Oh How True!

My wife emailed me this video, my oldest daughter Rachel had flagged it and commented on how true it was and that she had not thought of it from a man's perspective. This is scary because this means that the normal feminine brain damage has passed down to her generation. I am sorry Nef (my son-in-law). I tried to beat, scare, rip out, negate, educate, train, compensate for, eradicate, and overcome by all means know to man, plus a few more that I invented to keep this brain damage from filtering down. I guess it is one of those things that are, how do you say, inevitable.

Lots of Little Things

Lots of little things going on.

We went to see Eric Stone play the other night. It was the first time we have seen him with his band. He was also at the pot luck that goes on at the Tiki hut every Friday night. His wife was with him and their two huge parrots. I think the birds got more attention than them.

Eric and Steve playing at the Marina Tiki hut pot luck.

Eric's wife Kim with Marley.

We bought a used inflatable dingy to use here in the harbor which will allow me to repaint Rosie and get her ready to sell. We will have to buy a better dink before we leave on the great loop, but we need a good insurance job to finish paying off debt, doing a few more things to Queeny and buying a new dink and motor. It all takes time. As we look back over the last 12 months we have come so far financially to being able to really be free to cruise and still have some measure of security. If this year is as good as last year it will be a really good thing.

Old but cheap.

We bought a solar panel and a charge controller. It is the same controller we had on Morgan which I really liked. The panel should be here this week. That will cut down on the generator run time alot as we mostly run it to charge the batteries.

It rained alot this morning.Yea!! The fresh water tanks are now topped off.

Last but not least, hell has officially frozen over. That's right I got a smart phone. I swore I would never do it but here I am. If we had not had that little dingy accident with everything getting wet, I would still be using my 8 year old flip phone. When that happened Michelle sent me her old phone and I used it until last week when it died. Since I was fresh out of old used phones I reluctantly went to the phone store and somehow ended up walking out with a smart phone. I missed the first three calls because I could not figure out how to answer it. I think I pretty well have it figured out now. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The best thing about it (and really the only reason I got it) is Pandora. Good music with no babbling DJs.

Mike's Day Off

I took the day off today. That means I did not work on the boat (much). Instead I took Rosie (our dingy) over to Sombrero Beach and did some snorkeling. My scuba classes start tomorrow so I have been practicing snorkeling as much as possible lately. We are making a concerted effort to not just live on the water, but have fun in it as well.

Sitting on the beach resting.

31 years Today

Today was our 31rst anniversary. It is hard to believe that I could put up with Sharon for that long. On the other hand it doesn't seem that difficult to believe that Sharon has had the pleasure of my company for that long. She might have another take on this, but then I write the blog so we are not interested in her biased and distorted views.

We have been really enjoying Marathon. We went out to eat today at The Keys Fishery. We had a lobster Ruben sandwich. Not bad at all. We then took Rosie and went to Sombrero Beach and relaxed for awhile. There was some crazy lady on the beach with a hula hoop that she set on fire and had some guy taking pics of her. Oh well there are all sorts of nuts down here. I guess that is why I feel so at home.

If we look younger here it is beacuase we are. Taken on our 25th anneverary.

A few pics

Bailing out Rosie after a rain.

View from the flybridge.

You may see anything in the harbor.

Dragon boat race.

Dragon boat race about to begin.

Boot key Harbor at sunrise.


 

New toy.

Fresh Water

While living on the mooring we (I mean I) have to bring fresh water from shore to fill our water tanks. I usually bring 5 gallons back with me every morning after drooping off Sharon ashore. We use about 5 to 7 gallons a day on average. This in and of itself is not that hard of a thing to do. The thing I have a problem with is where we get the water. The marina has an RV hose hooked to a spigot that you can pull your dingy up to and fill your jugs. Not a bad setup if there were not stupid inconsiderate humans in this world. Twice I have pulled up and watched a guy hosing himself off, rubbing the hose all over himself. Yesterday I pulled up and there was a guy with two dogs in his dingy and he was using the hose to wash out towels he had in his dingy. Then I am supposed to fill my drinking water jug with the same hose. ARRRRHH.

