Wednesday, April 21, 2010

0541, Wed, 042110. We have moved on to waxing the sides of the boat. This is a real chore. To insulate myself from shock I wear rubber soled tennis shoes and rubber gloves, then I have installed a GFI adaptor, just like the ones you find in the bathroom back home. Sue works from the deck keeping the cord from dipping in the water while I work from the dink. Now we all know that every action has a reaction. Standing in a dinghy, floating in the water, there is no friction to hold you in place. Touch Neos and I move away. Push with a buffer and I really move away. The buffer weighs in at a few pounds at least, now try to hold that at arms length and move it up and down, hours at a time. This too is cruising. My arms feel like they want to drop off today. It was hot to boot, so I didn't last long until exhaustion set in. We got about half of one side done and called it quits, whew.
Bill and Jean came over and said people were going to a restaurant/hotel down the way at sunset and extended the invitation to us. By the time late afternoon rolled around we were ready to head out. About a mile down river we pulled into a real nice dinghy dock and joined over a dozen of the other cruisers for an evening in the pool and then dinner. We had a great evening socializing before heading back upstream. Sue remembered the hat with the red and green lights on top but we didn't think to bring a flashlight. There are a few nasty buoys along the way so it was time for eye strain trying to spot these things in the dark. Sure enough, if we hadn't been alert we would have T-boned one of the darn things head on. I made a quick adjustment of the tiller and we cleared it easily. We both forgot to turn on the night light before leaving, so we thought it would be hard to find Neos, but I had put out one of our new "garden walk solar lights". It was doing a great job of lighting up the back of the boat. I was so excited that I put out four more of these little guys, so now we have little lights all around the boat.
We just heard a call on the VHF. Another couple of boats are waiting outside to come through the surf at high tide in an hour and a half. About time we aren't the last boat in, heck we have been here over a week.
Of course we watched a couple of episodes of "24" and then rolled into the sack for the night……more later..

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