One of the projects I started here was recording my friend Toko. The video above features one of those songs. The video itself was footage of a recent rainfall that flooded most of historic Key West. All the drains got clogged. Toko Irie is a rastafarian from Grenada. He used to live in a real paradise where he hunted iguanas for food and really lived off the land. His friends told him not to go to America, that it would change him. He admits it has and wants to return to Grenada one day. However, now he has five children and a beautiful California wife. Now he has to convince them to leave home. He knows it probably won't happen. Home is a special place. They lost their boat and everything they owned on it during Hurricane Wilma three years ago. That is what the song is actually about.

Often people think there is nothing they can do to stop the direction the world is headed. When you find yourself unemployed and moping around at home hating the world, you could be learning exactly how the Federal Reserve, a private bank, is currently enslaving you. You could read about Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act (HR2755). Click the link below. Piper did.

What You Can Do to End the Tyranny of the Federal Reserve

If you like living vicariously through this blog, perhaps you would be interested in the same documentaries that we began viewing as soon as we moved onto the boat. They turned our perspective from "wanting to get away from it all" to "wanting to stay and make a difference." Movies like: Orwell Rolls in his Grave, The End of Suburbia, and Who Killed the Electric Car. There are also a few documentaries that are being banned or blacklisted and are only available on the web. When we first arrived in St. Augustine, FL in August 2006, we met our friend Curtis. He helped us learn how to anchor in alternating currents. We became friends. He had a woodworking shop where we often hung out. He had bought his boat from a filmmaker. He had a CD labeled Small Spaces Big Style. It was a home improvement show. The boat he bought was on that show and we had seen the episode two years earlier. We couldn't believe we had stumbled into that boat. He said we should check out the other two DVDs that former owner gave him. One was his documentary of Cuba and the other was called Reopen911.org. It was about world domination and how they do it. That spiraled into an online media frenzy and is why I sign hundreds of petitions weekly with all my "free time". The latest movie is much more to the point and is only two hours long as opposed to the five hour one we first encountered. You can view it online at Zeitgeistmovie.com.

I wanted to post a mini update. Just a video.

Coconuts are everywhere. You can live off them. Here's me opening a coconut.

October is here and business is slowly picking up again. Piper has been volunteering at the Obama office. She has been telemarketing. There is no McCain office here because he is anti-makeithappen. I finally, became a regular at Mallory dock which means now the lottery system for spaces is unfairly in my favor. They are against outsiders in Key West. That's why locals get a 20 percent discount pretty much everywhere. They forget we are all Americans.
Anyway, as far as news is concerned, a waterspout came thru the anchorage the other day. It knocked over a few boats, but they sprang right back up. I had no idea it was happening. I was sewing our bimini down below. I just thought it was raining so I shut all the hatches which is the safest thing to do anyway. Afterwards, I was ready for some air and went up on deck to set up the wind scoop. Fred, my neighbor, was motoring over to tell me something.
"Did you see that?!" I hadn't noticed anything. A tornado had just come through the anchorage. It was a very calm day. Mostly sunny even. He heard on the radio that there was a tornado but didn't think much of it because there is always one being announced. It came by the north side of the island hugging the coastline headed west. Piper had seen it from Bay View Park with the Boys n Girls club. She called Fred and he said everything was fine. He had tried to warn me by yelling at the top of his lungs, but I never heard over the movie I was watching. Toko and his kid, Aaron were puttering around in their boat. They had not noticed it either. We all congregated in a dingy flotilla while Fred told us about it. He said that the Bait guy had it all on video. The bait guy, Don, has a little barge next to his sailboat where he sells bait. He has a huge generator and has internet on his boat. He is the only boat with a back yard. We all went over to see his video. Luckily, for us, the waterspout hit the island and lost its funnel. But the bottom was still there and came around the island right through the anchorage. It knocked down a few boats and went out to sea. It hit Cliff's boat directly. He has lawn chairs and palm trees and other stuff that got all sucked up and thrown everywhere. Then it knocked a blue hull sailboat's mast all the way down to the water. It sprang back up. Then it spun a very large sport fisher and next it pushed a 45 foot Morgan Ketch over about 45 degrees. If you were standing on deck, you would be thrown into the air for sure.




