No Wanna Iguana

May 2017

In Naples there were pelicans everywhere. There are many fewer pelicans in Marathon, but there are a couple of other creatures that are not my favorites.

There are these land crabs that dig these little holes that I could do without. Both the crabs and the holes. I never got a picture of the crabs, and I think we can both do without a picture of the holes.

And then there are the iguanas.

I'm told that they are descendants from pets that made their way into the wild. They are thriving here. I don't know why I don't like them. Maybe it was the old stop motion dinosaur movies when I was a kid where they would swap in a big lizard.

Some of them are pretty colors, but eewhh. I saw one up on its back legs drinking from a dripping water tap. I'm pretty sure the one in the parking lot was about to charge.

They are everywhere!

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The Breeze

May 2017

Since we had arrived at Marathon the wind had blown. Constantly. Hard. We asked people if it was always like this and they looked at us with this sad face. Then the wind stopped and we knew why. It was hot. Not warm, certainly not "it's a dry heat", but I can't focus on anything or do anything and I'm going to lose my mind hot.

When the wind was blowing our tarps were sending a constant blast of fresh air down below, and keeping the things in the sun, especially us, from feeling very hot at all. Once the wind stopped everything else did too.

Since we were not hooked up to shore power in the middle of the lagoon, the only way we could have air conditioning was to run the generator. Not very efficient, but could be worth it. It's considered bad form to have it running it all the time when your neighbors are not running generators, which was most of them. I started looking at slips in marinas.

Additional problem. Due to a peculiarity in how our boat is wired, the battery charger has no on switch. It comes on when the 120v power appears whether you like it or not. Those who know something about electricity should be assured that there is a big-ass fuse. I can also turn down the amp load on the charger.

In addition, our generator was just barely supporting the battery charger on full. Add something else to the load and it seemed to bring it down. More on this later. Since we were on a mooring our batteries were rarely full, and in fact seemed to be slowly winding down over the weeks. I think the recharge efficiency number being used is a little optimistic. In other words, if you take out 10 amp-hours of power, you need to put back 11 or so to make up for heat losses and such. OK, no one cares about this.

We have three maybe 6 inch fans but they were no replacement for a 15 knot wind. More fans would be nice, but the amp draw of a typical fan is surprisingly high. We found a high efficiency 12 inch fan. With a soaking on the sugar scoop barely acceptable.

I may have mentioned that Marathon is a small town. There is a movie theater, but it only shows one movie at one time each night. Except as we found out, on weekends there is a matinee at 2p, the hottest part of the day, as long as at least 8 people show up. There is actually a sign on the wall that says that. Into the Bob Narley taxi we went to sit in air conditioning for 3 hours. Didn't really care what they were showing, which was good because they were showing Pirates 39 or something. At least a couple dozen folks had the same idea.

After a few days the wind returned and we vowed to not bad mouth it again. I used to think, when I saw a picture like the one below of the harbor, oh how pretty. Now I think, it better not be over 80 degrees because there is not a breath of wind.

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Flipper

24 May 2017

Heather managed to squeeze one more thing into our anniversary, a visit to the Dolphin Research Center down the road. She had been thinking about it for a while, but was concerned about supporting an organization that wasn't treating the animals well.

They seemed to be on the up and up now, although they were pretty typical for their time back in the 50s. The animals are rescue animals or descendants of captured dolphins. The pen fences are laughably low, and are open to Florida Bay. They can jump the fences if they choose, and in fact when a major storm is imminent they are released, but return themselves. Other dolphins from the wild apparently come up to the pens to chat.

The animals participate at their discretion, as we observed when we were there.

They also had sea lions.

Heather ended up doing one of the dolphin interaction sessions, which were for as many as four people in a group. Since she was the only one signed up for that session, she got to do all the activities herself.

Interestingly, one of the things the trainers are working on are higher level commands. Instead of "do this" with a set response, the dolphins are learning more vague commands, like "that thing you just did, do it again".

