Hoaxer and Hoaxee

Stuart Florida
N 27 12.86 W 080 15.46

In case you haven't figured it out, our previous post "What Do We Do Next?" was an April Fools day hoax.

All day long Libby and I continued getting comments, texts, emails, and phone calls. We fooled many but not all readers. Loren was the first to call it as April Fools. Still, it made our day. Libby and chuckled the whole day long.

But wait! I may also be the innocent victim of another more insidious April Fool hoax. In the afternoon I went up on deck toward my hammock and I saw something horrifying. See it in the picture below?

It is a cotter pin.  It is laying right at the base of the mast.  Oh no!  That could be disastrous causing us to loose the mast out at sea?  That is a deadly serious fault.  I called on Darrick from Y-knot to come over.  He and Libby hoisted me to the top of the mast where I inspected everything.  I checked, double checked and triple checked; no cotter pins are missing.

After the fact I thought it through more carefully. That pin on deck is made of stainless steel. It has been years since we switched to brass cotter pins.  We haven't used stainless steel pins for a very long time and I don't think any are on board.  I should have thought of that before going aloft.  

So, where did it come from?  It occurs to me that it is still April Fools day and that pin could be a perfect hoax.  Someone (Darrick denies it was him) could have come past in their dinghy and simply tossed that pin onto my deck, knowing how I would react when I found it.  The pin was not in factory new condition, but it did not look used.  If that person or persons never come forward, I'll never know for sure.  Got me!

By the way, our little manatee story started out to be an April Fools joke rather than a hoax.  What's the difference?   Well, at the last moment before posting, I decided to strike the last sentence in the "What Do We Do Now" post.  It said:

All this noise; Wah wah from the baby, roar roar of the gator, slap slap of the oars, screech screech of the gulls, swish swish of the boat hook, and the boat people clapped all around all around, the boat people clapped all around.