Mushrooms
Crazy Daughter
Journal of Diane and David's sailing adventures aboard S/V "Endeavor"
Sorry folks-----It's been way too long since I last posted. Uh, uh, uh I was busy; Uh, I forgot; Uh, uh the dog ate my homework. Actually, none of the above---I just got lazy. But I'm back and ready to fill in the blanks between April 3 and now (June 14).
We have truly enjoyed our stay at Safe Harbor Burnt Store Marina. We ended up on their first floating dock about 6 slips down from where we kept our sailboat, "S/V Assisted Living" back in 2012-2014. It's immediately adjacent to the pool, laundry, bathroom and shower facilities-- just mere steps away--very convenient---and the truck is even closer---very nice with regard to hauling our groceries from truck to boat. Just a very nice set-up all the way around. We were the first to tie up to this brand new dock but it is now completely full and the people here are great. There are 2 other Mainships on the dock and we have gotten to know one of the owner couples quite well---Jim and Darlene--aboard an almost identical 2007. They live in the Cape Canaveral area but have recently bought, and are fixing up, a home in the Punta Gorda area where they will be able to keep their boat in the canal in their back yard. Really nice (and helpful---more to come) folks. Also, Terry, the harbor master for the marina lives on his boat 3 slips over. He has promised to keep an eye on our boat while we're away. Very nice. It's really a very good situation considering that we will be away from the boat for almost 6 months. (I'll probably be back and forth a couple times, especially should any tropical stuff start to develop.)
We weren't there long before our son, Scott and his girlfriend Karina came for a week long visit. They were supposed to have been with us in Marathon but that didn't work out so they drove over from Miami where they had spent a week or so. They stayed with us on the boat and we had a great time together. This was the first time that we had met Karina in person and found her to be a delight. It was so much fun to watch this young couple who are obviously very much in love. While we weren't able to take the boat out (High winds) we had a great time showing them the area with a trip to Boca Grande, a trip to Ft. Myers and the Edison and Ford museum and estates and a trip to Sanibel Island and the beach. Lot's of good food, drinks and conversation. (With the pandemic it had been almost a year and a half since we had seen our son). They introduced us to a new board game--Codename-- and we promptly killed them (It helps, as a team in this game, to have been married for over 50 years). Its a fun game---try it.
Shortly after Scott and Karina left us it was time for Diane and me to start thinking about heading home. We had Grandchildren and daughter birthdays and it was just time to head home and take a break from the boat. So we packed up the truck and headed back to Houston where we hung out for about 5 weeks. But it was surprising--we shortly developed a longing to be back on the boat so we jumped back in the truck on May 23 and headed back to Florida where we spent one glorious weather week and another that brought rain almost every day for at least a couple hours of the day in the afternoon.
That first week was fabulous. The weather was clear and calm and in the 60's in the mornings and evenings and 80's during the warmest part of the day. The highlight of this trip was motoring down to our favorite anchorage--Pelican Bay---off of Cayo Costa Island where we dinghied around, took the park shuttle over to the beach and even dinghied the 2 miles over to Cabbage Key (The claimed "original" cheeseburger in paradise location). We were at Pelican the week-end of Memorial Day although we had departed for the anchorage on the preceding Thursday anticipating that the anchorage would get crowded over the holiday week-end. Boy! Were we right. Typically there have been perhaps as many as 10 to 15 boats in this somewhat small bay over a given week-end. By the time we left to head back to the marina on that Sunday there were close to 70 boats at anchor. We were not crowded at our spot as we had chosen carefully and wisely before the arrival of the "Madding Crowd". It was a wonderful stay---one of our best---certainly in part due to the fantastic weather. The next week--not so much.
As mentioned, the weather turned unsettled and we elected to stay in port. We planned to take a trip up to Punta Gorda and actually made a reservation for a slip for 2 nights at the Fisherman's Wharf Marina but had to cancel due to the weather. Along with the rain came the heat and humidity and by the time we left for home we knew we were in Florida in the summer. So we left Florida's heat and humidity to return to Houston's heat and humidity.
