April 2, Day 281 – In Cocoa Beach

We woke this morning to beautiful weather and a gorgeous sunrise – well, Linda did – Gerry was still in bed. Once Gerry finally got up we had breakfast and then got all of our dinghy repair supplies together. We had decided to take the dinghy to the boat ramp, pull it out and take it over to a shady, grassy area to try and fix the leak. The patching job he tried hadn’t worked so while in West Marine yesterday, we picked up some Sealant for Inflatable Boats. According to the hype on the packaging it would stop slow leaks (yup, that’s what we seemed to have); seal even tiny pinholes (not sure about that – just knew we had a hole); was easy to use (always a plus when it’s Gerry doing the work); and worked on all inflatables (ours was definitely classified as an inflatable, anyway when it would hold air). The directions called for first, deflating the boat; next inserting the sealant through the valve into the air chamber; next, re-inflating the boat; and lastly, slowly turning it over end to end and side to side until you’re sure all of the inside has been coated.

We deflated the dinghy – pretty easy; we inserted the sealant – not as easy, as Gerry made a small mess, but not too bad; re-inflated the dinghy – again, pretty easy. Now the hard part – the flipping and flopping. After 30 minutes or so of wrestling with the dinghy to turn it side to side, up and down, over and under we noticed some sealant bubbling out of a small “pinhole” in the bottom part of the front air chamber. Since we had now found the source of the problem, Gerry decided to also place a patch on this part (sealant on the inside, patch on the outside). After another hour or so, he finally decided we were done. It still seemed to leak a bit, but we are hopeful the sealant will become more ……. Ummm ….. sealant and do the trick. To jiggle the stuff around even more, Gerry went for a short dinghy ride. We’ll see what happens by evening.

After a busy morning, Gerry napped; Linda read. Thank god, it’s Friday. This work is wearing us out.

Later in the evening we dinghied over to Second Star for happy hour. Then the four of us went into town to eat at the Thai Thai Village and Sushi Bar. It was exceptionally good food. We’d highly recommend it to anyone traveling in the area.

It was dead calm this morning in the anchorage. Here's Second Star beside us.

Some neighboring sailboats in the rosy glow of sunrise

Here's the dinghy in one of its end to end positions

Oh, Oh ---- there's the hole (sealant bubbling out)

Gerry trying to apply a patch over the suspected hole

How'd he do that ???

This is a picture of the same fountain I posted yesterday, but here's a close up of the kids having fun in the water as it shot into the sky.

... and some older kids having fun

We've been in many manatee areas over the past several months. The area by the dock had signs posted, so I decided to take a few pictures.

Here's some Manatee facts. You can double click on the picture to enlarge it so you can read them (if you're interested).

While we were enjoying happy hour on Second Star, the Indian River Queen went by. It looked cool, but the paddle wheel was just for show.