Wednesday October 29: Sister's Creek - Mouth of the St. John's River

Yesterday was spent completing final preparations for finally getting under way. Bikes on - check. Trash off - check. Water tanks full - check.

It was up an out this morning as the railroad bridge in downtown Jacksonville is operating on a reduced opening schedule: 9-10am, 12-1pm and 8-10 pm.

It was no problem getting there just after 9 o'clock as the bridge was a short 45 minutes away.

We pulled out from under cover on schedule at 8:25 to another nice day. I continue to wonder when the not so good weather is coming!

Downtown Jacksonville is visible in the haze as we left Lamb's Yacht Center (does that mean we're a yacht just because they let us stay there??).


The first bridge was the Ortega River Bridge. It's 'on demand' which means we can just call and the bridge will open for us - as opposed to the bridges that are restricted and have only specific times during which you may pass.

The current was carrying us down the river almost all of the 25 miles to the entrance to Sister's Creek where we will pick up the Intercoastal Waterway to head south.

One of the reasons we left the boat in Jacksonville was the distance it lies from the Atlantic. With a 25 miles distance up the St. John's River, the thought was that even if a hurricane hit that part of Florida, it wouldn't be so bad by the time it made it 25 miles inland to Jacksonville.

Fortunately, no hurricanes for Florida this year!

In and tied up by noon!

We were able to finally drop the dinghy (there was no room behind the boat when we were in the covered slip) to add air.

A nice sunset ... all is right again :-)

Monday October 27: Finally - Winding Down and Preparing to Leave Jacksonville

So it's true and the proof is in the picture, right? Caught just sitting around, relaxing. And it wasn't even 4 pm yet :-)

Today was decreed to be a 'take a break afternoon.' No more getting ready and being crazy. Time to revise plans: spend tomorrow (Tuesday) here finishing up putting things away, getting the holding tank pumped out and basically just finishing up all of the little things that needed to be done before we take off.

Backing up a couple of days: the report on the new Sharp Microwave Convection oven is VERY positive. The salmon with dill sauce was the best ever. Not sure why but my thought is that the new oven made a big difference.

And the brownies? They'll get my vote everytime!!

The oven is definitely a keeper and will eventually replace the built in oven once we get to Banana Bay and truly have time to deal with the change over in cooking appliances.

Last big job was completed Saturday afternoon: redoing the Raptor bed liner on the forward and aft cabin deck tops. Again - just redoing what was originally done shortly after we purchased the boat 9 years ago.

Easy enough - just takes time.

Remove the hatches, sand the surfaces, wipe down with water, and tape off the teak trim.

With brush in hand, I trimmed the edges and Steve again followed up with the roller.

Job done. The last of the Raptoring for now at least!

The flybridge plastic finally went up. There were issues with getting the frames up with the high tides so we had to wait until the water came down in order to put the top up completely.

Better than hoped for results. Steve was able to get all of the fasteners along the bottom of the  front and sides snapped down. It was only in the back that we'll need some extensions. Because the canvas is now 2 layers of sunbrella, it isn't nearly at "stretchable" as it was originally.

But I look forward to not getting rained on through the canvas!!!

The new microwave and TV are now securely fastened. No losing of any equipment to giant waves for us :-)

My job for today? Made a quick repair to the washing machine 10 times more difficult - all I had to do was to drop the new door switch - and watch it fall all of the way down to the bottom of the inside of the washer! Sadly the part wasn't metal so no hope with a magnet.

Next try a yardstick with a wad of duct tape stuck on the end. Sadly that didn't work either ..... so fine. Take the back of the machine off and reach in and pick up the part - which then took all of 3 minutes to install.

Some days ....

So our car turned into a pumpkin today as our weekend special was up. But not before Steve made one last trip to Winn Dixie and came home with WHAT???

Chips made with beets?? I'm thinking he is really going to enjoy these because there is no way I'm even going to try them. I mean I did the beet burgers some time back and that was as far as I can go. Sorry ....








On a cute animal note: the neighbors had some friends out over the weekend to watch the airshow. They brought the cutest little monkey - actually it was a marmoset. The friend raises them and apparently this little guy needs to eat every three hours!

Sounds like me lately ......

The plan is set: finish up tomorrow and head out first thing Wednesday. We'll be in St. Augustine in a day or so.

Friday October 24: Was It the Wrong Side of the Bed??

I'm not sure what happened today - I blame it on getting up on the wrong side of the bed ... whatever that means anyway. The plan is to leave here and head south Tuesday morning. Weather is looking good and our last month of paid dockage is up so it must be time to move on.

