Monday February 3: What Did the Groundhog Say?

Sad to say but I don't know what the prediction was yesterday for Puxatony, PA and Phil the Groundhog. All I know is that sunshine has returned to Marathon!

Weather the past few days has really been nice. And we haven't worked on the engine - but that's another story.

Steve did take some time to work on completing the aft hatch project he began back at Matt and Wendy's in October. Soon it will be finished :-)

But for now it's fine for some fun!! This is a picture of Boot Key Harbor and half of the mooring field. It's still crazy full (with a waiting list) until folks start heading for the Bahamas and points east.

We left Yesterday's Dream behind as we headed out as guests of our neighbors George and Nancy on their American Tug - such a cute boat! And it even has a 'smoke stack' with a skylight in it!

Nancy, Cindy and I rode on top as the guys piloted from down below. What a wonderful day! After a cruise through Boot Harbor we headed west to Bahia Honda State Park.

We've been here a number of times by car and by boat but it's always a great place to come. First there was a walk up the "old bridge" for the view of the beach and then a stop at the visitor center.


The followup was ice cream at the refreshment stand. I mean we need to support the park, right? You can see Jenna Star at anchor outside the marina so it was a short dinghy ride in. Thanks George and Nancy!!




Funniest thing we've seen lately:  the neighbor's parrot (the smallest breed of parrot as I recall - can't remember the name of it though) that rides on the back of the his dog. Too funny :-)

Best thing we've seen lately? Our engine running as smooth as ever. Since Friday we've swung from "good to go" on one hand to "need to find someone to rebuild this engine" on the other.

After being able to call Brian at American Diesel this morning (first thing of course) we are now good to go. Seems the exhaust we could see coming out from under the valve cover gasket was due to a gasket leak. 

Learned two things: a small bit of oil vapor under the valve cover is normal and second: you can run an engine with the valve cover OFF and not have oil squirting all over the place (Brian said to just take the cover off, run the engine and look to see where the 'smoke' was coming from - who knew?)

Our nicely running engine: just click on the arrow in the center of the picture below (you may want to adjust your volume level).