Wednesday, 1 May - Pickleball and fitness training in the morning, then I picked up a quadruple block for the dinghy davits that had been delivered for me at the marina.

Thursday, 2 May - I got in about two and a half hours of pickleball this morning and mid-day, I tried to install the block that I got yesterday, only to discover that I'd gotten the wrong model. I called Vela Sailing Supply, ordered the correct one, and arranged to return the one I have. This evening Susie and I went to the Marathon Community Theater (playhouse) and attended Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap". The was well done and very entertaining. While there we also saw and talked to Mike Wagner and Bev Fowers, Jack and Deborah, Pat and Mark Becker, Catherine McCole, Phil and Carol Vachon, and others that we know. We were informed by Mike that "The Mouse Trap" has been running virtually uninterrupted since 1952 in London.

Friday, 3 May - Several pickleballers were on the court when I arrived, four playing and two waiting. A fourth arrived and we got in several games before I had to go to the fitness court for an hour. When fitness training finished there were still four players left and I got in another 45 minutes of play. I returned to the boat and cleaned up, then met Susie and about 30 or 40 of Chuck Henderson's friends at Dockside for his celebration of life. Susie left Dockside about 5 o'clock and I followed shortly thereafter. On the way back to my boat I stopped briefly at another boat where Bryan on S/V Grateful was attempting to replace the starter cord on his outboard. He was afraid to take the starter mechanism off but I showed him that it is really simple; three bolts and it's off. I briefly stopped at Island Time then met Susie at the marina to go to Barnacle Barney's for dinner with Kim, Leta, Roland, Jack and Deborah to listen to another Chuck and his wife, Linda, sing.

Saturday, 4 May - We had our monthly nautical flea market at the marina today. We had the poorest turnout, measured by both buyers and sellers, but I sold more today than I can remember ever selling in the past. I sold a cast net for $60 and three storage bags that can be hung on a wall for $60. I bought a rafter square, an easy to read vernier caliper, and a couple of alligator clips for $5 and a small plastic box to put small, miscellaneous items in for $2. The reason so much was bought and sold today was because Chuck Henderson's sister brought lots of tools, marine parts, and other things off of Chuck's boat that now needs to be sold to the sale. There was lots of great stuff at giveaway prices, but, unfortunately for her, I already have most of the things she had for sale. At least one person took away two wheelbarrow loads, however.

Sunday, 5 May, Cinco de Mayo and Mother's Birthday - Mike Wagner and Bev Fowers had a Cinco de Mayo party at the dock by their boat today. Lots of fun with Mike performing with his guitar and great food, too. We returned to Susie's about 5:30 and while there I was notified that I had the high bid on a used Raymarine Chart Plotter to replace mine that won't boot up. I got it for a reasonable price, assuming it is in as good a condition as represented. The only ones that I'd been seeing for sale cost more and not functional, only being sold for parts. Around 7 PM we went to Dockside to dance.

Monday, 6 May - I played pickleball this morning for an hour then went to the fitness class with Susie and about 10 others. When the class ended I returned to pickleball. While I was working out there were about 20 pickleball players but by the time I returned there were only four playing. When their game was over two quit and I had to coerce one of them to play one more game. This evening when I turned on the gas on the stove to heat dinner, it wouldn't light. I had to use the microwave. After dinner I checked the propane tank and, sure enough, it was empty. My last one lasted about a year. This one, I just installed on the tenth of April so I need to figure out what happened. I certainly haven't been smelling any gas and the propane gas alarm hasn't sounded either. The propane compartment is vented to the outside of the boat so maybe there is a leak somewhere and the gas simply vents out.

Tuesday, 7 May - After pickleball today I refilled the two 20 lb. propane tanks. As I returned to the boat one of the tanks was leaking from the overpressure valve. I hope that was because the attendant overfilled the tank a bit and it was warming up. I'll keep an eye on it for the next few days. In the evening Susie and I had Ron and Karen Butler join us at Dockside to listen to the JibSea Cowboys play.

