Well another lesson learned - if you keep the dinghy in the water all the time it becomes a barnacle factory! Coleen and I rowed the dinghy to the marina beach early in the evening to tackle the barnacles. I knew it needing doing as I could see them creeping around the edges, but I had no idea it was THAT bad. The entire bottom of the dinghy was covered. We spent about 2 hours scraping and scrubbing. I started out with a plastic scraper but the handle broke in about 10 minutes and I ended up using just the remains.
After rowing back to the Glass Slipper Mike helped us put her on the dock and we scrubbed and hosed her down. She looks pretty good now and instead of putting her back in the water - she's hoisted and hanging from the spare halyard. Not sure how that will work in high winds - but for now it's good.
I saw some bad news yesterday on cruising.net. It seems that the Okeechobee waterway will be closed from June to August so they can work on the locks. I was planning to cut across that way - but now it looks like I'll have to go around the keys.
I heard from my friend Bill who just returned from 3 weeks in the Bahamas. He was ready to be back as it was terribly expensive. His tranny went out and he had to pay $1000 just for the duty tax on the new one. And after all that it still doesn't work right and he can't go in reverse. He's holed up at an anchorage in West Palm until the new parts come in. Said his marina bill for the 3 weeks was $2100! Sounds like I'd better start saving my pennies now for next year's Bahamas trip.
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January 2019
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