TwoGether

Friday 1/20/12.          When we are anchored out I normally start the generator around 7:30P and charge up the batteries.  This gives us a chance to watch some TV in the evenings.  Last night when I went to fire it up I noticed a glow in the sky, barely above the horizon, that looked like a large orange star with a tail burning.  I called Linda to come and see it too.  We watched in amazement as it climbed higher and higher into perfectly clear star lit sky.  I haven’t seen this for over forty years.  It was a night launch from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, over 160 miles away.  After about 30 seconds you could see the separation of the first stage and the contrail light up behind it.  It faded into a pinpoint of light, than slowly disappeared.  We just witnessed the launch of a US Air Force, Delta-4 rocket carrying WGS-4 (Wideband Global SATCOM).  This is a communications satellite that will provide wideband coverage for the US military.  That was cool!

This morning the First Mate is all wound up about going fishing!  So we put the dingy in the water and were ready to load up the gear when I tried to start the engine.  Our son gave it a going over before we left.  And it worked great when we visited Aurora, NC back on Nov 27^th.  But it ain’t gonna fire off today Bubba….The ethanol gasoline is now about 3 1/2 months old. It goes stale in about eight weeks.  I’m not sure why, but you can’t buy ethanol free gas in marinas in Maryland.  Every state we have traveled in since has had ethanol free gas available.  When we were in Ft. Myers something told me to dump the old gas into the recycle tank and by fresh ethanol free gas for the dingy.  I’m glad I did.  I had to take the carburetor and fuel lines off the motor and clean out all the old gas.  In about an hour she was purring like a kitten….Well more like growling like a lion.

During the test run I took a bunch of pictures that were requested by our insurance company.  I guess they want to know that the boats they insure are not derelicts.   After the test run it’s off to the fish!!

We started catching Pinfish but soon Linda caught a Mangrove Snapper. Yummy.  But it was two inches undersize so she put it back to grow some more.   We weren’t having the best of luck when the First Mate said “I hope I catch the biggest fish…Then I can take a picture of the Captain cooking it on the grill”.   No more than these word left her lips and the Captain hooked into a 14 ½ inch Flounder which happened to be the biggest catch of the day.  So the First Mate graciously stunk up her galley frying up the captain’s dinner.