No issues, right? One would like to think so :-) And yesterday was such a good day ...

as we finally made the decision to just get a new fridge while we were someplace it was easy to do so. The old Isotherm - a 110/12 volt marine fridge was finally done. The good old glue gun fix from last spring lasted as long as it was going to! Again - it has been on the boat for the past 9 years so not surprising that it was time to be replaced.

Off to Home Depot for a regular 110 volt mini fridge. More energy efficient, way less $$ than something with "marine" in the name and a bit taller - making for a little more room. And it had a light!!! This is the first time we've had a fridge with a light :-) What a bonus - and who ever thought we could get so excited about such a mundane thing!!

Next on the list was to get the 5200 adhesive on the repaired cracks on the walk around deck. This was especially important to get done before it should rain and allow the open wood to get wet.

Easy enough to do - just don't get the stuff on your hands. It almost needs to be ground off.

Latex gloves were definitely in order. The hardest part is keeping the glove on the hand as this 5200 adhesive is really sticky. Total job time: less than one hour.

Next: get the new inverter actually hooked up and tested.

Because we moved from a 1000 watt inverter to a 2500 watt, the wires from the battery had to be several sizes larger: 1/0. Which is about the thickness of a normal pinky finger. The wires arrived yesterday.

12 volt power is nothing to be messed with - lots of potential opportunities for shocking results :-)

I was able to work from the aft cabin by reaching in through the fuel filter access door. A bit easier than trying to reach from the engine room. Job done.

The Jacksonville Naval Air Station is hosting the Blue Angels at the air show this weekend so it has been a delightful several days of watching practice runs as the jets fly over the marina.

Steve managed to catch a picture of one as it flew by the marina. I would suspect the waterways on the St. John's River outside the base will be a really busy place come tomorrow!

The planes definitely brought back memories of our days at East 55th St. Marina in Cleveland. Vivid memories of the many air shows we were able to watch right at the boat - with the jets flying over so closely the pilots could be seen!

And then we got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. Time to test the new inverter. Mmm... the microwave seems to sound funny. Not running right. Get out the "just happened to buy" Power Meter that could measure the power output from the inverter. Not good. Getting 110 volts but only 50 megahertz. Funny, I didn't even know what a megahertz was until this morning. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Turns out the ebay seller sent the wrong inverter. 110 volts but 50 megahertz. Electrical things designed to run on 60 mhz NEED 60 mhz. Back it will go - what a pain.

Otherwise the inverter was ok and the day got better. The top canvas (redone in May when in Cleveland) was finally getting put up.

Ooops. Tide is too high - the rest will have to wait until later!

No problem - at least the GPS is back and installed (it travels between Guppy and the trawler). Someday we may actually get a second one but then why do that??

The best surprise today happened when we went to swap cars. Our Alamo car was due in today at the airport (about 30 minutes away) so we were picking up a local Enterprise car for the weekend ($9.99 day + tax - can't beat the price, right?). Plan was to drive the Alamo car back to the airport and turn it in. This would give us a local rental and the Enterprise folks will bring us back to the boat. Beats having to take the bus back from the airport for sure.

Turns out Enterprise and Alamo are partners! We just "turned in" our Alamo car and "picked up" our Enterprise car - just by doing some paperwork. Never had to change cars. What a deal that was ........

And the day got even better - Steve's new microwave/convection oven came!

He's using it as I write to cook dinner tonight. We heard of it from Linda Murray (Symmetry II) who loves hers.

I'm hoping for more the the same great cooking to which I have become so accustomed .....


Guess we didn't get out of bed on the wrong side after all :-)

Wednesday October 22: Getting Started on Repairs - as always :-)

So it seems things don't like to sit unused for months at a time - particularly electronic things like TV's.

Of course it was getting a bit older - like 7 years - but for something on a boat, we thought it held up quite well! So after turning on and working for about 3 minutes - the tv in the main cabin died.

Off to Best Buy for an improved, larger one.

Not all a bad thing that it died!. The aluminum brace attached to the back of the TV. Keeps it from falling when it's a rough day on the water.

Next - try to figure out why the shower divertor on the tub spout would no longer work. This has happened before - but looking up into the spout really didn't offer any insights!

Then it just started working again. Perhaps it was a case of operator error - who knows? It gets confusing sometimes trying to remember how things work on each of the two boats ... or maybe I'm just getting old!

On to the next project: replacing the 1000 watt inverter with a larger 2500 watt inverter. This will enable us to run the microwave while traveling. It's just more covenient than having to start the generator just to heat lunch or make a hot drink.

That was my job. Done :-)

Steve got the hard job - finding and digging out any soft spots in the walkaround deck. This is an ongoing project that just needs to be kept up with - kind of like chasing a water leak.

The deck flexes as the boat moves so even though you can't really see any movement in the deck where it attaches to the hull, it is definitely there and causes small cracks in the paint/floor finish.

