March 2-16 2016 Marathon Marina

We stayed aboard most of the morning here at Marathon Marina.  Mary played with her new boat washing toys purchased when we came into the marina yesterday.  I fixed a door hook, and a side curtain snap before tackling the Bullet 5HP and trying to get it to work with the our router.

Here in the marina, the wifi is broadcast on 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz bands.  The 5 ghz is the less commonly used and also boasts a larger pipe i.e., more capacity.  So when all the boaters here try and watch a YouTube video the 2.4 ghz band slows to a crawl.  The 5 though seems quite spry and quick!  So I wanted to use our 5 ghz wifi booster.  And after an hour or so of configuration  fun I did get it working and mounted it up on the spare GPS mast.  So now we have a sort of good internet connection.  Except during certain times when all the grandparents start watching grandchild videos.  Oh well.

I made a quick trip to the Publix on the bike before meeting Dave and Joann at the pool for cocktails.  Also met Mitch who's on a 38 Senator.  It’s a Taiwanese trawler too.  He’s been here since August though.  Don’t think we could stay in one place that long.  But he and Linda bought a condo here and are refurbishing it to sell it this summer.

Found out that Tuesday is pump-out day.  And the weather is going to be pretty good for a few days.  Light winds, and mid 70’s for temps.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll head out to the reef and see how cold it is.

More dead sea treasures

Mary was up early today.  Marilyn drove down here to pick her up and then they, including Rhonda, walked the Coco Plum Beach and found plenty of fascinating dead things to bring back.  My, how thoughtful of them.

I did some computer work most of the morning and then started to wash the dinghy but noted we had run out of dinghy cleaner.  Conveniently, Dave just happened to stop by and said he had to run to West Marine so we all, (Joann, Dave and I) biked there.  They were looking for clothes stuff and I needed dinghy cleaner.  End result was I took back some free sample cleaning pads and an antenna extension which I need for our other wifi extender.

Once we returned we each took our respective small craft out for a joy ride.  Theirs, called The Red Devil, is a speedy little jet boat.  And ours is a hopefully cleaner by the weekend dinghy.  

Dave and Joann in the red  devil

We ran out into the ocean for a few miles, came back in at Sisters Creek and then went into the Vacca Key canals where many of the big homes are located.  I specifically wanted to see this one area near the golf course where I had noticed an anchored sailboat when Dave and I were there at the driving range a week ago.

Yes we made it under the bridge

The route to this place is rather torturous and narrow in some spots.  Its basically a 50 wide foot canal passing through the backyards of the homes lining the canal.  Maybe a mile or so later we came into the area.  Its deep, 12-18 feet and large enough for several boats.  The only downside is the long winding route to get there and the depths.  It was close to high tide and I was seeing some places with 6 feet.  If the tide level is 2 feet we’d be aground so I guess if we ever decide to use this anchorage we’d have enter and leave at high tide.

We wound out way back to Sister Creek and headed over to Burdines dinghy dock.  I had made the mistake of not changing out of my dirty work shirt thus the received a pointed suggestion that I should purchase suitable attire.  So I had to buy a shirt.  At least I got to pick it out, not that there was an expansive collection to choose.

At Burdines

We all, except Mary, had Burdines famous green chili burger.  After consuming that we went back to the boat and where I dropped Mary off and then went out in the dinghy to the Bay side through Knights Channel to Faro Blanco Marina to see all the boats paying $4 per foot.  Several Looper boats were there.  I turned around and got back to the boat.  We sat around for a little bit and then I took a walk and returned around 8.  Mary was going to bed.  Those early mornings are a killer.

Marathon is really an island of sorts.  There is the Bay side, Florida Bay and the ocean side.  When one is navigating in Marathon its no unusual to add, "Bay side", or "Ocean" to describe a location.  

Mary was again, up early while I putted around the boat.  Later, I headed off to the store to buy some fittings for a new antenna and a dinghy rear light.  And some groceries.  Mary's bike is racking up the miles.

I got back and Mary had returned but wasn’t feeling well and ended up napping.  I had to ride back to Home Depot one more time and also stop and get a card for Marilyn.  She's another year older and the party is tonight.  It's going to relatively clam out so we'll take the ocean side there and back.  It's about 10 miles or so.

Ultimately Mary elected not to go so I took a solo dinghy ride to Colony Beach but tried a different route this time.  From the ocean there are several private marked channels at Colony Beach.  These lead to shore and usually into one of the many canals.  One was very close to Vaca Cut so I figured I’d be able to avoid the long swing around the large shoal making the entrance to Key Colony.  It's about 2 miles further to do that,

Dinghy resting at Boat House marina after an ocean romp.  

