A Mixed Bag O' Nuts

Weather: Last night’s sky was ablaze with flashes and bolts of lightening that was accompanied by roars of thunder. It continues to be windy (20+ knots) and the night time temp was 76 degrees. The morning dawned bright and sunny with winds subsiding to about 18 knots from the east. By 1230 hours, the sky had darkened and we were in for some serious weather. Radar showed several cells of thunderstorms accompanied by high (gale force) winds. The first storm hit at 1200 hours. It brought twenty minutes of high wind, torrential downpours, lightening and thunder. Another cell of similar strength and duration came by an hour or so later. After the storms, showers were the order of business for the rest of the evening.

Comment: After arising at 0750, I started the generator. It is one of the first things I do in the morning. I try to do the logs while the jenny is running. In addition to the batteries, it charges the computers, cell phones and the other rechargeable batteries (C, AA, AAA, blender and drill) that we use. We try to run it for at least one hour in the morning and another in the evening. I’m told the batteries charge up to 85 to 90% in an hour but it takes significantly longer to get them any higher than that. So far, between the generator and the solar panel, we’ve been having a pretty easy time keeping the batteries topped off.

Today is chore day. Our list includes:

• Take the dinghy in for repair;
• Do the laundry;
• Wire the wind gauge, and;
• Clean the BBQ grill.

We decided to have the dinghy professionally repaired by Eric at Inflatable Boats of the Florida Keys (ifbkeys.com). It’ll be a ride on the SmorgasBoat and then a Taxi ride to his place of business. Since the boat weighs 60+ pounds, walking the mile or so to his store is not an option.

While I take care of that detail, Anna Marie will do the laundry. It’s been 12 days – the longest stretch we have gone between clothes washings. We just about out of clean clothes!

Eric said he could repair the dinghy so that the Admiral could be confident that it won’t spring a leak. I forgot to get an estimate, so I called him back. The estimate (about 40% of the value of the boat) was high enough for us to question whether or not the boat was worth the investment. The boat is the least expensive one I could find. I got it from E-Bay for a better price than I could have from West Marine. It is a PVC (as opposed to Hypalon) unit that is susceptible to UV deterioration. We’re going to talk to Eric tomorrow about some ideas for a new boat.

We didn’t get back to the boat before the thunderstorms hit. We waited for an hour at the marina. It was interesting to see the weather roll in and we watched in amazement as the harbor became a frothy, foamy white. When the wind diminished, the froth and foam disappeared almost immediately.

During a break in the action, we took a cab to the Dockside for lunch. We humped the laundry and several bottles of spirits (40% off at the Overseas) to the cab and then to the Dockside. The SmorgasBoat picked us up at about 1515.

Back on the boat, we cleaned up the BBQ grill and ran the generator and worked on the logs.

Pat and Ray ran their dinghy out to our mooring so we could go to the comedy (2100 hours) show at the Dockside with them. Ray Fogg (rayfogg.net) held court for a couple of hours singing bawdy songs and telling bawdy stories. Some of his groupies were in attendance but most of the crowd was boaters from the harbor. Before Ray’s show, Tommy Tunes was entertaining assembled throng. Many of those in the audience were pretty far gone before Ray took the stage. Several tables were boisterous but Ray played through the noise. At times he was funny but we all thought he was repetitious.

We were all pretty tired, so we left before the show was over. Ray ferried us back to the boat. We were ready to hit the sack.