Friday, February 22, 2019

Friday February 22: Celebrating 34 Years of a Gift of Love :-)


1st year celebration - Feb. 22, 1986.
Funny how February 22 comes every year. And every year I am again reminded of how fortunate I am to have 4 wonderful brothers.

But especially fortunate that two of them had the necessary blood type to consider giving me one of their kidneys when in 1985 mine were failing.

I'm not sure if they drew straws or played rock, scissors, paper or if winning was donating or losing was donating but both Pat and Tom were there and willing.

Tom and I sitting near Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies.






The rest is history though. Tom (1 1/2 years older than me) ended up giving me a chance to have a normal life - allowing Steve and I to be able to live our nomadic life on the boat that we are enjoying today.














At left is a picture of the 5 of us from several years ago! I know - you're thinking what a motley crew :-)

Well, it was apple butter making at the Loudonville fair after all. But we all clean up quite nicely as can be seen below as we went all out at nephew Pete's (Pat's son) wedding!


We're all cleaned up :-) Pat (the groom's father) was in a tux and cleaned up well also. Just not available for the picture :-)


And so it's now been 34 years ago. Soon I will have lived with Tom's kidney longer than I lived with my own. Thank you Tom for your continuing gift of love :-) - and to Pat for the backup - and to Warren and Dick for being willing but off the hook with the wrong blood type :-)

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Thursday February 21: Anchoring out with a Spectacular Sunset



The low winds prompted another trip out for a couple of nights - not far. Like 10 miles so we could anchor near East Bahia Honda key. By the time the sun set last Friday, there was barely a ripple in the water.



This had to be one of the best sunsets we've ever seen in the 10 years we've been doing this! We were anchored with Randy and Cindy on Love You More. They were anchored 30 yards east of us and were taking pictures as fast as we were as the sun set in the west.

Which was fun because they sent a number of pictures that included Yesterday's Dream in the foreground of this spectacular sight!

Thanks Cindy for the picture at right :-)

The day itself was nice - a bit of kayaking, Steve trying his hand at fishing (notice no catching - just fishing :-) ) and a dinghy trip to Love You More for adult beverages at 5 pm. I'm thinking is was technically not docktails because we had no dock, right?




I was on the water in my kayak first with Steve following shortly. He was kind enough to blow up mine!!

Destination was the nearby shoreline of East Bahia Honda key. Like almost all of the mangrove islands on the bay side of the lower keys, it is primarily made up of a combination of red, white and black mangroves.


Also like most of the bayside mangrove islands, East Bahia Honda was destroyed by Irma. There is very little left that is growing even after a year and a half.

There is some question about whether or not the mangroves will come back and how long it might take. From what we can see, there has been very little change over the past year.





There are still literally thousands of cormorants, pelican, egrets and even osprey that make their homes here. And they do not like kayakers that come anywhere close to the island! Fortunately all they do is fly away :-) PS: that is NOT a line from my kayak tied to Steve's - it's really hard to sneak up and tie it on :-)

When all of these birds get worked up, it sounds like Jurassic Park!

These pictures give a good idea of the devastation of the island.



After a very peaceful night (I didn't even bother with the anchor alarm it was so calm), Steve was up early to a sunrise that was almost as good as the sunset was the night before!

Coffee on the flybridge is pretty hard to beat :-)  

It was so nice we just stayed where we were for a second night! I'm thinking it just doesn't take much to please us anymore .....

Just a normal sunset though Saturday night. Guess we shouldn't expect a super great one every night, right?


As we traveled back on Sunday, Steve had spotted what appeared to me to be just another crab pot but it was very shiny. Steve said it was a balloon.

And so it was! Guess there have to be SOME times when he's not wrong :-)

Anyway, we stopped and he fished it out of the water - it was for Valentine's Day. Which is nice but the sea turtles see a balloon floating and are fooled into thinking it is a jellyfish. 

Favorite food of sea turtles so they eat the balloon which is not a good thing. It's enough to kill the turtle .....




A fun thing he caught was a nice Spanish mackerel - perfect size for appetizers at docktail time :-)









Paul and Miriam left - old friends - both literally and figuratively!!
Yesterday we had an opportunity to visit with friends whom we haven't seen for a couple of years - Paul and Miriam. We first met them when we moved from Akron to Galion, Ohio. This was in 1976 when Steve took his first administrative job - joining Paul as assistant principals at Galion High School.

 Throughout the years we've kept in touch as we both moved around - staying mostly in northern Ohio.

Our kids grew up together and we grew old together :-) So many shared memories - including many of being on vacation in the Keys, renting and living on a boat while diving the Keys' reefs so familiar to us now so many years later.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Thursday February 14: Happy Valentine's Day!!


Steve brought a nice surprise home after his last trip out today - a very nice red rose - how sweet of him :-)

It is shocking to me that February is half over already! Soon it will be time to figure out where we go next. The current plan is to head over to the Bahamas in late March - early April.

So to that end, Steve has been working double time getting the boat and all of it's systems ready for extended travel.


That means a great deal of time spend in the basement:-) And a lot of time on Amazon - picking up spare parts, pumps and other miscellaneous 'just in case' things.

We'll be traveling with Randy and Cindy on Love You More which makes it nice. Having a buddy boat gives a great deal of piece of mind!