I found this one channel fine and made it in but then running along the shore, I was close to going aground a few times.  There is 4 or 5 feet of water usually very close to shore as I found out.  But it was high tide so nothing to much to worry about. 

There was a dock party for Marilyn’s Birthday and many folks were there.  Jay made the meat and others brought dishes to pass.  All I brought was a small bottle of rum and a card for Marilyn.  Slacker!

Happy Birthday Marilyn.  

I had to leave before Donny started playing.  It was pitch black, partly cloudy and no moon with 1-2 foot seas out on the ocean.  I could only go about 15 mph because it was so dark and my backlit gps  was set to dim after 30 seconds so dead reckoning was my primary navigation technique.

Sure was pretty out there though.  Small boat on a dark sea.

Made it back about 10pm and pretty much just went to bed.

Mary went off for coffee with Dave and Joann while I stayed back here and sent some sorely past due email replies.

We didn’t do much except decided our efforts to fashion a forward dinghy seat cushion were doomed to fail without the use of a sewing machine.  I epoxied up the antenna holder for our other wifi booster and got a 5.0 ghz usb wfi adapter working on our spare ships computer. 

Then I biked to the store, got half way there and noticed I’d forgotten my wallet so had to back track a few miles..  Finally made it to Pubix where I ran into Phil and Maggie.  On the way back Mary was on the phone talking with Dave so I suggested we have cocktails on their deck.  I’m sly that way, suggesting parties at other peoples places.

I put all the groceries away and then had to fix up my epoxy master piece.  Some epoxy dribbled into the screw threads so I dug it out with a tiny screw driver and threaded the the thing on the antenna extension to be sure I had it all off. 

Then, after Mary was done talking to her brother and sister, we walked over to Dave and Joann's place.  On the way I stopped by and convinced Sue to stop vacuuming and agree to join us.  We six had a great little sunset cocktail part.

Came back, cooked burgers on the grill, watched a west wing, took a short walk and went to bed.  Adventuresome couple aren’t we?

Dinner dance

Tonight we went to the marina’s Italian dinner dance/ party with live music.  I forget the two guys playing but they were very good!  It was a dinner dance so yes I had to dance.  One slow one.  Some of these old cruiser couples can really cut a rug.  Limber doesn’t quite cover it.  The food was this really tender pork cooked by Judy and Dennis the marina managers. 

Before that though we joined Dave and Joanne in the morning and went to key colony days in, well, Key Colony.  That’s where Boat House marina is located.  We were there for a about a week or so before coming here to Marathon Marina.

The guitar player is under the canopy in the blue shirt

It was sort of a flea market with a band.  Nothing of interest for sale but the guitar player in the band was really, really good.  He played bass on some foot pedal apparatus and his guitar playing was reminiscent of Sonny Landreth, the Louisiana slide player of renown.  I talked with him for a while.  He’s been playing for many decades and now only does a few private partied and an occasional public event like Key Colony days.   Has a really old guitar I didn’t recognize, a hollow body 7 string instrument plugged into a unlabeled amp.  Sounded great!

The 3 verbose Trump Supporters  

The only thing of real interest here were the Donald Trump supporters wandering around in Donald Trump 2016 T-shirts.  I overheard them several times muttering, “yup, he's the only one”.  “Yup, no one else comes close”.   The temptation to engage in a political discourse was strong but I resisted realizing it wouldn’t be real enlightening or probably friendly.   I do regret not accepting one of their free t-shirts though.  Opportunity lost.

We left the event and drove to Tarpon Grill where we had stopped before with Curt and Marilyn.  Good food and always good conversation with Dave and JoAnne.

We cleaned and straightened the aft stateroom most of the day.   I removed the remaining de-laminated teak off the shelf under our rear windows so we’re ready to make a template and have the teak guy cut us a piece out of 1/8 teak laminate.

We also cleared the shelves, cleaned them and re-arranged somethings.  I’m taking all of our old TV series DVD’s and ripping them on to a 2 TB hard drive attached to our new router so we can stream them.  Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, FuturerRama, and some musical things I have. 

The winds had picked up and were blowing 20 mph out of the east which was pushing on our stern.  The lines stretched a bit leaving our bow hanging over onto the main pier so we got out there and I pushed the boat out and Mary tightened up the aft spring line.  Later Dave came by and we repeated the effort leaving us with our bow barley over the dock.  Safer for the night time dock walkers. 