It was a nice, small facility where you could see most everything that was going on in multiple shows and training sessions at the same time. Or just sit in the shade and watch the animals on a nice day.

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Happy Anniversary

17 May 2017

We flew from Phoenix to Orlando because Heather (aka Dan) had had a hankering to go to a theme park for a while. We never quite made it to Busch Gardens near Tampa, and we had been to Universal a couple of times in recent memory for Harry Potter world. Heather is still scarred from BlackFish so SeaWorld is out. Setting aside GatorWorld for now, that leaves Disney. It was close to our 32nd anniversary, so we decided to lump it all together.

I wanted to try and do all four parks in a day. Heather was skeptical, rightly so as it turned out. We started at the animal park. The Pandora ride and accompanying area was not open to the public for a couple more weeks but it was still pretty crowded. We went on the safari ride first.

We also got very close to a few giraffes, saw the lions, pretty much everything was still out because it was early and still pretty cool weather. Even so, it is a pretty amazing experience to pack into 10 or 15 minutes. We also went on the Expedition Everest train like coaster and the Dinosaur ride. To save time we took the secret between park bus  to the Magic Kingdom park. There we went on the Big Thunder Mountain coaster, Pirates, and we saw the afternoon parade because we couldn't escape it. We went on Space Mountain of course, but I may be getting a little too old for that. My back and neck popped in new ways that didn't hurt, but didn't sound great either. The air conditioning was nice. We went on Splash Mountain to cool off. We hadn't been on the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train before. It was very detailed but not that great a ride.

Back on the bus we go to Epcot. It was late afternoon by this time, and we did Soaring and Mission: Space (the wimpy one). Of course Heather had to open a pearl.

By this time it was dark and almost 9p, the closing time for the park. We made the mistake of sitting down to watch the fireworks show. By then I was tapped. It was a long slog out of the park, then waiting for a bus to take us back to the animal park. By the time we got back to our room it was about 11p, way past my usual bedtime.

In the morning we drove back to Marathon, stopping by a Miami Costco on the way. Someone had kindly bailed out our dingy about a week before, but it still had a few inches of water in it to be bailed before we could ride out to the boat, which was just the way we had left it.

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Back to Arizona

We headed back to AZ because Heather had some appointments scheduled, and, oh yeah, for Chelsea's graduation! She is finishing up a Masters in Criminal Justice this summer. She has all the classes but still needs to finish up her thesis. Since they don't have a graduation ceremony for those who finish in the summer, they have a choice of walking in May or waiting until December. Since Chelsea is supposed to be in Florida in December, now was the time.

We're very proud of her and how hard she has worked for this. I was even willing to wear pants for the first time in two months. I'm told the sticking your tongue out thing is from Gilmore girls. The picture with her boyfriend Travis doesn't really show just how tall he is.

Since our house is rented out now we did the AirBnB for the first time and ended staying in a very nice guest house north of Southern, coincidently just down from a couple of folks I used to work with. It was a little weird as an experience, but the place and the folks letting it were very nice, and the price was right.

We had almost finished moving out of the house and into one parking space in the garage after our last visit. We still had a side table mostly filled with crap we hadn't looked at in a decade, and the big closet downstairs. Got both of those sorted, donated, thinned and the remainder packed. Still haven't finished the hutch off of the kitchen because it contains a computer and monitor, printer, cable modem, router and such that they are still using. There's also a couple of pictures, most of which Chelsea is taking to Florida with her. Since almost all of the furniture is going when everyone moves out in the fall, we pretty much have our stuff thinned down to one parking space worth. When we come back we'll go through one more cycle of thinning, organizing and packing, and what'e left goes into a storage unit for a while.

Heather drove home for a few days to visit with her mother and extended family. I drove up the hill to have dinner with the Prescott Ruffners on the day after Mother's Day. We had a nice dinner at the Hassayampa across from the Elks theater. I stayed the night at my mother's house, maybe for the first time since I left town for Tucson in 1980. We had breakfast the next day at the St. Michaels hotel at the end of Whiskey Row. I remember sneaking into the bar that was downstairs when I was 15, facilitated by my fast-talking girlfriend of 17, to listen to a drummer. It seemed important at the time.

