Friday

January 13th, 2017

Has the boat yard called yet?

Yes

Joe stopped over this morning and said that he thinks they can do the work in one day.... 

Plus we'll be replacing dripless seals on both shafts with spares placed on both drive shafts in case it starts leaking again, that way you don't have to pull the boat to switch in a new one again...

Thats' What I'm Talking About!

So now we have to wait for an estimate and determine a day to drop off the boat...

On another note:

MarathonMarina had a Dinghy Run...

Here's Jane and Patrick who put this together...

Guess where there from....Green Bay, Wisconsin and have lived down here for 3 years know...

Gas prices are up...  $3.97 a gallon for gas...

We passed this marina during the dinghy run...

Interesting boat...

Another Tiki Bar to explore...

This is the Marathon Mooring field...just part of it...

It's hard to see but they have around 200 mooring balls and people on the waiting list...

see how lucky we where to get a slip at a marina!!!

This was taken at Sombrero Beach, our final dingy destination with some of the others...

Hey, how did Joell get in the picture?

more of the group....all super folks...

especially the guy on the left :-)

The girls trying to show off their legs....nice!

heading back...

Joell ran out to the front of our boat to take this shot....

Not a bad view from our boat here in the Florida Keys...

Ok Joell, you can stop taking pictures of the sunset now...

I think she used up all the film...(Mike took most of the pictures out.  I had a lot more showing progression of the sunset)😁

It's Friday and the produce guy comes from 10 am to 11 am...  lots of nice locally grown goodies...

Produce Sky View...  only in the keys...

Nice the way he hangs crates right off of the truck...

Has the boat yard called yet?

NO

But this has given me some time to contact Silverton's Owners Group and get a lot of great responses..

One fellow asked for some pictures and because of this we found something...

Above picture is Port side looking back...  What you see is the rudder shaft at the very top, the seal attached to the big nut and below is the "jam" nut...see pic below...

Again, you see the Starboard rudder shaft, the seal connected to the large nut and the "jam" nut...

So what's different....  Jam nuts are supposed to be jammed up against another nut like in the lower picture...

We'll have to see if it leaks while underway, but I've loosened both jam nuts (one was loose already of course), tightened down the large nut with the seal above it and then retightened the jam nuts...  This is the least of our worries, because we don't have much water coming in here...  Another owner of SOC suggested that by what he see's it might not be the rudder seals...he said look at all the mildew above both rudder shafts...if water came in the rudder seals it would run down, not up...so I'll look for water getting in somewhere else... by the way, there was mildew all around the rudder shafts...you don't see it now because I've cleaned it up as far back as I can reach...

 It's my port propeller shaft that's leaking for sure...although we had a suggestion for that too....maybe tomorrow I'll crawl back down into the hole... who knew I was a 6'4" contortionist!

Time for a dip in the pool :-)

Monday

January 9th, 2017

The boat yard said they'd call today but didn't...

Stopped by the boat yard and their pushing us off due to a lack of tech's..

Hopefully by the end of the week they'll call...

Here's our Tides Marine Dripless Shaft Seal that's not dripless anymore... 

This is where the sea water comes in, right by the drive shaft...

These photo's are for my buddy Tim (of Tim and Michell at SSYC)

Tim loves animal pictures so I thought I put a couple in here just for him...

Tim especially likes birds...(yes, I'm just kidding around with Tim)

The escort for Wounded Warriors riding there bicycles through Marathon to Key West!

Here they come....

Brought tears to our eyes watching these men and women who put their lives on the line and got hurt doing so!

A charter boat had just come in...

Pretty strange looking fish!!!

A @$%! load of crab pots...

These darn crab pot floats are in the thousands out in the Gulf and you have to drive between them for ever it seems...

Porkys BBQ place...

Joell had BBQ Chicken and I had pulled pork...

This is Dawn our great bartender at the LIGHTHOUSE GRILL located at Faro Blanco Marina and Resort...

Another transplant from the Midwest....Michigan!

This is where they care for the sea turtles...

A wall turtle...

Turtle Skeleton...

Another turtle on the wall...

Most of the turtles are alive at the hospital😀

Overlooking the pool here at Marathon Marina, waiting for the weekend storms to come in...

The pool at Marathon Marina is a salt water pool...very nice and not as salty as the Gulf or ocean...We have heard they are switching many of the pools in Florida over to saltwater.  It is supposed to eliminate adding all the chemicals.  Don't know if this is true.  

A small RV park is a part of the Marathon marina.  it only holds 8 large RV's...(here comes the storm)

We got a free boat wash about 30 minutes after this photo was taken...

Friday

January 6, 2017

We have moved from Marco Island to an anchorage in the Everglades and then on to Marathon in the Florida Keys.

Driving from Marco Island to our anchorage for the night, we constantly had to dodge these little bombs, called crab traps.  

We did see a huge sea turtle on our way to the Everglades.  It was out swimming in the gulf.  

If you run over one, your propellers can get tangled in the thick line that goes down to a big trap on the water floor.

At Little Shark River, in the South of the Florida Everglades.

 We anchored for one evening.  The mosquitos started to arrive immediately.We used a Thermacell to keep them away.  It worked great.  We were able to have a martini on the flybridge and relax while watching the sunset.

There were two cats anchored when we came in. "meow"

A motor yacht anchored right after us.  They came in a little late, but a sail boat did pull in after dark.

This beautiful anchorage saved us from rocking through some north winds.

The sunset was spectacular, but we were a little late at taking the pictures.  Must have been the Martini.

Left the anchorage for Marathon in calm seas.  Only issue were those lovely crab pots.  This is one of the crab pot work boats heading out to pull their catch in...

Seven mile bridge in the distance.  A good sight to see.  

We pulled into the Marathon Marina & Resort for gas.  This is the resort we have been calling for a reservation since April, 2016.  They knew us immediately.  We asked if they had a slip available and were told no.  We then asked them, (first Jules) about the mooring field and or a safe anchorage.  Over 25 mph winds are expected for this weekend.  She was worried for us.  There were boats anchored out in the open, because they were on the waiting list for the mooring balls.  She went and talked with a manager, Julie.  Julie looked through the big wall chart of slips and discussed it with Jules.  After a while they decided to give us the one open slip they had.  There had been some type of cancelation, but we didn't care why we got the slip.  👏  We are at Marathon Marina & Resort, for at least a month.  Wonderful.  And a great price, which is why we have been trying to get in here.

We are now working on a leakage issue.  We might have to stay in a hotel for a few days while the boat yard pulls our boat out.  Looks like the port engines "dripless shaft seal" is not dripless anymore.  We've been getting in about 5 gallons of water a day while underway...  This means getting the boat lifted out, drive shaft uncoupled from the transmission and pulled out a few inches so they can slide on new shaft seals... More on this as it develops.