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Accidents
Mom Breaks her wrist.So Thursday evening March 2nd Mom tripped and fell on the concrete. She was walking across the deck where the tables were above the TIKI here in Marathon and broke her wrist. Brad came over that evening at about 21:30 and wrapped it. Then Friday morning we went to the ER and had it x-rayed... well it's broke alright and so they refered her to an orthepedic who happened to be in town this Friday and she put it in a cast and said to see her next week. It'll probably be 6 weeks to 2 months to heal and we're not going to sail when she can't hold on to anything so we got a mooring ball. We moved on to it the 5th. We're on W3.
We had to motor over but the exhaust is leaking terribly so I wrapped it in aluminum flashing and used a hose clamp to hold it in place. It still leaks but not as bad. We got the mooring ball just as smooth as if we'd done it a hundred times.
Sam and I finally figured out how the swim ladder works and we did a little video about it yesterday. We'll post it when we're done with it. But one person can pull it up and put it down now. I knew that it was not correct back there on the stern to be carried around all the time.
Tonight we went to Barnacle Barnie's again to listen to Mike sing and talk with our friends. We were there for about 4 hours and had dinner. The poor waitresses and kitchen staff were sooo overworked. But the food is pretty good there and the atmosphere on the beach is wonderful. Good music, good friends, good food... oh my! Now it's time for bed... OH... a few days ago we saw a comet in the south western sky... turns out it was very large and could have done a lot of damage. I'm still trying to find out how close it was.
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2023 22:30:00 GMT
Sea Food Festival
Fish Fish and more Fish!.Today we all went to the Sea Food Festival and looked at all the booths, met some interesting folks we hope to be good friends with and ate lots of wonderful fish!. They had lobster, fish and chips, crab cakes, chowder, fish dip, smoked fish, smoothies, Margarita bars and beer. We met some wonderful folks selling dresses and hand made cotton blankets/towels from Turkey. They were amazing. We are going to get some at their shop in Boot key later. They have rugs there as well. We spent the day with Moral Compass. The most wonderful thing about this harbor is it's like a big resort with your best friends! There is always something going on! Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2023 13:28:00 GMT
Shrouds
Working on the Rig in BootKey.Good morning folks! This morning Sam and I adjusted the standing rig tension on the Mizzen mast. We knew it was loose but it was seriously loose, less than 100lbs. We got a tension gauge at from another boater about a month ago. So we adjusted the tension to about 550 lbs. It feels a lot better and I'm sure the vibration will be reduced as well. We will put up a video of the process in a few days. Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 22:30:00 GMT
SUSHI!!!
It was a good day today.The morning started with a bread making class at the tiki at City Marina. Hannah made bread with several other boats. The class was taught by Neil and Elizabeth from Twocan. While Hannah was there sam and I worked on adjusting the standing rigging for the mizzen mast. It was very loose and we made a YouTube of it. Then we polished a few stantions before going ashore to West Marine. Then we went to Castaway's for lunch with Moral Compass and Suprise. The food was great and it's a wonderful resturant/bar tucked away in a little building that you don't even think is a resturant till you get inside and it grows to a big place with a very nice setting. We had sushi and cheese cake. Suprise came to West Marine to rescue me. I had walked there to pick up teak oil and metal polish and Hannah had asked them to pick me up and bring me to lunch with everyone. We had a great time. Then Hannah went to do laundry and I met Mirage at the boat to do our bottom. He took about an hour and a bit to clean the bottom. Yesterday I had run the engine but it would barely go in reverse. The prop was all barnacled up but now it is clean and works a lot better. The engine started right up today and ran a lot faster before topping out. This evening I spent with Skylark talking about how to adjust his rigging which I lent him the tension gauge for as well as brought him a shackle for his anchor. Now Hannah is baking the bread and we are relaxing. The wind has picked up and it is supposed to rain but the temprature is wonderful. Good Night all! Check out our youtube site. The link is on the front page of the web site on the left hand side. Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2023 13:50:00 GMT
Clean up
Cleaning up Boot Key Harbor and a busy week.Last Saturday the 18th we helped clean up he Mangroves where the tides and winds have lodged all kinds of trash in their roots. We pulled out several bags of trash and a couple buckets and a mattress. We had to tow the matress to shore. We tied a rope around it and pulled it with our poor little dingy at about 1/2 knot. We had to go about a mile and by the time we got there the rope was about 1 inch from pulling of the matress. Afterwards there was a gift give away with lots of advertising and gift cards from the local community from resturants and the like. It was a lot of fun Ryan from Intreped organized it. I guess it happens every year. But it was a long hot day with a fun ending. We got a gift certificate to Burdines down harbor a little bit.
Sunday was a very stormy day with winds reaching 29 knots and lots and lots of rain. I have now identified more caulking to re-do becuase of little water leaks on the outside. So this morning I pulled out some of the offending caulking so it can dry out.
Yesterday I bought a used Victron 100/30 from Ryan and tried to get it hooked up. It's not charging and I'm not sure why but I think it has to do with the batteries because I have not been able to get anything to charge. I'm really pulling my hair out (Literally because I keep catching my hair on the screws on the top of the aft lazzerette where I'm doing boat yoga to put it in). It's quite frustrating because this should be pretty simple but it's not working. I have tried 3 different solar chargers now and none of them work. I think it's the batteries perhaps being nearly full? I'm not sure. I suppose it's possible to have 3 bad chargers but that's a pretty big stretch.
The month is flying by and we need to be ready to go but our exhaust elbow is not in yet and I'm getting worried about it. The guy supposedly working on a temp fix for me is not contacting me back. I need to get it going soon or we'll be here for the summer.