Day 2-252 A lazy day in beautiful Put-in-Bay, Ohio

What does the Admiral do on a day off from travel? For one, she got up at sunrise and took this picture of our Looper friends Gerald and Cheri leaving the harbor. Needless to say, I was still sound asleep and taking full advantage of the day of "rest".

I was actually awake and having breakfast when she called later to suggest that I join her in town.

As I said yesterday, this was our first experience with a mooring field, and I must say that their water taxi service was absolutely first class. Our longest wait might have been 5 minutes... In a lot of mooring fields you are left to your own devices when it comes to transportation. We could have launched the dingy, but then you have to worry about finding a dingy dock. There is also the question of security with expensive items like self inflating life vest, hand held VHF radio, etc. This operation really might have spoiled us.

There are cars on the island, but many of the visitors rent golf carts, bikes, etc. We could have taken our electric bike/scooter on the water taxi, but we had been here before so we just walked. We had a delightful lunch overlooking the harbor, and guess what? I had fried perch once again. They had a fun sign on the waterfront. It was fun in that we had already been to some of these places like Ft. Meyers, Annapolis, Cleveland and the Statue of Liberty. Also, we are going to Port Huron (in 2 days), Mackinac Island (10 days?) and Chicago (for Labor Day). Yup, a reminder that we have put a lot of miles under the keel with quite a few left to go...

I like to jump off the swim platform and take a short swim, but we have a problem when the dingy is on its davits on the swim platform. The problem is that we cannot lower the swim ladder into the water. The swim platform is less than a foot above the water, but wet fiberglass is very slippery. Thanks to the Admiral who found the PERFECT part, and we now have a "lift" to get out of the water.

The picture at the left shows her leaping into the water so that she could be the first person to try out the lift. I think that her body language indicates that the water was more than a little cooler than she had expected...

The picture at the right shows me being lifted out of the water on our new "do-it-yourself" Bosun's chair. We had the rope and pulleys as part of the dingy retrieval system. The line is also wound around a (sailboat) winch that we have mounted on the stern rail. Altogether the mechanical advantage is about 42:1 so I weigh about 5 pounds...  Anyway, I hope to be able to leap off the swim platform much more often now...

We ended the day with a delightful view of Perry's Monument lit by the setting sun. A perfect view to end a perfect day...