Thursday February 27: Guppy Spotting!!

Guess who we spotted in Boot Key Harbor - Guppy!!! This is the small trawler we had seen two years ago in a marina near here in Marathon. She was for sale and for a brief time we thought this might make a great Canada boat.

After coming to our senses (WAY too much work involved and no place to do it), we passed on Guppy and ended up with our 28' Bayliner for our Canadian boat. Of course the name selected was a natural: GUPPY.


What a fun surprise though :-) We were actually in Boot Key Harbor visiting Werner and Kathie along with delivering a cover for the front of their boat. These are easy for me to make and can really provide a nice cover in case of rain as the hatch can remain open.

The cover worked out great for them and even covered their kayaks which ride on the front deck as well.

Funny sign where we parked our bikes over by the harbor though! I wonder if they are serious .....

It's not hard to tell from a side view that Guppy is a Gulfstar though. Basically a sailboat hull turned trawler. She's a small sister of Deja Vu (Peter and Cheryl's trawler).

We had a nice trip the other day on "Jenna Star" with George and Nancy (with other folks from the marina) as we rode on the bay side about 10 miles east to the Island View Restaurant for lunch.

When we were pulling in the guys on the dock were busy with the power washer cleaning all of the bird poop off. How nice of them, right?

And then the go fast boats started arriving .....

Oh - the clean docks were for THEM! In the end there were about 15 cigarette type boats that came in for lunch. We deemed the totally enclosed one with the skull painting to be the coolest!







Last night turned out to be "dock night at the movies"! We provided the movie "Batteries Not Included" and Cindy and Randy provided the computer and speaker.

Popcorn from "I Think I Can" completed the evening. It was a perfect night - light breeze, stars out and a gathering of friends.

Perfect :-)

Today though back to work. Steve started with the rotten board in the lazarette which holds the port 125 gallon water tank in place.

I worked on the high water alarm (so if the main bilge pump float switch turns the pump on we will know it is running by the sounding of a horn). The main pump should never run unless there is an abnormally LARGE amount of water entering the bilge. Check - done!

Once that was fixed, we both worked on adding an additional 60 feet of chain to our ground tackle. Just making sure we have enough for the Bahamas! To know how much chain is out, we painted a mark every 20 feet.

We've had varying opinions on how much chain we REALLY need but settled on a total of 95 feet of chain and 150 feet of line.

Totally good on that end now but sometimes we're concerned about how much weight we continue to add to this boat! I don't see nearly as much weight going off as I see coming on for sure.

Tomorrow: may be another work day - might as well as the weather doesn't look great for fishing. There is a place on the bay side we want to try so maybe Saturday or Sunday.

Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy what has been very pleasant weather!