Wednesday, 8 May - I head to shore to play pickleball before the morning Cruiser's Net so I'm having a hard time contacting the captains of two other boats. They must turn their radios off during most of the day. Each of them has a Yamaha outboard motor for sale the same size and model as mine although, perhaps, not the same vintage. I currently have one Yamaha and one Evinrude but would prefer to have two that are alike so spare parts could fit either one. I tried to reach the other boats but since they didn't answer I defrosted the freezer.

Wednesday, 8 May - I played pickleball from 9 to 10 then attended the fitness class from 10 to 11. When I returned to the pickleball court there were only 4 ladies left. We played until about 12:15 then I headed over to the marina to check to see if the quad block that I had ordered had arrived. It had and I picked up my mail, too. I got on the VHF but still couldn't raise the boats with the outboard motors for sale.

Thursday, 9 May - It's getting pretty warm here so some of the pickle ballers decided to start at 8 AM. I got up early and joined them. We played until almost 11:30, about the same time that we usually quit. This afternoon I installed the quad block on the davits. I now have quads on top and bottom on both of the davits. I gave up on hailing the boats with the outboards for sale, got in the dinghy and headed out to their boats. One owner was not on his boat but I talked to the other owner and saw the engine. It's the engine that Roland and Leta had on their dinghy. The price is good but it sounds like it has the same problem of not getting the dinghy up on a plane that mine had. Although mine is running pretty well now I never did figure out what I did to make in do so. I wasn't able to take this one out for a test drive. I want to talk to the other seller first and see what his looks like.

Friday, 10 May - I played two hours of pickleball starting at 8 AM then an hour of fitness class and when I finished the class I returned to the pickleball court but everyone else had had enough. I returned to the boat and hand washed some clothes then returned to the marina for the Friday evening pot luck happy hour. Ben of S/V Driftwood was there playing guitar and I joined him by singing along to some of his songs.

Saturday, 11 May - I waited about as long as I could for rain to fill my water tank but gave up today and made three trips to the marina to get 50 gallons each time and pumped it into my tank. Well, most of it. My tank wasn't as empty as I thought it was. I only got 120 gallons into it before it overflowed. I store the rest in jerry jugs on deck. I was running low on clean clothes so I washed several sets by hand onboard today.

Sunday, 12 May - I gave the boat a better than usual vacuuming today. I lifted most of the floorboards and vacuumed the upper edges of the compartments where dust seeps through the cracks. This evening I met Susie at Dockside. The snowbirds have definitely left the state. Dockside was only about half filled with people this evening, but Karen and Ron Butler joined us about 8 o'clock.

Monday, 13 May - After pickleball and fitness exercises I stopped by the marina and picked up the Raymarine e7 chart plotter that I was high bidder for on eBay. I returned to the boat and immediately disassembled the pod mine is mounted in and replaced my old one with the new (used) one. So far it seems to be just fine but it will probably take another day or two to get it programmed like my old one was. I think this one has an older version of the operating system on it that will need to be updated and I need to change a lot of settings in the software and find backups for my old tracks, courses, and markers and load them. At 4:30 I met Catherine McCole at her house to buy a set of foul weather gear that her friend Chuck Henderson had. They still have the tags on them and were very expensive when purchased new.

Tuesday, 14 May - After pickleball this morning I re-defrosted the freezer and went to the post office to mail a package and then to the grocery store. I think I may set another personal record; $348 worth of groceries, and I'm not buying beer or other alcoholic beverages. Living in paradise isn't cheap! It's Tuesday so I met Susie at Dockside this evening.

Wednesday, 15 May - We've started playing pickleball at 8 AM this week, but only three of us showed up then, Karen Butler, Margerie, and I. The next to show up came about 8:40 and they were visitors that had heard about the games through the park office. Bob Dahmer showed up just as I needed to go to the fitness class and by the time the class was over, everyone else had quit pickleball. I returned to the boat and spent the afternoon reprogramming the chart plotter. Unfortunately, I think I'm now going to have to do it all over again after updating the firmware. It took me a long time to figure out what version the firmware is. It's V.5 and the current version is V.19.03.

