We had expected that the package of mail from our forwarding service would have arrived today, so we could get out of Dodge before the New Year, but somehow in the post-Christmas rush (is there such a thing?) delivery of our package got held up a day. Which, because of the holiday weekend, actually means 4 days. It won’t be available to us until Tuesday afternoon. Oh well, there are worse places to be stuck for a few days.
So the newly revised plan (weather permitting) is to dart out of here on Wednesday morning and head up toward Bimini to check into the Bahamas for the next phase of our adventure. That will be a 24 hour run, more or less, moving fast, “downstream” in the Gulf Stream.
In the mean time Key West is keeping us entertained. Yesterday’s boat fun was rearranging the storage of some heavy items on the boat to see if we can improve our trim a bit.
This stuff is called many things by sailors, usually names not printable. But when in polite company, it is usually called “calcium”. Many sailors assume it is calcium carbonate, the material that seashells are made of. It is not. It is a complex mixture of various things, likely mostly calcium oxalate, a primary component of some kinds of kidney stones. The photo on the right is what we found in the hoses in our aft head. Not a disaster–yet. But the diameter of the hose has been reduced by almost 25%, and every narrowing of the hose makes a truly messy clog more likely.
One common myth about this stuff is you can prevent its formation and/or dissolve it away with vinegar. Nope. Doesn’t work. This is one of those things that gets repeated so often people start to believe it. It is told to beginning sailors, and becomes part of what they “know” to be true. “Experts” say it all the time. A simple experiment shows that vinegar has almost no effect at all. After the “Before” picture was taken, we emptied the hoses of all water, and filled them with straight, undiluted vinegar, and left them to soak for six hours, then flushed through with seawater. The result was, as you can see, not worth the trouble. The stuff lining the hose was just as hard, and just as intact as it was before.
I am happy to report, it worked, and not just a little, but perfectly. The picture on the right is the same hose after a 6 hour soak in SewClean followed by a saltwater flush. Pretty impressive.
A pretty place is Key West. Some parts of town are a bit overrun with tourists and the various ticky-tack businesses that pop up to cater to them, but other places are just plain pretty. There is a pretty steady stream of cruise ships that make port calls here, but they tend to be the smaller ones, and there is only room for one at a time so they don’t quite totally overwhelm town like in some places.
When the United States acquired Florida from Spain, Key West was pretty much uninhabited. The U.S.Navy developed a base here in the early 19th century that was initially used to “discourage” the original Pirates of the Caribbean. The Navy is still here, although in a greatly reduced capacity. Just a few hours before we arrived, an Amphibious Assault Ship arrived at the Navy dock. We were told she is the largest Navy vessel to make a port call in Key West since World War II.
fetchinketch 