Wet Foot Dry Foot Policy

My feet are dry again. Both of em.

It was a wild and crazy weekend! I got to the boat ramp at 11:50 PM Friday. I got a little bit of a late start. There is a food place / bar at the marina, but the kitchen was closed by the time I got there. Too bad for me. The bar was still open. Only a drunken idiot would have headed out that night anyway.

See the weather was iffy. There was a high pressure to the north, and a low pressure to the south. When you are sandwiched between a high and low the winds are strong. I had a wind gauge thingie and it was reading 15 mph. And then I stopped using it because I did not care.

And of course, I got a little bit rained on launching the boat. No big deal. It made everything more fun. But the rain stopped by the time I was ready to leave. Maybe 3 minutes of rain - about 1 minute of the time it was raining hard. I had about another 30 seconds of rain while in the marina channel.

That is how the rain was for me all weekend. On and off. Short bursts. This happens in South Florida

When I got to the anchorage where the party is, there were already a bunch of boats there. I was actually a little surprised by this.

The party seemed to be a little muted this year. The weather reports were bad. And I got spy reports that it rained a lot in town. I could see some of these showers. They stayed on land. Mostly. The winds were around however, and that did create some bay chop. But a lot of people got out anyway. At least 2,000 boats by my rough estimation. And that is a low ball figure.

Saturday I was already there when I woke up. I was anchored a little bit away from the actual madness. Last time I was out there some drunken idiot ran over my anchor line. This year a police boat ran over my anchor line. But the cop shut his engines off before any damage could be done to my anchor line. Too bad, I would have got a new stainless steel anchor out of the deal. The cops would have either had to write up a report that THEY cut my 300 feet of premium anchor line (I really only have 100 feet) and as a result I lost my solid stainless steel anchor (I actually have a galvanized steel anchor) and my 20 feet of stainless steel anchor chain (I really only have 10 feet of galvanized steel chain) OR one of the cops would have had to go swimming for my stuff. That would have been funny.

I still can't believe the cop boat got that close to my bow.

After that incident, I weighed down my anchor line with a 10 pound dumbbell. I had done this before, but it came loose. The weight causes the anchor line to hang at a very steep angle off the bow. This way when the bacon boats come too close to my bow, they float OVER my line, not into it. Pretty cool.

I had the kayak, so that is how I got into the thick of the madness. The kayak is good like that. The only problem is that with the foot pedal things it has no reverse. So you have to be careful so you do not have a need to go in reverse. And you have to watch out for large boats that could run you over.

I got rained on Saturday night trying to sleep on my open boat. So I would have to get up and go to the other boat I was tied up with and hide from the rain. And then it would stop so I would go back to my boat where I could sleep better, and then it would rain again and so I would have to get up and go hide on the other boat again. This happened three times. The rain showers were never very long. Only a few minutes. It did keep waking me up.

I stayed out longer than I thought I was going to on Sunday. I thought I would be back at the ramp in the early afternoon. But as it turned out, I was back in the late afternoon. 2 full days and 2 nights on the boat. It rained like hell after I got the boat out of the water. Like I said, the rain stated on the land. It was actually nice out on the water.

I had a beer tragedy. When I left the floating party, I could see the rain. I knew it was going to be a race to the finish line. So I hauled ass across the bay at wide open throttle most of the way. Full speed ahead. I beat the rain (it hit after I was out of the water), but the cooler in the back of the boat had a rough ride. When I opened the cooler to get some water for the drive home, I could see that some beer had leaked out of one of the bottles. I guess the ride across the bay caused the bottles to bounce around a bit.

Well as it turned out - all the beer I had left was mostly out of the bottles. But the caps were still on and none of the bottles were broken. It was a Bermuda Triangle mystery. How did the beer get OUT of the bottles without the caps being removed? I do not think this mystery will ever get solved.

At home while washing the boat down, the Bimini top gave put. One of the support poles just broke. It seems there was some corrosion going on I was not aware of. That or metal fatigue. But at least it fell apart at home AFTER the weekend and not on Friday night. I can fix the top. All I need is piece of aluminum pipe of proper diameter. I can cut it to the required length. I should also check the other supports.