I go for a swim in the marina

We couldn’t get a consensus on whose fault it was; the guys sided with me and the women sided with Wendy. It didn’t really matter anyway, I was going to be the one swimming in the marina.

I had taken our dinghy out to try to find the local marine salvage yard. I tried to find it by walking around, but I had only been there by water and had no luck on foot. I took my phone with me in the dinghy and used Google maps to show my location. Now I knew where the salvage yard was located and how to get there walking. On the way back to our boat the engine died. I figured, no big deal, restarted it and continued on my way for about fifty feet before it died again. Over and over I would restart the engine only to have to die more and more quickly. Finally, I gave up and started rowing. As I approached the marina, Barry saw me, hopped in his dinghy and come out to push be the rest of the way back to our boat.

It took a couple of days before I had time to work on the engine. I was afraid that I was going to need to take the carburetor off and clean it all out. Since it had run just fine all summer and fall I tried the easy was first; I sprayed the carb with carb cleaner. It took a few tries, but eventually, it seemed to work. I took the dinghy out for a test drive and the engine died again. This time when I got it restarted it stayed running while I motored back to the marina.

Later that day I asked Wendy if she wanted to go for a ride and explore the inlet where our marina is located. There are a couple of miles of canals back in here and we had not seen most of the area. I figured that would be a good way to really test the engine to make sure it was running as it should. Since we were going to be out for a while and motoring at about 2 mph we brought along a couple of beers and a bottle opener in our little softside cooler.

We explored the area, saw lots of nice houses and some nice condos. We also saw something that seems to be common in the Bahamas, especially around here. We saw several properties that were nearly complete and abandoned. We also saw some properties that looked lived in and it was as if the owners had just walked away leaving everything behind. Like a row of townhouses where there were lawn chairs and kids toys in the yard. Weird.

As we motored around we each finished our first beer and opened a second. Here is where things began to fall apart. I opened both beers then put the bottle opener back into the side pocket of the cooler, but I didn’t zip the pocket back up. 

When we finished our tour we cleaned out the dinghy and while I tied the dinghy up, Wendy emptied the contents of the cooler. After pulling out the two empties, she dumped the remaining ice water over the side of the boat into the water. She then went down into the galley to throw away the bottle caps and put the bottle opener away. Unfortunately, those things were no longer in the cooler. We looked around and finally decided that the caps and opener had gone overboard with the melted ice. She blamed me for not zipping the zipper back after using the opener, I blamed her for not emptying everything before dumping the melted ice. Either way, the bottle opener was at the bottom of the marina.

At the back of our boat the water is no more than 12 feet deep at high tide, less than 10 feet at low tide. Diving in to get the bottle opener would be trivial, if it were actually down there. The tide was high and we couldn’t quite see the bottom, so we decided to wait.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that swimming in a marina is not a good idea. There are bathrooms in the marina, so that you don’t need to use the one on your boat. Boats have holding tanks to hold waste, so it doesn’t have to be flushed directly into the water. In theory, there should not be any waste going into the water in a marina. Of course, that’s only in theory. While most people around here will go up to the marina bathrooms if they are going to need to sit for a while, many will flush liquid waste directly overboard. While I haven’t seen it here, I have seen people flush solid waste overboard in a marina which is pretty disgusting.

Low tide eventually came around and we could clearly see the bottle opener at the bottom of the marina. I tried to reach it with a boat hook, but 8 feet was too short. The only way to get it back was to go for a swim. It’s just a bottle opener. It has no sentimental value, it’s nothing special. It does lay completely flat, so it takes up little room. It has a long handle on it that makes it very easy to open bottles and it doesn’t corrode. While it was cheap, I just really like this bottle opener.

 Nothing special

Night was falling, so while I dug out my fins and mask, Wendy got my towel and soap. I jumped in the water, swam around to the other side of the boat and dove down to retrieve the opener. Nothing to it, it was easy and I got the opener back. I climbed out of the water, grabbed my towel/soap and headed straight for the marina restrooms to take a good, long, hot, soapy shower.