Tuesday February 6: Ready for Christmas!!

So the real question is are we early for Christmas 2018 or late for Christmas 2017? Well, since we hadn't yet celebrated in 2017 with our family, it's a late Christmas for 2017 of course :-)

Time to head to California - home to Wendy, Matt and Becky!

But not so fast - still a few things to take care of before we take off.

Old aft hatch cover

Nice and new!

It was nice to do a couple of things that have been getting on my nerves: the state of the front and aft hatch covers.

I'm not really sure how they became so stained - all I know is they weren't like that when we left the boat last May!

Forward hatch

New cover

Next was the forward hatch. What actually prompted the cover for this hatch originally was that it was just impossible to stop the leaks!

No matter what we did .... so finally - just make a cover for it :-)

Meanwhile the dinghy continues to dry. It takes a full week for the new rubber coating that long to "cure" fully.

Steve was concerned about the rain so he added tarps to the area by the electrical panel structure.

Worked great - the next step will be to paint a coat or two of single part paint to finish off refurbishing this dinghy.




And it was going to be a nice day Sunday - maybe we should take a short cruise on the bay side to run the engine a bit and more importantly clean the bottom of the boat (just moving through the water cleans the bottom).

Have I said this boat doesn't like to sit?

Another 'sitting' issue: the raw water circulation pump had a very slow leak. This pump is very similar to the circulation pump on the front of a car engine and needs replaced every so often. Drain the antifreeze, remove belts, remove 4 bolts and replace. So the pump is on order and all is ready to put back together when we return from CA. And so Steve spent yet another couple of hours 'down below' :-)

Sunday: time for the Super Bowl!! There was a gathering in the marina and an opportunity to gamble on the game. What could be better ? :-)

Playing Flip Cup or was it Cup Flip????

So we forked over our $40 for 8 squares. It's a fun investment even if we don't win as my thought was it would take the sting out of the Patriots winning yet another Super Bowl.

I mean really - did the Eagles have a chance?

As it turned out, we had the winner 9-3 at the end of the first quarter and the winner 2-2 at the end of the first half. Total of $160 in returns! Best part? The Eagles winning :-)

And a beautiful sunset to boot ....... what's not to love about living here ......

Meanwhile Steve's little engine that could - couldn't. This is a picture of the bucket he used to run the engine for a bit. All of the 'junk' is oil. Something  must be wrong, right?

Off to the repair shop again. But the mechanic said all is well - just has sat too long (one month) before running. So back it came and we'll see how that goes .....

For now though no dinghy, no engine, beautiful day, no problem. Go fishing with Flint and Leslie on Grace Full!


Result not too bad - a nice Bermuda Chub  and a nice Mangrove Snapper.

Not the best day fishing but still not a skunk :-)

And so we are off tomorrow. A quick stop and x-ray at the clinic to verify the thumb fusion is well healed and then off to Fort Lauderdale and Christmas in California!

Back in a week ......