The heat is on!

With apologies to Glenn Frey and those back home having a less than perfect summer, every day is the same at the moment.  We awake to 84 degrees F and the temperature quickly rises to 90+ degrees in the afternoon with thunderstorms rolling in around 4pm.  It was over 100 the other day.  So a noontime cold brew of Sweetwater 420 at Riverside Restaurant is very welcome.

You learn something new everyday.  Who knew (not I) that there were crabs that would drown if you put them in the water.  This is a Blue Land Crab

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Piper Aircraft factory.

For fun I bought a Canada-US friendship flag on Amazon and put it up this morning while I was washing the aft deck hard top and measuring for solar panels.

Off to get some herb plants so Jo can restart her on-board herb garden.

Nice CB formation as the set sets...

I applied solar film to two of our five forward windows today.  Seems to help with the almost vertical sunshine.  Hopefully it will save a bit of a/c power.  I will do the other three windows tomorrow in the morning...when it's cooler.

To Bradenton to renovate Jon's boat helm.

Jon's new display came in so I headed over to Bradenton via Ft Myers with Jo to look at a 49' Gulf Star which didn't work for us.  The Gulf Star was too much put into too little length.

We got to Jon's at 5:30pm.  We went to Jon's to install a new chart plotter at his boat helm because the old one had displays that were failing. This is the old config:

We removed the old displays, cut the panel and made a new panel to take a new 12 inch display in place of the previous two 8 inch panels.  We also installed an NMEA2000 bus, remade many interconnecting cables, replaced the old sonar, installed a new engine interface and re-installed the autopilot controller.  A very long 12 hour day resulted in the new configuration:

Looks pretty good.  Then we hit the road for a 3 hour trip back home to Vero Beach. A very tiring weekend but I think Jon is happy with the result.

Life at Loggerhead

We have just watched a very good 4-part series from History channel called "The men who made America" that Jon recommended.  I endorse his recommendation.  Excellent.

The last few days have been kind of quiet while we watched how Jo's leg would behave.  It has swollen a bit more and we will make an appointment to have it looked at again tomorrow.

In the meantime we had a sumptuous supper with Jamie and Jennifer on their Hatteras in the marina last night and lunch with Eden and Ferman today at Waldo's.  Then we gave Spooky an airing on the dock.  Here's a few pictures:

I guess most of these marina pictures look much the same if you're not here.  Sorry!

We have a number of Canadian boats here.

Their owners are expected back in the fall.

Most days end with a thunderstorm.  Today the sky was pretty threatening but so far no rain. Just lots of lightning and thunder.

We'll see what the doctor says about Jo's leg tomorrow.

Happy birthday Liam!

Spooky has decided she is happy to stop here.

Jon and Janice arrived yesterday for a quick weekend visit.  Here we are catching up over a glass of wine.

We went to Citrus Grill for supper last night and Mulligan's for lunch today

Jon's latest lease is his best yet.  A CLS550. Very nice indeed!

We are only two and a half hours apart now so we will see each other more often.

In Vero Beach

This what happens when you poke your fingers into the air conditioning raw water strainer before you realise there are barnacles in there!  It had healed a bit when I took this photo in North Palm Beach.

Here's a couple of pictures of Old Port Cove in North Palm Beach.  We really liked the marina but they won't let you stay when there's a hurricane so no dice.

I didn't take picture of the restaurant but it was the best food I had had since leaving Florida some months ago.

We motored north to Vero Beach.  Loggerhead marina is in a gated housing development.  Very quiet and nice.  We will see if it is as convenient as we need.

Tomorrow we set about getting Jo into a clinic to see about her leg.

Air conditioning again!

So we changed the raw water pump and we had air to sleep last night.  Today the lines were well and truly cleaned out and we have more raw water flow than we have ever had. 

Tomorrow we head to Vero Beach where we hope to stay for the remainder of the summer.