Things are slowly returning to normal around Dream Catcher as everyone seems to almost have shaken off the gloomies. A couple more boats have arrived in the harbour and the shore side business are starting to see the long awaited end to the quiet (read: poor) season.

The weather is doing it's best to keep the boats away though and I heard on the single side band that there were 100 boats in Biscayne Bay waiting for a weather window to jump across the gulf stream and head this way. Based on the weather dudes 6:30 am report this morning, it'll be another 4 or 5 days before those waiting can depart.

I finally finished taping my head sail back together. What most people don't realize is that it is easy to sew a sail, but if you don't tape it together correctly it doesn't matter how well you can sew.

It took me more than 4 hours of cutting out the damaged section and taping in the new to make it ready for the machine. I opted to use 3 ounce sail cloth for the repair rather than the 5.5 ounce stuff I used when I initially made the sail. The reason for this was so that I could double up the new area and place the patch on both sides of the sail.

I have no real knowledge that this is the better way to do it except my own experiences patching sails. Doing it this way makes for a much stiffer repair and results in a better foil shape when the sail is set.

Keep in mind, your mileage may vary and I do in fact look smaller in your rear view mirror....

By one p.m. I was back on the big boat and Amy sent me to town for water and groceries. The weather is supposed to turn ugly here tomorrow and stay that way for several days, so it was important to take advantage of the relative calm and stock up now. In all, it took not one, but two trips over and back to get everything we needed.

On the final return trip, I went to start the engine with the pull cord and the handle broke off sending me flying into the water once again. Shitty death!!!!

I thought about beating the engine to death for it's transgressions, but financial rational overtook pure rage and so the outboard was spared.

Herman, from White Wing, was passing by when this happened and after fishing me out of the drink, he towed me home to Dream Catcher, laughing pretty much all the way across. He shared a couple of his beers with me on the long tow home, so I can't be too mad.

I suspect I would have laughed as well if it was someone else and I take solace in the fact that the entire episode hasn't already appeared on YouTube.

This evening we invited Gille (Jill) and Danielle from the boat Imagine 2010 over for cocktails and snacks. They are a very nice, older couple from Montreal and they speak almost zero English. Amy met them in town the other day when she struck up a conversation in French to help them figure out how to get online.

They seem like nice people, but I think that the lack of English skills is keeping them from making lots of friends and they both jumped at the chance to latch on to Amy. I suspect we'll be seeing more of them in the future.

In any case, they stayed for several hours and although I didn't understand everything that was said, I was able to get by using the verbs and nouns from my Spanish studies. A good time was had by all and they returned home to their vessel around 7 pm.

Dinner was late, but tasty and included a pair of Lane snappers (our last), done whole on the grill and served with rice and a small side salad Amy made from some of the veggies I scored today in town. We called it a day around 9 pm and retired to our cabin with our respective books.

See you tomorrow, end of line ....