No boat travel.
We made an appointment to have the holding tank pumped out today. As planned the crew at the marina showed up at our boat just after 10:00 to do the dirty deed. After that activity, we had nothing specific planned for the rest of the day.
With wind and rain in today's forecast, the varnishing job continued to be on hold. Clark decided to look through his punch list to see what other items he might work on. After weighing the pros and cons of the various tasks, he settled on taking a look at the bow thruster to see why it works only intermittently.
He spent the majority of the day working in the storage space under our master stateroom (MSR) bed.
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| Clark working on the bow thruster controls under the MSR bed. |
Although some of the folks in the marina would claim that the wind made the day downright cold, Clark suffered in the warm confines of the area under the bed. A fan helped only a little.
When 5:00 rolled around for docktails, he was still in his cubbyhole working on the thruster. The controls for the thruster are in the pilot house, so a couple of times he had me work the controls while he measured contacts in the MSR. With this arrangement, he diagnosed the problem to be the solenoid controller. Since this is basically a "black box" that he cannot see into, he will need to buy a new one to fix the problem.
His need for me to assist with testing meant that I could not leave for docktails. He kept me "chained" to the boat until he completed his tasks around 5:30 when we walked over to docktails together. On the way there, we spotted a number of pelicans hunting for their dinners.
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| As Clark walked up to take this picture, the third of three pelicans decided to find a new spot to fish. |
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| Another favorite venue for pelican fishing. Just glad its not our boat. |
The wind continued to blow as we walked out to docktails. The last remaining palm tree, located where the Faro Blanco "Chapel" used to stand before Hurricane Irma hit, valiantly fought the wind.
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| Strong easterly wind today. |
When we arrived at the lighthouse for docktails, we found a number of folks there, all huddled closely together, surrounding a pitifully small table containing the food offerings for the gathering. The only way my plate of cheese and crackers fit on the table was to remove some other plate from the table. Folks explained that the objective of huddling was to protect the food from being blown away by the wind.
Clark captured a picture of the group on another looper's iPad, and she sent the picture out to tonight's docktails participants.
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| Windy Docktails at Faro Blanco Resort & Yacht Club (Picture compliments of Clark and Beverly Kness on Seaquest) |
Beverly managed to hide in the first picture. Here is one Clark took with our camera where she is not totally hidden by her husband. She is wearing the pink hat that she had to hold onto throughout docktails to make sure it did not fly away with the wind.
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| Boaters at Faro Blanco huddled together protecting the food at docktails! |
Bruce, Beverly's husband, makes his own wine, and he brought two bottles of red over to the group to share. Even though I do not normally drink wine, I could not resist tasting them both just to see how good they were. Although dryer than I like, I could see why the others at docktails exclaimed about how great they tasted.
Bruce and Beverly leave here tomorrow on route to the Bahamas. Another boat is traveling with them, so that will be those two gone first thing tomorrow morning. At docktails, Clark discovered that Remember When, Marianne and Steve, are also leaving tomorrow on their way to Key West. The marina will look empty until we get an influx of boaters, hopefully loopers, in February.
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