A rind and a bight.

After all the failures of the last post I can report one more in the leak category.  Strangely it showed itself in the exact same spot as the last but was due to an overflowing air conditioning condensate pan.  I must have moved the drain hose when I was fixing the other leak causing it not to flow correctly.  No more issues yet but boats are boats so something will go wrong!

We had a fun weekend at Jon's.  Jon and Janice were there just for Friday and Saturday morning before they set out for Canada and Sian's 60th birthday celebrations.  Not before Jon and I sampled Motorworks' IPAs.  I took the following picture of the bar inlay.  It was made from many CNC machined parts and the bar had three of them along its length.  Impressive work.

Jo and I met with Jamie and Jenn (now of Twin Dolphin, previously here at Loggerhead) and Matt and Karie (sp?) for a great dinner at Blue Mangrove on Saturday before heading home to Vero on Sunday.

Our Hope Town friends Paul and Eileen live in Jensen Beach.  They boated up to stay at our marina for a few days. This was us for lunch in Sebastian at Capt'n Butcher's.

Spooky finds the cutest pose when sleeping:

Linda sent us this picture of our old slip at Hope Town Inn and Marina.  The blue face was Rick's image of Winston that he thought we would need when things got quiet there.  It's still in place and Sasha looks well.

We decided to get a change of scenery yesterday so we headed down to Ft Pierce for lunch at a new spot.  As we left the water was very calm.  These apartments are just opposite our slip.

We stopped at Ft Pierce inlet to sit and watch the boat traffic before heading to Archie's Seabreeze.

Archie's is an old bar, popular with bikers, and is very relaxed.

The decor is very basic but the staff are fun and the beer and food is good.

 On the way home we splashed out a couple of bucks to visit the Manatee Center in Ft Pierce.  We saw no manatees but we did get to pet this Corn Snake.  And Jo didn't know how much she liked snakes!

The nights are cooler and clearer now.   Life is good.

One of those weeks...

...when it seems something is always going wrong. In no particular order:

1. We found a leak in the boat.  Tracked it down to the galley/forward head sump.  Dried everything out, cleaned the sump (always a yucky job). Figured all would be well.

2. We use those shower soap dispensers and Jo decided to change shower gel to a different colour so I had to hose down the old to take the new.  I have a hose on the swim platform.  All was well until two of the chrome push buttons fell into the water and sank to the bottom.  New shower dispenser.

3. The leak persists.  Figure it must be rain (it's fresh water not sea water) so I go out and caulk everything I can see on the outside.  Seems ok.

4. Get stopped by the police for having a licence tag out of date.  It's a rental car so we are innocent.  The rental company updated the tag.

5. The ice maker quit.  I took it apart and isolated the problem to one of two components.  Problem was the chassis was rusted as well.  So I ordered a new one somewhat reluctantly.  It came in Wednesday and fit perfectly and works much better than the other one ever did.

6. The leak persists.  I had a brain-wave.  The fresh water system has an accumulator that leaked a year ago.  I fixed it.  What if that area was leaking?  The water would find it's way down to where we were seeing water.  This is the way it was.  The previous owner had mated flexible hose directly to semi-rigid pipe without a fixture on both sides of the accumulator.  It's in the picture at middle bottom.  That's where the leak was coming from!

I changed out the accumulator for a new one and used fixtures for the pipework.  See below.

I wanted to change the whole arrangement but didn't have teh fittings in my spares box.  A job for later.  Leak fixed!

Now we're off to Bradenton to get Jo's hair fixed, mine cut and meet up with friends at Twin Dolphin.  Spooky is not happy but she seems to know we'll be back.

Will it stop raining?

The pool has been close to overflowing for a while.  But the rain has kept the water temperature below hot tub levels.  Every day is much the same.  Pop-up thunderstorms, which are short lived, during the day and occasional heavy downpours in the late afternoon.

This one was particularly heavy and arrived with nice cloud formation:

Of course, in times like these, one has to time arrival at the local bar in between downpours. Radar apps on the smartphone are essential.

Then one can watch the rain in the comfort of other die-hard happy hour folks.

The forecast?  You guessed it...

