Wednesday, Eleven/Eleven/Twenty Twenty - Again today I continued to put things back in order after having prepared for severe weather over the weekend in anticipation of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Eta, which had decreased in intensity considerably as it passed over us here in Marathon. I will admit, I became a bit worried when I saw last night that it had headed south almost to Cuba after passing over us headed west. What a crazy track it has left and I was afraid it might just make a circle and take a second stab at us. Thankfully, it has headed north without getting any closer again.

Thursday, 12 November - Wow! There was a little excitement in the harbor this morning. Right about 8 am all the telephone and WiFi service went off line from all the phone companies. We couldn't use our phones or our internet connections at all. People trying to verify why also found out that the island's service was gone, too, then that Key West had the same problem. We could communicate via the VHF radios, but that was all and they don't reach far. Some people here thought the U.S. might be under cyber attack. About an hour later a harbor resident eventually heard on their FM radio that a car had hit a pole up in Islamorada about 35 miles to the east of us and it knocked out everyones service on all the Keys to the west of it. About 10:30, we were back online.
                    Finally, the sun is back and the wind is backing off! I remounted the fenders in their storage positions after having deployed them during the high winds in case another boat broke loose and ping-ponged through the harbor and I took down some of the window coverings on the dodger so I can open the windows again. Awhile back when three of us kayaked out to West Sister Island, I acquired a 5 gallon plastic gas can that had washed up on the island. It was totally empty and had a slight ding in one corner that I thought might leak so I filled it full of seawater after returning to the boat. It hasn't leaked at all, so today I emptied the seawater out, rinsed it with fresh water and dried it out in the sun. The gas can also needed a cap to close it. It came with a spout, but there was no way to seal in up if I didn't want that spout sticking up all the time, which I don't, so I had to make a cap for it by cutting down a V-8 bottle cap. While I was doing that I defrosted the freezer again. It seems to me that it needs defrosting even more often than it used to. I'm sure it is getting moisture through air that is getting into it, but I can't access the back side to tell where it is coming in.
                    After defrosting the freezer I added six snaps to the top edges of the three window covers for the dodger. They had been supported only on the sides and sagged it the middle. The snaps will keep that from happening.

Friday the 13th of November 2020 - With lots that I need to do, but nothing pressing, I spent part of the day doing minor cleanup, maintenance, and repairs onboard the boat. I also finished reading "Ramage and the Freebooters", number three in the series by Dudley Pope.

Saturday, 14 November - Susie had ordered some friction tape for the dog's ramp last week and it came in, so we finished the ramp up today by smoothing edges on the wood with my small block plane and wood rasps, then applied the friction tape in-between the rungs. The tape said to let the adhesive cure overnight, so we may see how Sangria fares on it tomorrow. Last time she had problems with the slick, smooth wood. I'm sure, however, that the tape will solve those problems.

Sunday, 15 November - Well, the surer I am about something, the more likely I am to be wrong. The tape seemed to help some but didn't truly cure the problem for Sangria, Susie's dog. It appears that Sangria uses the rungs on the ramp more than the spaces in between as we had assumed. Because of that, her feet are still slipping sideways, so we came up with plan B, or is it C. We spent the afternoon cutting up the three leftover rungs into 2 inch long pieces, covering them with the friction tape and screwing them in the spaces between and at the ends of the rungs so that her feet can't slip all the way off the boards. Plan D will be to unscrew the rungs and wrap them with the tape. It's a good thing we found a good price on a 60 yard roll of the tape. We won't get to see how well she does with today's fix until next Saturday.