Next time we're in Arizona we'll have one more pass at thinning out our possessions and the remainder will go to a storage unit, the smaller the better. We're selling the convertible to Heather's brother Rex, and driving the Land Cruiser to Florida, hauling a trailer full of Chelsea's stuff to Tallahassee.

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No Cal

1st Week Of May 2017

We had one of our trips back home scheduled and we tagged on a side trip to see Madi and Koji in San Jose first. We haven't seen them since the move in January. We drove up to Ft. Lauderdale the day before our flight and porked on cuban food. Our flight from FtL was delayed by weather, then once we were second in line to take off a light for the engine went off, so back to the gate we went. It was corrected fairly quickly, but we had to get back in line, where there were more delays due to the storms passing over FtL, one after another.

Against my better judgement we had a connection in Baltimore, which we missed by hours. There were some more weather issues but they finally they put us on a flight to Denver, which is sort of closer to San Jose. In Denver we waited some more but caught the last flight out and arrived in San Jose about midnight. So much for having dinner with Madi and Koji that night. Some folks must have complained and we ended up with a couple of $100 vouchers a few days later.

We were able to stay in the spare bedroom at Madi and Koji's which was very nice. They had done a great job settling in and nesting since January. On Saturday we drove up to San Francisco and visited the Fisherman's Wharf area. It was the nicest weather I've ever experienced there, and the only time we have visited without buying an umbrella or poncho or sweatshirt or even a jacket. We ate the obligatory clam chowder in a bread bowl and bags of taffy.

That night we had dinner with Koji's family. His parents and sister were delightful and we had a great time.

The next day we went the opposite direction to Monterey Bay. 

Madi got to see the sea otters, her favorite, in the tank and in the wild. A fine time was had by all.

On the way back to San Jose we went to a farm Koji remembered visiting as a kid. We ate various types of pie with ice cream and had to bring one back with us. We had very good but overpriced pizza that night and I was only able to eat one slice of the pie, considerately leaving the butter knife I used to slice the pie in the box for the next person. Unfortunately there was no next person. This became a problem when Heather tried to take the pie thru airport security the next morning. Paraphrasing some movie, she screwed up - she trusted me.  After Heather's mug shots we were allowed to fly to Phoenix.

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Shade

Since it is summer in Florida and we are largely without air conditioning away from the dock, shade for the boat became a priority. I spent a couple of days perusing the net and decided not to go with boat specific options which can be hundreds of dollars if not over a grand. I ended up with a few smallish white tarps held down with bungees. The one on the bow and the two in the middle are off the shelf. They've held up nicely even in 25-30+ knot gusts without flapping.

I added two more along the sides of the cockpit for shade and a little more privacy. They were cut from the sides of a fourth tarp. The cut edge was seamed by a local sailmaker conveniently named Stitch. The highly technical grommet installation along the cut edge I saved for myself, and managed to not hammer any appendages.

All in all a good addition for very little money. The forward shade has the additional bonuses of funneling wind to the forward three hatches, and even keeps the rain out of the forward cabin hatches if the wind isn't blowing too hard. And I can close the hatches from inside the boat without having to go up top and disconnect anything, which was a weak point of a similar wind scoop that came with the boat. The mid and cockpit tarps are usually edge on to the wind so don't block much of the breeze. Between the shade and spraying off with cool water on the sugar scoop the hottest part of the afternoon is tolerable as long as you're not doing much, which works out just fine.

I had Stitch put together an additional pair of shades for along the cockpit but made out of shadecloth, but I haven't tried those out yet since the tarps have worked out so well.

Energy Independence

End of April, first week of May 2017

We have been spending much more time on the hook, anchor or mooring, than I had expected this soon. We've been on a mooring at Marathon for two months now: it's cheap, we have more privacy and the air flow is better. When we are at a marina we have the world's largest extension cord to give us (almost) everything we have come to expect power wise on shore, but when away from the dock, and not traveling most days, electrical power use and generation is a daily issue.