One day we met Vivian pictured below in the kayak. He was very polite and didn't drink or smoke. Of course he loved bob Marley. He wanted to buy a small sailboat and go to Cuba and then to Venezuela. He wasn't particularly close to us, but he often asked us a lot of sailing questions. We offered up lots of advice. One day, he was kayaking thru the anchorage and we invited him aboard. We noticed he didn't take his life jacket off. Eventually, we asked him if he knew how to swim and he said, "No." Our friend Cliff, also living on the water, found this out and immediately began teaching him how to swim.
One night, I rode my bike up Duval and saw Cliff and Sean talking in front of Project Lighthouse ( a place for runaway kids). Cliff works there. Cliff had spent the last three days at the city pool teaching Vivian how to swim and was very concerned.
"As soon as I let go of him he flips out and sinks like a rock." He was very worried about Vivian living on a sailboat.
That night the dolphins were making a lot of noise in the anchorage, slapping their tails on the surface and in the blackness they appeared to be playing. The next day at about two o'clock, the coast guard was circling about four boats away from our boat. My friend, Fred, came over to tell me they found a floater, a black man with dreadlocks. I said,"that's Vivian!" He said they didn't know who he was an expected foul play. So we decided that I should go identify him and let them know we were previously aware that he couldn't swim. It was a beautiful day and once i motored up to the coast guard boat, I could see Vivian was still in the water. He was face down in the fetal position. They made me keep my distance as it was a crime scene. They pulled him out by his dreadlocks. Rigamortis had set in. His father was murdered by rebels in Siere Leone and somehow he had ended up here. I identified him and told the coasties they could learn more about him from Project Lighthouse. It was terribly sad. I now associate not being able to swim with sinking like a rock.



I have been recording my neighbor, Toko, out on the anchorage. It is fun. He uses a sequencer and so I am learning a lot. We are also using his Roland recorder and a condenser mic. He has been playing steel drums, acoustic guitar and bass. His voice is incredible. He is the real thing as far as a vocalist entertainer is concerned. He can freestyle a song at any given moment and it just exudes love and peace. We have a lot of fun hanging out with his family. They have four kids and another on the way. One night, Naomi, made an booger out of aloe slime and hung it from this statues nose.





Our friend, Robert, in Colorado had sent us a solar panel and I successfully installed the system on Delphine. Thanks a lot, Robert. I learned a lot and am putting the PV to good use. It was really easy. We also installed LED technology from sailorssolutions. They are called sensiBulbs. They cast a light equal to incandescent bulbs. They are not bluish at all. We want to put them in our house one day.







Here is what you don't realize about ethanol. They are using the boating industry as guinea pigs, because we are recreational craft. Our life does not depend on our motors bringing us back to port safely. The disclaimers are as large as the gas pumps at the dock. There are two of them. Everybody in the anchorage is experiencing motor shutdown. Even us. Our motor has shut off and stalled about three times since they put the Gas with 10% ethanol in a few weeks ago. It is unreliable. Now we have to bicycle to the gas station where cars fill up.

September is the slow season here in Key West. Locals say Americans have a pretty predictable schedule. This time of year families are putting their kids in school and visiting campuses, not exploring islands and reefs. That seems to be the case. I decided if I am going to work and not make money, then i should work on the boat. That is the way I have spent the last two months. I cleaned up finished all my brightwork on deck, except I still need a few extra coats on some of the handrails. Anyway, here are a bunch of pics leading up to september. We had a tropical storm Fay, which evacuated tourists and was over by the time we were finished preparing for it. There was a lot of flooding as always when it rains. Too much work.

I was just reading over our last entry to see where we left off and I noticed I was wearing pants and my wind breaker in a lot of those pictures. That has not been the case lately. Paul said it was hot in the last update. Now it's sweltering.
Back in late May we flew up to NC for the week at Ocean Isle. It was a week full of babies.




I've been working full-time at the Boys & Girls Club this summer. We spend about half the day in the AC playing games like Connect Four and Checkers in the cafeteria and the other half outside or in the un-airconditioned gym playing capture the flag or building and learning to walk on stilts (my idea) or going to the beach or the pool. A few of the other things we've done are going to the aquarium, and the Eco-Discovery Center, snorkeling on the reef, fishing, archery at a boy scout camp, and movies every Tuesday. I enjoy it for the most part. A few of the kids give us problems daily. I've about had my fill of hotdogs.



Since I've been working 9-5 we don't go out much anymore. When Paul works we often don't get home until 11:00 or so and still haven't had dinner. It's too hot to cook on the boat so we bought a blender and lately we've mostly been eating smoothies, cucumber yogurt soup, and gazpacho.

