Monday, January 09, 2006

Current Events

So... A quick recap of the last few days:

Friday- No Boats came out from Key West. Weather was pretty bad- 30 knot winds, gusts into the 40s. I had 6 campers: a guy and a girl from Philadelphia- very low-maintenance folks, and 4 guys from Croatia (I think) who were ill-prepared for bad weather.
I tried to warn them on Thursday that the boats might not be running for a couple days, but they wanted to stick it out. They were relying on their survival skills to procure food- fishing off the dock for snappers- and not doing well at it.
They had plenty of water and beer but no food...
By Friday afternoon they were worried- it didn't look good for boats on Saturday either. Winds were still high and the tempature was dropping.
We called Sunny Days And Yankee- they said the jury was still out for Saturday and to call back in the morning.
Saturday was still windy and cold (67 degrees) but one of the boats was coming out- I believe it was only because of the campers... they only had 12 people on the boat.
No campers on Saturday night- and both boats came out Sunday, and still no campers. Hooha!
We decided to try to prep the 7 chugs on the seaplane ramp to be removed by the cargo boat, so I have been spending most of my time mucking out the chugs and removing the trash to the burn pile, and removing the engines from the boats themselves...

(Click for larger pic)

The chugs are made to survive the trip across the gulfstream, a one-way trip, so they are built to make it- not to be deconstructed, so it is a huge effort to get the things apart...
It is kind of a backwards "Junkyard Wars"...



Monday- We're almost finished prepping the chugs- 2 motors left to pull. We've removed about 25 gallons of diesel fuel and several huge trash barrels of old clothes, shoes, food and other miscellaneous garbage.
Both boats are running today- probably 60 visitors on the island today...
And the best news- no campers on the boats today.

Another quiet night on the Tortugas...

TBG out-

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