit and believe that all that is necessary is to determine the setting to which the thermostat needs to be adjusted. Finally! I hope I'm right! I need to move on to something else.
                  I'm sure some of you wonder why in the world I don't just hire professionals to come onboard and fix problems like the refrigeration or heat exchanger. There are several reasons. One is money. Another is that I'd end up paying for things I don't really need. One of the first comments I got from professionals on this refrigeration project was, "That unit is so old, you might as well replace the whole system." That would have cost thousands of dollars for the system and I would have had to rent a slip at a marina while the work was being done, when all I really needed was an electronic control unit and a thermostat for $300. The main reason, however, is that although I could have the work done here in a marina in a metropolitan area, I would have learned nothing about the system. Then, if I later have problems at some remote island or other out of the way location, I wouldn't have a clue as to what I needed to do to correct the problem, and I wouldn't have the resources to find out as I do now. I still might not be able to get parts, but I couldn't get parts for the heat exchanger even here in Metropolis. In short, I need to know how to fix things on my own.

Friday, 2 September - Much of today was spent adjusting the refrigerator thermostat, then waiting to see if the unit would shut off. It's still not working well. Some adjusting of the location of the thermostat sensor was done, too.
                  Steve Monaghan called about 6:30pm and said he'd had to go rescue his boss and would be back in about 30 minutes. The boss had locked himself out of his vehicle. They're very good friends, too, so Steve went to the rescue, then invited them to join us for the evening. We had clam chowder and cocktails at Matanzas Bar, then headed over to the Mermaid. His boss lives about an hour and a half away, so he and his wife left around 11:30 and Steve and I closed the place down.

Saturday, 3 September - Today was much like yesterday, except I got a later start. After dinner, Steve and I wandered back over to the Mermaid, but at midnight, the place had almost emptied out, so I suggested we leave, too. Steve and I headed back to the marina where his boat is, then I took my dinghy out to my boat and raised it on the davits. Before I got to bed, I got a message from Steve that the Mermaid was packed! He'd decided it was too early to call it a night and headed back over there. We should have known. The Mermaid stays open an hour or two longer than the other bars, so when the others close, everybody heads to the Mermaid. Steve stayed till two, but I called it a night.

Sunday, 4 September - This afternoon, Steve and I went for a walk down the beach and probably went about three miles, further than I had gone before. Most of the beach had throngs of people celebrating the holiday weekend, but some were less busy. I guess the recent near miss by hurricane Hermine and the work on the main thoroughfare on the island kept lots of people away. Actually, if the local chamber of commerce had been smart, they'd have been advertising that Hermine had little affect on Ft. Myers Beach. Maybe people that had planned on going to the Keys, Tampa, or Port Charlotte would have come here instead.
                  While walking the beach we saw lots of one to two inch Queen Conchs that had, for some reason, washed up on the beach, and some large clams called Pen Shells or Sea Wings. Very pretty, colored like abalone shell. We also came across something that I thought might be some fresh Ambergris. I've never seen ambergris, so I really didn't know if that was what I was looking at or not. After looking it up on the internet, I don't think what I saw was ambergris, but, since ambergris comes in many shapes, colors, and densities, it still might have been. If I'd had a bag to put it in, I should have carried it back with me and tried to discover what it truly was. If it was ambergris, the pieces could have been worth as much as $10,000, however, what I found was soft, so I really don't think it was ambergris. I knew it was valuable, but I didn't know how valuable, or I would certainly have put more effort into verifying what I had. I won't make that mistake again. See my picture. Maybe you'll know what it is.

