Boating with Sunset Delight: 2020: Life at Faro Blanco

20 December 2020

No boat travel.

Yesterday, I was on a day-long mission to clean the inside of the boat from bow to stern. It seemed the perfect day for such a project given that the northerly winds pushed the boat so far from the dock that I did not feel comfortable trying to get off. Twice I looked at the boat position and twice I backed off. I sent the garbage off with Clark!

I checked the weather including wind speed and direction and decided that today would be perfect for a bike ride to the 7-mile bridge to see if access was open to "Fred the Tree". The walkway over the bridge has been closed to public access since Hurricane Irma wrecked havoc on the Keys. I hoped that this season it would be open. Since I am friends with "Fred the Tree" on Facebook, I thought it would be fun to go visit him.

With an air temperature of 75, I wanted to get out for my bike ride as early as possible. I did not want to be biking (for fun) under a hot Florida sun. I told Clark my destination. He showed no interest. I begged and then threatened him but could not get him to budge from his email. Disgusted, I left on my own.

I set out at 10:15 and enjoyed a lovely, quick ride to the park. As I neared the park, I expected to pass a spot, as I did last year, where I would choke and gag on the stench of rotting sea grass. Amazingly, I passed that spot without a whiff of odor. What happened?!

By 10:30 I was already at the park. As I neared the bridge, I saw the "Park Closed" sign. Dang! I really hoped to be able to explore further. I stopped at the barricade and took a couple of pictures.

Dang! Park still gated off!

Ramp down to park

View of sailboats anchored on the Gulf side of the island

Flowers growing in park

Picnic area in park

Given it had only taken me 15 minutes to get to the park and since I could not go on the bridge to visit "Fred the Tree" as planned, I decided to bike down into the park just for a bit more exercise and to look around.

I found a lone sea gull in the park

Only view of the 7-mile bridge I was getting today!

Critter in the dried grass

Ran up on the steps when I poked at him

Fishing Chart
"If You Don't Know, Let It Go!"

One guy had biked to the park and sat reading something on his phone, and two others were fishing. Otherwise, I had the park to myself. Since I did not feel like hanging around, I headed back towards the boat.

Pathway back to the boat

At 10:45 I found myself back at the Faro Blanco Resort. That meant that my trip back was faster than my trip out to the bridge since I stopped several times to take pictures. Deciding I was not yet ready to put my bike away, I decided to bike around the marina for a bit more exercise.

Pigeons have taken over!

Faro Blanco Lighthouse

"Sunset Delight"

Eventually, and all too quickly, I ran out of places to bike to without heading east on Route 1 and dealing with a busier area. When I got back to the boat, I banged on the side of "Sunset Delight" to get Clark to help me lift my bike back on board the boat. Afterwards, I took some more pictures of the marina, this time, while standing on our boat.

View of Lighthouse from our boat

3 Poles - each with a pelican on top

One Pelican that preferred a neighboring boat's railing to a pole
(spreading his wings for balance)

View of pool from our boat

Normally, we do not get great views of the marina from our boat because we usually have a large-boat neighbor blocking our view. Today they took their boat out for a small voyage, and I got to see what they normally get to look at.

Upon returning to the boat, I found that Clark had moved from email to furniture repair. One of the plastic feet on our footstool broke and left a nail exposed that was scratching our wood floors. When I cleaned the boat yesterday, I left the footstool upside down on the chair as a giant reminder to Clark to fix the foot.

Last night, Clark used epoxy to glue the foot back together where the plastic had broken. Today he reattached the foot to the stool.

Broken foot fixed and reattached. Time to
put the stool back on the floor!

After that he moved outside to work on exterior boat repair. He found a few places (some surprises) that needed to have some fiberglass work done. He prepped, e.g. sanded, the surfaces to make them ready for re-glassing.

This is new.
We can't normally reach the anchor pulpit from the dock.

Aw! This is our normal means of access to the pulpit!

I called Clark in for lunch. He planned to do the fiberglass patching after he ate. Just after 1:00, he went out to recommence work, said he felt "drips", checked the weather report, and decided to wait until later in the afternoon to start the patching.

We watched the sky after those "few drips" and it only got darker and more threatening as time went on. Instead of clearing as predicted by "Weather Bug", the rain only got worse, and eventually we had a downpour. No fiberglass work today! As I watched the rain coming down, I could only congratulate myself on biking early in the day when the sun was out. If I had waited until later, it probably would not have happened.

Since I was up-to-date on cleaning, I decided to pull out my art supplies. Two girls that are on a boat in the marina came by yesterday and asked me to have a painting session with them like I did last year. One requested that we paint a beach scene with palm trees, shells, and a sunset. The other asked that we paint a dolphin. In preparation for that session, if I can figure out a Covid-safe way to do it, I drew up some pictures based on their requests.

Colored Pencils out; Pictures on Tablet

Sketch of Seashells and Starfish on a Beach

Twice, while I was having fun with art, Clark came by to request my help with his inside-the-boat project - the one he started once he got rained out from the fiberglass work. I grumbled about having to stop what I was doing for him when he refused to stop what he was doing earlier to join me. Oh well!

His inside project felt all too familiar since he had taken out the starboard-side water pump for the engine to check to see if the nut was properly torqued. He needed me to operate the torque wrench like last time on the port engine repair. Once reinstalled, he needed me to turnover the engine to see if he got waterflow through the pump.

First, he had me just turnover the engine without starting it. I did that a couple of times, but he saw no waterflow. Finally, he said I should start it. No sooner did it start than he started yelling stop, stop. Water was gushing out and overflowing the pathetically small bucket he had put in place to catch it.

My job done, I went back to my art. As I sat at the salon table drawing, I saw something I would never have seen if the boat was docked stern in - a huge rainbow. It looked like it came out of a sailboat on the opposite side of the marina and continued across the sky for a full half-circle.