No travel on Sunset Delight.
The day started out with Bill and Sandy on L'Attitude Adjustment offering to drive Clark to the Home Depot and the Specialty Hardware store - an offer he just could not refuse! When he came to tell me of his good fortune, I was dawdling over breakfast while reading my Kindle. I waved him away and told him to have fun. Ah! Bliss! Just me and my Kindle.
After breakfast, I decided to do some sewing that I did not get a chance to work on yesterday. I got everything out and set up to begin when Clark returned from his outing and announced that he needed my help sanding the boat trim for his next coat of varnish. Given the humidity of the day, I thought I had escaped the varnish torture for a day. Wrong!
I set my planned sewing to one side and changed into grunge clothing to go out and get coated in sanding dust. Clark is several inches taller than I am. With three sections that needed to be sanded, he assigned me the one of the three that meant I could not reach a portion of the wood to be sanded. I know not what goes on in his brain - it is a scary place!
I did what I could and left him the rest while I went around to check on his work and try to clean up some of the sanding dust to further speed him along on his varnishing task. At noon the sun starts to shine on the port side of the boat where he is working, so he raced to get the varnish on before it got hit by the direct sun.
As soon as I could, I escaped and grabbed my sewing to start my own project. I have a dress that makes me itch when I wear it, so I am adding a bit of lining to the top. Too lazy to pull out my sewing machine and too uncertain of the outcome if I did use a machine, I am hand-sewing this project. It takes longer but because it is very stretchy fabric, I believe I will have a better end result than with a machine.
After finishing today's coat of varnish, Clark came inside and I realized it was time for lunch, so I put down my sewing to get us something to eat. Afterward, I picked up my sewing again to continue my work. When, out of nowhere, Clark asked me if I would like to go out on a jet ski / personal water craft (PWC) today.
Two years ago, for my birthday, Clark bought us tickets to go on an air boat through a section of the Everglades. Today, he came up with the idea of renting a jet ski as my birthday gift. He said he had called to check on prices for rentals and availability for today. The person he talked to said that we could rent today, but he was obligated to advise us that "a small craft advisory" was in effect for today, i.e. we might get wet. Whereby Clark responded, "Isn't that the point?"
In case I did not find the jet ski idea an attractive offer, he suggested the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon as an alternative. I like dolphins, but I could not turn down the jet ski option. I gave Clark one of my "are you kidding me looks" and said that between the two options, hands down the PWC wins! By the quick little smile he gave me, I knew I had made the right choice. He said, "I thought you were the adventurous sort!"
With temps in the low 70s, cloud cover, and a breeze, we had to think about how to dress for our expedition. Clark decided to wear his "shorty" wet suit. He has not one ounce of fat on his body and needs help staying warm. Sadly, I do not have that same body composition. I put on a long-sleeved sun shirt over my swimsuit and hoped for the best.
We took nothing with us except two towels (in case we accidentally went for a swim) and our pocket camera. Having paid for a half hour, I wondered, with no waterproof watch between us, how we would know when the time was up. Clark asked, and we found out that the odometer on the PWC also clocks hours of operation, so we could use that to know when to return to dock. When we left the dock, it read 160.2. We needed to return at 160.7 hours.
Clark had the attendant take our picture. Neither of us have ever ridden on one of these, so we wanted to capture the moment and record it in the blog! We asked him to hold onto the camera while we took our little trip.
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| Our first ever PWC ride! |
Two people on one jet ski was half the price of two PWC since they charge by the water craft. I really had no interest in learning how to drive one. I was very happy to hide behind Clark and just hang on.
Before we even left the little area surrounded by sea wall, I thought we were going to go in for a swim. The PWC tipped precariously over to one side, but we stayed on. After that I handed my sunglasses to the attendant and asked him to keep them until I returned. If I went in swimming, I did not want to lose them in the water. I had nothing else on me that might fall off if I went for an unexpected dip.
We discovered that the hours portion of the odometer display only appeared when Clark turned off the PWC. Every so often he would stop and check the time. The first time we looked, we found the display at 160.5, so we had about 10 more minutes of fun left.
While we drove around out there, I was glad that Clark was driving and my job was just to hold on tight to him. We had a run down of instructions that we had to initial that we understood before taking out the PWC. One that they stressed was the need to not let up on the throttle when turning. Clark said this was hard to remember to do. I guess that is why they stressed it so much.
A few times I wondered what Clark was doing as he seemed to slow down and wiggle / rock the PWC back and forth. Sometimes he would go slowly and "wiggle", and sometimes he would go fast in one direction or another. When I asked about his antics later, he said that "following seas" made the PWC behave strangely, and his maneuvering depended on whether he was head into the seas or had them following.
Once more checking the time, we found it had moved up to 160.6. After that, however, it seemed to take a very long time to go from 160.6 to 160.7. Clark stopped multiple times and each time it displayed 160.6. Clark chuckled at one point perhaps thinking the thing was permanently stuck at that number. I think we were both ready to return to dock but wanted to get our full half hour in. As soon as it said 160.7, Clark headed back to dock.
Later, he told me that he thought he would have been bored had he paid for a full hour of time. Now we know what it is like to ride one, we both agreed that we do not see buying a PWC in our future. That's one item I can cross off my Bucket List!
After our adventure, it was back to business as usual. We headed to the showers to clean up. Afterwards, Clark went to visit Jim on Hour Plan to help Jim drill some holes through some steel. I planned to go back to my sewing. That did not happen, however, because I found a pile of lunch dishes in need of cleaning. By the time I was done with that, Clark returned and inquired about docktails at 5:00.
I stuck my head out a couple of times trying to decide about docktails. Right about 5:00, it started to drip sprinkles of rain. Mel and Ann on Morning Star II returned today from their trip to Canada, and I knew they were excited for docktails. With the rain, I did not know if we would meet for docktails or not.
With Clark pushing me, I put together something to take out to docktails. Just as we stepped out onto the back of our boat to head up to the lighthouse, Mel and Ann returned to their's saying no one had appeared. They quickly disappeared in the direction of the Lighthouse Grill restaurant. With no docktails, they decided to eat an early dinner instead.
Meanwhile, as we stood on the back of Sunset Delight with our drinks in hand, Jim and AC from Hour Plan walked by on their way to the lighthouse. We told them no one was there and invited them on board our boat for a private "deck"tails instead. As we sat and talked on the back deck, Faith and Jim from Third Degree came by and joined our little gathering. Later, after their dinner, Mel and Ann came over with chairs and joined our party as well.
Docktails normally ends by 6:30, but our little gathering lasted until 7:00! Finally Faith's dog, Pete, needed to go for a walk, and AC and I had to go cook our dinners. We all went our separate ways. I never saw the sun set tonight either due to the weather or the great conversation. I know not which!
After dinner, around 9:30, Clark crawled into the back-breaking area under the floor in the master stateroom to install the reassembled saltwater washdown! Earlier in the day, just before docktails, he cut a 12' length of 3/4" hose for the connection on the bow and attached the hose connection he had purchased at the hardware store first thing this morning. I bet tomorrow we get to test the whole assembly. Oh joy! If it's windy, maybe I'll get a face full of saltwater as a birthday present!
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