Monday, 1 April - April Fools Day - I'm surprised. I heard absolutely no April Fools jokes, scams, or tricks today. I had a fitness court session again this morning. Each day there are fewer participants but those five in attendance today voted to increase the sessions from Monday and Friday to include Wednesday also.

Tuesday, 2 April - I had physical therapy for my left shoulder this afternoon then returned to the boat and moved about a gallon of gas from one tank to the tank onboard the dinghy. I also, once again, increased the idle speed on the Yamaha outboard just a bit. It has continued to die just as I idle back to the boat or at the dock.

Wednesday, 3 April - I attended the fitness class again this morning at the city park. I miss pickleball so I decided to give it a try once again playing right handed to let my left arm continue to recover. That was harder than I realized it would be. Not only does my right hand not know which way the face of my paddle is pointed, but I kept unconsciously putting the paddle in my left hand, especially when the ball came across the net headed toward my left side. This is definitely going to take some time and more practice.

Thursday, 4 April - Rain was predicted for today and it came early this morning around six. It was a thin band of clouds preceding a cool front and didn't last but about an hour although there was lots of thunder and lightning. Since it passed so quickly and since I had neither physical therapy nor fitness class scheduled for today I decided go play pickleball right handed again today. Unfortunately, I didn't plan far enough ahead to get up early so I didn't show up at the courts until about 9:05. Pickleball normally starts at 8:30, however when I arrived I was the only one there. I don't know if others showed up and didn't have enough players, so they left, or not. I went ahead and got out some balls and practiced serving about 150 times then went over to the tennis court where there is a practice wall and hit balls against that for about a half hour. That's certainly not as much fun as playing and competing in a game. I returned to the boat, fixed (I hope) a leaky screw in the starboard hatch cover, and tried to find a leak in the dinghy with soapy water. I found only one really tiny leak that I don't think can be deflating the dinghy as fast as is happening. I really suspect a leaky valve but neither of those was leaking, either.

Friday, 5 April - I had both a physical therapy session and a fitness class today so I wasn't able to play pickleball. Actually, I thought I only had about 30 minutes between the fitness class and being picked up by the transit bus to go to my physical therapy session but the bus was about 45 minutes later than I had been told it would arrive. It worked out because they were to pick me up a full hour before my therapy class, but had I known that was going to happen I might have squeezed in a game of pickleball or two before they picked me up. Later in the afternoon I attended the Cruiser's happy hour then went to meet Leta and Roland Kok at Dockside to listen and dance to music by Donnie McDaniel and Four Sheets to the Wind.

Saturday, 6 April - We had our monthly nautical fleas market at the marina today and, as usual, I sold nothing, but brought home more to fill the boat with. At the end of the meet, a fellow had three bags of miscellaneous hardware, mostly stainless steel nuts and bolts, but other items, too, including several clevis pins, blind rivets, and an expensive three way toggle switch that he didn't want to have to lug back to his boat so I was glad to take it all off his hands. I then spent all afternoon sorting the nuts, bolts and screws and putting them in with mine.

Sunday, 7 April - I finished up the sorting, packaging, and storing of the hardware today. It's easier to spend the time sorting now when I have the time than it is to go through 20 or 30 pounds of miscellaneous nuts, bolts, screws, etc. to find specific, matching items when I need something in a hurry to do some work. In the evening I met Leta, Roland, Donnie McDaniel and the rest of Four Sheets to the Wind, Karen and Ron Butler and others to listen to the music at Dockside's open mic night. Susie had a long day traveling from California to Miami, then driving home, so she was tired and wasn't sure she'd make it, but when I told her at eight thirty that Popeye hadn't played yet, she finally got up off the couch and joined us. Unfortunately, there were so many guest musicians wanting to play that Popeye had to leave without playing at all. That's a shame. He probably travels further than any of the other musicians to play here for free and he's our favorite. Randy is a great musician but he doesn't manage the players well on open mic night. He should tell his next performer to be ready after the next song by the performer that is currently playing but he doesn't and that sometimes means that there is a 10 or fifteen minute delay between players while they set up and get in tune. Their instruments should already be in tune when they step onto the stage.

