The swap meet

 The annual Fisheries Supply Swap meet is over. Sellers will setup the night before and camp out. Buyers will wake up before the sun rises, 4:00am or earlier, so they can grab the best deals. Rachel and I tried to get there around 7:00am - late enough to get some good sleep, but early enough to find some deals. It was a bright morning. One of those early Spring mornings where the sky is all blue, and the wind is still. The dew had yet to evaporate and the glare from the sun blinded us whichever way we looked. I love those mornings. I love the sun. I love the stillness.

We found some deals too. The first stand that we stopped at had some brand new marine speakers that I snagged for $15. Those will be great in the cockpit this summer. We found some recessed LED lights - regularly priced as "too expensive for me." For $40 I bought an old baby blue folding bicycle. The rubber tires were cracking a bit, it needed a new chain, and the gear shifting cable was stuck - but a new one can cost $1,000. A folding bike will allow me to through it below on the boat and easily bring it ashore to go exploring. Other things I bought: dehumidifier ($25), sewing palm for repairing sails ($5), a tether to keep me tied to the boat ($5), some tubes to re-plumb my manual bilge pump, and a half broken Autopilot for $20 (I have another half broken one that I'm hoping to Frankenstein into working).

Catch phrases like "the more I buy, the more I save" ran through my head. To balance that, the realization that the more I buy, the more boat projects that I acquire - meaning more work. If only you could buy more time at a swap meet. Fixing up the bike will take several hours.

Back a Rachel's Jeep, we stuffed everything in the back - and I mean stuffed. Mixed in with all the swap meet deals was the freshly cut foam that we had picked up a few days before. A whole Jeep full of projects for me. Even when I'm being careful the work piles up.