The previous owner had these 75 watt solar panels that butterfly off the rails on either side of the cockpit. Not the best place for them, and we had tried to tear them off during several unplanned docking maneuvers, but until we get an arch about the best we can do location wise. Talking with Jason the diesel mechanic while getting our engine in shape inspired me to take the plunge, buy some new panels and reduce our dependence on running the generator, which was running over two hours some days.

The controller for the old panels was a good one and actually could handle about 360 watts. Back when the old panels were bought I would guess that they were $6-8 per watt, so well over a grand for two light bulbs worth. In perusing Ebay under Jason's direction I found two 160 watt panels for just over $300, less than a buck a watt, that were slightly wider and longer but would still fit in the same spot with some modifications. A little more than half the difference in power was from increased area, but much of it was from increased efficiency achieved over the years.

I was annoyed to find that the brackets that hold the panels to the rails and allow them to rotate were more than the solar panels, and we should be doing the arch within a year or so, which meant this was a temporary fix. I needed about a six inch extension for the 2" wide, 1/4" thick aluminum bars that hold the panels. Bar this big was not in stock on the island, and I could only find 1" wide bar about 30 miles away,  so I spliced that on with 1/8" bar, relocating the pivot points to keep the panels just above the deck when vertical. I'm not the handiest guy, and a drill press really would have been nice, but the splices are definitely stronger than the panel. That takes care of the mechanical installation, which just leaves electrical.

The electrical pass through connectors linking the panels on the outside of the boat to the controller on the inside are in many ways weak links. When the panels are banging there should be over 8 amps passing thru each one, which is a lot for something that  also needs to be weather and waterproof. I reluctantly went with the same design as was already there even though I had damaged one connector by stepping on it accidentally during one of the previously mentioned unplanned docking maneuvers.

The side I had stepped on was fine electrically, and I was able to figure out which pins did what and reproduce that with the new connectors, but the other side was a mystery because nothing indicated which pin did what. I  finally just took the whole thing apart and found a big ball of corrosion on the back of the boatside half of the connector. In all likelihood that panel was delivering no power at all, which (partially) explains why my power usage estimates never worked.

With both sides now generating more than twice as much power we are within 10-20 amp hours of our daily electrical needs from the new panels on a sunny day. Instead of running the generator for a couple hours a day, we can run it for an hour every three days or so. We need to do this anyway for a few minutes to make hot water, so this dramatically reduces the urgency of watching every watt.

Jason reviewed my installation and had another suggestion. Since the connectors are always a weak link, he bolted and bonded/sealed two sections of brass threaded rod thru the hull. Rings on the ends of the positive and negative wires are installed onto these, inside and outside the boat. Simple and bulletproof for low voltage (<17 volts). I bought the brass threaded rod and nuts, but that project is for another day.

Key West

22 April '17

It didn't seem like we were going to get the rest of the way to Key West on our boat anytime soon, and we had the itch to go, so we rented a car and drove. We dropped by our niece Faith's work where she is training to be a manager. She lived with us for a year, and with our youngest daughter for a couple more. It was great to see her and she is doing well.

It was a rainy day there, but that was at least cooler than it had been. We did the usual touristy things, and I feel strongly about supporting any locale that allows public drinking. KW is always a fun place to visit.

We didn't feel like waiting in line at the southernmost marker so we snuck in from the side. I took the picture myself. I believe the kids call it a selfie. When I first heard the term I assumed it meant something else. In any case, it's my first one, the picture, not the... never mind.

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Outdoor Shower

As a part of shimmying down the aft lazerette to install the new electric diesel fuel pump for the engine, the sunrotted fixtures for the shower on the sugar scoop finally expired. After some internet searching I was able to find replacement bits of plastic for only $50 plus shipping. Boat stuff is always more expensive.

After installation the shower on the back of the boat is functional again. Rinsing off after getting back on the boat or showering outdoors is now possible again, assuming privacy and/or public nudity norms are observed. It's a good way to cool off in the middle of the afternoon. The photo is Boot Key Harbor here in Marathon, taken from the boat.