The silver lining in the 2nd week was the opportunity to meet and get to know our marina neighbors a bit better. I mentioned Jim on the other Mainship. It so happened that one hot and humid night the power on the boat went out. I spent a couple hours trouble shooting but could not get to the cause. Our generator was being repaired as well so without shore power we had no electric coming into the boat and were unable to run our air conditioning. Our inverter would run fans but we had no way of recharging the batteries without either shore power or generator. The fans got us through the night fairly comfortably. The next morning the marina electrician came by and determined that the problem was indeed on our boat, not the electrical pedestal that provides the shore power. Shortly thereafter, Jim walked by and I mentioned the problem to him. Turns out he is an engineer and actually knows something about boat electrical systems. For 21/2 hours we traced the entire electrical system all the way through the boat--from shore power cord to circuit breaker to galvanic isolator to the 120/240 breaker panel and down to the inverter. We had power at all those places but not at the panel where the circuit directs the power to all the 110 volt applications. Jim located a cable that seemed to be running to my inverter and we questioned whether the inverter was the culprit. The problem---the inverter is located behind the refrigerator requiring the removal of the fridge. Jim had done this on his boat, so we set about removing the fridge. Once removed, Jim was in the process of removing the cover on the inverter box when he stumbled across a little tiny button on the outside of the inverter----obviously a reset button--he pressed it, reset it and voila! We were back in business. I'm pretty sure I know what I had done to cause it to shut down but won't go into it in any detail--just to say I think I had tried to pull too much current to too many things the night before. (Curses on whoever decided to bury the inverter behind the fridge!!!)
Needless to say, the Admiral and I were thrilled with the result. We took Jim and Darlene out to dinner the next night to thank him for his assistance. The silver lining here?---I know my electrical system a lot better now.
For now--we're melting away in Houston looking forward to heading for the mountains and cool air of Colorado in another month. While I may be going over to Fla. a couple times to check on the boat we don't anticipate being on her for any extended time until October------sooooo----I probably won't be adding to this site for a while. I wish all a very happy and fun post-pandemic summer wherever life takes you.
On Tuesday, March 23, we left our friends at White Marlin Marina to head down and under 7 Mile Bridge over to the Gulf of Mexico and up the West coast of Florida to the Punta Gorda area on Charlotte Harbor, just a few miles north of Ft. Myers. We had made arrangements to keep Endeavor at The Burnt Store Marina just south of Punta Gorda. We had been here previously ---spent a month at this marina on our sailboat, "Assisted Living", back in 2011 and actually had kept her here from time to time as we left her during the hot summer season--probably about 3 years in total.. It was falling into disrepair then, but has been purchased by a large marina operating company--Safe Harbor---and they're pouring money into the place with all kinds of up-grades, including floating docks (instead of fixed docks where you're constantly adjusting your dock lines to accomodate rising and falling tides---these docks float up and down with the tide but you are secured to the dock so the boat and dock rise and fall together. No line adjusting necessary.)
Our first day started at 8AM and we headed West to 7 Mile Bridge, passed under and began our passage north to drop anchor at the mouth of the Little Shark River, in the Everglades. The day was PERFECT! Very little wind; very little wave action; clear sky overhead and beautiful blue water below. The boat did well as did our new electronics and the new auto-pilot made the trip quite pleasurable. The only inconvenience was the occasional string of crab pots that you have to steer around, but there were not as many as I remember from prior trips along this route. We arrived at Little Shark around 3:30 that afternoon and dropped anchor in an oxbow near the mouth with very good holding and wind protection. Surprisingly, bugs were not a problem. (Our last visit to this spot found us infested with "No-seeums", little bugs that bite and cause large welts and extreme itching on some people (including Diane)). Even though I felt we had a good anchor set I was up much of the night keeping an eye on things as the current changes 180 degrees here which requires the anchor to turn 180 degrees as well. This can sometimes result in the anchor failing to reset and the boat can drag with the current (or wind) into shallow areas. My vigilance went unrewarded as we had no anchor dragging issues all night.
The next day, being the longest of the passage, had us up and gone at 7:15, just after sun-rise. It was a little choppier but still very comfortable and we made good time. There were many more crab pot arrays along this stretch but we managed to avoid them. Very heavy as we approached Marco Island.
