We're still here in Thompson Bay. No laundry was available at the Long Island Breeze so Bud took me ashore at what we thought was a beach and turned out to be gravel. I let Fuzzy pee and then sent Bud and Fuzzy back to the boat and I walked up to the car rental place, Fox Auto. Not only was the beach not a beach, but the lane turned out to be someone's driveway. It was directly behind Fox Auto, may have been theirs, but if so it was for their house. Anyway, I walked out to the road and in to the car rental place and made arrangements for a car for noon tomorrow until noon on Saturday. We heard rumors that the Thompson Bay Inn might be having a buffet dinner tomorrow evening, and Bud wanted to go but didn't want to walk. So we decided to do our touring and laundry earlier in the day and have the car to go to the buffet if it happens.

After I reserved the car "Sure we'll have one for you; what's the name of your boat?" I walked up a bit to the other grocery store in the area. I didn't get a whole lot because we want to go to Mr. Pinder's for vegetables. I looked for fruit, but there really wasn't much there. And biggest disappointment of all, they didn't have any local bread. I ended up getting a loaf of rye bread made in Pennsylvania. After I was done at the grocery store I walked back down the road to the marine store. Someone told us since they serve the local fishing fleet they might have a replacement for our forward head tank overboard pump. They did not. Then I called Bud on our hand- held VHF radio and had him pick me up at the dock we'd been told was private, but available for cruisers to use. At least it was at the end of a little street and not down someone's driveway.

In the afternoon we decided since it was a mild day, and since Friday and Saturday are supposed to blow like stink, it was a good day to go out and empty our rear holding tank. That's the only one we're using now and it looked like it was getting full again. A lot of people just pump their tanks out at night, or don't use a holding tank at all, but since this is a wide, shallow bay we were reluctant to pump out at night if we didn't need to. Anyway, we pulled up the anchor again and headed out. This time we didn't even bother with sails. There isn't any deep water within 30 miles of here, so we just went a couple of miles out onto the banks, emptied the tank and came back. Again we anchored just about where we were.

We did see an odd boat approaching the island on our way back in. I took a picture of it which I'll put in the gallery when I have Internet again. Bud saw it later when he took the dinghy past the government dock fishing. He said it was from Islamarada, Florida, appeared to have a load of building materials and was basically a motorized barge. Nothing he'd like to ride out any bad weather in.

We also may have disappointed another boat in the harbor. As we made our way back to our old spot we saw another boat with its anchor up, also heading further towards shore. They may have thought we left and been moving to take our spot, but we beat them back to it. There's actually plenty of room here, and they did anchor quite a bit closer to shore than they had been, perhaps in anticipation of the predicted winds (20 knots steady with gusts to 25 knots, tomorrow night). We should be all safe and secure, Bud backed off on the anchor with the engine up to 2400 RPM in reverse and the boat didn't move. We couldn't check the anchor visually, yet because the prop kicks up so much silt in this harbor that you can't see the bottom. Hopefully we can check it tomorrow morning before the wind kicks up too much and that stirs the bottom. It would be nice to check it before we go off and leave the boat in a rising wind, although the holding is very good here, and I'm sure we're fine.

Bud did catch a fish on his expedition. He caught a three and-a-half foot shark, too bid to eat, but it made him happy. He said he was able to release it with the hook releaser Gary gave him without ever having to touch the fish, so that was nice. Now we're just about to eat, so I'm going to try to get this posted.