Our well found SUV at Win Dixie

Later, I peddled over to Winn Dixie first stopping at Publix for wine.   After Dave helped us move the boat we had a drink on board and then ate dinner.  I took my usual nightly walk and Mary watched her murder and mayhem TV programs.

Before I took a shower I measured the laundry center (stacked washer and dryer) to see how tough it was going to be when we removed it to gain access to the broken AC unit.  The door width is 21 inches.  The laundry center unit is 24inches.   And so now the puzzle solving begins …

The next evening Dave and Joanne came over for dinner.  This spurred me to clean the grill before they arrived.  We were having steaks which meant grilling.  Another wonderful evening

We drove to Key West this morning with Dave and Joanne.  Well, they actually drove, we just rode.   Dave once again exhibited his skill at finding parking spaces.  He's uncanny!

 Key West, hadn't changed much so we wandered around the crowded streets.  Thankfully there wasn't a cruise ship in port.  When they arrive and disgorge there hundred of vacationers, its unbearably crowded.  

Dave, wandering near the beach while the rest of us were in the Butterfly Conservatory, spotted a guy sporting a thong and wearing little wings on his shoulders.   I had to walk out and see for myself.  Yup.  Little green wings.  Dont ask.  I haven't  clue.

Mary and Joann in the foyer before entering the garde 

The Butterfly Conservatory is sort of an indoor garden with all these butterflies swooping around.  Yes, some are quite colorful and even mildly interesting.  Your required to walk a meandering path through the place oooing and ahhhing at the bugs and the plants.

Joann, Dave and Mary at Blue Heaven

After, we ate lunch at Blue Heaven.  Joann knows one of the waitresses, a daughter of  friend of theirs.  She's a marina biology student and very interesting.  Blue Heaven has this tree canopy open area which is just delightful.  Neat place.  Good food too.

We of course stopped at several bars along the way.  It is Key West after all.

Thai Life.  Doesn't look like much, but it's very good!

On the way out we took advantage of Dave and Darlene's advice about a really good Thai restaurant, Thai Life.  It's situated on  barge and floats near the yacht basin.  Good food!

I spent the morning, researching places to order batteries.  I had confirmed earlier that they are pretty weak by running the batteries for only a few hours and watching the voltage sink under a weak load.  Quite a variety of pricing and delivery charges.

Later we went to the store and Mary did laundry.  We opted to stay in tonight and didn’t go party.  Just a quite evening.

Finally completed the battery order which turned out to be about $1,000 less than other places.  They’ll be arriving here early next week.  720 pounds of new batteries.  Now where did I put that truss?

We received our mail today.  A pile of a months worth of mail which included our new debit cards complete with a chip.  How exciting?

Fought and finally got my Acer laptop to recognize the large disk connected to the router.  A bug in Windows 7 with  a work around.  I know, interesting stuff, right?   But this lets me upload ripped movies and manipulate the video files on the big disk.  Baby steps towards ridding ourselves of all the DVD's we have been carting around.

We reverted to task mode today and cleaned the galley shelves, drawers and stripped and sanded the new flagstaff we bought for $13 at the nautical flea market.  Mary went to yoga and Sue and Rob are taking us to the fish festival Saturday at City park.

As for me, I started copying (ripping) movies to our big hard drive and stream them to our TV.

Rob and sue took us to the fish festival at city park.  Jeff and Mary drove along too.  We met Rhonda and Bruce, Randy and Sherry there as well.  Also ran into Mark who we met at Brunswick Landing.  He left a week before we did on a boat bound for the Outer islands (south Bahamas and beyond).  Mary, his wife still works,  but from their boat.   So he's sailing the tropical seas while his wife works.  hmmm ....

The blind Pelican that's always here at the Festival.  Very Tame

Bought a few shirts today at the Festival but had to search around for a ATM.  I was out of cash.  I found one and donated $3.49 for the privilege of withdrawing my own money.

Tried a Conchwurst sandwich here.  It's basically a bratwurst made out of conch.  It was not exceptional.

Now who would be consuming lobster at 10AM?

Drank beer and noted the plastic mugs are gold this year which will compliment our collection from previous years (Blue and yellow).  However my mug collection is being watched and I'm sure sits prominently on the disposal list of certain people.

Since Rhonda and Bruce had volunteered to help with the festival, they snuck us back into the volunteer section where we had some free beer even though we were not wearing the peach colored T-shirts worn by all the volunteers.  Criminals?