Marco Island in the distance as we approach from around 8 miles off shoreWe covered roughly 90 miles this day (from Little Shark to Cabbage Key near our final destination. We simply ran out of daylight and decided to anchor approximately 2 hours south of our destination right off the famous Cabbage Key restaurant. (We've stayed here many times before and occasionally dinghied over to the restaurant for lunch or dinner. It's a very popular spot and you can only get to it by boat.). Our past experience here usually found us among only 2 or 3 other boats in this rather small anchorage. This time there were 8 or 9 other boats. It's right around the corner from our very favorite anchorage--Pelican Bay, on Cayo Costa Island, but we noticed as we were coming into Cabbage Key that Pelican Bay appeared to be quite crowded. So we dropped the hook in about 8 feet of water and spent a very comfortable night.
The next morning, after a leisurely wake up and breakfast we headed up Charlotte Harbor for a couple hour trip to our final destination --Safe Harbor Burnt Store Marina--near Punta Gorda. We've been here quite a bit before--back when we had our sailboat and even once on Opus V, so we are quite familiar with the marina as well as the surrounding area. They've poured a bunch of money into the place including the building of the floating docks, upon which we are securely tied.
Retrieving our truck from Marathon and bringing her up here proved to be quite a challenge. Usually we have Enterprise pick us up and we drive a one-way rental to where we left our vehicle. Drop off the rental and return in our vehicle. This time proved to be a bit more problematic. There were absolutely NO rent cars available in South Florida---Spring Break; approaching Easter week-end. Even if you could find a car to to rent they all were requiring a 2 week rental. But we were desperate to get our truck up here in order to prepare for a visit by our son, Scott and his girl-friend, Karina. We ended up paying an Uber to drive us to Marathon (Don't ask how much---It was a lot; but we needed the truck.) We accomplished this on the Friday before Scott's anticipated arrival on Sunday. It was another incredibly long day --left here around 9AM and got back around 7:30 that night. (We're to old for this!!!)
But now we had our truck and were able to use it to provision in advance of Scott and Karina's arrival. More on that in my next post.
Mostly we have 3 varieties of birds-----the usual Seagulls, Cormorants and Pelicans---oh so many pelicans. We'll occasionally see Frigate birds flying high overhead but they seldom come down close enough to be exciting. We'll also see Osprey soaring overhead---but they, like the Frigates, usually don't come down very close.
Seagulls are actually kind of boring. They fly by, very seldom diving on prey. Their flight pattern seems to consist of fairly relaxed wing flapping and some occasional soaring for short spurts. But they're pretty fast in the air. About the only time they are a bit interesting is when they've spied someone at the fish cleaning station when they congregate and fight for morsels and then chase the one who succeeds in snagging the fish guts. (Remember "Finding Nemo"?------Mine, Mine, Mine, Mine) They don't like to fly too close to the boat but will occasionally fly over close enough to concern us with the possibility of a little doo doo being dropped on our decks.
Cormorants are a bit more interesting. They're terrible flyers---flapping their wings violently to get off the water and continuing their rapid flapping as they fly to their next destination. There's no soaring involved. They fly like they mean it. But they fly very fast, once airborne. The don't seem to want to mingle even with others of their own specie. They are excellent swimmers and divers. They'll stay down for minutes at a time often surfacing with a fish in their mouth.
But my favorite is the Pelican. A wondrous bird the pelican. His mouth can hold more than his belly can. I love to watch them fly by. Some of the adults are huge with 6 foot wingspans. They fly beautifully and gracefully for such a large bird. They'll fly by, flapping their wings gracefully and leisurely and then soar for 6, 7, 8, 10 seconds, often dropping down to inches off the water where they soar often toward a water landing. As opposed to the pelicans I use to observe in Galveston Bay these pelicans don't dive straight down into the water after their prey. In fact, I haven't seen one of them do that dramatic dive. I don't know how they get their food. Quite often you'll see them flying and soaring in pairs. Are they mates or just following each other? Sometimes you'll see 2 or 3 flying along and then 3 or 4 or so will change their course and fly with them. I don't know where they're going or why they seem to be more active during my cocktail hour (just before sunset). Perhaps they're flying home for the night. Rush hour? It really is a beautiful sight and I continue to be entertained by the beauty and grace of their flight.
