WHERE WE STAND

We are back in Missouri now after a fairly eventful month in Islamorada/Bimini. The projects we undertook on the boat prior to the crossing seem to have been a success. The bottom job still looks good. When we have been able to open up the boat, it seems to be really moving through the water with little effort. The trim tabs are both still working. The new valves (sea cocks) are opening and closing as they should. We flushed the engines with fresh water before we left and they seemed to work perfectly. I have not seen any drips around any of the new hoses we replaced. The caulking job seems to be holding up as well. The new little "classic" dinghy we purchased just before leaving is still holding air and so far doesn't have any varmints living in it. The only bad thing is it is made from dark gray material, trimmed in black rubber. It is leaving black marks everywhere, but they will come off. The reel overhaul I did to our new wire line rig was successful. It did take a few adjustments along the way as we used it and a little help from some forums (chat rooms) to get it put together correctly. The rest of the tackle seems to be fine. We have used almost all of the rigs without any failures. And, the bait supply is holding out. The only glitch is the fuel supply to the port engine. We have the problem narrowed down to the fuel pickup. I currently have the engine and generator pickups switched and both are working fine. The generator does not require as much fuel as the engine, so it works on the bad pickup. The only problem is it runs out at a quarter tank which could limit our range should we decide to make a really long run some day. Our plans are to blow out the fuel pickup to try and dislodge any debris and hopefully it will break it up and allow it to run on through the lines and be picked up by the filters. We will add some algaecide to the fuel as well to help if the problem is algae. We chose not to do this just prior to leaving as it was really windy and we did not want to wrestle stowing all our gear and cleaning the boat up again, so that will be the first order of business when we return.

We did find some time for fun. Sherry was of course happy to see us. She fed us several nights. We ran in to Millie at Big John's. Dave will remember her as the waitress at the End of the World Bar who was so nice to him when we were there Wahoo fishing. We had conch and lobster salads several times at Stuart's. And, the Bimini bread and banana bread from the bakery was very tasty. Stevie S is out of jail now and playing again at Big John's. We caught a little of his show one night. The CD release party with Jim Morris was a lot of fun. As for fishing, well it has been a lot better. We were able to catch a couple nice dolphin, a nice grouper, a tuna, several trigger fish and some snappers to eat on, but no really great catches. The wind was not our friend.

The official stats are as follows. We left Islamorada, crossed the Gulf Stream and arrived in Bimini on April 13th. We fished four days with Freddie, one afternoon with Larry and Laurie only and one afternoon by ourselves. We ran 326 nautical miles total in 40 hours of cruising time and burned about 400 gallons of fuel, 10 of which probably ran out the overflow. We had our own fish to eat most nights but did sneak in a couple burgers along the way. We consumed 2 1/2 bottles of rum, 14 bottles of wine and 11 cases of beer, not counting what we got in bars.....we obviously had some help in this department :)  So you can see, some fun was had. Only 2 weeks now until part 2 and I just heard snow is possible the next couple days. I can't believe old Feeding Frenzy III is sitting in the Bahamas just chomping at the bit to go fishing and I may be shoveling snow tomorrow:(