Last week the Turtle Hospital released a loggerhead turtle back into the ocean - fun to see! It's a big event (even Marco Rubio came for it!) and drew quite a sizable crowd to Sombrero Beach.

It's nice because they give everyone a chance to see and 'pet' the turtle - with explicit instructions to keep their hands away from the turtles mouth!!

It was nice to finally be able to see one released - usually we're reading about it after the fact!

The weather is perfect for the next few days so once again we'll head out for a few days. We were told about an area we've not been to before so it should be fun. Supposed to be lots of sand bars, birds, lobsters (Steve may try his hand at catching!), horseshoe crabs and other critters.

A report back after we return!

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Wednesday Feb 6: Where to Begin?


Today: 8 new knuckles and a screw fused in each thumb!
Like new hands - what an amazing thing :-)
Probably the best place to begin is at the end. We returned from a trip back to the Cleveland Clinic in Coral Springs today after seeing Dr. Friedman for what we thought would be the last visit.

Turns out he wants one last x-ray to verify the thumb fusion on the right hand has totally finished healing. In the meantime he ok'd me to stop wearing the splint that has been my main accessory since December :-)

But light duty only he said. Steve is taking that to mean doing dishes is fine!!

March 2017: Left hand with thumb and 1 working finger. Right
hand with 4 new knuckles but still a bad thumb

Dec 2016: Both hands had a working
thumb and 1 working finger

It's been an interesting trip - starting in Jan 2017 and soon to be ending in March 2019!

The award for the most support through out this 2 year long process goes of course to Steve. I never heard even a hint of displeasure at having to tie my shoes, do the cooking AND cleaning up the dishes, helping me get dressed when needed, making the 2 1/2 drives to the Clinic for surgeries or checkups, the hour drives to Key West for the hand therapy and basically making the care of this boat and Guppy into a one person job - his.

So that's the end of the story. Backing up a few days: we were FINALLY able to head out for a couple of days to anchor out and enjoy the best weather of the past month.

You know it's cold when Steve had his knitted socks (gift from daughter Wendy) along with a heater up on the flybridge with all of the plasic up!

It was quite a few nights this past month that drove us to the enclosed flybridge for docktails as this was the coldest, windiest Jan ever!

But finally, we were able to enjoy the sunny, calm mid to high seventies for a few days on the bayside.


After leaving Saturday about noon, we were about 5 miles from Banana Bay when the dolphins showed up! There were four of them having fun in the bow wave or in the wave along either side of the boat.

Steve saw what must have been a baby as they were in the very front of the boat.

We continued to travel west to the selected anchorage of Bahia Honda.

Randy and Cindy arrived first (thanks for the picture!!) and found the "sand bar" which was already several inches under water.

Dennis and Lois on Mystified joined us for the overnight as well. Everyone was on the sand bar at one point or another even though the longer we spend on the sand bar the more in the water we were! Umbrellas came out as the day wore on and the sun was really strong.

Randy, Cindy, Gigit and Cricket arrive for docktails.

The day was finished off on Yesterday's Dream flybridge as docktails started on time just after 5 pm.

Wind was predicted to be very low overnight - which it was! So peaceful and being more away from the light pollution of Marathon made the stars more visible than we've seen in quite some time.







The morning was so peaceful ....

And off they went to go fishing under the bridge! Steve, Cindy and Lois were after whatever they could catch! It was so nice being anchored so close to the highway bridge near the state park.


It was a good day for fishing as it turned out! Two Porgies, excellent eating, a Mangrove snapper and 3 grunts. All are very tasty for eating and with the electric knife, Steve has become very proficient cleaning them quickly!


Sunday the anchor was up and off we went to the docks at Bahia Honda State Park - it was, after all, Superbowl night and we needed to be tied up in order to watch the game.

We lowered our mast but Randy and Cindy thought they would be fine. So we carefully monitored their progress under the bridge - no problem with clearance!!

The super bowl was a dud as far as we thought. Just not terribly interesting but we had splurged with our eating habits and had a pizza :-)  All was good ....

Hurricane Irma in Sept 2017 really devastated this area. The marina never even opened last year and the grounds took a huge hit.

Steve went to a ranger talk where the woman (who has been at this park 18 years) talked about the impact being greater than any other hurricane that has come through in that time.

The ocean side beach and it's onshore mangroves were simply gone. Whether the mangroves will begin growing again is unknown.






The beach on the ocean side was covered with sea grass and a sign nearby explained why.

The ranger had also explained why the seagrass is so important to the area along the shore returning to it's previous state.



We've had lots of manatee visitors to the marina this winter - seems like more than usual but probably not!


There were a number of fishing trips from the marina to the seven-mile bridge. Steve and Cindy were headed out this day - can't remember if this was a good day or not but for the most part, the trips were successful!




When Steve wasn't fishing this month, he was working on a couple of soft spots on the deck. It's a very time consuming process since each layer of fiberglass has to harden before being able to add the next layer.

Eventually the layers are built up enough to be level with the rest of the deck.



These places on the deck will be finished off using raptor truck-bedliner - the end result will look great! And won't leak :-)













Coolest fish caught this past month? A hogfish caught by Cindy. Excellent to eat but sadly not big enough so back it went :-)