Missed seeing the band RAK, which has a great guitar player.  They were playing at night and, well we can't stay up that late decided not t try and hang around. 

I eventually walked back to Marathon Marina and drove the dinghy over to City Marina to pick up Mary.  We returned and I rode the bike down to the store and we had a little dinner and went to  bed.  Mary had called Sue earlier to thank them for taking us but she woke her up.  Guess shopping can be a hardship, strolling up all those aisles of flea market type retailers.

While we were strolling around gawking at all the stuff, I stumbled on a lamp place where this couple makes lamps out of dug up coral from construction projects.  They are pretty.  We are going to buy one.  

Maybe.  Mary's enthusiasm plummeted when the $350 price tag some how was pulled up into plain sight from its previous spot under the lamp.   Best laid plans ....

We attacked the engine room this morning.  I removed all the spare parts, jugs and battery boxes and took out the generator start battery.  Confirmed that the main DC battery switch position (2) is really the port side battery bank.  This is all in preparation for replacing the batteries in a few days.

Continued on ripping all the Donna Reed TV series DVD's.

Later I helped Dave and Joann with their wifi issues (lent them a usb wifi adapter which is duel band and can read 5 ghz).  5 ghz here is much better than the 2.4 band we’re usually seeing.

Ok, its not easy to tell the difference, but I did varnish the trim

Rode to Winn Dixie for some things that are markedly cheaper than Publix.   I was anticipating battery deliveries today.  No truck.  Thus no batteries though.

Our new, "yachtie looking" bow flagstaff

Mary, taking advantage of the lull in activity, washed the boat and then went kayaking.

I varnished the trim pieces from the stove and a few other pieces including the flag staff.  And continued on my DVD conversions by ripping Ozzie & Harriet.  I'm using two laptops to do this, so its going pretty quickly.  Thanks to Dave Hagen who showed me a nifty piece of software to do this with.  

Today we took the small boats out to the reef with Dave and Joann.  I cleaned the dinghy bottom while I had it out there on a mooring.  Water was rather cloudy so not so good for seeing anything.  We got the last mooring ball furthest from the best area of the reef. 

We weren't moored at the reef until 3pm and only stayed an hour or so.  Wish we had gotten an earlier start.  It was a calm day, warmer water and sunny.  The only down side was the turbidity of the water which made seeing things on the reef cloudy, and not as clear as it can be on good days.

Mary and Jeff catching the sunset

Came back early and made snack stuff and then met at Rob & Sues little Grady White for a sunset cocktail cruise with Dave, Joann, Jeff and Mary.  Went out on the Bay side and just drifted for while the sun set..  Beautiful sunset.  

The sunset

"Rob, take a group picture".  This was the result.  A can of nuts.

We asked Rob to take a group picture of us.  I gave him my phone.  After several minutes of what appeared to be picture taking we ended up with this one picture. 

By then the sun was down (no green flash) so Rob fired up the engines and we cruised to Sparkys at Vacca Cut for dinner.  

Captain Rob and Admiral Sue leaving Sparkys

After eating we went out the ocean side for the ride back.  Magical night.  It was dark and loaded with stars!  We just drifted awhile out there.  Rob and Sue even mentioned they were able to see the Southern Cross, an constellation normally only visible in the southern hemisphere.  In late winter it can be seen up here in the Keys.

The reef beckons every sunny day.  And so we took the dinghy out there again today in the late afternoon.  This time there were perfect conditions.  Mary swam over a 6 foot nurse shark while all I saw were barracuda and a big old grouper hanging by a rock.  Oh well.   I forgot the underwater camera again so no pictures.

A few of the many dolphins swimming around us

Dave and Joann at Castaways

The best though was on the way back in when Rob pointed out a pod of dolphins which we went to investigate.  The pictures dont do it justice.  They were jumping and swimming around right next to us.  Very cool.

Oh, yeah.  We went to Castaways and ate (ready Kathy?), Pompano.  Mary had the sushi version, barley cooked (not to her liking).  I had the cooked blackened version, very good.

Bahamas next year, absolutely.  But ... recent rumors are flying around indicating the ability for us lowly boat bums to take our boats over there very soon.  And without undue restrictions.  Stay tuned.  I hear they even have a golf course or two.

In other news our batteries are arriving tomorrow.  720 lbs. of new batteries.  And 720 lbs. of old batteries.  Me and two, near-70 year old guys (Rob and Dave) remain poised to heft all 16.  If I can still move I'll let you know how it went, or didn't.  Getting old is a pain.

Mary and I at Castaways