Cousins

One of the highlights of our winter vacation so far was seeing my cousin Barb and her husband Lynn . We finally got to meet her son John and his wife Michelle. Their kids range from 6 - 12 and were so much fun to meet . Such a nice family.We arrived at John and Michelle's gated community around 4:00. Thank goodness I brought some photo I.D. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to get in.

So their house is on a golf coarse. It's a beautiful home in a great location.

We hung out in the yard with a glass of wine for a while. I love these Florida style homes.

John took the kids out onto the golf coarse to throw the Frisbee. It must be great living on a golf coarse.

  I got Daisy from the truck to meet her new cousins.

She had a great time once she was introduced. I liked that she got to be with a couple of little dogs that were happy to play with her. We think she is a little lonely these days. She must be missing Sweet pea.

I love my cousin. She has to be the sweetest woman on this planet. It was great seeing her again. 

This sort of picture never gets old in my family. As soon as I lifted my hand off her shoulder she sighed and said  "Go ahead. Get your rabbit ear picture."  Hahaha.

Now Barb had her camera out and I still don't know why she took this picture of my dog. Nice.

American Thanksgiving 2013

We were invited over to Rose's boat for thanksgiving dinner tonight. We knew Charlie and Rose in Winnipeg during our Manitoba Yacht Club days.  Charlie has passed on recently but Rose is being as strong as one can expect at this time . She put together a wonderful thanksgiving dinner for five.It was a lovely evening . We were happy to have been invited.

Ruth got a few moments of quiet before everyone came. It was nice to spend a few minutes with Rose before Bruce and Heather showed up and we all got noisy.

Nothing quite like a great Traditional American Thanksgiving dinner on the water.

Tuesday In The Hull

So this is where I have been living for 3 of the last 6 days. It's not so bad. It's warm and quiet. The bonding with the electrician is finished. Such an important thing to have operating perfectly in salt water and what surprises me is that many of the boaters I talk to ignore it. They either don't know about it or feel that is doesn't matter all that much. SURPRISE . It can sink your boat in about 6 months if not kept under control. IN TUNE is electronically perfect now. We ended up using 110 feet of bonding wire. It was an interesting job to do. The next expensive project now is to put on the new risers I just had manufactured in Ft. Lauderdale and install the water coolers we just had rebuilt. The mechanic came this morning and spent the day working here in my office. Nice environment if you are 2.5 ft. tall. Unfortunately everyone I know is a little taller than that.

I asked him to change all the hose clamps on all the water & exhaust lines while he was at it. The exhaust was double clamped in all places and there were some worn looking clamps. The boat is 14 years old and they are original clamps. Once again this can cause a serious problem when crossing the Atlantic to the Bahamas. The cooling water runs thru these lines as well as the exhaust. Much to his unhappiness he agreed to change all these clamps. Thank goodness. When he got around the bends to the unseen clamps this is what he found. Rusted and broken. Salt water is a killer.

It is a very big job. We're glad we decided to have him do it. At one point I came down stairs into the engine room and at first I was wondering if he had left . I couldn't see him anywhere .Then I saw his foot sticking out of the tiniest spot between the motor and exhaust. 

He is Cuban and is about 38 years old. Great work ethic , and built like a fire hydrant. He was training for the olympics as a weight lifter but developed a problem with one of his knees. Now he just works out for fun but it sounds like he is very dedicated to the sport. I can't stop staring at his arms when he is working on the motors. Huge and really defined. I have to admire his dedication to what he must love doing. He seems like a very kind and gentle man. This life sure is fun and also full of interesting people . 

Now for the funny picture of the day. The dock master " R1" came and got me this afternoon saying I had to see what was sailing past the marina. I went and grabbed my camera. You couldn't pay me to climb into this boat. Looks like something out of a Disney show. It didn't look safe to us. There are sharks around this marina. I wonder if she knows that?

It Was A Busy Sunday

I went to Lowe's and bought a deep freeze for the boat. Meat is expensive in the Bahamas and we both are wondering about the quality of the meat there. Ruth and Heather were in Costco on Saturday when they saw a pallet of frozen turkey's with the tag saying Marsh Harbour , Abacos , Bahamas on it. That is where we are going. Ruth went and pressed her finger into a turkey to see if it was frozen and her finger sunk one inch into the bird. It was well on its way to being thawed. This gave us extra incentive to take our own meat across the Atlantic. I had to take the hinges off to get it into the downstairs by the kitchen. I understand that a freezer like this sells for around $500. in the Bahamas so we will likely sell it over there before we come back to the U.S.  That and the bikes.

I hired Ben to wax the boat before we head to the Bahamas. He figures it will take him about 5-6 days to get it done. Not something I wanted to do.

My First Boating Boo Boo

So I'm busy helping the electrician yesterday which was fun. I also cut about $1000. off the bill because  I ran for whatever he needed to do the job. To do the bonding on the boat he had to get into the most awkward nooks and crannies behind and under the motor. He sometimes took up to 5 minutes to get into position. Then he would need a number of wrenches , cutters , wires  and clips to bond that location. He would tell me what he needed as he needed it and I would get the item and pass it in to him. Most of the time he wouldn't even be able to stretch his arm  out to me to grab the item. I would have to partly lay on him and snake the item up into his working hand. I now understand why it is so time consuming and slow doing this job. Around mid morning I had to run upstairs in the boat to grab a tray of connections for him. As I ran down the stairs I thought I was on the bottom step but I was still 2 stairs from the bottom. I tripped and crumbled to the ground. I honestly thought that I had broken my Tibia again but luckily it is just a sprained knee. This is my Friday night  & Saturday morning.