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Sunset Grill

For only a few months Heather had been trying to get me a grill for the boat. I think it was originally a Xmas present. Sure, to her it seems like a simple thing, but there were important issues to be resolved, like sizes, fuel sources, insulated lids that allowed the grill to also be used as an oven, and mounting options that allowed the grill to be conveniently used without setting the boat on fire. Also, I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted.

I kept checking on this during all my West Marine visits on the dinghy registration issue, and around Tax Day I finally pulled the trigger. It mounted nicely on a support bar on the side of the sugar scoop so I can stand, sit, and put things down. If the boat is on the hook it should face the wind and the smoke should immediately blow aft.

This increases the number of things I am competent to cook for dinner several fold.

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Turtle Hospital

21 April 2017

Somehow in the midst of all this excitement Heather had time to visit the Turtle Hospital across the street. Ask her about it and she'll tell you about things like turtles getting "bubble butt".

I think it meant something different in high school.

Dinghy Registration

Since getting the dinghy last October we really hadn't stayed in one place long enough to worry much about registering it. Some of the states we had been in didn't even require registration, but at some dinghy docks she looked a little naked without some sort of numbers on her. We've now stayed long enough in Florida that we need to register her, so I started down that path between buying starters for the engine.

Given that it's all of 10 feet long when inflated, has a patchwork plywood floor, and weighs less than I did in junior high I didn't think this could be a big deal. I called to find the tax collectors office, walked there, took a number and waited my turn. When I got to the front of the line I was informed by a woman behind the counter that while there was one office, there were two locations, and I was at the wrong one. I walked down the street to the other location of the same office, and in a Monty Python touch the same woman was behind this counter. I'm hoping she drove.

Now that I was in the correct location for the same office she was free to inform me that I did not the required documentation. Since it had never been registered before I needed something called a "Manufacturer's Statement of Origin", something like a birth certificate for a boat. I had not received one with the boat when I received it in Texas, probably because I didn't need one in Texas. 

Now started the fire drill of obtaining this certificate, with a home address in Arizona, for a boat that we had ordered while in Maryland, had delivered in Texas, and had since moved through Louisiana and Alabama, and had now been in Florida a teensy bit past the 90 days allowed. What could go wrong?

Hijinks ensued, but after a little more than a week of back and forth with the West Marine office in California I finally had my MSO, and back to the office with two locations I went. Since I had apparently not suffered enough we went round and round on whether the MSO was valid, which eventually turned on whether the dinghy was West Marine branded, regardless of who had made it and where. Once that was settled I had my dinghy registration.

Radar Love

Week of April 10th

One of the things on our fixit list was the works then doesn't then works again radar. It had been a blessing when crossing from the panhandle to Tarpon Springs in the fog. But it wouldn't spark up again when we left Naples. The second mechanic, Jason, was an electronics guy in a previous life and he agreed to take a look.

I hooked up the display box at the binnacle and plugged it in. The receiver seemed fine but there were no returns on the screen despite being surrounded by them in the lagoon. Jason looked up the mast at the radar dome. After a double take he said that he saw a problem.

The top of the radar dome was gone. The gasket between the dome and the base was hanging to one side and the transmitter inside could be seen from the side. The storm the night before must have taken the top of the dome off, but in all likelihood the problems started long before.

The radar didn't work after we first bought the boat. I honestly don't remember trying it during the survey since it wasn't included on the list of equipment. I'm thinking now maybe that was intentional rather than an oversight. We hooked it up again later thinking maybe we had done something wrong and it worked, and continued to work until Naples. The thinking is that the dome was loose and/or leaking, but not in an obvious way when the surveyor went up the mast last Spring. It finally was loose enough to fly off in the recent storm, which had 50mph+ gusts reported nearly.

Weirdly enough Jason had the same radar on his boat, but the display box didn't work on his. We agreed than one of us should buy the working half of the other's radar.