Update

I continue to do very well, all things considered. The marina is starting to fill up again as people return for the Fall. Many of those people are leaving to go home. Some are arriving to spend their biannual visit, a few months in the Fall and a few months in the Spring. And, hopefully many to spend the Winter and make life more interesting for me. Speaking of making life more interesting for me:

An Israeli boat came in a few days ago and tied up next to me. For the first several minutes it appeared that there were only three gorgeous women on board. It perked me right up!

It turns out there was a guy on board, and he certainly has excellent taste. As I got to meet them and talk to them, it turns out that two of the women and the guy all have Capt.’s licenses and do deliveries. That’s what they were doing this time. Delivering an Israeli boat back to Turkey. The owner had sailed it out here somewhere, for several months during the summer, but the owner had flown back to Israel and was having a delivery crew bring the boat back.

The woman who was not a licensed delivery skipper, turned out to be a doctor and longtime good friends with the others. In fact, one was her sister. They were all very nice and very interesting to talk to. As people with boats often are

They were all roughly 30 years old. Or, I think so. We left on, ‘The First Trip’ (to Tahiti) when Janet was that age. A very pleasant age from my viewpoint. So, they could all have been my grandchildren, I guess. But, I still feel in that ageless age. Where the calendar is just a number and I want to know how interesting you are, not your age, occupation, nationality, color, or so on.

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain

Like Janet said, “We are just getting started.”

They were very nice to have as neighbors. For me, that was because they were so interesting, not just because they were very easy on the eyes. The, “I’m Hot Stuff” was totally absent with them. Part of the charm. They were just four friendly folks that left far too soon.

I had stopped swimming because, the cold freshwater was just too annoying. What a wimp. But, I might give it one more try. I was talking with a lady from another boat last evening, who has been feeding octopi by the swim area. As I recall she said that she met the first one in the Spring of this year and it has doubled in size and has become extremely friendly to her. It is my understanding that octopi are considered to be extremely intelligent. This one recognizes her and comes out from hiding and now will even attach itself to her arm. She said that, if it’d done that the first day, she would’ve been terrified.

As I understand it, when it is on her hand, it’s tentacles reach to her shoulder. She also said that one day she saw six octopi but yesterday she could only find five. And, often fewer. The others were all smaller. I guess they must of been discussing her and decided that she was worth the risk.

Most humans in the Mediterranean enjoy eating octopi. So, it is very a good idea for them to stay hidden when they see us coming by. In Greece, you would often see dozens of small octopi, hanging from ropes around a restaurant. I assume that they were drying them. But, I have no idea. It seems to me like they might spoil quite quickly. But humans have dried seafood for thousands of years. I certainly hope they were not wasted. Personally, I would rather they not be eaten or bothered in any way. But, I understand that few humans feel that way. It would just be a shame to have them killed for nothing.

I have watched for them as I swim over there, in the marina swimming area, but I have not seen anything at all. They are extremely good at camouflage and crawling into improbable spaces. The same friend of mine has also often seen squid swimming over there. Squid are quite amazing to watch. Janet and I saw some while we were diving in Belize, but only one time in all the years I’ve been diving. About 20 years ago, I saw a really interesting video, about them. I should Google around and see what’s on the web now days. The author of the video felt that they communicate by manipulating their colors. Not just turning red or green, like a traffic light, but creating very complicated multicolored patterns on their skin all over their body. Kind of like the sign on the side of the Goodyear blimp.

In the video, it was absolutely like modern computer-generated special effects. The author was trying to work out what the different patterns meant. And, that was a long time ago. So, hopefully the humans have gotten smarter in the interim. Although, clearly many humans have not.

I believe I fixed my freshwater pump a few days ago. It was a real battle. I’ll spare you the long and complicated details. But, when I rebuilt it a few weeks ago, I thought I had fixed it then also. Because it worked perfectly for perhaps a week. So, I know that I will not know whether I really have solved the problem for a month or maybe several months. But, in any case, it is certainly nice to have it working when it works. I spent quite a few days filling up water bottles at the marina in order to have drinking water on the boat, since the pump, at first during this time, was hard to use. And then I disconnected it completely while I tried testing the system. Keep your fingers crossed.

During this period of unreliable freshwater, I was having a conversation with an experienced cruiser from another boat, who agreed that pressure water systems and many of the complex accessories that are so common on boats today, like water makers and air-conditioning and gigantic refrigeration systems, create a fertile ground for failures in constant and expensive maintenance.

I totally agree.

But, then he said that, the manual systems never break, and I had to give him the bad news. But, I certainly believe that they are far more reliable in general. Yet, it would be fair to say that most technology has gotten much more reliable in the last 20 years. Automobiles go far longer, and so on.

Keep having fun,

Dave

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