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.