Holy Crap!

Geez- What an insane couple days!!
What is today... Tuesday? Wow. I has just been crazy out here...

It was back to business as usual here on Sunday and Monday... Weather was beautiful. Nice warm breeze out of the south. It was very nice. Sunday was very non-eventful... One couple camping, and that was it. The harbor was starting to fill up again, but the folks on the sailboats and cruisers are usually pretty low-maintenance.
No issues to speak of really.
On Monday we were working on vacating our quarters to make room for the next set of volunteers that are coming to take over from us. We packed all out stuff and cleaned up the joint and moved down to another "apartment" across the fort. A much nicer place, except that it leaked badly from the storm...
It had been cleaned up, but there was a lot of mold on the ceiling tiles in the living room.
No big deal to us, though.

I mowed most of the parade ground at the end of the day on Monday... The parade ground is the area inside the fort walls. It is the equivalent of 16 football fields. That is a $#|+load of mowing... I finished 80% on Monday afternoon. We have a bitchin' mower... The thing will do about 40MPH...

Anway- I knocked off just before sundown... I was a tired camper.
Trep and Brion asked if we would help move a couple chugs in the morning, and help get the Mako and the Whaler on trailers before we got going on our regular chores... We arranged to meet at 6:30- We needed to use a forklift and tractor to move the boats-

Well... We got the old chugs (including the one we got on the 7th) re-arranged on the chugpile, got the trailers freed up so we could use them for the real boats, and as we were getting ready to pull them out, here comes another chug steaming through the harbor!
13 more Cubans, 6 men, 4 women and 3 kids! Trep ran to put his gear on (Kevlar, sidearm, shotgun, etc) and Brion and I went out to settle the migrants as they arrived on Bush Key...
They cheered as the chug hit the beach- the all got out of the boat as we arrived...
They were very cool once we told them the had made it to the US... Lots of smiles.
Willie and Trep arrived, did a quick weapons search, and they marched them off Bush Key and into the fort, got them settled into one of the rooms and let them shower and cleanup a little as they were covered in disel fuel.

Brion and I dealt with the new chug- got it off the island, on the trailer, out of the water and over to the chugpile and back off the trailer in 20 minutes. We got the Mako on the trailer and up out of the water so we could look into the damage to the engine from the storm. It's not a pretty sight.

The ferries arrived at 10:30- about 10 new masons from El Morro in San Juan arrived, and also the new volunteers. They are also from Jacksonville Beach... Real nice folks-

The Coast Guard showed up at 12:00 to pick up the Cubans- The rangers marched them out to the CG tender, one of the kids led the parade- She was a tiny thing- maybe 6 or 7 years old... Made a nice photo op for the visitors. (I was on crowd control, so I had no opportunity to take pics, but I did get a couple shots as they were loaded in the CG tender.

Let's see... What else- I gave the new volunteers some orientation- got them pointed the right way.
Finished up the mowing...
Gotta repack, get ready to leave tomorrow...
Man, what a day.

Oh yeah- in the Cuban Migrant pool- Whoever had 13 on the 14th wins this weeks pool.
Congrats.

TBG out-