Thursday, 16 May - Three of us arrived at 8 am to play pickleball but a fourth didn't show up until almost 9 am. Eventually, we ended up with eight players and one came so late that everyone else was hot and ready to leave. He got in one game. That's the second day in a row that that happened to someone. I returned to the boat and updated the firmware on the chart plotter from V.5 to V.19. It still took all afternoon to update and reconfigure the software.

Friday, 17 May - Four showed up for pickleball at 8 this morning. I played for two hours then expected to go to the exercise class but no one showed up, so I played another hour. I had noticed yesterday while programing the chart plotter that the FluxGate Compass wasn't working so I spent the afternoon trying to figure out why. I opened up the flooring where the sensor is and started tracking the wiring from there, but didn't finish before having to clean up to go to the Friday happy hour at the tiki at the marina.

Saturday 18 May - I picked up on the diagnosis of the FluxGate Compass again this morning, tracked the wiring back to the aft cabin and ran tests of the wiring as prescribed by Raymarine's instructions. Everything checked out OK and the compass was working again. I don't know what fixed it. That's a little scary. If it goes out again I still don't know how to fix it.

Sunday, 19 May - Susie joined me for the harbor's Sunday brunch this morning then we went out to West Sister's Rock, a very small island about a mile from here on the ocean side of Boot Key, in the dinghy. We had planned on doing a little snorkeling, but were soon joined by several other dinghies full of boaters and spent about four hours simply enjoying the 85 degree water and conversation. We spotted three fins about 250 yards away in the grass flats and one of the guys bet that it was a big nurse shark. Being in very shallow water, he walked over to prove it, but he was wrong. It was a sawfish about eight feet long that was probably dying. Lately, sawfish here have been found to be affected by some unknown disease that makes them swim in circles and die. At first, this one seemed to simply be stationery, but then we saw it thrash around and circle several times. We called the FWC, Florida Wildlife Conservation, to report it and hoped they'd arrive in time to see it roscued, but that didn't happen before we needed to leave. Later, Susie and I met at Dockside for the evening's entertainment.

Monday, 20 May - I woke up at 4:20AM to the crash of thunder, got up and dropped the side panels on my bimini/dodger to keep out the rain, then went back to sleep. By 6 o'clock the thunder and lightning was too constant to ignore...and it got worse...the wind got up up to about 41 knots briefly and the sky opened up and dumped 6 inches of rain by noon. Boats in the harbor were dragging and dinghies were getting swamped. I put on my raincoat and went to the stern and strapped the dinghy close to the boat on the davits so it wouldn't swing. Three of four guys eventually got out and started pumping out boats and dinghies for others. Some people here have jobs that they have to leave their boats and dinghies unattended during the day, but I can't understand why others that are on their boats don't put on their rain gear and either pump out or bail out their dinghies before they swamp. It makes no sense, especially when they have outboard motors on them that will quickly ruin when the dinghy swamps and the engine gets salt water in it. Luckily, although thunder and lightning rumbled all around us until around 3PM, the rain was only off and on. I knew when I filled my water tank with fresh water from the marina that it would soon rain again. Within about 30 minutes of the first rain my tank overflowed so I took the opportunity to wash some clothes and still maintain a full tank. For some reason my batteries were low today and as soon as the strong winds quit, it dropped to below the point that my wind generator will charge my batteries and the cloud cover prevented my solar panels from charging, too. I decided to start the engine but upon doing so heard an unfamiliar sound. I couldn't tell where it was coming from so I opened the starboard side of the engine room. I still couldn't tell so I opened the port side, too. I dropped down into the engine room but that big diesel is so loud I still couldn't tell where the sound was coming from or what it was. I shut the engine off and decided, since the sun had come out, to let the solar panels try to catch up. Two hours later I could see that they weren't going to fill the batteries so I moved the Honda 2000i to the afterdeck and started it up and ran it until sunset. I got the batteries back up to 90% charged. That should get me through the night.

