Heading for surgery..

No, not us, I meant the boat. This afternoon I moved it back to the Caicos Boatyard so that they can start to work on finding and fixing the fuel tank leak. They have told me they will start tomorrow. LaGringa dropped me off in Leeward, and I ran the boat down solo. Well, Dementio The Dog was with me, but quite frankly, he's not much help on a boat unless you have a fish that needs to be bitten. It was just before dark, and there was a lot of big sky out. I was dodging squalls again. Here's looking back at Leeward-Going-Through:



Nothing much exciting happened on this short trip. I suppose that's probably a good thing when you are alone in the boat and it's getting dark. Excitement at this point is probably not going to be good. We had run most of the fuel out of the boat over the weekend since the boatyard guys are going to fill the tank with water anyhow. The gauge was sitting dead on "Empty" when I left Sherlock's Marina. ( We don't know what the name of it is going to be yet, so for now we are just calling it Sherlock's). Here's a view leaving Sherlock's. That's the Conch Farm on the left, the two buildings in the middle are the start of the marina complex he has planned. The big house on the right is the Premier's home.



I did take a six gallon can of gasoline with me but did not want to have to put it in the tank if I could help it. I ran her nose high all the way to get every bit of gas down in the back of the tank where the fuel pickup is located. Uneventful trip, only about six miles. Still feels funny running along with the needle pegged at empty. Not another boat in sight. The sensory input was all just boat, ocean, and clouds:



So, for the next few days (we hope it's only a few) we will be Boatless in Provo. We have some ideas for other things to photo and post here, though, until we get "Cay Lime" back.

Then, of course once we get the boat back, and can start filling the tank with fuel again, we still have all of the trips planned that we have had to put off. We even found out that Preacher did not make the Salt Cay trip (boat problems, now there's a surprise) so that's still on. Now to be fair, between our fuel tank problems, Tropical Storm Noel, and Preacher's boat problems, that wasn't gonna happen as scheduled. Any one of those three things would have stopped it, and we had all three. Preacher is just waiting on two new starter motors, by the way. We still want to visit East Caicos and the ruins at Jacksonville. We are not NEARLY done with French Cay. After we move into the house we will be making scrounging and beach combing trips for driftwood and interesting ocean stuff to pile around and make the place look more nautical... Looks like it's shaping up to be a fun season. I'm still glad I did get to make this little sunset trip this afternoon:



I know the recreational boating season is just about finished in the high Northern latitudes. I remember this time of year in New England very well. But here the boating and fishing season runs year round. It does get a little cooler and rougher in the winter, but the low 60s are about as cold as it ever gets. It still gets up into the 80's every day all winter long. It's about as close to an 'endless summer' as I have ever seen.