FEB 7 08

? FEBRUARY 7, 2008
Jack here. On Long Island. There’s a house here that’s totally run down, with an ocean view, that needs a ton of work, and it’s small. We’re going to stay here for a bit to see if it’s cheap, and if so, consider buying it once we sell our place down south. Like, if it’s $20,000 or something. We’re hoping it’ll be that price or below, and if we did get it, what we’d like to do would be to fix up both buildings (there’s two foundations, one water cistern, a well (hot commodities here), with a beach, in a sheltered harbor we could put the boat. They’re cement walls and floors, so good hurricane-wise, and there’s an airstrip aand all the stores you could want on the island, so what we’d like to do would be to buy this stuff, fix it up, and all of our families and friends could use it all whenever they wanted. They’d just have to get airfare. And we’d use it too. Sounds like paradise, cheap, and even better than what we’re doing now, if we did that, we could share it with all of you guys, bccuase this is great and all, but all that’s missing is you. Our families, our friends. (Editor’s note: the price came back on the piece we looked at… $500,000. Ha ha ha ha ha, said I. We’ve seen ocean front lots for $40k, and I bet you could get them for 20 if you look. Oh well…)

Moving on. Chris says there’s a place in town where you can sit on a wall next to the real estate office and use the wifi, so if you’re reading this, that means we dingyed into shore, walked down to the place and sent this in the middle of the night. Just for YOU. Aren’t you flattered? Because we love you all.

Moving on again. We’ve decided to stop moving south, as we mentioned, so this kind of marks the halfway point here, and from now on, we will sail north, northeast, then northwest, then west. Basically, Long Island, Conception Cay, Cat Cay, Eleuthra, Nassau, Andros, Bimini or Gun Cay, Florida. So ya know. Should have internet periodically while we’re gone, so we hope to stay in touch.

About 15 minutes ago I had a really weird experience. I’ve been torn up from this itching, and my skin has been dry, so I’ve been oiling myself up with lotion, etc. I finally felt like I was healed up enough to get back in the salt water to soak for a bit, before I scrubbed under the solar shower. I called to Ruth while I was in to throw me a scrub brush to scrub the hull while I was out there, because stuff grows on it, and impedes our racing performance (haw haw). While I’m waiting, I reach for the dingy line to hold on while I tread water. I feel something against my leg. Whenever you’re in the water, you always have bathing suit strings, mask straps, etc. bumping you, but you always check to make sure you’re not sharing the water around your body with an unwelcome fish of some kind. Just a paranoia, practically (or maybe not, read on…) from watching Jaws, etc. So I feel this against my leg a few times, and I reach down, and start to look down to see if my bathing suit string is doing it or what, and sure enough, right in front of me, half between my kicking legs, is a small shark nibbling at my leg, on the inside, halfway up my thigh. Probably bumping into my leg repeatedly with his nose, because if he bit me, I think I’d know it. Anyway, man did I go freaking out. That thing was only a few feet long, but man, I think I actually walked on water getting into the boat again. Screw the ladder, I was in over the side in about half a second. That sucker scared the hell out of me. I don’t know if it was blood (I don’t think I’m bleeding, hardly, if at all) oil (olive oil is tasty stuff, especially when you dip your bread in it and add a little pepper. MMmm MMM!), or what. In any event, it was a trip.

Hey, who wants to visit? We have an extra snorkel!

Alright, gotta run, but thought that you might get a bang out of that one, Diary.

Later days,

JL