Monday, Labor Day, 5 September - Wow! What a perfect day! Steve Monaghan and I took our boats out together. As we left the bay, I thought we were going to have to motor most of the trip, but as we cleared the harbor a breeze picked up just a little and I realized that we could probably sail at about 60° off the eye of the wind, so I called Steve and told him I was going to raise sail and he did the same. We were in search of clear water to dive into and clean the bottoms of our boats and propellers and staying on that tack was merely following the shoreline, so Steve suggested we fall off the wind and head away from shore. We headed out and, unfortunately, the wind backed off a little, so Steve furled his sails and restarted his engine. I followed with just sail for about 30 minutes, but then decided to drop my foresails and motor to catch up. Before I caught up, Steve decided the water was clear enough even though we couldn't see the bottom in 20 ft. of water, so he dropped anchor. I caught up, pulled up near him, and dropped my anchor, then got out my dive gear. Steve was using air tanks and I was using my Hookah gear, which is a generator powered air compressor with long, flexible air hose. Once in the water, both worked fine. I'd been down scraping the hull about three hours when I felt a tug on my air line. I surfaced and there was Steve with two containers with a serving of freshly scrambled eggs and bacon that he'd just cooked, still hot. He'd finished before I did, cooked lunch and swam over to my boat. I was just about done, too, so I quickly finished up, surfaced and had a great, hot lunch on the foredeck of my boat.
                  Steve had just gotten back to his boat to put things away when my VHF radio alarm went off. It was a weather alert from NOAA weather service saying that there was a strong squall with the capability of producing water spouts and sustained winds up to 40kt, so I called Steve on the radio and said we'd better forget putting things away and hightail it back to the harbor. As I mentioned, the wind had died off before we started our dive. That was nice because it gave us nice calm water to work on the hulls of our boats, but just after we started our engines to head back, the wind picked up nicely to about 12-13 kt. off our port beam. I decided to boost my speed a bit by unfurling my sails and was making such good speed that I cut my engine when Steve unfurled his sails. At that point I was making 5.9 kt. in 13 kt. of wind. Pretty good! Amazing what a clean hull will do for you. We made it almost back to the turn into the bay when I noticed that Steve had furled his sails, then I saw why. The storm was just beyond him. I restarted my engine, turned on my auto pilot, and furled my three sails. Steve passed me as I was dropping sail, so I followed him into the bay. Luckily, the storm never caught us. Steve slid right into his slip at the marina in a picture perfect docking and I dropped anchor in the bay about twice as close to the marina as I had been before.
                  It started to rain very lightly and with no wind just after I dropped anchor, so I went below and took a shower to wash the salt off, and when I came back on deck it had already stopped raining. About then I realized how thirsty I was. I'd been too busy to notice! I drank two large glassed of water then, and two more at Bonita Bill's when I arrived, hoping to win a bandana it the musical trivia contest. No luck tonight. You had to be really fast! Some people even yelled out answers before Ghost finished the question. There are usually quite a few questions that no one knows the answer to, but not last night. Someone knew every answer but one. The bandanas were gone in minutes.
                  The rain started again about 8 pm and continued until after they closed at 9:30. Since I was relying on my dinghy to get me home, I waited about 45 minutes as they cleaned up the restaurant, watching the radar on my iPhone. I could see that the rear edge of the storm was approaching, so I just waited it out and arrived back at the boat dry.

Tuesday, 6 September - Today I put the awning back up over the deck of the boat, then headed to the island to go to the bank for some cash and to the dinghy dock to get 16 gallons of water for the boat. Again, as I loaded the water, it was starting to sprinkle. I made it back to the boat just in time to unload the water and duck into the aft cabin to put on my bathing suit. Once that was done, I returned to the afterdeck and raised the dinghy on the davits. The rain felt great! Now I have to empty the jerrycans into the boat's water tank.

Wednesday, 7 September - I did lots of little, miscellaneous things today; put away the auxiliary generator, repaired a diving knife leg strap, opened and closed the boat several times to keep the rain out or let the breeze in, rinsed and dried items that had been used sailing Monday, and recoiled lines, etc. Just a bit of house cleaning, so to speak. Not much excitement.

I hope you had a great holiday and that this coming week is even better.