Tuesday, 1 August 2023 - I contacted a State Farm Insurance agent today, referred by Jay Klassen. We discussed briefly, the boat and what coverage I want and he has quoted me a much better price on a policy to insure Island Time than my previous agent; fewer restrictions, wind coverage, lower deductible, higher value, and a better price.
                    I had dinner at Dockside, but left early. The band was the usual, JibSea Cowboys, but the place was almost empty. At eight thirty there were only 10 people in the whole restaurant and bar. I watched the Sturgeon Supermoon rise over the horizon as I dinghied back to the boat. Since this full moon occurred on the first of the month, we'll have a super blue moon at the end of the month.

Wednesday, 2 August - Things that seem as they should be so simple confound me. Today I needed to send the State Farm agent a copy of the marine survey I had done late last year. It sounded simple, it's a digital PDF file; email it, right? It's too large to email so I downloaded an app called FileMail and sent it with that. State Farm's servers rejected it saying that forms would need to be filled out by the agent and they would need to be verified by corporate before they would allow the file to be opened. The agent said that would take weeks. The agent suggested texting it to him. I knew that wouldn't work; it's 28 mb. I tried other routes and finally, after several hours and several failed attempts, uploaded it to the servers on Photographers1.com and emailed him the URL. I hope that works. He hasn't gotten back to me to verify that he received it.

Thursday, 3 August - I got a reply from the insurance agent today. He says that he wants to put off sending me a policy because Jay and Tami on S/V Avigna and I are full time live-aboards and he needs to ok it with the underwriters. That doesn't make sense to me because we are on our boats daily to observe any problems like strong winds, smoke, fire, dragging anchors, excess water in the bilge, etc., and I told him so. He said he agreed with me, but it probably won't do any good.

Friday, 4 August - As I left the boat today and got just about to shore, I looked westward toward the "Bridge to Nowhere", an old bascule drawbridge near the west end of the harbor, and saw that it was raining there. I wasn't sure that I had closed the hatch in the saloon so I doubled back to make sure. Out of habit, I had, but it wasn't worth gambling on. I closed the hatch and the sky opened up with a torrential rain for about twenty minutes, once again topping off my water tank. At nine o'clock I headed out again and by the time I got there others had arrived and were squeegeeing the court. Just as we got it pretty dry it started raining again. Some players left but in a few minutes the rain was over and we dried the court again. We got in one and a half games before it rained again, but we finished our game before taking the net down. We were drenched. Playing in the warm rain isn't too bad except the pickleball won't bounce off the court when there's a quarter inch of water sitting on the surface.
                    I spent the evening enjoying reading Sabatini's "Scaramouche".

Saturday, 5 August - This being the first Saturday of the month, we had our nautical flea market this morning at the marina's tiki hut. I neither bought nor sold anything but walked away ahead of the game because right before I was going to leave, one of the other boaters gave me a dollar's worth of small stainless steel cable. This evening I went to dinner at El Molcajete Mexican Restaurant with Jay Klassen and Tami Shelton of S/V Avigna and had enchiladas and a margarita along with good company and conversation.

Sunday, 6 August - I had defrosted the new freezer just last Monday but by this morning there was about an inch and a half of frost and ice on the evaporator so I, once again, defrosted. Jay and Tami noticed that the bottom of my dinghy is pretty dirty yesterday when they dropped me off after dinner. I wanted to say that that was because of my shoulder injury, and that is partly correct, but in reality, even though my arm is still weak and hurts at times, I've just been procrastinating. After defrosting I decided to clean that bottom today. Not normally, but today for some reason, lots of the gunk that I scraped off the boat fell on me. That's not too perplexing since I scrape the hull of the dinghy while it is overhead on the davits while I stand on the swim platform. I was so filthy upon completion that I really needed to rinse off...and what better way than to do a back flip off the bimini top! I haven't done a back flip into water in, probably, at least forty years so it was no surprise that I under rotated it a bit. Actually, I was a bit surprised since I thought I might over rotate since the bimini top is about seven or eight feet off the water. Next time I need to jump higher and tuck harder.

Monday, 7 August - My arms weren't the only muscles that atrophied from my inactivity caused by my shoulder injury. In working overhead to scrape the bottom of the dinghy yesterday there was much twisting and other unusual positions that, today, have caused my lower back to be extremely sore. Luckily, the pain is very localized and I'm sure will only last a few days.