• Currently

  Partly sunny79°
  RealFeel® 93°
  
  

• Today

  Sep 29

  Couple of thunderstormsHi 87°RealFeel 102°

  
  

• Tonight

  Sep 29

  A couple of evening t-stormsLo 71°RealFeel 74°

  
  

• Tomorrow

  Sep 30

  Heavy thunderstormsHi 85°RealFeel 97°

  more
  

Road trip to Bradenton

 Jo had to get her hair stained at Gloria's place in Bradenton so we had another excuse to go see Jamie and Jen and Jon and Janice.  We had lunch with Jamie and Jen at one of our favourite lunch places; O'Brick's, on Friday.  Jen was looking smart in her business attire.  Jamie wasn't.  Always great to chat with these folks.

Then to Jon and Janice's place so Jon and I could go get his boat out of the shop and bring it home.  Forecast was for heavy rain but mild winds.  We had the boat back from Bradenton Beach within a couple of hours.

Saturday was Singapore Grand Prix qualifying for breakfast.  The we split for shopping so I could get a new phone  and later we joined up for lunch.  Janice's sister Jen was visiting for the weekend from Naples.  Later Jo had her staining done.  I thought it was too dark but she said it was exactly what she wanted.  What do I know?

Jon had a couple of electrical snags on the boat so we went down to fault find.  One remedied itself (for now) and the other turned out to be a faulty electrical actuator that needs to be replaced.

Next, an Indian supper in Sarasota:

Wine and dice games in the evening.  Sunday breakfast included the Singapore Grand Prix yielding an excellent result.  Then Jo and I hit the road back to Vero Beach.  Very heavy rain storms enroute.  They were heading east with us but much slower of course so we temporarily overtook them.

Spooky was much better on her own this time.  She had eaten and was in good spirits.  She must be getting used to our occasional sojourns to the Gulf Coast.

The storms caught up with us around supper time. This brief movie shows the contrast in the sky as I panned from east to west.

When it arrived, the rain was very heavy and prolonged.  Not the typical afternoon thunderstorm.

In the evening we Skyped with Catherine using the TV.  I like Smart TVs!

That's the diary for this last weekend.

Another day closer to fall..

It's been a very warm summer.  Both in the Bahamas and here.  But we are starting to feel the changes occurring. In Ontario you can feel the change in the air and see it in the cloud formations as the weather pattern changes.  We are not used to the weather patterns here but we can detect a change.  It is too hot here in the summer to do very much but siesta in the a/c in the boat or bask in the warm pool waters.  I look forward to the winter when we can take the bikes out without an ambulance following along.  There was a fair breeze yesterday so we drove over to the Atlantic coast to enjoy the surf.

We decided to lunch at the Riverside where everyone was watching Florida's NCAA team. 

A few laps in the pool and we retired to the dock with the cat.  Life's like that.

Marina views

Jo has been complaining that I haven't posted pictures of this marina here in Vero Beach.  Here is a post to correct that. The first thing we saw when we came into the marina was this; the gas and pump-out dock.  Diesel prices are excellent here.  The time before this that I filled up was at Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas en route TO Hope Town.  There we paid almost $5 a gallon.  Here the price was discounted to $3.15.  Pump-outs are free and you can help yourself but there's no pump out at the slip which is a bummer.

Looking the other way shows the Entry/Exit channel to the IntraCoastal Waterway.

The Captain's Lounge is where we watch Formula 1 as they have Cable TV in there but not on the docks.  We do get about 15 over-the-air channels at the boat.  Jo is watching Ellen in high definition as I type.

The pool is a highlight of the facility, especially now when midday temperatures are over 90F.

The dual waterfalls are purely decorative and hide the gas dock awning.

Ed, in the following picture, just had a hip replacement and has a boat identical to ours on the other side of the marina.  We meet he and his wife almost every day in the pool.

This is Cadence; In the marina for the school semester.

And this is the view down our dock as you leave the pool deck:

So these and previous photos should give you a qood idea of our current home base.

Road trip

So our Destiny friends, Jamie and Jenn, left for the west coast which gave us an excuse to head likewise. We drove their car and ours across to St. Petersburg so their car would be at their new marina and we could see and stay with Jon and Janice. Half way across Florida I was sorely tempted to stop here for the night.

Once we got there we found out that Jamie and Jenn had pretty much decided to stay in our old marina Twin Dolphin, that we had recommended previously.  We had a great weekend with Jon and Janice and had lunch with all six of us on holiday Monday at Pier 22 served by our own Megan.

Jo's leg has made two major reductions over the last couple of weeks.  Overnight, her hematoma has shrunk drastically on two separate occasions and it looks like it could be back to normal sooner than we were advised.  Fingers crossed!