After a horrific night, Dave decides first thing in the morning to move to the next bay over. He says it should be more sheltered. Ha. The wind blew all day, says Melissa. Ah, but the boat didn't rock says Dave. Why is that? Because the distance between the shore and the boat determines the height of the waves. Guess we will see if it works tonight. (It did.)
Melissa has been fretting about the skiff that wouldn't start before we left. Dave got it running, and we headed for shore. Melissa listened to the engine and said "I wouldn't want to trust my life to that thing." More prophetic words have not been spoken as 10 minutes later it died. Fortunately, the water was 2 ft deep 2/3 of the way back to the boat. So Dave walked ¼ mile pulling the boat through the water with Melissa inside. But alas the last 200 yards we were going to have to paddle. With no paddles on board we had to take out the wooden seats and paddle with them. This was going agonizingly slowly (it is possible we did not move), when fortunately a boat happened by with some tourists aboard who pulled us back to our boat.
Upon further examination, Dave discovered the spark plug had broken in half. He knew this because he heard a "ploop" as the other half disappeared in the water when he removed the plug wire to inspect it. Melissa promptly decided that was the end of the skiff. No more expeditions to shore this trip unless we went in the kayak.
Not to be deterred however, Dave took the plug out anyway. Melissa asked why he was bothering, and Dave replied, "Well, I'm gonna take it out and stare at it and see if something occurs to me." Yeah, right. Melissa went back to her book. Before 50 pages went by she hears the engine on the skiff come to life. Dave had put a screw down the center of the spark plug. He says you just gotta understand why things work the way they do. Big grin.
After that we went ashore to check out the local beach. Lots of dead puffer fish, sponges, lizards and mysterious foot prints that look like deer. Weird cuz out here in the desert life seems non-existent.
Dinner was papaya, avocado, shrimp salad followed by steak skewers marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and garlic salt with pineapple.