Hose from the flybridge.

Filter.

Hose going into the tankfill.

Lots of people collect rain water and filter it for their fresh water supply. I had planned on doing this eventually, but the frustration with the marina water pushed this up on the priority list. We have the perfect setup built into Queeny. There are two drains from the flybridge. One on each side of the boat. I already had hoses hooked to them to drain the water overboard rather than onto the deck, so it was an easy thing to plumb one of them into a filter. An RV hose then runs from the filter to the tank fill. It should not take long to fill the tanks in a decent rain. We also have a filter at the sink. After a rain we will put a little bleach in the tank as well. After I cleaned the flybridge I took our 5 gallon water jug and dumped it onto the flybridge to test the system. I did not know how freely the water would flow through the filter. It worked great. They are forecasting rain tomorrow. Hopefully we will have full tanks shortly.

New Hatch

The new hatch is installed. It was actually easier than I thought it was going to be. When I took the old non-opening port out I was surprised to see that the new hatch fit almost perfectly into the opening with only minor trimming needed. It has worked out beautifully. I still need to trim out the inside when I get the time. It was a learning experience getting the old port out. I think they had a contest for eighth graders to design the worst possible installation method and employed the winner. It was as Micky Mouse as you can get. No wonder they call Taiwanese boats "Leaky Teaky".

New Addition to the Fleet

We have a new addition to the fleet. I bought a Kayak to play with. It is a two or one person Kayak depending on which position you put the seats. I have been roaming around the harbor in it. On Saturday Sharon and I paddled over to Sombrero Beach and watched the Dragon boat races. It was about a half hour paddle each way. It is nice to get some fun exercise.

This week I changed the zincs on Queeny. One on the rudder, one on the drive shaft and two on the hull. A zinc is a sacrificial metal that gets eaten away by the stray electrical currents in the water instead of metal that is attached to the boat such as the propeller or rudder or any other metal that is below the waterline. I also had them bottom of the hole cleaned by a diver. when I was changing the zincs under the boat I scraped up my arms and fingers pretty bad from the barnacles on the bottom. I learned a valuable lesson. Next time I will clean the bottom before changing the zincs. The diver told me that if I sprayed rubbing alcohol on the scratches that they would not get infected it would not hurt near as much. I did this and it's stung like FIRE. I wondered if he told me this just to torture me because I changed the zincs myself rather than paying him to do it. I sprayed the worst scratches. I didn't worry about the little ones. Two days later the large ones that I had sprayed are fine at the little ones that I didn't spray are still stinging and hurt a lot. Oh well life is a learning experience.

We are getting Queen ready for a summer with no AC. I installed 2 new 12 volt fans in the aft cabin. I also bought a new hatch to replace a non-opening port above our berth in hopes that the breeze will blow from the open port on the front of the boat straight through and out this new hatch. Time will tell. Hopefully I will get it installed next week. This is very high on my priority list.

Till next time.

Making Adjustments

We have been on the mooring now for about a week and a half. We found out the alternator on the main engine isn't working, the 120 volt battery charger was very weak, and we had one bad battery. Fortunately I have been working for the last two weeks. The best part of that was it was from the boat. I would much rather work from the boat and look out over Boot Key Harbor than sit in a motel room in New Orleans and work. The pay is not as good, but it has alot of other benefits. The money I made the last two weeks we are putting straight into Island Queen. We bought a new 120 volt 40 amp battery charger (twice the size of the old one), 4 new Trojan golf cart batteries (450 amp hours), one new hatch for the aft cabin, and some other odds and ends.

I got laid off to day, so now I will have the time to install all of the new goodies. We want to keep making improvements on Queeny so we will be ready to take off on the Great Circle Loop in March next year.

Sharon enjoying Boot Key Harbor.

What $597.00, are you kidding me?

Blurry pic of our new charger.

Fun project for another day.