Friday January 5: A Good Start to the New Year

It was a very low keyed Christmas. Since we're actually celebrating in February in California with the kids, we enjoyed the evening in the company of folks at Banana Bay who for one reason or another decided to be in the warmth of the Keys rather than points north!

There are some really good cooks living here as was evidenced by the great pot luck dinner here at the point. Sadly I took no pictures :-(

It was fun to open the annual Franko Family Calendar - put together this year by Matt. Rebecca - who has done the calendar originally and for the past ??? years - decided to turn it over this year.

The result was great and up to the standard set by Rebecca so nice job Matt! So fun to look through each month and enjoy the memories created over the past year.


The weather for the week between Christmas and New Years was excellent. Perfect again for Steve to continue working to finish painting 2 coats of paint on the starboard side of the boat.

Having finished one side, he was anxious to begin the port side.

First sand the side (one day) and then the next day, prime the areas - which turns out to be most of the port side. That took another day.

In between, he decided to work a bit on the broken railing. Because the railing is so bowed at the front, there is a stainless steel support under the wood - which needed to be straightened.

Pounding on a flat concrete edging worked quite well :-)

We're still hopeful that we'll be able to just replace the front 10 feet of the railing with a stainless railing but it's undetermined if the stainless guy Steve spoke with a couple of week ago is going to come through. After all, it's the Keys. And now it's the Keys after Irma which seems to be a whole new ball game!

The manatee have been in quite a bit lately - especially a really small one! Saying a manatee is small means it's 4 or 5 feet long and weighs in at about 100 lbs. The average adult manatee is 10 feet long and weights between 800 and 1200 lbs.

The one in the picture is easy to pick out anytime it comes to visit. It's name is Three Toes or Three Fins - depending on who you ask!

For more info about manatees, click here.

New Year's Eve was a nice night here at Banana Bay. The sunset as I looked west and the super moon rising as I looked east!

It's wonderful to see how quickly the palm trees have grown back. These 3 had no leaves left at all after Irma. Now just 3 1/2 months later, they are looking great!

Steve couldn't stand it the morning he woke up and there was NO wind! Off he and Flint went to try to repeat the last fishing trip under the bridge.

But no such luck :-(

Lots of catching but all except one mangrove snapper were too small. Plus the chum bag escaped by cutting it's line! Without chum, it's almost a hopeless case to attract the fish .....

Next time ....

This past Wednesday, it was finally time to return to the Clinic in Weston to see how my hand was doing. It's been almost 6 weeks since the surgery so I was hopeful that it might be time to ditch this splint!

We took the opportunity to drive to Ft. Lauderdale the night before so we could see the newest Star Wars movie - 3D IMAX - it was slow at the start (my opinion) but the finish was GREAT!! Worth the price of admission :-)




The visit to the clinic was great as well. The splint is history except I have to wear it at night for the next month - which is very easy to do. The bones need more time to fuse even more solidly together so once that happens I won't have to worry about turning over in my sleep and bending the thumb the wrong way!

It's amazing to me to see what's been done! The nice thing is getting copies of the x-rays means just stopping by the radiology department, filling out a form and 15 minutes later I walked out with a CD of all of the x-rays taken since last January. I guess this is probably done everywhere but it sure is nice.

In the meantime, Florida has also been affected by the cold front which is taking it's toll up north. We keep an eye on the weather in Ohio and parts north as some of our friends are still up there for the holidays.

The trip to the Clinic Tuesday was one of the nastiest days we've seen in a while. Very, very windy, rain and temps in the 50's (I know, I know - we're just spoiled for sure :-)  ). But it's getting better each day .......