Tuesday, 8 August - Our pickleball sessions are getting shorter. The temperature here in Marathon has been setting all time record highs lately. I think the "feels like" temperature, adjusted for the humidity and perhaps, lack of breeze, was about 110°F on the court today and later hit 117° as reported on my weather app. Amazingly, we're still getting 5 to 9 players showing up. I had a couple of odd things happen today. As I headed to Dockside this afternoon I looked down into the dinghy as I started down the ladder at the stern of the boat and discovered about 5 inches of water in it. What? It hasn't rained. I lifted the dinghy on the davits just high enough to get it out of the water, reached down and pulled the drain plug, let all the water all drain out, replaced the plug, lowered the dinghy back into the water, stepped aboard, and heard water rushing into the boat. What the heck? The threads on the drain plug have corroded away so that the plug isn't tight in the hole even when the lever is flipped. Luckily, I had a back-up plug right there and quickly replaced it.
                    Late that evening, as I was about to leave Dockside, Randy, the lead guitar player, violinist, harmonica player, harpist, flutist, mandolin player, etc., etc., and leader of the JibSea Cowboys came over to my table and said, "Rick, your outboard is running." Really? Neither the docks at the marina nor at Dockside have cleats to easily throw a bow painter over so when you dock, you have to either quickly jump ashore with the painter or leave the engine running and in gear to keep the dinghy against the dock as you tie up or step onto the dock. I guess I took the engine out of gear, hit the kill switch and jumped ashore without the engine dying, tied up, and walked away...and I did that before I started drinking! Thank goodness I've recently filled the fuel tank because it set there idling for about three hours or more.

Wednesday, 9 August - It was hot and windless again today and people were ready to quit pickleball after only one hour. It's hard to get motivated with it this hot, so when I returned to the boat I turned on two fans, one at my feet and the other just above my right shoulder and did some reading.

Thursday, 10 August - So much for bragging about how many pickleball players are toughing it out. We only had 4 players today and they only lasted one hour. This afternoon I replaced the bilge pump switch which had ceased to turn the bilge pump on when the float was raised. My boat's not leaking to my knowledge. The rising water in the bilge is from defrosting the refrigeration which drains directly into the bilge.

Friday, 11 August - When I started to lower the dinghy to go to shore this morning I was surprised to see that the front air compartment on the dinghy was totally deflated. I thought that, perhaps, something I did while cleaning the bottom of the dinghy with the scraper on Sunday might have sliced the tube. Luckily for me, it turned out that the spring on the valve in that section wasn't seated properly...an easy fix. I squirted a bit of WD-40 into it and flexed it a few times...all better.

Saturday, 12 August - I peeked into spaces around the refrigeration with a flexible camera probe trying to discover where air might be entering the box but couldn't find anything. Just about sunset a couple of storms rumble through the harbor with lots of thunder and lightning, filling my water tank again and creating beautiful skies in their aftermath. See the link to pictures below.

Sunday, 13 August - I spent about seven hours today defrosting the freezer again and cutting bubble wrap insulation sandwiched between aluminum foil into pieces that I could shove into the triangular void behind the freezers evaporator and the curved back of the freezer. Since the boatyard worker didn't fill that space before he installed the evaporator as I had told him to, it fills up with solid ice that is very hard to melt. I believe that has been a significant contributor to the moisture left in the box that just recondenses and recreates more frost as the box freezes again. I've been getting significantly more condensation and frost in the refrigerator since I got the new unit than ever before. I thought the new refrigerator would allow me to defrost less frequently, use less energy, and run for shorter duration throughout the day, but I have been wrong all counts.

Monday, 14 August - I finished reading A Matter of Honor by William Hammond today, a pretty good story about the naval war during our war of independence.

Tuesday and Wednesday, 15 & 16 August - We had several visiting tourists join us for pickleball each morning, all of them pretty good, addicted, players, so much so that they'd rather play pickleball than take advantage of the other diversionary opportunities while on their vacations here in the Keys.

Thursday, 17 August - We had one more one-day visiting pickleballer join us this morning. This afternoon I replaced some of the tie wraps that hold the insulators between the single sideband radio antennae and the backstay cable that had broken.

Friday, 18 August - I searched high and low for a receipt for the chainplate replacement that I had done last November but didn't find it. I know it must be here somewhere; either in the computer or on paper. Surely I wouldn't throw that away.

