Thursday, 29 September 2016 - While out making some adjustments to my lines on the deck awning, I saw a large manatee surface to breath about 15 feet from the boat. I haven't seen one in several weeks and thought they'd moved on to some other location. He swam right along side the boat at about the same pace that I could walk the length of it. The tidal current was traveling at about the same speed, so he was probably just riding the tide. He seemed rather large, I'd guess about 12 feet long. I wish the water here was clearer. I could barely see him even though he was probably only about four feet under water except when he came up to breath once at the bow, then again at the stern of the boat.

Friday, 30 September - It took virtually all day to go to a 15 minute appointment with Customs and Border Protection at the airport via the bus system, partly because I missed the return bus at the airport by less than five minutes and had to wait an hour and a half for the next one to arrive, then I also missed the connection by about 5 minutes and had to wait about 45 minutes for it to return. The Customs and Border Protection trip was to facilitate my re-entry to the country if and when I come back, when ever that is. It MAY keep me from having to go to their facility for a persona interview and allow me to merely make a phone call instead. They wanted the print of each index finger, but for some reason or other, their finger printer didn't like my right index finger. I had to scan it about 10 times before it "took".

Saturday, 1 October - I again embarked on the bus to go to the hardware store to buy several items including some solid, welded rings for use with straps, rechargeable AA batteries to use in my solar lamps, a 32mb microSD card to use in my chart plotter, a soap dish to stick on the wall in the aft shower, and a few other things. One item I needed was 40 feet of 1/2" vinyl tubing to connect the water catchment system directly from the bimini top to the water tank as suggested by Gary Powers. Forty feet was going to cost me $32, but one hundred feet was only $8 more. I went with the 100 foot roll. I'm sure I'll find uses for it. Now I have to find a place to put it. I spent much of the evening sharpening some of the knives onboard, then did some reading.

Sunday, 2 October - I sharpened a bunch more of my galley knives today. One of the things I'm not short of on the boat is knives. I also cleaned up and lubed the connections on some of the lighting on the boat. Later, after finishing the book I've been reading this week, I joined Steve Monaghan for a dinner of meat pies and beans on his boat (he says they're a British thing), then helped him retrieve his car from across town. He has access to a friend's Jaguar this week and needed to have both here at the marina. He twisted my arm and made me drive the Jag back from across town. I don't even know what the car looks like, but it was newish. I hadn't planned on going anywhere when I went over to Steve's boat, so I had absolutely nothing in my pockets, no id, no money, no auto insurance card (because I don't have auto insurance or a car). If I'd been stopped by the police, I would have had a heck of a time explaining why I was driving that car. Even Steve would have. The owner had just gotten on a plane to fly to some island and was unreachable, loaned the Jag to him, who in turned loaned it to me to drive back to the marina. "Sure boys, I think we'd better discuss this a little more back at the precinct."

Monday, 3 October - I cleaned the bottom of the hull of Island Time from the dinghy today, well, at least the portion that I could without getting in the water myself. I used a stiff brush on a broom handle, so I was able to clean maybe the top 3 - 4 feet below the waterline. It was already plenty scummed up and quite a few barnacles on it, too. I finished just as a storm came through, so I showered and washed clothes in the rain, then got ready and headed to Bonita Bill's as soon as the rain quit, about 6:30pm. No bandana for Rick tonight. Too slow.

