OPB...

Some boat folks know the meaning of that: Other People's Boats.  If you can't be out on your own boat, Other People's Boats can still get you out on the water.

We have some new friends here on our island - Mike and MJ (and furry kids Gracie and Yogi).  They are nice folks and have definitely embraced the lifestyle here.  They've been here about 5 days and have taken delivery of a new boat (Blue Wave 22), rigged up some electronics and other goodies, adapted a boat lift for their new boat... and today was launch day.

I offered to give Mike a hand with getting the boat launched... not that he needs any help, but just along for the ride, to provide some local information.  First time dunking the boat in and all went well.  The original plan was to move the boat from the launch ramp to their dock... a quick side-trip to the Brownsville Ship Channel gave Mike a good feel for the handling of the new boat.  It is like a fast magic carpet!  It is a fishing machine, 175 hp on a lightweight, shallow draft hull - it moves right out!  Along the way, we saw some dolphins, checked out a couple good, shallow fishing spots, and got Mike oriented to the water here.

Everything checked out great on the boat, we brought it back to their dock, and got it on the boat lift - they are good to go!

Back home, I was expecting the delivery of an outboard motor today.  Well, that's what the tracking said yesterday... alas, today, the "Out for delivery" status never showed up, and they moved it back a day.  I have been anxious to get the dinghy in the water and putt around... since the motor was going to be a no-show, I tossed it in and rowed it around.  I wanted to make sure there are no leaks...

This is the current version of the dinghy we had that literally came apart at the seams, but lasted longer than we were lead to believe.  Turns out, this is made by a different company; after some initial frustrations (caused entirely by the most ineffective owners manual I've ever seen), I have been convince that this boat is, indeed, an upgrade from what we had.  The inflation tubes are bigger, but there is more interior room.  Much more carrying capacity.  It can take a bigger motor.  At this point, any motor would be good, but I found out that it also rows much better than our old dinghy.  I still wouldn't want to be out rowing in a strong wind, but this was pretty effortless (thanks mostly to the better designed oar lock).  Yep, I'm looking forward to mounting the motor on there.

The info on the boat says this one is lighter than our old one.  Maybe.  Maybe I'm getting softer?  The two of us were able to heft it up on the dock easily... not so easy by myself.  Got to keep it clean and pretty...

Should be fun, and it will get us out on the water under power until we get back to Wild Blue.  Assuming the motor shows up.

It was another "Chamber of Commerce Day" in the Tropical Tip - absolutely perfect weather; temps in the 70s, abundant sunshine, low humidity, not much breeze.  It was a good day for releasing rescued sea turtles back into the water.  Two weeks ago, we had much colder than normal weather... cold enough that it "cold shocked" many of our local sea turtles.  Rescue volunteers pulled over 100 sea turtles out of the cold water and took them to Sea Turtle, Inc. to allow them to warm up.  They didn't all make it.  Today, they released all the surviving sea turtles back into the Gulf waters from the beach on South Padre Island.