Monday, 16 November - Right after the Cruiser's Net this morning I joined Mary Ackroyd of M/V Island Girl and Walt from S/V The Gloaming in a run through the Boot Key mangrove trails in our kayaks. It's been quite some time since we went through there and there has been a lot of damage to some of the trails. Lots of dead trees have blown over, blocking them. I spent about 45 minutes sawing and using my loppers on fallen trees just to get through one blockage about 6 or 8 feet long. Unfortunately, we cleared the path at today's high tide and at lower tide levels, the path will be blocked again. We were all very surprised to see so few fish and almost no Cassiopeia jellyfish. Usually, the jelly fish almost carpet the bottom of the shallow interior lakes of Boot Key. Both Mary and Walt have been through the trails before, but I was able to show them a couple of trails that neither had seen, although two of the entrances were so overgrown that I actually had to search hard to find them. That made the day even better. Oh, and I ended up acquiring another kayak today, Wo found one in the mangroves right after we start toward the first entrance and I went and got it when we finished kayaking. This one is a sit-on style, which some people prefer and which I don't have. Mine are both sit-ins. I had thought I might keep this one if I can't find the owner for it and sell one of mine, but on second thought I probably won't. I believe it will prove to be much heavier than mine and hard for me to get over the safety lines and back on board the boat by myself. It's been in the water quite awhile so the bottom has quite a bit of growth on it and side handles on it are gone, so those will need to be replaced. I'll probably clean it up and play with it some before I decide. I suspect that it wasn't lost by a boater here in the harbor. If it was, I think I'd have heard someone looking for it on the Cruiser's Net. If that's true and I can't find the owner, I can turn it in to the police, but they'll charge me $200 to do so, then after 90 days or so, if they haven't found the owner, I could claim it. That doesn't inspire someone to turn things into them much.

Tuesday, 17 November - The marina give a small discount for boats that have been here over a year. I used to get that discount, but my month on the hard last year interrupted the discount and I had to start over again. I've just re-qualified and needed to move the boat to a different ball. City mooring balls are for long term boaters and I was on a state ball here in the harbor. It's been pretty windy so I was concerned that I might have trouble getting from the cockpit to the bow of the boat to hook the ball with the boathook so I called Tom Krueger to get some help. Boy, I'm glad I did. I knew I hadn't cleaned the hull recently, but didn't think it looked too bad. I was totally wrong. Tom released me from ball L-8 and before I could get headway to get steerage, the bow blew around almost 80 degrees. I applied lots more throttle, but the boat barely moved. My propeller and rudder must be encrusted with vegetation and barnacles. You'd think that the spinning prop would divest itself of the attachments, but it can't. That stuff is really well cemented on. Luckily, there aren't many other boats around me and Island Time finally made the turn back upwind and we inched forward to the new ball and got tied up. I was glad Tom was here to help. I didn't move far, one row over and two mooring balls closer to the docks, which is probably only about 20 seconds closer by dinghy on a normal day, but still, I though that would be a good thing. I shortly became aware that that might not be true. All afternoon a dog on the boat in front of me barked because its owner wasn't aboard and the boat right beside me has a poodle that does the same thing. Then, as I was going ashore to pay the ball rental fee, a catamaran pulled in on the other ball near me and tied up with another barking poodle. This is not going to be fun. I like the area of the mooring field that I'm in, but I certainly hope to move again soon. I'll have to wait until a ball in this area opens up. There are lots of open balls, but not in this area of the long-term mooring field.

Wednesday, 18 November - I thought that with the strong winds that are predicted here, I'd get some reading done onboard today but that didn't happen. I had tied the kayak that we found up next to my boat overnight, but upon returning from Susie's this morning, I realized it was totally awash and barely visible at the surface. That's not supposed to happen. Its supposed to be self bailing and had been floating for quite sometime, as was obvious from the amount of aquatic vegetation attached to the bottom of the hull. I guess the waves breaking over it all night had penetrated the hatch cover on its deck and a few small screw holes in the deck enough to sink it. I'm surprised that the ocean kayaks are allowed to be sold with no built-in permanent flotation. I started working to get it to the back of the boat around 10 this morning and it took me almost an hour just to do that. Both the bow and stern stamped eyestraps on the dinghy have pulled out so it was really hard to get loops over both ends of the dinghy by myself, especially because the two pieces of line that I had grabbed floated while I was trying to maneuver them into place. I finally got that done, then moved my dinghy to the side of the boat and attached the loops I had on the kayak to the davit blocks and tackle so I could lift it high enough that waves wouldn't refill it as fast as I could bail it or pump it out. As I mentioned, it's a self-bailer and as I raised it, the water in the cockpit flowed out through the bottom, but the inner hull was still almost totally full. I had anticipated that I'd simply unscrew the hatch cover at that point and pump the water out, but the hatch cover is totally jammed or glued or something. I got out my rubber mallet and really pounded on it, and to be honest, I was surprised that the hatch cover didn't break I was hitting it so hard trying to make it rotate. I just kept raising one end of the kayak until water started flowing out from under the deck hatch, which it shouldn't do. Once that the water stopped flowing from there after about an hour, I lowered the other end and unscrewed a small drain plug and let the rest of the water out. In the meantime, I started scraping the growth off of the hull. I hadn't intended to clean the whole thing, but in order to keep from getting filthy as I rigged some new lifting loops, I couldn't stop scraping until it was totally scraped clean. Once the new lifting loops were installed, I raised the kayak to vertical by one end and got the remainder of the water out, then lifted the other end and secured it for the night on the davits. It's still blowing 20 to 30 mph out so I moved the dinghy back to the back of the boat and tied it up well so I'll still have a dinghy and three kayaks in the morning. Several dinghies have already been lost today and the wind is supposed to get stronger before morning. We are all hoping the no boats break loose during the night. I finally finished about 4 this afternoon.

