Getting Ready to Leave Marathon

We called Barnacle Bill from the harbor to clean our bottom (hull) and because he was really busy we had to wait two days for our appointment. He spent a total of an hour and fifteen minutes cleaning the bottom of our boat with 20 minutes of it just on our propeller. He charged us $2.50 per foot of boat length and we believe he did a good job, but we won't be able to really tell until we get to the Bahamas and see for ourselves. He complained about how much surface area we had due to our bilge (fin) keels and said our boat had more surface area and a 40 footer, which I don't believe for one second because we have a very shallow draft (3'8”) and narrow beam (9') on top of the fact our hull is only 31' long. He was totally exaggerating and just wanted to try and milk more money out of us, but we talked about the price before hand and settled on it so a deal is a deal. He even tried to tell me that we had 6” of growth (he couldn't tell me what kind, but not barnacles) on our bilge keels, which is ridiculous considering the time we have been in the harbor was 3 months and it didn't look bad at all from the surface near the waterline. I gave him what we owed after listening to his prognosis of our bottom, but we could hear from inside the boat when he was scraping barnacles (not many) and other stuff (not sure what the identity of those organisms were but it was green and slimy). The time he was working on our propeller we could feel his scraping through the floorboards. Now we are really able to leave the harbor, because we weren't really able to move very well through the water before the bottom and propeller was cleaned.

The next day was nice so we decided to clean our dinghy bottom and outboard motor. We went to Sombrero Beach to clean the bottom of the dinghy so we could bring it on the beach and use the ocean water to clean the stuff growing on the bottom of our little boat. We saw a miniature reef growing inside the hole for the center board because no anti-fouling paint was put on that portion. I saw tiny feather duster worms amongst other marine creatures growing in the opening. Due to the south winds we saw tons of Portuguese Man of War jellyfish floating around the beach and in Sisters Creek on the way to the beach. I also saw a purple moon snail with a clear inflated balloon-like protrusion and a sea slug of some sort that washed up on the beach. When I turned the moon snail upside-down I saw a purple liquid leak out of the shell. It was quite interesting and reminded me of a squid shooting ink as a defense mechanism. After my brief marine exploration I got back on task and finished cleaning the dinghy. We were able to clean the entire dinghy in a short period because we both were working on different parts of the boat at the same time.

We have a few other small projects to work on for the boat before we leave, but they are minor and could be done at a later time. We will wait here in Marathon until we find a good weather window to cross the Gulf Stream and in the mean time we will enjoy the fresh foods, hangout with the people we have met, reading books, going to the beach when the weather permitted, and work on the boat when the urge strikes. The weather has been back to back cold fronts with northern winds, which has kept many people in the harbor for more than a month in some cases. Some people just left even in weather that wasn't allowing a comfortable and sometimes safe passage across the Gulf Stream. We will wait until the weather is right and hopefully the Stream will be flat and we can motor over to the Bimini Islands without getting seasick. Fingers crossed.