Tuesday night at Newfound Harbor turned out to be a very peaceful night. The rain and thunderstorms passed south of us earlier in the day.
Steve fished until past dark - too bad there wasn't much to catch here - the water was only 6 feet deep so it wasn't too surprising!
The stars were crazy out even with what seemed to be a full moon. Of course when I realized the "full moon" was our anchor light, turning it off made the stars REALLY come out :-)
Steve was up with the sun - as usual. I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing and Steve's call of "the sun is over the yardarm". I didn't really know what that meant but interpreted it as meaning it was time to get up and get moving!
Turns out the saying really means the sun is high enough to a) take a noon break or b) have a cocktail at 5 pm - it depended on how close to the equator you were.
We were off to Looe Key for diving/snorkeling as the predicted low winds actually WERE low!
Which makes it very nice as Steve spent the 40 minute trip to the reef getting the dive equipment out. Even when it is calm it is still sometimes a challenge to be digging tanks, BC, mask and snorkels out from their storage places as we rock on a mooring buoy.By the time we arrived at Looe Key, all that needed to be done was to drop the dinghy and into the water we went.
There were no other boats when we arrived but it didn't take long for many others to show up. The water was just too perfect for anyone to stay home!Steve dove and I snorkeled. There were tons of fish again - all with the bright colors of the saltwater reef fish. They are so fun to see.
A perfect day and we finally made it to dive/snorkel at Looe Key reef.
Next was on to fishing.
What he really meant was it was time to troll back toward Marathon - I mean we were already the 5 miles out from shore that puts us quickly in 100+ feet of water.
So we trolled - zig-zagging between 80 feet and 120 feet of water. But again no luck .... what's with the fish? Normally he'd catch something ...
And now we were only another 6 miles to Sombrero reef (off of Marathon) so guess we'll stop there and snorkel since the ocean was still flat.
The water though was very murky for some reason. It's like the sand has been mixed up with the water. Glad we had stopped this morning at Looe Key as the water clarity was much better.
After we were back in the boat, Steve rinsed all of our gear off with fresh water. By the time we'd be back at the dock, everything would be dry and could be put away. Nice job, Steve :-)
There was, however, a casualty on Tuesday. When we traveled from Bahia Honda State Park to Newfound Harbor.
Sadly, little flower guy was bounced off of the windowsill (where he lives) by the not very nice waves. He was so cute - a photocell keeps the bumblebee flying back and forth on the plant stem and the plant leaves moving up and down. Now it's only the plant leaves that remain - the stem of the flower broke. His broken stem is still moving though. Steve feels confident he can fix him up though. Will report back :-) (Click on the small forward arrow in the lower left to start the video.)
But we do think the mystery of the missing coolant in the generator may be solved. If we didn't run the generator too long, it didn't leak. If we ran it 30 minutes or so, it lost about a cup of water. Perhaps it was overheating just a bit (not enough to trigger the automatic shutoff) and blowing water out of the overflow tube. Let's check the strainer ..... wow - is it any wonder it wasn't getting enough water??? Note to self: when running things that intake raw water from the ocean, see if any of the grass has gotten sucked in.
Some days I think we are just not too smart .....
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