Thursday, 19 November - Once again the day didn't go as planned. Since I didn't get to do any reading yesterday until the evening and because it is still very windy, I planned to read today. Unfortunately, I decided this morning to make a quick spreadsheet to better track my transactions on the net. I'm truly not good with spreadsheets and should have stuck with a database, but once I got started with the spreadsheet, I couldn't accept defeat. I got stuck on something as simple as writing a function for a cell that would subtract one number from another. I could add numbers in different cells by using the "SUM" function and expected to find another function, "DIFF" or "Difference", but it doesn't exist in the program. I had to call Susie for help and she figured it out quickly. Then I got confounded trying to create a cell that would find the percentage of difference in two other cells. Seems like it ought to be easy, but I can't figure it out. I must have tried at least a hundred ways, but the app keeps telling me, "The formula has a syntax error." A lot of help that is! ...and the help file tells me all the things I can do, but not how to do them. Uggh! I give up for today. Around 4 in the afternoon, another dinghy got loose in the harbor and I went to help get it back to its owner. It was one of the two that I dragged across the harbor about two weeks ago. If I'd realized before I left my boat who it belonged to, I probably wouldn't have gone. The guy doesn't take care of anything. The dinghy had broken its bowline and no wonder, the line was really old, frayed and too small in diameter for the job. He needs help so often that others are going to quit helping, me included. His wife works at the marina and he's a stay at home Dad partly because they have a young child and partly because if he gets a job he would have to pay child support to his ex. Not your most upstanding gentleman. As they say, "No good deed goes unpunished." I really banged up my shin on a big under-water rock while trying to control the dinghy in waist deep water and high waves. It's not bleeding much, but it sure is sore. My leg, not the rock.

Friday, 20 November - Wow! The bruise on my shin was way worse than I realized. By the time I got to bed it was really hurting - sharp pains when I moved that leg, especially when I had it horizontal. I started to think I might have cracked the bone. I tossed and turned until 3:30 am, got up, took a 500 mg. Naproxen tablet that's supposed to be good until 31 July 2016, applied Neosporin to the injury, and wrapped it with two stretch bandages, then moved to the galley and set up at the dining table to sleep, thinking that keeping it vertical might help. I don't know which helped the most, the Naproxen or keeping it vertical, but by 5:50 am my arms had gone to sleep where I had my head resting on them and I felt good enough to try the bed again. The sharp pains occurred again the next day and are still a mystery, but have since subsided.

Saturday, 21 November - Susie and I went to Specialty Hardware today and each bought a couple of items we each needed.

Sunday, 22 November - About noon Susie, I, and her labradoodle dog, Sangria, got to try out the ramp we'd made to get Sangria from the canal back onto the deck. This time it worked great. The side pieces we mounted on it to keep her feet from splaying right off the edges worked just fine. It's funny to me, on shore we can barely ever get her to retrieve a ball more than about twice, but off the dock and into the water she has endless energy and interest. She just doesn't want to stop. We started off throwing the ball right in front of the ramp so that she would see it and come right back to it, but now, it doesn't seem to matter where we throw the ball. She seems to have learned that that is the only place she can get out of the water. That's great. I could lift her out of the water using the floatation harness's handle, and Susie has proven that she can, but with significant difficulty. The ramp is going to be great. She'll probably get to go for a swim almost any sunny day all winter since it never gets really cold here. After swimming, she can sun dry before going back in the house.