Tuesday, 4 October - Last night, coming back to my boat from Bonita Bill's, I realized that, at some point recently, Island Time has dragged her anchor a short distance and allowed me to be out into the ship channel. I didn't feel in danger, or that I would be a danger to others since the channel is quite wide here, but I thought I'd better weigh my anchor and move today. I got up a little earlier in order to get the boat moved before the Coast Guard, whose local headquarters I am anchored near, came out to give me a ticket. It's not legal to anchor in, or even drift into the channel. The latter is what I've done. I spent about two hours cleaning the fifteen or twenty feet of anchor line that is just below the surface of the water, but not resting on the bottom; that's where the barnacles love to attach themselves and, boy, there were plenty of them. The photo I've included shows three sections of the chain; one with barnacles, on the right, one just cleaned, and the other clean, rusty, and dry. The one on the right, with the barnacles, is hardly recognizable as chain. The only way I know to get them off is to simply rub all the surfaces of adjacent links of the chain together to crush and dislodge them. Cleaning them off sure eats up gloves, cloth or leather. I think it would take a pretty high pressure stream of water to knock them off, and I don't have one of those.
                  Just as I was about to start my engine to move, a pontoon boat pulled in right about where I felt I needed to be and anchored. I thought I'd just observe them awhile to see if they were going to stay long. They didn't, so I started the engine, weighed anchor, and made a circle to drop my anchor again. Just as I was walking from the cockpit to the bow, the same pontoon boat passed me and dropped their anchor right in front of me. I couldn't believe it! What timing. As my boat, which was still moving, approached them, I hailed them and explained that I was about to drop anchor and that there is a very small area here that I, with a six and a half foot draught, can anchor and they were right where I was headed, although at a very slow pace. They acted upset, but did move a ways off.
                  Before you drop anchor, it's very hard to tell exactly where you are, or rather are not, even with charts and a depth finder and, sure enough, once I drifted back to the end of my anchor chain and the wind shifted a little bit, I was in only 9 ft. of water at near high tide. I could tell that I'd be aground at low tide, especially if the wind shifted around to the south more, so, now I've pulled sixty feet of chain in, leaving thirty out for the moment, and I'm waiting for the tide to reverse slightly so I can pull the rest up move over about 30 feet. That's a lot harder than it sounds with nothing standing still. It's certainly not like moving into the next parking spot or to the slip two slips down. Once you get the anchor off the bottom, everything starts moving with the wind and current, and with nothing that is within 300 yards stationary, you can't tell how far 30 feet is, or for that matter even where you were a minute ago.
                  Well, I just felt a jerk on the anchor chain, so I went on deck to see what had happened. The wind had reversed directions and gave me the advantage that I wanted. I had expected the current to change, but since the current is almost at slack tide, the wind had more effect on the boat than the tide did, so I could let the wind drift the boat over to where I wanted it to re-anchor. I can't tell how far I moved, but I am in a better position than I was.
                  I'm keeping an eye on Hurricane Matthew and certainly hoping it goes on the other side of the state as the weathermen are predicting. We all know how accurate they are.

