I awoke to noise in the engine room. It seems that when Harold awoke he noticed the engine room bilge pump was on, so he was down there investigating. The float switch had died, and, bona fortuna, this is one of the few times he had purchased the extended warranty when he bought the pump! He got everything taken out and borrowed Ken and Diane’s truck to head for West Marine. He got back with a new bilge pump and float switch. By 4 pm it was repaired and all is well. He stopped by to check on the dinghy while he was out and it should be back tomorrow. I am jonesing to get in it and do some exploring. We walked up to the pool and had one of their frozen margaritas and talked to Tom and Harry (whose third brother’s name is Dick). They are the electrical contractors on the new Walgreen’s across the street. In the pool, we met Diana from Two If by Sea and had a long conversation about the differences and similarities of boating and RVing. They (she and her husband George) apparently retired to a motor home and after a period of time and sold it in favor of this boat, which is about the size of ours. They have now been here for some time and apparently do not like waves (it’s a boat, honey!), so are trying to sell the boat and go back to the RV. In the meantime she has found a full time job to supplement their retirement, which is pretty good, because from the look of things between here and Winn-Dixie, our furthest adventure, the economy is pretty dismal. And the people working in the stores are all kind of grumpy. Happily, marina people are mostly fun! We came back to the boat and I fixed some spaghetti and sausage with a salad, a little TV and off to bed.
6-23
Up early again and walked the marina with our coffee. Back on the boat we prepared to take our morning walk (which we missed yesterday because of the float switch). We have to go back to K-Mart because my computer mouse died yesterday. By the time we got there, they were not open yet so we took a tour of Winn Dixie. We finally got a mouse and a couple of other things and headed back. We had breakfast and cleaned up after last night’s meal and I got the frig a little more organized. Harold called me out a little later to meet Bob and Diana from Sea Biscuit. They were waiting for Ken and Diane next door to go to Big Pine to the No Name Pub. I believe I may have been there (probably in another lifetime), but it is definitely a destination one of these days. Had a little lunch, Harold is working on installing our alarm system (thanks, kids!), and I am catching up with Casey. What a train wreck!! We had planned to go out to dinner tonight and after a shower decided just to walk up to the Hurricane instead of calling a cab to go “off campus”. It was 25 cent wing night and they were packed! Back at the boat, Ken, Diane and Bob were chilling on their forward deck, so we chatted until mosquitos started. We had decided there were too many clouds for a sunset, but after a few minutes clouds cleared out so we walked over to the point. There was still one big cloud right in front of the sun. One lady said God put his hand up and said “Not tonight”, but Dan said God was giving us the finger. Ken and Diane caught up with us and Dan invited us all to go on his boat to the Island Fish Co. for lunch Sunday – we’re looking forward to that! Still no dinghy – hopefully it will be back tomorrow.
6-24
Missed our morning walk today pretty much due to laziness. Harold is doing internet research on dinghys. About the time the Casey trial gets really good, our TV starts searching for the satellite and can’t find it. (I call this “Repair O’the Day”) Diagnostics reveal a bad LNB (that is what makes it find the satellite).
Fortunately, we have a spare, so it is only a matter of a hot hour on top of the sun deck to get us back in business and the bad one will be replaced under warranty. With my Casey addiction, I remarked that the thing waited until a really exciting day to crap out – I could have missed a whole bunch of the forensic investigators. Late afternoon we borrowed Ken’s truck and went to West Marine to look at a dinghy and next door to where our present dinghy is SUPPOSED to be being fixed. The guy who is working on it is out of town and the earliest we will get it back is Monday. We have pretty much made up our mind about the one in West Marine and as we were leaving to come back to the boat, Harold’s phone rang and it was Linda, of Jim and Linda, Clint’s neighbors (neighbors from Satellite Beach). She told him she was looking at our boat and Harold asked if she were on Google Earth. She said no, she was standing on the dock looking at it! They are here for the weekend. So we made a quick stop at Keys Fisheries to pick up some mangrove snapper for dinner and hurried home. We had cocktails and camaraderie for a while, then they left. They have reservations on a dive boat to go to Sombrero Reef for snorkeling tomorrow. We grilled our fish for dinner and it was outstanding! After dinner, Ken invited us over to his boat and we shared some more war stories.
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