This morning, after a breakfast of fresh melon and freshly baked chocolate chip muffins, I went snorkeling and swam all the way around the nearest reef. The water was so calm and clear that snorkeling was great even though in places the coral formations dropped off to 20' or so. My bum arm didn't seem to bother too much if I just sort of let it drag behind which is sort of what one does normally with snorkeling. Shortly after I returned to the boat, another cat, Fine Line, anchored outside the reef. Ann & Steve came by in the dingy to inquire about the best places to snorkel and introduce themselves. I explained that it was all pretty deep and better diving than snorkeling but suggested the section of reef that was nicest and still fairly shallow. A while later another boat, apparently friends of Fine Line, anchored even further off. Neighborhood is getting awfully crowded! I read in the hammock a bit and then disassembled and reassembled the folding props that I will put on when we haul out. Seem very well made and very straight forward to put on. Deb & I agreed that after lunch we would try launching the hookah and see if we could manage between us. It coulded up a bit, but we decided to go anyway. Unfortunately the hookah had other ideas. It once again did the start right up and then die routine. As I watched it do this several times while I fiddled with the throttle, it became clear that when the compressor hit 100# and tried to lug the engine down, it had trouble compensating and the throttle adjustment mechanism overreacted killing the engine. Of course, getting at that requires serious dismantling so I decided to put that off and we went snorkeling instead. Together we did the loop to the E of the boat. This is a bit longer and deeper than I had done earlier and would be great with the hookah as the coral formed deep canyons down to a sandy floor. As we were rounding the edge and headed back in through the cut, we spooked a very large grouper – at least 50#. If I had had the hookah and my spear gun,.... probably just as well. On the way back, we mostly were over conch grass but found very few conch until we came to this one little patch that had several including one huge one. Now the season on all shellfish officially is closed from March – May, but we had planned a major conch hunt for February 28 and got blown out by high winds and currents, soooo THIS is our February 28 hunt. We won't take any after today. We made a return trip over the same section and got a few more. All in all I extracted, Deb cleaned, and I diced six good sized conch. That will be enough for several nights of conch salad and at least a couple nights of conch fritters. With the lobster we already have in the freezer, we are pretty well set. After dealing with the conch, I tackled the hookah. I took it out of its floating tub, removed the pull starter and the cooling cowl thinking that I would find the automatic throttle control which is usually governed by the cooling air. Not on this model. With everything out of the way, I could see that the throttle control came from the middle of the engine. I'm not ever going to get there. As I was taking things apart I did notice that the fuel line was not in its clamp on the cooling cowl but above it where it might have been rubbing on the throttle control. ?? I put everything back together and fired it up and it works fine. (Of course this has happened before: take it apart and put it back together and it works even if you didn't “fix” anything.) Tomorrow we'll see if it still runs and we can go hookahing instead of snorkeling. Mojitos and then grilled lobster with wine and salad. Not a bad way to end the day.