Wednesday, 5 October - A very interesting and busy day. It all started off with a discovery trip around San Carlos Island which is a small island between the mainland of Florida and Estero Island, on which Ft. Myers beach is located. With hurricane Matthew headed toward Florida, although it is predicted to run up the east coast and I'm on the west, I thought I'd better discover my options pretty quickly; after all, it's supposed to start effecting the weather here tomorrow. Of course, the big question is, how will it change the weather and how much? I got in the dinghy this morning and headed east to discover if there was any chance that I could merely hide in and anchor to the mangroves near here, after all they do call the area Hurricane Bay. I took soundings with my lead line and discovered that there are thousands of acres of here that could be wonderfully safe and protected waters for canoes, kayaks and maybe some water ski and pontoon boats. There are lots of small bays, hidden coves, and natural channels that a boat could possibly squeeze into, but...it's all about 2 to 4 feet deep! Most of it is so shallow I couldn't even take the dinghy in without raising the motor. The only areas deeper are the channels that have been dredged, and you can't anchor in the channels. What a pity!
                  Where I've been anchoring is fine for winds up to about 25 or 30 knots, but it does depend on the wind direction and whether the wind and tidal currents are running together or opposition. When they're working together, they're not too bad, and strong, but predictable, but when in opposition, the wind is pushing on the mast and topsides, and the current is pushing the opposite direction on the hull, keel and rudder. Of course, the denser water has a lot of effect, but the wind may be traveling at much higher velocity; three or four knots, maybe five, compared to 30 - 40 - 50 - or more. Even when they are in equilibrium, there's another force involved, the anchor. When the boat runs to one side, pushed by either the wind or current, the extremity of the anchor line is reached, and the boat can't go any further, so it reverses direction and runs till the anchor stops it again going the other direction, and the cycle starts anew. That's assuming the repeated yanking in opposite directions on the anchor hasn't pried it from it's hold on the bottom, letting the boat continue on its way to disaster. My normal anchorage here is narrow, limited by shallow water and a tiny island on one side and the channel on the other. This doesn't allow me to put out enough anchor line to make the anchor stay dug into the bottom well. When the pull on the anchor gets too strong, the chain lifts off the bottom, straightens out, and thus, yanks upward on the shaft of the anchor, making it lose its hold. Not good!
                  That's why I decided to take my good friend Steve Luta's advise and rent a mooring ball in the city's mooring field on the other side of Matanzas Pass Bridge. As he says, "It's cheap insurance."
                  The difference between a mooring ball and being anchored is, the mooring ball, floats above a VERY big weight or auger screwed into the sea bottom and is way too big to be lifted by the bow of your boat, whereas my 66 lb. anchor relies on the scope, or length and weight of the chain to hold it in place. If you put out an anchor that is big enough to hold you down in all circumstances, it's too big to get aboard when you want to leave.
                  So, I'm now the proud new renter of mooring ball number 21 in the Ft. Myers Mooring Field. It's a nice new neighborhood with about 50 sail and power boats in line with or to one side and beautiful bayside homes about 100 feet away on the other. I'd been apprehensive about trying to pick up a mooring ball by myself, but decided now was as good a time as any. I waited till slack tide, that period between the ebb and flow of the tide when the water ceased to move at either high or low tide, in this case, high tide, because I'd need to approach the buoy very slowly and try to stop with it right at the bow, and I didn't want to be fighting a current to do so. I mentioned to the manager at the mooring field office that I would be doing this single handed and one of the employees volunteered to help. Helping was probably just a way to get out of the office, but thank God he did. It took the two of us three hours to get me tied up to the mooring ball. The pennant attached to the ball was so encrusted with barnacles that it wouldn't fit through the cat for my anchor. If I'd been by myself, I'd probably have given up in frustration and returned to my old anchorage. The pennants are supposed to be cleaned weekly, but the employ in charge of that left a few weeks ago and the new employ apparently hasn't been doing his job properly. We had to really jury rig lines and, with a squall coming, I had to try to get my helper back before he got too wet. That part didn't work. I took him back to the office, then came back to the boat and re-did the lines. The sun came out just as I got back to Island Time and the boat next to me had a beautiful rainbow streaming from its mast. I got a picture and used it to introduce myself to the Jason McGinnis, on a 40 foot Beneteau sailboat next to me. I had a nice glass of wine in return. I asked where he was coming from and he described a boatyard north of here that was very hard to get into and out of because of miles of canals and shallow water. I said, "That sounds like where Steve Luta is. Did you meet him.?" "Oh, yes," he said, "my wife and I even had some meals and went out dancing with him, too." Small world. Unfortunately, darkness and another small squall called a halt to our introduction party, but I'm sure we'll trade more stories soon.
                  I must say, the new neighborhood and change of scenery is nice, but picking up a mooring ball by myself in a crowded field is going to be a lot harder than simply dropping the anchor. I'll probably just stay in the mooring field until the threat of Matthew is over, then either move back to the other side of the bridge and anchor or move on. Now they're saying Matthew may make a loop in the Atlantic and try to hit Florida twice. That would be different.
                  You gotta feel for the poor little island of Haiti, they just can't seem to catch a break at all. The storm's not going back there, but I'm sure once was enough. They still haven't recovered from the last big hurricane and now they got pummeled again.