Normalcy

Things are gradually returning to normal in Key West: the wind is slackening and the temperature is slowly rising.

How have you all fared?

My friends from Beach Haven suffered water damage/flooding in both their restaurants, and they had to fly home to deal with it!

I finally got a haircut today – first one in 3 months. I looked like Albert Einstein on a bad hair day. Much better now.

BTW, you may recall that I was concerned about all the boats out in the Key West anchorage – it’s pretty much just a big area of open water, and they were totally exposed to the 35-mile-per-hour north winds during the gale Monday and Monday night…I talked to a marine tech down here who had his radio on Monday night, and he heard a number of distress calls to the Coast Guard and TowBoatsUS. Dragging anchors, crossed anchor lines, etc. I am so glad we were safe in our slip behind the rock jetty.

We are getting some routine maintenance done (changing the oil and the oil filter) and hoping to get the refrigerator repaired. That’s an interesting tale of self-inflicted pain…It is a drawer refrigerator, and it has a plastic pin that locks the drawer closed during heavy seas. Unfortunately, the pin was broken when I bought the boat, and I never bothered to replace it. As a consequence, the drawer opened on one of our crossings, and ice formed on the cooling plate. In my haste to break the ice away, I used an ice pick and punctured the plate, which I learned is almost paper-thin, and the freon escaped. Stupid. All I had to do was turn the unit off and let the ice melt. The unit is built in Italy by Verifrigo, so it is questionable whether I’ll be able to get the new part within the next three weeks.

Oh well, that’s the least of my problems…the freezer still works. And the drawer now has a nice new stainless steel pin.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. Etc.”

I’ll let you know what transpires.