Business for Paul has been really slow for the past few weeks. Fortunately his construction boss from Chapel Hill, John, called and offered Paul work and a vacation all rolled into one. John is moving to Boston and was trying to finish the roof on his new home in Boston before starting a job in Chapel Hill. He called Paul as a last resort and the timing just happened to be perfect. Paul got to see Boston for the first time and make some money to get him through this slow season.

With all this free time during the day, Paul has been trying to catch up on refinishing our teak. It's going to look fabulous when he's done.

Mark and Jessica came down to visit back in June. It was nice to finally have some visitors. Unfortunately Jessica gets seasick so they saw the boat but couldn't stay for dinner. Mark made up for it by taking us out to dinner (a lot).


Tioga also came down for a week in July. We thought we might sail up the Keys all the way to John Pennekamp State Park, stopping to snorkel the reef along the way, but it turned out there's plenty of good reef right here off Key West.

So we had the best of both worlds, snorkeling all day and always getting back to Key West in time to go out for a nice dinner. The first night we stayed out at the reef seven miles offshore and pitched and rolled all night. It was one of the worst nights of sleep any of us had ever had. We didn't make that mistake again.
So, so far on the visitors to Key West tally it's brothers 2, everybody else 0 (except Jessica). In case you didn't realize, you are all invited to come stay with us. It's way cheaper to fly into Miami and rent a car or take the bus. Winter is great down here. It's also the busy season. We will be here until late March.

Life in Key West is strange, pleasant, creepy, loud at times, lazy or is that a disguise? Lots of things happen and right now it is so hot that everyone is crawling around like lizards. A typical day is a ridiculous collage of events followed by a long dingy ride over moonlit ocean swells as we cross the channel to the anchorage. One day I had my guitar strapped on my back as I rode my bike up to Caroline Street Music to buy strings. There was a drunk dude with a straw hat playing the piano I had helped move a week or two earlier with Andy(also from deep chatham) and the owner. I have already moved two pianos and a keyboard since we got to Key West. Last year I did a grand piano. This particular piano came from the Red Barn Theatre on Duval St. This dude playing the piano was playing Pink Floyd. His style just makes your jaw drop cause you aren't expecting this Key Bum to be able to play that well. He asked me to play something and I said after I make my purchase, give me time to think about it. He was really good. He had played on cruise ships and probably everywhere else. That piano sounds like crap when anyone else plays it. That's why the Red Barn bought a new one. I came out after buying some strings and played him one of my songs. He asked if that was an original and I said, "yes it was". He thought I was really good and said he liked the words a lot. That was cool and then his friend Woody walked up and he played his songs on a guitar which were very funny and loud. Billy Crow was there playing harmonica with the pianist. They started playing another Floyd tune and Woody flipped out because he had never heard this guy play piano. They only knew each other hanging out on the Duval Street. Woody called his mom and made her listen on my phone because she had met this guy and thought he was just another drunk (which he is). It was fun. All this continued until the shop manager came out and said we needed to take a break so he could work on a customer's guitar. Every night when we pass the the music store by the dingy dock, we hear them playing while the rest of the city sleeps. The owner likes having the guy play the piano.



I jumped a bucket at Mallory Dock. Now I am officially a Snowbird.



This cute lizard ran out of wire during birth. It only has three legs. Sadly, Americans nor Europeans are very interested in purchasing this one. An artist at Keys Fest in Islamorada showed interest in a trade of some kind. Hopefully, we find a home for him.



We have been helping our friend, Melanie move her cart to Sunset every night. She was one of my first customers last year. She said she would put it on her house and I would get a lot of business. She was right. I get a lot of customers that say they saw it and are so glad they found me.



































Piper is learning music.



On Conch Republic Day they battle out on the water. The Coast Guard vs. everybody else. It's a re-enactment of the battle for secession that took place back in the early eighties. In an attempt to curb the flow of illegal aliens and drugs coming in through Key West, Border Patrol put a checkpoint up in the northern Keys on the only road in or out. It was very successful but it also killed tourism for the lower Keys. The three-hour drive from Miami to Key West became a six-hour traffic jam. The final straw was when the beer distributors said they would no longer deliver to Key West because it took too long. Key West seceded from the Union then promptly surrendered and applied for aid. The stunt generated enough publicity to end the "border" checkpoint. These days they squirt each other with firehoses. In years passed, people threw tomatos and sometimes an outbreak occurred on the pier. So I decided not to set up. It turned out to be pretty tame.