Monday, 8 April - I attended the fitness class today then went the 100 feet to the pickleball courts and played for about an hour. It's certainly not easy playing right handed after practicing with my left hand for 75 years. It was very windy so I could blame some of my wide shots on that but I don't think I got many shots in the court. One thing is good, all I can do is get better. I surely can't get worse. Back on the boat and since I don't have glasses dark enough to watch the eclipse with, I used my binoculars to watch the moon pass in front of the sun. NOAA said that we saw a 46% darkening of the sun but it only looked like about 30% to me. By the way, no, I did NOT look at the sun through my binoculars. I merely focused the binoculars at infinity then, without looking through them, I pointed the front end of the binoculars toward the sun and the rear end at my deck and projected the image of the sun onto the deck and within the shadow of your hands and the binoculars so I could see the image. If you hold the binoculars at about waist high the image of the sun will be about 2 inches in diameter and won't hurt your eyes at all. No glassed needed, no damage done. I mentioned this method via VHF radio no the harbor and received several favorable comments from people that hadn't been able to watch because they didn't have "eclipse glasses".

Tuesday, 9 April - I had physical therapy this morning. The repair job I did last Thursday by filling a screw hole with epoxy putty failed so today I re-sealed the screw in my skylight hatchway cover with silicone by simply squirting some into the hole then reinstalling the screw. I'll know the next time it rains if that worked. I met Susie at Dockside this evening to dance.

Wednesday, 10 April - Something of significance happened to me on this date but I can't remember what it was. I think I either got inducted into the army or was discharged from it. This morning before leaving the boat Roland Kok asked on the Cruiser's net on the VHF if anyone had an Easy Out bolt extractor he could borrow. I did so I spent about 15 minutes digging it out from under one of the seats in the saloon, then delivered it to their boat for them. I met Susie and about 10 others for fitness class from 10 to 11 then went and played pickleball for about an hour and a half.

Thursday, 11 April - Pickleball starts about 9 am so I got up earlier than normal to get there on time and played until about 11:30. Using my right arm instead of my left, the ball seems to have a mind of its own as it comes off my paddle. It's quite frustrating but I guess I'll get better eventually. This afternoon I replaced a hinge on the toilet in the forward head. I thought I had a full set of the hinges but I did not. What I did will get by for awhile but I ordered another set off Ebay today so I'll have them when I need them again.

Friday, 12 April - This morning starting at 9 AM I played an hour of pickleball, at 10, an hour of fitness training, then at 11, back to the pickleball court for an hour and a half before going to my last physical therapy session for my shoulder. For some reason, I needed a short nap this afternoon before going to the Friday happy hour.

Saturday, 13 April - Several of us had an extra session of pickleball this morning for about two and a half hours. After that I returned to the boat and defrosted the freezer, washed several shirts, and had lunch before going over to Roland and Leta's boat to try to help Roland extract a broken bolt in their engine's heat exchanger. They had already had someone else try before me and, after trying unsuccessfully for about an hour, I determined that the hole the other fellow had drilled into the bolt was crooked and that my Easy Out was stuck in the immoveable side of the housing. I had to back the Easy Out out and give up. I was afraid I'd break the Easy Out off inside the exchanger. The Easy Out being hardened steel would have really been a problem to extract if it had broken. Roland will have to call in the real expert, Diesel Don Shuler. He'll probably remove the whole heat exchanger so it can be worked on in his shop. He'll probably re-drill that hole larger, tap it to the next size larger and insert a HeliCoil, a springlike insert that will reduce the hole back to its normal size.

Sunday, 14 April - It was the second Sunday of the month so we had our Sunday pot luck brunch at the marina today. Susie joined us and we had lots of good food and conversation.
                    My taxes go out tomorrow. Why wait until the last minute?

Monday, 15 April - I played pickleball and worked out at the fitness court for an hour each then went back to the pickleball court for an hour and a half. The lady next door hailed me the other day and asked if I have any sewing that needs to be done on any Sunbrella items on my boat. I do so I needed to dig into the pile on the forepeak birth and move it all into the cockpit so I could get to so Pfiefertex material that is stowed under that bunk. I got it out and took the Pfiefertex and some Sunbrella over to her boat this afternoon and explained what I needed done.