Saturday, 19 August - I got going early this morning and defrosted the freezer once more. It already had about an inch and a half of frost in one corner and I needed room so I could add fresh groceries. As soon as the defrosting was done I headed to the grocery store so I could be back before the prognosticated rains came this afternoon. Unfortunately, I failed, but fortunately, it rained while I was in the store and didn't rain again. For the evening I headed to Dockside to be entertained by Popeye and the Easy Street Band, my favorite of the locals. Popeye sings mostly 60s rock and roll and he has a lady guitarist that has a very distinctive voice and really does a great job with old country western songs.

Sunday, 20 August - A very rainy day here. It was 84°F. this morning when I got up, but rain started around 10 AM and the temperature dropped to 76 during the day; a nice change from the mid 90s that we've had for so long. I noticed that the rain catchment's pockets at the corners of the bimini top seemed to be leaking or overflowing more than usual and determined that the water was backed up from the input filter. I changed the filter and that let the water flow much better, topping off the tank once more. This evening I went to Dockside for dinner but since it was open mic night, four young fellas took the stage during the second hour and they were really bad. It's my opinion that Randy, the stage manager and head of the house band, should, when a person or group takes the stage and is that bad, thank them gracefully for contributing and encourage them, but put the audience first and let them play no more than one or two songs. There were other, much better players wanting to perform, too. When I realized that they were going to be allowed to play four songs, I deduced that it was time for me to call it a night and returned to the boat. When I returned to the boat and the rain had stopped the temperature was back up to 84°F. and the humidity was 87%.

Monday, 21 August - Only three people showed up for pickleball this morning. Tonja and I played "Skinny Singles", where we only used half of the width of the court, until Phil showed up, then we played two against one. It's all good practice and fun. Back at the boat I put a large anchor swivel and its shackles in 30% apple cider vinegar to soak and remove the rust on them. I'll soak them for at least a day. That should remove all the rust, then I'll rinse, dry, and paint them. I was expecting four orders from Amazon to be delivered by the US Postal Service. They usually arrive at the marina around noonish, but not today. I'm glad I didn't count on their arrival. The postman didn't come until around 3 o'clock. I headed back to the marina a little bit earlier because I wanted to update my iPhone and laptop which takes quite awhile. The laptop got almost finished, said "10 minutes remaining"...for about 40 minutes, then I unplugged and gave that up for another day because they were closing the marina for the day. While there I dropped off three more books for our library. I returned to the boat again I devised a magnetic bracket that lets me clamp the fan onto the top of the two inch rail at the foot of my bed so it won't fall off in the middle of the night.

Tuesday, 22 August - It sprinkled early this morning before pickleball so we had to squeegee the court. We played a couple of games and another brief, light shower occurred so we squeegeed again. A couple of games later we saw a real shower headed our way so we quickly ran for cover, waited it out, then put away the net. Of course, it never rained again after that. I went to Dockside for their "Country Night" and the music was good, but it's not the same without Susie there.

Wednesday 23 August - I rinsed the shackles and swivel that I had soaked it vinegar this afternoon, then dried them and sprayed them with galvanizing paint. A little later I heard a several knocks on the hull of my boat, went on deck and met Dan Duggan, a fellow that was told by Mary Ackroyd that I am the most knowledgeable person in the harbor about the mangrove trails in Boot Key. He wanted to know about the trails so that he can snorkel through them. I told him where the best trails are for that, taking into consideration depth, tidal currents, what trails he might see the most fish and what types, etc. It sounds fun. I may go with him sometime.

Thursday 24 August - Today I cleaned up the rust from some tools including a couple of screwdrivers that I soaked in the same vinegar that I had previously used to soak the shackles and swivel in.

Friday, 25 August - Went to the Cruiser's pot luck dinner and played a couple of games of corn hole with Phil Vachon, a game where you try to pitch corn filled bags into a six inch hole about 30 or 40 feet away. You play to 21 points, no more. If you go over 21, you drop back to 15. I've played about ten games in my life and had to drop back to 15 after I hit 22 points, but still beat Phil by 21 to 3.

