Day Two in Fort Pierce, aka Hoboville
After a breakfast of the now familiar Kellogs’ Smart Start cereal, we got in the truck in order to run some errands. First, we offloaded the previous owner’s books at the Treasure Coast Hospice Thrift Store.
Next, we returned a real marine current converter and a faux marine current converter to the West Marine and Home Depot stores, respectively. The headcase at the Home Depot tried to give us $2 instead of $8 and played dumb when we confronted her with it. Despite ironing the problem out, we determined to steer clear of Home Despot when possible.
The previous day, we noted that the town visitor’s center was open until 3 pm on Saturday. We arrived around 11 am and made use of the bathroom, which proved much more satisfying than the beachside tin mechanism we utilized the day before. We also looked in on the town library, which, to our chagrin, was small and had few services. Still, we managed to dash off a few e-mails before hitting the road in search of a produce market we’d seen advertised.
The market turned out to be one Mexican selling pineapples and tomatoes, and another asking us for a ride south. We made a quick round of the other booths, which offered an array of poor electronics and cowboy boots, and returned to the ship for bologna sandwiches.
The afternoon was spent opening and draining the blisters from the hull of our boat. This process involved hacking at the fiberglass with hammers and chisels. At each stroke, acid from the blisters would spray into our faces and onto our arms (“the pressure inside a hull blister can be double that of a bottle of champagne,” says our literature). The smell was of rotten eggs, and the taste was certainly no better.
After four hours of hot, miserable work, we hit the beach and washed ourselves off in the pounding surf. We found a spigot for rinsing off feet next to the bathroom and attached a hose nozzle we found in the truck, which we used to shower ourselves. Brian inadvertently exposed himself to a group of picnickers, and we determined to return to the spot, at night, with a hose so that we could shower more comfortably.
Back at the boat, we called home and learned that we had been running off battery power for our entire stay, and we rectified the situation. Then we went grocery shopping, picking up a 50-cent, two-liter bottle of Sam’s Choice Root Beer, which amazed Aaron. We had a dinner of salad, soup, and bread in the cockpit, listening to the ghostly whistle of wind through rigging and watching the clouds colored by the setting sun. Tired, we spent the rest of the night rolling coins and reading Chris’s porn.