If any soft spots are found, the wood is dug out and repaired with JB Water Weld. This 2-part epoxy is great as it will cure even if it is wet. Not very many epoxies will do that.

Next step will be to cover with 5200 adhesive (they say not to use this stuff if you ever want to get the pieces apart again!).

Next - on to redoing the flybridge floor.

It is SO nice being under cover - have I mentioned that??

We are using Raptor truck bed lining to redo the floor. This was first done 7 years ago and the bed liner wears like iron. So why not use the same thing again, right?

This is also a 2 part epoxy (so a base paint and a hardener). It has a 1 hour work life so there is no rest as this is done!

I start by trimming the outside edges with a brush and then Steve follows up using a roller.

The paint is quite thick but goes on easily. Rule number 1: don't get the stuff on you! Or your shoes - then it gets tracked everywhere.

We both did pretty well - until the end when I sort of stepped right on a painted spot on the hatch on the aft deck. Oh well - fix it with the next coat :-)

It came out really well - won't be really dry for a week but it looks like that won't be a problem as we'll still be around here for a while .....

It hasn't been all work though. Steve has managed to find a very nice spot at the end of the dock to sit and fish in the late afternoon.










The first fish he caught was a gar! Not for eating of course but fun to catch anyway.

His teacher for fishing here is Yam. She comes most afternoons and is usually successful!

Steve also caught an eel .... what's that about? The fish of choice is a red drum. Never had it but certainly willing to try!




The latest Must Be Stupid moment: Steve decided we could watch the rise and fall of the tide to best determine when to fish, right?

The best fishing is at high tide or at low tide when the water is moving the strongest.

Can do. Just put the fishing pole out with the sinker hanging right at water level. Then merely watch and observe when the water is above/below the sinker and keep track of the time.

Right.

Sadly neither of us noticed that a pole sitting on the boat would go up and down with the tide so the sinker would remain at the same level relative to the water - right at the current water level.

Very sad ....

Monday October 20: Back to Yesterday's Dream in Jacksonville ...

It has been an unbelievable 5 months since we left Jacksonville, I again wonder where the time went ....

After leaving Guppy in New York in late August, it's been an interesting and fun time on land but now that we are back to the trawler, it seems the world is right again :-)

After arriving in Cleveland in late August, it was a very enjoyable two - almost three - weeks at the farm with my brother Tom and of course its always great to see my other 3 brothers and their wives as well Steve's sister Julie and our brother-in-law Jim. Plus a chance to get caught up with friends from Ohio.

It was a successful cataract surgery on my left eye (other may be done next May) and then off to Newport, Rhode Island to visit Matt and Wendy.

We had a great 2 weeks there (Becky came to join us the last weekend) celebrating Matt's acceptance to the War College in Newport and my birthday!

Motorbike and scooter cars were a blast! If you haven't been to Newport - you should definitely go!!

Much of our time was spent relaxing and touring the mansions of Newport. The Preservation Society there has made a real effort to preserve the mansions of the wealth families of the late 1800's, early 1900's. The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms - amazing homes that just are hard to believe were summer "cottages" for the wealthy families of New York society to enjoy for 2 months of the year. Think Downton Abbey if you are a fan of the show.

It was addictive really. Many had audio tours and we learned more about the history of the families - along with the "have to have" architects and interior designers of that era than anyone probably ever needed to know!

This is a picture of the back side (which faces the water) of the Breakers. Cornelius Vanderbilt's summer home.

Truly, truly an amazing place as were the other 8 mansions/homes we were able to tour. Check it out on the internet at: The Breakers

From Newport, it was off for a 4 day road trip to Maine and Acadia National Park. Also an amazing place.

Then on to LA to visit Becky for ten days. Only one major project this time: install an apartment size washer/drier in the closet of her condo.

Let's just say it was interesting .... and accomplished with no building code violations!!

She assures us it's one of those life changing improvements and I believe it after observing how tied up the washer/dryer right across the hall from her place was. Like morning, noon and night. And that was just the weekdays! Weekends were just as bad.

But not all work for sure. We made it to the Getty Museum (Getty Museum), Malibu Seafood, the Hearst Castle (Hearst Castle) plus were able to attend the taping of the 100th show of Mike and Molly (Carl gave me a hug :-) and we met Mike). And as a surprise Becky was able to take us to the Big Bang Theory set. You can see the picture of Steve and I on the I-pad and the actual scene from one of the shows in the background on the TV!!

How cool is that!




We actually returned back to Jacksonville late Tuesday the 14th and have spent the last almost week getting the boat (and us!) back together. Projects of course are underway - more on that later.

Loving being docked under cover - makes working of the boat crazy nice as the weather has been unseasonably warm.