But after I had gotten about halfway down the port side we had to move because of the 4th of July regattas. Bummer. We were anchored right in the middle of the Opti course.
So we moved, but there were race courses all over the place. I thought if we got right next to the sandbar off the cove we'd be in shallow water again. But when we anchored, the water was too deep to touch with one good push from the top. And more power boats were out, zooming by creating a whole mess of chop. This makes the back of the boat go up and down and creates a kind of video game situation: can you get anything scrubbed before the stern comes crashing down on the top of your head, giving you the Mother of all Concussions, or breaking your head open and giving the crabs all that knowledge to eat.
The most important thing was getting the barnacles off the prop so I could actually get the boat moving under power. Before I even got into the water I dropped my goggles overboard, so I'd have to work by feel instead of by actually looking at what I was doing. Great. Right to the prop I went, and using the big scraper, got some condo-sized barnacles off the blades of the prop. Cleaning barnacles by feel is like cleaning barbed wire in the dark. My fingers look like they went through an industrial paper shredder.
Home we went, with three quarters of the bottom still acting as a host organism for a barnacle colony. (They've since organized Committees of Correspondence, sent me their own Olive Branch Petition, their own Declaration of Independence, and formed a Keelinental Congress.)
But there was some good news:
Rob & AJ came out for some BBQ!
And then we went out for some fireworks watching:
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