Monday, 23 November - Walt on S/V The Gloaming, Mary on M/V Island Girl and I all went kayaking out to West Sister Rock, an island about 50 yards across just off Boot Key again today. En route we saw several ospreys, egrets, herons, etc., and while snorkeling, los of fish, two spotted eagle rays, a round sting ray, lots of conchs and urchins, and of course, lots of other wildlife. I was hoping to find the queen conch shell from when we saw the horse conch eating it two weeks ago, but I couldn't find it. I'd like to make a horn out of it. On the way back I found a couple of floats that were in very good condition. One was apparently used on a lobster pot and the other was painted bright yellow and had "Research" painted on it. No telling where they came from. They had washed up it the mangroves.

Tuesday, 24 November - I always dread scraping the hull on the boat. It's not that it's hard work or that I have to spend two to three hours under water in 78°F temperature, which it is now. Wetsuits compensate for that. The problem is that it takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get ready and another twenty four hours or more to get things rinsed, dried out, and put away; so basically, it's a two day job. Because of that, I don't do it ofter enough and that's why my boat would barely move the other day when I had to move the boat to another mooring ball. The propeller had about an inch of barnacles on all its surfaces. I bet those barnacles were dizzy by the time I got over to the other mooring ball with me running the engine at 2000 rpm!

Wednesday, 25 November - As predicted, most of today was spent waiting for dive gear to dry and putting everything away, then I started cleaning the boat and clearing the cockpit so Susie and I can dine there tomorrow.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, 26 November 2020 - Most of today was spent cleaning up the boat, which was long overdue. I also found a buyer for the kayak that we found last week. I really wanted it off the boat. I had it on the davits which meant that I couldn't get the dinghy out of the water. That means that barnacles and vegetation start accumulating on the dinghy's hull. Once that was done, I went ashore to pick Susie up so we could return to Island Time for Thanksgiving dinner. On the way here she had picked up take-out dinners for each of us from one of the nicest restaurants on the island, Key Colony Inn. The food, company, and sunset as seen from the boat were all wonderful. After dinner we enjoyed participating in the trivia on the "Night Net" on the VHF. Lots of people participated since most people in the harbor celebrated Thanksgiving onboard their boats because of Covid 19.

Black Friday, 27 November - I was Net Controller again this morning. The mooring field is really starting to fill up quickly with snowbirds sailing down to get away from the cold weather so the morning nets are getting longer. It has been raining so much this summer and fall that I haven't had to go to the dock for water in several months. My water catchment system has really paid off. Adam Bilik called this morning and he wishes he had a catchment system, too. I assisted him take his boat, S/V Tapestry, to the water dock and back. It turned out that he could have taken it in by himself, but you never know. The marina didn't have anyone to give him an assist when he called, and you never know what the wind is going to do to hold you against the dock when you try to leave in or not. This time the wind was gracious and a marina employee showed up just in time to push us off, too.

Saturday, 28 November - We had take-out turkey dinner and all the fixings on Thursday, but we celebrated Thanksgiving again today at Susie's. She cooked up two turkey breasts, mashed potatoes, and dressing this evening, too, so I think there will be leftovers for quite awhile. Yum. When I arrived at Susie's she had already started decorating for Christmas by putting lights and other decorations all across her dockside fence, but had several more strings of lights that were from previous years that had lights burned out, so we spent several hours testing bulbs and trying to get the strings to light up properly. These new, tiny lighting strings baffle me. Some of the lights, actually four, on one string have three wires going into their bases and all the others have only two, creating four sections that seem to work independently from each other. If one bulb goes out it doesn't shut the whole string, or even its own section off, but there is something in the string that will make a whole section shut down and not the others. The wall plug only has two wires. I'm stumped. We also made a quick trip to West Marine where I hoped to purchase a hat, rain jacket, and life jacket. The only thing I got was the hat.

Sunday, 29 November - We were up earlier than usual so we could treat Sangria, her dog, to a ball retrieval session in the canal and so that Susie could treat her with a medicated shampoo to cure the ringworm fungus, and then let her dry off before coming back into the house.