Heart of Gold, Face of S*t

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, FL
34 42.54 N 081 05.58 W


A regular feature on the morning VHF cruisers net here in Marathon is called "comments and questions."  There, people can and do ask for help.   It really warms the heart to listen to all the replies to those calls for help.  Cruisers have hearts of gold.   The cruisers here in Marathon are generous with their time, their tools, their spare parts, their local knowledge, their nautical knowledge, and of course their advice.   


Indeed, the generous spirit of the cruisers here in Marathon has a lot to do with the strength of the magnet that draws people here and keeps them here.


It is very common to hear on the net, "I first came here for a week, and now one (two, three, five..)  years later I'm still here.


The other day though I thought I heard a call for help that would reveal the envelope of generosity.  Someone on the net said, "My black water tank is pressurizing.  Can anyone here help me to releive the pressure."  "Good God", I thought, "He who relieves that pressure is likely to get a squirt of that black water in the face.  There are limits to generosity.   I'm certainly not going to volunteer for that job and neither will anyone else."  So what happened?  You guessed it.  The man had no trouble getting volunteers, and the next morning on the net he was thanking those who helped him to unclog the vent.   Amazing!


That raises a delicate point that I never wrote about before -- holding tanks.  I'll write about that soon.


p.s. My freind Bob wrote a neat blog post about the wildlife around here.  See it here.