The week in review

I won't bore you with a year end review, but I will catch you all up with what's been going on since Christmas.  First, we're still waiting for the health certificates from Dr. Don - not really sure what the hold up is.  But since the winds have been out of the north the last week or so, it hasn't really mattered, as we don't want to try to cross the Gulf Stream with the wind against the current.


For any of you familiar with Parkinson's law, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", we're finding a corollary to be true.  Our "To do" list seems to be expanding to fit the time we are spending in Marathon.  Though if we had a car and my shop for tools and supplies, we could be finishing several projects a day.  Yesterday we decided we don't need 3 or 4 cubic feet of refrigerated space to keep 6 or 8 containers of yogurt and half a gallon of milk cool.  And if we were cooling a smaller volume we wouldn't have to run the refrigeration (our biggest battery drain) as long.  We didn't have any suitable materials on board to wall off the ice box, so I took the dinghy ashore, walked to Home Depot and back, and then dinghied back to the boat.  Then we fired up the generator to run my saber saw.  The project  ended up taking most of the afternoon, instead of a couple of hours.  Today we decided to get diesel fuel and fill up the water tanks so we will be ready whenever we get a favorable wind.  By the time we left the dinghy on the mooring ball, motored the mile to the fuel dock, filled the diesel tank, 2 gas tanks, all our water tanks, and motored back to our mooring it had taken an hour and a half.  And in the process I noticed a water hose on the diesel is dripping so now I have to replace two short sections of hose.  (Add another project to the list.)  We also changed the oil in the generator so we can get rid of the old oil here.  We then walked to a local bank to get more cash, but got there after they closed, so we have to go back tomorrow.


We have made friends with people on two other boats.  The other day we were sitting on one of the boats talking when we heard an explosion, and then all kinds of sirens.  It turns out a teenager was gassing up the family boat and neglected to run the blower.  The explosion threw him 20 feet into the water and sank the boat.  Luckily he wasn't injured except for some singed hair.  This happened at the marina where John G. took us to eat when he was visiting.  Allen, on another boat, used to be a farrier, which is not too common of an occupation.  Today they didn't notice us leaving to get fuel and thought that we had left Marathon without saying good bye.  I think they were glad to see us come back.  Tomorrow there is an appetizer get-together around 5:00, and then we will probably go out to eat with some of the other boaters.
(A farrier shoes horses.)


We all hope everyone reading this has a happy and healthy new year.