Tuesday, 16 April - I played pickleball from 9 till about noon today. Phil Vachon said he needed some sealant to plug a couple of holes in his fresh water transport bag so I loaned him the never opened jar that I had. He called back in a few minutes and said that, even though it had never been opened, it was totally solidified. Oh well, I tried to help. I met Kindra Warnygora at the marina at 1:30 this afternoon. She had the paperwork on my taxes done and needed a couple of signatures. I'll be getting money back this year. Since I had to get everything out of the forepeak to get the Pfiefertex, I took two sails to the tennis courts that were stored there to see what they looked like. I had never even taken a look at them. One is a 75% yankee foresail and the other is an asymmetrical spinnaker. The small yankee, I hope I'll never need and I'll need a lot more sailing experience before I'll be able to fly the asymetrical spinnaker by myself. The lady doing the sewing hailed me as I returned to the boat and had most of the sewing done. Later, I met Susie, Roland, Leta, Candace, and Kim at Dockside for the evening.

Wednesday, 17 April - Pickleball, fitness training, pickleball again for another hour and a half, then picked up the remainder of the sewing from S/V Wisdom, then returned it for corrections. She had installed one patch on the wrong side of the fabric and left one off. I started reloading forepeak but realized that I had originally entered some dowels, rods, and tubing that was stored in there as a generic "bunch", so I decided to list them separately in my database so I'll know exactly how much, how long, and what sizes I have of each. That may keep me from having to dig it all out again to simply look.

Thursday, 18 April - I missed most of the pickleball season because of my left shoulder. There had been almost 40 players showing up but today there were only 12 and they didn't last long. We played for about 2.5 hours and everybody was done. As I returned to the boat the lady next door gave me the corrected sewing back and I reinstalled it on the boat then proceeded with finishing my database entries that I started yesterday and washed some T-shirts and hung them up to dry. I got in a hurry the other day when I looked at my two sails. This afternoon when I was about to stow the asymmetrical spinnaker I realized that I had simply stuffed it haphazardly into its bag so I opened it up, pulled it all out and restuffed it so that the head of the sail is on top and will come out first and the opening to the snuffer is on bottom and will come out last when being deployed. After about three hours I got the lower level of the forepeak repacked and closed up. I'll finish with the upper area tomorrow or Saturday. I spent the evening reading and finishing "PT-109".

Friday, 19 April - I played pickleball and worked out with the class at the fitness court again...about 2 hours of pickleball and an hour of fitness training. On the way back to the boat I picked up a couple of orders from Ebay that finally arrived. On the boat I re-sealed the three foremost port stanchions where I thought a little bit of water might have come into the boat and gotten some charts wet under the mattress in the forepeak. After I did that and upon closer observation I am not sure that was the problem. Perhaps the water had come in through the anchor chain hawse holes in the deck. I need to figure a way to seal those better. Next, I started, but did not finish, stowing away the items that I had removed from the forepeak bunk that I use as storage. At 5 o'clock I headed in to the marina's tiki hut for the Friday evening happy hour. I rarely play the game of corn hole but was recruited into a game because three others wanted to play. I was surprised to hold my own against the others that play frequently and my partner and I won both games that we played.

Saturday, 20 April - Susie and I went to the Marathon International Airport this morning in hopes of seeing lots of experimental airplanes. I had heard that they'b be giving free rides to kids there today, an event sponsored by the Experimental Aircraft Association to promote interest in aviation to the next generation. I had seen an unfamiliar white biplane flying over the harbor recently and had assumed there would be more. I was wrong but the short trip was still worthwhile. There's a small aviation museum there too. Later we went to Skipjack for dinner and met Roland, Leta, Kim, Sean, the city marina manager, and his wife and others there.

Sunday, 21 April - I finally got everything back in place in the forepeak and while I had the chance I adjusted the catch on the forepeak to chain locker hatch. I also put away the long sleeved shirts that I had hanging in the hanging locker and put them in a hanging wall bag in the forepeak until next fall. I hope I can remember where they are when I need them.

Monday, 22 April - I played about 40 minutes of pickleball this morning before I had to walk 50 yards to the fitness court for the fitness class. That class runs just about an hour and I intended to return to pickleball but all the players had already quit. I went to lunch with Brian, another player and fellow in the fitness class. When I returned to the boat I fabricated a replacement tiller extension for the dinghy motors. The one in use for the past three years or so recently broke.

Tuesday, 23 April - I played pickleball this morning then Bryan of S/V Grateful went over to the Overseas Pub for lunch then I returned to the boat and defrosted the freezer. At six this evening I met my friends Mark and Pat Becker at Dockside and Roland and Leta, then Susie, Candace and Bob Harrington joined us.