I broke my Tibia in two places 3 years ago skiing and refracted that break 2 years ago on my motorcycle. I was also slated to have an operation on my knee because of all the damage done to it during my earlier misfortune until my friend (Dr. Marcus Thiel) introduced me to his Lazer clinic and fixed my knee to almost new condition. It feels like it did before he did those 8 sessions 2 years ago. I wish he was here now. Lesson learned is never run on a boat and look to see where you are going. Hopefully I'll be up and running by Monday.

Our Electrician Came Today

Today we are introducing a very important safety asset to our boat under the advisement of out daughter who was a Marine Engineer with the Canadian Coast Guard for 10 years. She couldn't believe we didn't have high water alarms wired into the hull. I agreed with her after we had that scare last week with the water rising in that one bulkhead. I bought all the pumps and switches the other day and was shopping for an alarm to activate if it got too high until I met Yves from Trinity Electric. He had me return all I had bought and then he sold me these alarm floats. A little more expensive but better. They are the same switches that the U.S. coast Guard use in their boats.

If the water goes part way up the glass tube it activates the bilge pumps but if the water gets close to the top of the glass tube that means the bilge pump can't keep up and the alarm goes off. All 5 bilge pumps are wired to a central alarm panel which we installed at the entrance to the forward state room. Here Yves is cutting a hole in the wall for the panel with the coolest saw I have ever seem.

Sorry this picture is so blurred. The stern bilge pump is down about 3 feet and off set from the access panel between the air conditioning pumps. I learnt a few new French words today.

When finished I couldn't help thinking that it was such a professional job it must have been done by the boat gnomes who run around the hull doing jobs in the tight spaces while we sleep.

We Have New Electronics

We've been waiting for this. I didn't like my Raymarine Radar or chartplotter so I upgraded.  

If we are going across the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic to the Bahamas We want the best equipment possible. Now we have it. We will be installing a new Garmin Radar over the next few days.

As well as a new Garmin Chartplotter and depth finder. I may switch out my Raymarine Auto Pilot with Garmin but that will be later. We have so many jobs on the go right now I can't even consider another project. Today's job was to remove the old Raymarine Radar dish without sliding off the roof. It may not look high but it is 18.9 feet to the water and that is high for a guy who doesn't love heights.

I don't know why I held up this pair of pliers when Ruth took my picture cuz I wasn't even using them.

We Saw Lots Today

We started our day at The Florida Oceanographic Coastal Centre. 

It is walking distance from our Marina. We were meeting our friends Bob and Anne at the centre.

They were a little late and the sting rays were being fed. We didn't want to miss that so we went ahead to watch. We didn't realize that we were going to be allowed to feed them. First we washed our hands and arms before the trainers would give us the food. It was pieces of squid. Ruth went first. I didn't want to do it.

But I did. I wasn't listening to the instructions properly and held on to the squid too tightly. The stingray did a second pass because I didn't let go on the first and this time instead of just sucking the squid up from my fingers if chewed my fingers with its mouth hole. Fortunately their powerful grinders are set back far enough in their mouth that it didn't bother me.

Success . I still have all my didgets.

Next  we had a lesson on Sea Turtles. There are only 5 different types in the world and I think she said 4 of them are found in florida. The leather back can grow up to around 12 feet long and weigh over 1000 pounds.  It was very interesting.

As soon as the turtle session was over they started to feed the game fish. I found this the most interesting.There was a huge variety of types in this pond and they all gathered at feeding time around one end. We learnt about their different breeds and feeding habits before they fed them. Everything was calm before they threw in the food.

But it turned into a frothy pool as the food hit the water.

There were 3 Nurse Sharks swimming around before the feeding.  They freak me out. They call them Nurse sharks because when they go to eat anything they make a sucking noise like a baby nursing.

The marine biologist who fed the fish kept dropping food straight down for the sharks. The bursts of sucking noises were so loud you would think they were running them thru a speaker system. Apparently the power of their suction is equivalent to 20 over powered vacuum cleaners. Not something you can pull away from even if you wanted to. Like I said , it Freaked me out.

Feeding time was over and everything went back to being calm.

The last part of our education was a nature walk. George here is the volunteer who was in charge. His paying job is as an Alligator hunter for the state. There are four of them here. If you have a problem with an Alligator in this area you will have a 25% chance he will come out to catch it. He told us how he cooks them and suggested where they serve goof Alligator in Stuart. We went there for a late lunch and it was very good. The mosquitos were terrible on his nature walk so I couldn't wait to see it over.

We went for lunch and had Alligator , Ribs and beer. What a great lunch. We laughed lots. After lunch we drove around in our friends back seat getting a tour of some really interesting neighbourhoods. They introduced us to our new favourite hang out. It's a Restaurant / Bar that was started in the early 1900's and was a hang out for people like Jackie Gleason , Frank Sinatra , Jack Bennie and all the stars of that time. It was a beautiful place. It has been kept in the same condition as it wis 80 years ago. Very cool.

This is going to be out new happy hour place. Anne and Ruth on the deck.

Rob slid in with me and Anne on the deck.

 The bar feels  like the Manitoba Yacht when we belonged to it 30 years ago. Home at last.

The best part of the day was learning that there are people / organizations trying to take care of our oceans and the Animals that are living in them . Humans need to smarten up if we want to have the oceans living for our kids and grand kids.

The Sunset here at the Marriott Marina is gorgeous tonight.

It's A Busy Day On The Boat

I ordered new running lamps from West Marine and they came in this morning.I went and got them at noon . When I came back to the boat I set to the install. Unfortunately the access to the bolts which need to be loosened are in a very small crawl space. 

I was in there yesterday and feared I may get stuck but I did manage to  make it back out. 

 Ruth could hardly believe I made it into that small hole so she took a picture of me as I passed into the obis today.

This is one time I wished I was a little guy.

 There . I made it out again.

The new lamps look great. The old one's were white and one was cracked. I like the black.