Always a story

The chop on the water finally laid down at about four o’clock in the morning, so Ray barely got a couple hours of sleep.  As is usually the case on the first day of traveling again, I woke up once very disoriented as to where I was.  Getting up at 6:00 this morning wasn’t quite early enough I guess.  We could have pulled up anchor by 6:30 light, but we didn’t get going until 6:45.  The choppy waves were on our beam of course while the winds were blowing out of the east.  They were hardly two footers, but just enough to keep us rolling along.  Around nine o’clock they really calmed down all of the sudden.  The only thing that seemed different was that the water was pretty shallow, because it didn’t really last long.  They did continue to diminish all day as predicted.  It was just after noon today though when those winds changed to NNW again.  Still assuming it was the sea breeze as the past two mornings have been a little bit cooler.

The afternoon continued on with no major events.  Sometimes the starboard engine just dies on us.  Once we prime the fuel filter it starts right back up.  Remember the same thing happening with the generator?  Yep, that’s still going on intermittently.  They both feed off of the same fuel cell, so something is going on with that, but Ray can’t seem to find what it is.  Other than that, just lots of turtle sightings, I bet 30 today, along with the usual dolphins too.

It was a long day for us.  We dropped anchor near Cedar Key, Florida on the north side of Atsena Otle Key, a National Wildlife Refuge after 68 miles of travel in ten and a half hours.  Shortly after settling in Ray dinghied over to “Conched Out Too” to borrow a ratchet strap.  Along with our one we had, Ray cross tied the dinghy to try to stop it swaying so much in the rolling seas.  We’re still leery of the original welds of the pieces mounted on “The Second Noelle”.

Soon after getting the dinghy all secured is when it got interesting.  There were two men on Atsena Otle Key yelling to “Conched Out Too” that they were stranded on the island because the kayak they rented got swamped and they lost the paddle(s).  So Patty called Cedar Key Marina.  We said we would put the dinghy back in the water to get them if needed, but the marina said someone was on the way.  We even tried getting the attention of a fishing boat that went by by blowing our horns and Ray waving his arms in the distress signal.  It totally ignored us.  In the mean time the two men on the island have started a fire.  Finally here comes Tom in another kayak.  He thought it was his rental.  He is yelling while still in the kayak for them to put the fire out.  That continues as he gets to shore.  The two men put the fire out but a lot of arguing was going on with the two men using quite vulgar language toward Tom and another couple of guys that came in a fishing boat to rescue them.  The rescuers obviously had enough of that and left.  Come to find out it wasn’t Tom’s rental kayak they had.  The two men ended up paddling the kayak back to the main land with their hands.  We were all thankful we didn’t get any more involved.  Patty apologized to Santa, yes that’s her name, at Cedar Key Marina not knowing what trouble they would be, and hopes to get the rest of the story from her later.