Wednesday, 24 April - I played about 40 minutes of pickleball then moseyed over to the fitness court for an hour of exercise. I planned on rejoining play on the pickleball courts but the other players had pooped out by the time I returned. This afternoon I spent going through one of my tool boxes and wiping all the tools down with light oil to stave off the omnipresent rust.

Thursday, 25 April - I got in a couple of hours of pickleball this morning then headed back to the boat. Roland and Leta have sold their boat and are trying to get everything off of it so they offered me several items at good prices. I called them but unfortunately, Leta had her phone turned off and Roland doesn't have one so I couldn't go over there. She called about 7:30 but I was just about to have dinner so I postponed till tomorrow, had dinner and read some.

Friday, 26 April - I played pickleball for about an hour then headed to fitness training for an hour. When I went back to the pickleball courts today there were still players there so I got in another hour of play. As soon as I got back to the boat I checked my messages and Leta had left a message to come to their boat as soon as I returned. I headed over there and ended up spending $60 on things that I can use and that they needed to get rid of. After working out all morning I was pretty tired so I took a nap from 3 to 4 o'clock then cleaned up and met them at the dock to go meet Susie at Havana Jack's restaurant and listen to Ty Thurman, Bob, Bob and Max play for the last time as a band. Ty will only be playing solo until October then leaving permanently to go to Tennessee to be with family.

Saturday, 27 April - I researched online today about how to make a Dyneema locked Brummell sheathed loop splice that I need for quite awhile then went to West Marine to buy the Dyneema. Dyneema in a fairly recent, and expensive, cordage that is much stronger than the Dacron double braid that most of my running rigging is made of. In fact, it is weight for weight, stronger than steel. It even floats. It is so strong that I want to replace a short section of my genoa sheet with it. I can replace the 1/2 inch line with 1/4 inch but unfortunately, it is more susceptible to UV degradation, thus the need for the sheathing. It's also very slippery. So much so that there are very few knots that can be tied in it or onto it and hold so it has to be spliced for most uses. Apparently, this West Marine store is so small that they do not stock Dyneema in any size over about an eighth of an inch. I could triple the loop, but that just adds complications.

Sunday, 28 April - Since I can't get the Dyneema or the sheathing here I tried to find it online today but couldn't find sheathing other than Dyneema sheathing. That wouldn't solve the UV problem. I think I may use the outer layer of Dacron double braided line to use as the sheathing. Of all the cordage I have on the boat, I don't have the right size to strip the outer layer off of. I'll have to buy some. I met Roland, Leta, Susie, Kim, Candace and others at Dockside for cocktails and music this evening. When I returned to the boat, the anchor light was not on so after a few drinks at 11 o'clock I removed the face to the electrical panel and cleaned up the wiring connections on that circuit and rerouted a wire to make it easier to reconnect, but to no avail. I'll have to track down the solution another night. During the day I can't tell if what I try has worked or not because I can't tell if the light comes on during daylight. I replaced the bulbs it that light with new, brighter lights and had found a broken wire in the circuit, but lately the light has not come on about once in ten sights. Intermittent problems are always hard to resolve but not being able to tell if what I've done has resolved the problem during daylight hours makes it especially difficult.

Monday, 29 April - I played pickleball for an hour this morning then walked the 100 feet over to the fitness court for that class. I intended to play about another hour of pickleball after the workout but the other players had already called it a day. I went to the marina and signed up for another month on the ball, then back to the boat. I spent some more time online researching the loop I need to make, too. There is lots of conflicting information. Later, I met Susie and about 10 of the other fitness class participants at Dockside to celebrate the departure of our instructor, Melanie Streng, to ports further north and to listen to her husband Mike entertain us. He sings and plays the guitar solo. On the way back to the boat I found that the masthead anchor light did not come on again.

Tuesday, 30 April - We played pickleball for a couple of hours today even though the sky opened up and sprinkled a couple of times. This is going to be a very busy week for Susie and me. We'll have been at Dockside Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, then back there again on Friday for a celebration of life for Chuck Henderson that was on S/V Cool Change but passed away recently. On Thursday evening we are going to the playhouse to attend a murder mystery play, Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap". Plus, of course, workouts at the park fitness court on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.