August 6, 2009

Heidi, of course, woke up all fresh and ready to go. I kind of struggled through the day after listening to all of the fish chasing that was going on. But life should be so bad. We worked on the boat a lot that day, Thursday I think it is. We tightened the life lines, cleaned the bottom and sides of the boat. I even set up a few lines to try to catch some fish. I used a smaller rod and spinning reel with tiny bit of the leftover tuna as bait. I would constantly catch catfish, but finally I caught some real small fish that I could use as bait on larger lines. I like to eat freshwater catfish, but saltwater catfish are not as good. Really I have not eaten one in forever. I might have to try it out again. I hooked up a couple of live bait lines and threw them out the back of the boat and placed them in the rod holders we have in the stern. I had seen about a 50+ pound tarpon jump completely out of the water earlier in the day, and also I know all of those fish that were chasing fish last night. I was hoping we would catch something good or at least have a good fight. As soon as I set up and casted the second rod and placed it in the rod holder, the cork started to move away rather quickly. I grabbed the rod and tried to set the hook, but I lost the fish. I grabbed the smaller rig, caught another small fish, threw it out again and placed it back in the holder. After about an hour went by the cork started acting funny again. This time I hook the fish. I knew I had a good one. After a few minutes fight I brought it next to the boat and what did I see – another damn catfish. This time is was a Sailcat or otherwise known as a Sea Cat, Gafftop, Slime Cat, Gafftopsail Catfish or Crucifix Fish. It was probably about 5 pounds and they are slimy as can be. I mean once you get the junk on your hands it is very hard to clean it up and get it off. As I am writing this, I just looked up on Google some info about the Sail Catfish. For those of you who are religious, you may find it interesting that these Sailcats are also known as the Crucifix Fish. The fish has a skull that when the flesh is gone has what looks like a crucifix on one side and a roman shield on the other.

I caught a couple more Sailcats and decided that was enough of that for a while. At one point when I was fishing it started to rain. I went below to work on something and Heidi decided to go outside in her bathing suit and clean the boat in the rain. I thought that was pretty darn cool. And she was pretty darn cool for the first time working during the hot day. We worked on the boat until around lunch time and then we put the dinghy in the water. We can carry the dingy one of three ways when we travel. One is to tow her behind us. Another is to pull her up n the foredeck using one of the halyards (lines) and wrenches that we use to raise the sails. The other choice is to put her up on the davits we have in the very stern of the boat. This is where she was now and we simply have to untie her and equally lower the bow and stern at the same time on the pulleys it is attached to. After doing this we bring the dinghy around the side of the boat and we lower the Yamaha 15 HP engine we have for her by using another set of pulleys that are attached to a separate davit/crane-type set up. This easily lowers and raises the engine as needed. I lift the engine over the life lines and then get back in the dinghy. Heidi then lowers the engine to me and I guide it onto the back of the dinghy. So far it has worked like a charm every time!

When we put the Yamaha on this time we started to crank her up, but she would not start. These engines are VERY finicky about the fuel they use. It is a two stroke engine and we have to mix oil to it with a ratio of 100 to 1 (100 parts gasoline to 1 part oil). Every time we use it if we are not going to use if for a while we always run all of the fuel out of the engine so it can’t sit in the sun and turn the gas into varnish which will prevent the engine from running properly, if at all. Although it had not been long since we used the dinghy, I know we did not run out all of the fuel and here we were having a problem keeping the engine running. We could get her started, but she would cut out soon. I must have tried to crank that bad boy 100 times, but it would keep stalling. At least I was getting a good workout out of it. You know, being the phenomenal athlete that I am – lol!

I had some carburetor cleaner in the boat that we add to the fuel. It is supposed to do the trick but the main trick is you have to run the engine enough to get enough of the treated fuel to run through the engine to clean everything up. A much longer story shorter, we did treat the fuel and run her the best we could and sure enough after a little while we got lucky and she started to run, and run, and run! YES!!!!!! We had lunch at the White Elephant and asked them if it would be all right for us to leave our dinghy there for a few hours tonight when we went to Jack and Debra’s (Jack’s better half) house for dinner tonight. They said it would be OK as long as we were there by 9:30 p.m. to leave as they would shut the place down at 10:00 p.m. and the alarms would be set. Our wonderful waitress told us this about a dozen times. We told her we got it and would not miss our curfew.

Dinner with the Mosley’s was great. Jack cooked up some chicken cordon bleu and some potatoes au gratin and Debra fixed some southern green beans. Well, really they were just green beans, but I thought it sounded better this way. Damn, that boy can write great songs and cook. Who knew? After dinner Jack got out his guitar and he played three new songs for us that he had just written and were going to be on the new CD. We know the songs are going to be super because the next day both Heidi and I woke up and we each said that we were singing “Time on the Water”. Thursday night was a nice cool, breezy night on the water and for the first time I was able to get some sleep in our stateroom down below.