Well-------You can ignore some of what I said above. After I started drafting this post we went out to the sand bar with our folding chairs to enjoy an afternoon of sitting in the water, sipping a beer (and smoking a cigar) and listening to music from our friends boom box. Looking off toward shore--about a mile away---I saw what I thought were waves breaking against the shoreline. But it was a calm day and there were no waves to speak of . It turns out that it was a large number of pelicans diving for fish in the manner that I had been familiar with back on Galveston Bay. There were so many of them diving that it truly looked like a breaking wave. Then, later, back on the big boat at the marina I saw this going on across the bay:
This is a guy on his anchored boat throwing fish cleaning remnants into the water. The birds congregate waiting for the next contribution then they fight for it.
When we bought the boat it had horrible, dirty, oil stained carpet throughout. It is OK in the bedrooms but the main salon was a mess. So----Diane made it her mission to replace the flooring. At first we shopped replacement carpet but received ridiculously high bids for the cost of the carpet. This led us to reconsider and ultimately decided to replace the carpet with a vinyl flooring product that looks like the popular teak and holly wood product. We found the vinyl product by cruising through the Mainship on-line forums and then found it at Defender.com, a large marine product store located in California. This is, I believe, the same flooring we had in Opus V, our prior Mainship 400 and we really liked it. When we were shopping for the boat this time we knew we wanted the vinyl flooring but with the dirth of Mainship 400's on the market we had to settle for one with a dirty salon carpet.
On our way through this flooring journey we came across a young flooring installer by the name of Alex Parera. We met with him a few times to assess the job and finally he agreed to do our installation even though he had never installed this particular product before. Alex emigrated to the US from Cuba in 2014 during the more lenient Clinton policies with regard to Cuba. Later he succeeded in getting his parents here as well. Having had no carpet laying experience before, he learned the trade after he came to the US. He started his own business after a while---Parera Carpet---and has been quite successful staying much busier than he wants to be. He is truly a terrific young man and I've never seen a tradesman work as hard or as meticulously as he did, completing the job beautifully in a day and a half. He was assisted by another Cuban emigree and also by his father. They had worked a couple of hours on 2 different days and finished the job on a Saturday, working non-stop from 8AM to 5PM (without a lunch break). They had a particularly difficult time removing the old glue-down carpet and padding and then the hundreds of staples that had been used in the original installation. Then they meticulously laid the new flooring and made the cutouts for the 4 different removeable panels that lead below decks into the engine room and the equipment room. Here's what it looked like during installation:
And here's the finished product:
Diane is a happy camper. And you know what they say: Happy wife--Happy life.
I call it the penultimate project because we have one more major one to do. When we get to our next marina, in the Ft. Myers area we will contact a guy that built a new fly-bridge enclosure for Opus V and have him build us a full enclosure for Endeavor. Right now it only has an unenclosed bimini cover. So---Kaching, kaching--(sp?) and we'll finally be finished with all the major projects that we felt we needed to bring this boat up to Opus V standards. It really is a labor of love because we truly love this life-style and want it to be as pleasurable and comfortable as possible.
January has proven to be just what we needed to get the boat in shape for getting out and about. The weather had been a bit blustery from time to time giving us the perfect opportunity to spend time at the dock taking care of all the minor and a few major issues. We got a "bottom job" a few weeks ago and she's now slick as glass under the water. It will be interesting to see how long bottom paint will last in these constantly warm waters.
We've toyed with the idea of replacing our navigation electronics (original equipment) and after discovering that our radar was shot (along with our autopilot) we decided to pull the trigger and we've arranged for the installation of a new chart plotter (GPS), along with the synchronized auto-pilot (that allows you to set a course by compass direction or by inputting a waypoint and the boat will steer itself on that heading or in the direction to the waypoint) as well as our radar. This alleviates the tiresome effort of manual steering everywhere you want to go. I bought a reconditioned chart plotter on Ebay to replace a completely non-functioning one on the fly bridge. Paid $225 for what would ordinarily cost (new) around $1500. It works perfectly and will give us a reliable backup (redundancy) at the helm.