Saturday, 26 August - Right as the Cruiser's Net ended it was announced that someone had run aground in the grass flats at the end of my mooring ball row. It took me a few minutes to get there and some others had given up because he was so far aground. He had a six and a half foot draught and was in about four and a half feet of water with the tide going out. I have a hundred foot line that I've use several times to help in these situations. We tie my line to the grounded boat's halyard, which usually give us about a hundred and fifty feet of line, to the bridle on the back of my boat then I head out perpendicular to the direction they are headed and since the halyard is attached at the top of their mast, we can heel their boat over significantly, raising their keel off the bottom. Other dinghies attempt to turn the boat toward deep water and the grounded boat applies full throttle for thrust. Two dinghies were pushing on their bow to turn her and two more boats were tied to my bow to help heel her over. We eventually got their boat to deep water and all was good again. Upon return to the boat I defrosted the freezer.

Sunday, 27 August - We're keeping an eye on a tropical storm coming up between the Yucatan peninsula and Cuba but it appears that it will move north of us, only giving us some wind and much higher than normal tides; about 2 feet higher than normal because it will be in conjunction with the full moon this week. It's Sunday but we played pickleball anyway. One of our usual players, Phil Vachon, had invited some friends to play, including, to my surprise, Sam and Lisa Iverstine, friends that I have met through Susie. They were newbies to the game but played pretty well for first-timers.

Monday, 28 August - After pickleball this morning I defrosted the freezer then headed to Home Depot for a few things. I got a couple of items I didn't intend to and didn't get a couple of things I meant to. Upon returning to the marina I decided to stop by the community room for a Dr Pepper and ran into Tami Shelton and Jay Klassen there. We discussed the approaching storm and they inspired me to do a bit more preparation. I returned to the boat and installed the ATN Genoa Sleeve to protect the genoa and keep it from unfurling in high winds and then dropped the inner staysail, folded it, and put away. Three hours of work but will pay off in the end if only to give me a bit of peace of mind during the next few days.

Tuesday, 29 August - Today was supposed to be quite blustery but started out just breezy. I texted the pickleball players to see how many would show up and six did. Afterward I returned to the boat and turned on the VHF radio. High wind warnings were being broadcast about every 30 minutes and I kept an eye on the radar. One of the outer bands from hurricane Idalia, which has just past west of us a couple of hundred miles has move north of our latitude, too, so the worst has past for us. However, I had forgotten that in the past I have taken one of the spare halyards and wrapped it in a spiral around the mast and mainsail, binding the sail to the mast. Well, to my surprise, enough wind snuck into the sail and stated unfurling it. Luckily, I had tightened both the furling and unfurling lines on the sail so it didn't totally unfurl, but the midsection billowed out and, try as I might, I couldn't do anything about it. I got up on the bimini top with the spare halyard and tried to wrap it but the sail was flogging so badly that I couldn't get the line placed right. If the sail hadn't been almost new I'm sure it would have been destroyed. It's not new anymore. I'll have to inspect it when the storms have past. Lots of harbor boaters were on the VHF trying to keep tabs on swamped dinghies, breakaway boats, etc. and I was offered help. I turned it down at first knowing there really wasn't anything that could be done as long as the wind was so strong, but a few minutes later it died down a bit and Jay Klassen of S/V Avigna, Chris Mincarelli of S/V Sanuk, and Mitch of S/V Miss Millie came over and we managed to unfurl about half of the sail and then refurl it tighter and then wrap two spare halyards around it in opposite directions. I really don't think it's going to come loose now. I should have done that earlier in the day, before the winds hit, but only twenty to twenty five mile per hour winds were predicted. Someday I'll learn. I hope someday was today. I also learned today that although the sleeve that I put on the yankee sail at the bow will absolutely keep that sail from unfurling, its wind resistance is huge, way more than I had expected. It was really shaking the whole rig even before the mainsail broke out; and the wind was probably only about 35 to 40 miles per hour. That certainly can't be good for the hardware that supports it.

Wednesday, 30 August - It was blustery again this morning. We played about 5 games of pickleball before it started to sprinkle. I took a peak at the My Radar app and could see that the squall was going to just skirt quickly past us but others were already dismantling the net, so we were done. The winds finally died back this afternoon about 4 o'clock. It started to rain again so I rolled down the side window on the dodger and in the process the snap on one of the straps that holds that window up when in the rolled up position broke so I dug through my bucket of webbing and created five more straps, one to replace the existing broken one and a spare set of four for use later.

Thursday, 31 August - Susie's returning sooner than I thought. She'll be back tomorrow and I didn't think she was going to leave Ohio until tomorrow morning. So much the better.