Monday

January 23rd, 2017

Tomorrow morning the boat goes in for repairs... We'll be staying at the Sand Piper Hotel for the evening and Mikee Likes it should be done on Wednesday...with 2000 less in the bank account...

Just get'er'done...

Keys Fisheries has the famous Lobster Reuben sandwich...

Clair and Joell in a Comic Foreground at Keys Fisheries...

$2.00 Stone Crab legs at KF...

South of Marathon, over the 7 mile bridge is Old Bahia Honda Park where the remains of the railway that used to run all the way to Key West remains...

Railway in the distance...

A nice anchorage on the lee side of the island...

Right by the 7 mile bridge...

Overlooking the beach...

High tide and wind causing the water to pile up reduced beach access today...

Two dollars a foot with electric and water right inside the park...

Scuba diving boat in the park...

Protected beach on the lee side of the park...

Thanks to Shawn and Clair for driving down to the Keys to see Joell and I...

Friday

January 20th, 2017

Beautiful green critters running around here...

This is Jane and Patrick at the Pot Luck dinner.  

Patrick, Joell and Mike went out on their boat for a couple hour ride....Mike was driving most of the way.   A little different feeling driving a 50 foot, 40,000 lb. boat with diesels. 

Here's Jane and Patricks boat...

Another great sun set in the keys between the trees!

Everyone is finding a seat for the Marathon Marina Pot Luck event...It was a great time.  There were lots of laughs, great food and a game with prizes.

Joell looking especially good with a nice glass of Shiraz wine...

Walking back to the boat we always pass Lazy Daz restaurant...Tiki torches ablaze..

Out a couple miles on Patricks 50' Viking MY where the water was the most beautiful we've seen so far...

Lots of shadowing of tourquise color... 

What's this their selling at the Paradise Produce?

Rambutan

Wikipedia says:

"The rambutan is a medium-sized tropical tree in the family Sapindaceae..."

Start peeling with your thumb nail..

and it comes off easily...

The fruit...

Do I want to try it or not....

The seed inside...

Makes a great hairy eye patch....don't know which patch I like best...

Elwood always has to try and steal the show....

Tuesday

January 17th, 2017

Pulled a Palm frond from off a tree to use for an up coming party...

This thing had some weight and windage...

Found a couple Manatee's hanging out in the Marathon Marina...

We think they were resting..

This sailboat was having a brand new engine dropped into his cabin today...

Off the crate, lifted by a large fork lift...

Sliding her in under this hard top...

Just over the hatch now...

Down she goes....

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 :-)