With the functioning plotter we decided to, finally, head off shore and down the Keys to one of our favorite anchorages where we spent 2 nights on the hook. (Had to hand steer all the way out and back, against fairly choppy seas but the boat handled beautifully ) Here, at last, are some pictures of our new boat on the hook in Newfound Harbor, a very nice anchorage off and between Big Pine and Ramrod Keys:
BUT FIRST;
WHAT'S THAT GUY DOING DIVING NEXT TO MY BOAT
Back in October when I flew down to Florida for the survey (similar to a home inspection) of the boat it was hauled out of the water on a "Travel Lift" and all the below water parts were examined. At that time the bottom was quite clean and smooth and there was very little growth. In fact, it was so clean that I opted not to have the hull power washed. --------That was then------This is now.
Rear of boat. (Note the prop shaftand blade)
We made it through 2020 unscathed !!!!!! Our last post had us back in Kingwood to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with family------NOT!------- Although we were happy to be able to celebrate, in person, with Diane's sister, we were not able to get together with our daughter and family. The big mini-reunion scheduled for Thanksgiving didn't happen. Nor did Christmas with daughter and family. They all had had way too much exposure to others and, while they all were fine (as far as we knew) still, we just couldn't chance exposing our aging bodies to the risk. (I am sure you all experienced similar disappointments. I'm not whining, just explaining). Still, Christmas was a very nice celebration; Our Christmas Eve church service was one of the most beautiful I've ever experienced and Christmas day dinner of my first prime rib effort was spectacular. Christmas day opening gifts was spent at Nan's where she had prepared a fabulous brunch. Even her Golden, Haley, got into the spirit by spending the whole morning lying in her new bed that we got her. All in all---the day was a beautiful time but we sure missed being around the kids. Zoomed later in the day and was at least able to see everyone, including Scott and Karina in the D.C. area.
Then it was back to Florida and the boat. (I know--you're questioning why we wouldn't expose ourselves to family but were willing to risk a plane flight. We did decide to take that risk--but at least we reduced our risk somewhat.)
So it's back on the boat which seemed to do OK in our absence. And the beginning of all those projects I listed in my earlier post. We began by getting our dinghy into the water and off the davits so we could get our new outboard mounted and start doing some dinghy exploring.
I spent a day in the engine room changing out the zinc anodes--at least those that I could get to--5 per engine. Next I tightened the belt on one of the engines, then spent a couple hours checking the batteries---4 8D wet cell batteries--2 for the "house bank" (runs all the 12 volt devices) and 2 starter batteries for the engines. NO BUENO!! They're all shot and will have to be replaced before we head out of port and spend days and nights "on the hook" away from shore power. They'll take a charge but won't hold it very long. I'm guessing the previous owners never maintained them properly. Oh well---the hole in the water into which one throws money. Lot's more projects ahead of me but we picked the right month to stay in port and tackle them. While the weather has been very comfortable temp and humidity-wise the wind has been blowing hard non-stop, with small craft advisories almost every day--stuff we wouldn't want to encounter off shore or at anchor----so--- let's get the chores done.
New Year's Eve found us dining on Brats and hitting the sack by 9 0'clock. But New Year's Day was a very different affair. At 3 0'clock we all (the entire marina) gathered at the Tiki Hut for the annual New Year's Day Pig Roast offered by marina management. All the boaters brought sides and quite a feast was had meanwhile watching the college play-off bowls on the 80 in. TV in the Tiki Hut. It was perfect opportunity to meet everybody--- a few people we had met here the last time we were here in Opus V in 2016 but mostly new faces---- a very nice crowd---many from Michigan (one guy was best friends with a fraternity brother of mine from Adrian College--"Moon" Mullins. A really great time and it's nice to be able to start to develop some relationships and experience "community" as Diane calls it.
See pic's of the pig roast below:
The Pig----He was gooooood!