Down by the dingy dock we see lots of big fish, like tarpon, parrot fish, barracuda and nurse sharks. One day, we started noticing fish carcasses. They were around for days and started stinking up the marina. The sport fisherman do this. They aren't supposed to throw them in the bight. It's actually illegal. All the fish leave the area when this happens.



Here's a shot of me enjoying a morning dingy ride.



We've been helping Andy and Vicki look for a sailboat. I drove with her to Marathon one day to look at a real heap. It's amazing what people think they can sell. It was a beautiful drive. It is a great way to see the keys really. The drive is incredible. Never do it at night! Pull over and sleep until morning.



I kept telling them that there is bound to be something here in Key West in the 3-4 thousand range that is worth the money. We looked at this crappy Pearson. I don't know why people say things like, "It doesn't leak at all, we left it alone for a year until it chaffed though the line and started drifting during a storm and still doesn't leak even though someone stole the compass and there is a 6 inch hole in it's place." I looked in the bilge and there was water. The chainplates were dissolving from salt water exposure.












Thank God it has a temporary rudder! Does it come installed?





Eventually, They found a boat. It's a very reasonable boat for the money and it is ready to use.



During all the chaos, you have to find time to go dancing. We went to the Green Parrot one night to see the Spam ALLSTARS. We bumped into Sandra outside. She is from Dominica and sells ginger beer on the street. She is a bit of a pushy salesperson, but very interesting. She dances like a hoochi mama. Vicki and Saundra were speaking many different languages. None of them together.




Music at the Green Parrot is awesome. Every local in town comes if there is a good band. It's always free. Often it is so crowded, we just hang hang out on the other side of the street, because they open all the windows and doors, you can hear perfectly wherever you are. It's an all ages show over there. That's Toko's kid, Aaron, riding the skateboard.



Music is all over Key West. But most of it is classic rock and eighties covers. There are a lot of street musicians and performers with originals. Here is another video of Toko at Conch Republic every Sunday.



My Uncle Chan came to Key West and didn't realize I was living here. We were able to reconnect after ten years. He even sang a little song. The guy playing piano also has a tumbling act down at Sunset every night. His former tumbling troupe from NYC made it into the top ten on America's Got Talent. Unfortunately, they got kicked off the night he was going to join them.



In the mornings, we have breakfast with the pirates at Harpoon Harry's.






Often we party on Christmas Tree Island. This time there were two fiddles, a cello, an accordian or two, a bagpipe, hand drums, several guitars, an electric bass powered by marine battery, acoustic bass, recorder, harmonicas, ukes, and I'm sure there was more.

One day, Dusty, another tarheel asked us if we wanted to come over to his Tiki Bar for stone crab claws. We did. And they were excellent. We met his turtle.



































Here is Capt. Michael. He is one of the first boaters we met this year. He decided to wear his pirate suit. He says he always gets lucky when he wears it. Sadly, we were shocked to find out it is true. We heard he left sunset with the new photographer girl.

We often hang out at Melanie's house. It is in the Old Town Historic district. The tour buses always talk about the gingerbreading of her house and how it represented alcohol (during prohibition) and gambling. I built her a new display for her art one week. She lets me keep my art at her house which is close to Sunset. One night we painted umbrellas for a Boys N Girls Club auction til 5 am at her house. What a long night. The auction went well and Piper got to meet the host for the event, Veronica Webb from Tim Gunn's Guide to Style.







Piper worked very hard on her umbrella. I kept going out into town and watching the drunk dude on the piano at Caroline Street Music. I eventually came back and laid some chair cushions out and covered up with a blue tarp. i got a little shut-eye, then she woke me up at like 5.

The auction was held at the Garden Club which used to be a fort.
























OK i gotta get out of this coffee shop. I don't even drink coffee anymore. Just smoothies. The rest are pics of the Keys. A lot are photos from a show we did in Islamorada. There is an electric car expo in marathon today. Unfortunately, I can't make it. Peace Out.





















We had another party last night at Christmas Tree. Piper stayed on the boat and missed it. It was a slow start, but by the end, we had played all kinds of music. Toko's wife, Diane, played some songs that were really good. She has been playing and singing a lot lately. She said that's all she's been doing while pregnant and sea-steading.