Tuesday, 21 May - The masthead anchor light that is controlled by the photoelectric switch that is mounted near the bottom of the mast is still only working sporadically so today I removed the switch from the system and will simply leave the anchor light on 24 hours a day. I had installed the switch because I could not always remember to either turn the light on at night or to turn it off during the daytime. Now however, since I recently replaced the tungsten bulb at the top of the mast with an LCD bulb that is not only brighter but also uses about a third of the energy, it uses so little energy that it is too little to worry about. Susie and I met for entertainment at Dockside this evening. So many of the snowbirds have left the area now that we don't have to arrive 45 minutes to an hour to get seats. That's nice and cuts down on the evenings bill, too.

Wednesday, 22 May - I played two hours of pickleball then went to the fitness class for an hour. This afternoon I opened the engine room and filled the engine coolant reservoir, replaced the zincs in the reverse gear heat exchanger and the Isotherm refrigeration water pump, checked the engine oil and transmission oil levels and ran the engine for a few minutes. I didn't find anything wrong.

Thursday, 23 May - Pickleball this morning lasted for 3 hours: 8 - 11. I returned to the boat, had lunch, then prepared about 4 of the sacrificial pencil zincs for the Isotherm refrigeration pump for future installations. Those zincs are a size E-0 which are sold about two inches long with a 5/16" X 18 threads per inch on one end. They are called !/4" NPT but for what reason I know not. They are actually 3/8" in diameter with the 5/16" threads and I need them to be their normal length for the reverse gear heat exchanger but only about 5/8" of thread and 1/2" of the 3/8" pencil. That means I have to cut them off but I have realized that, as purchased, I can make two from each pencil. To do that I have to thread the end that isn't already threaded and then cut them in two. Unfortunately, since they are 3/8" in diameter, I have to first thread them with a 3/8" X 18 die, then thread them again with a 5/16" X 18 die. That's probably more work than it's worth, but I do it anyway.

Friday, 24 May - Two hours of pickleball, then an hour of fitness training. Susie and I attended the Friday evening happy hour at the Tiki Hut this afternoon but very few people showed up. I had walked over to the RaceTrack gas station to purchase a pizza for the happy hour but when I walked into the store I immediately saw that Susie had had the same idea and had beaten me there. We left the party early and went to her house and watched an episode of a series that was, in part, filmed on a ranch where my dad spent part of his youth being a cowboy.

Saturday, 25 May - I spent almost all day preparing the boat to sail tomorrow to go out and calibrate settings on the new to me Multi Function Display / Chart Plotter that I recently acquired and installed.

Sunday, 26 May - Kevin Smith of M/V Sonic Seadog came to my boat to try to resolve some questions I have about the MFD. We didn't really resolve anything, however. Around noon I called Susie and she met me at the marina then we headed out of the harbor on Island Time. Unfortunately, just as we got to the location that I had planned to swing the compass, the engine overheated. I had to shut the engine down. The entrance to the harbor is long and narrow so sailing back in was out of the question. We wanted to go to Dockside in the evening so I made the decision to call Tow Boat US and get towed in. The $150 I pay for that tow insurance is the best investment I think I've ever made. When I got towed eight hours back up to March Island years back would have cost me thousands of dollars if I hadn't had the insurance and saved me enough to pay for a lifetime of annual fees. We got lucky on this Memorial Day holiday and the tow boat showed up within an hour and got the boat back into the harbor before a low tide that would have stranded up outside. We actually made it back in time to get cleaned up and meet Karen and Ron Butler at Dockside for the evening.

Monday, 27 May - Today was the last time Karen Butler will play pickleball with us before heading north for the summer so I played, then headed back and replaced the impeller in the raw water pump that caused the engine to overheat. That went better than usual and I was surprised that it had failed in just 14 months since it was replaced. Unfortunately, six of the eight blades on the impeller were missing and will need to be removed from the system.

Tuesday, 28 May - I got up early this morning and skipped pickleball in order to get an early and cooler (84°) start on tearing the cooling system apart to find the missing neoprene blades from the impeller. Luckily, all the pieces got stuck at the forward end of the transmission's heat exchanger. I removed, cleaned it up, rodded out each of the passageways, and reinstalled it in about 3 hours. I should have taken photos before I cleaned it up so you could see what a mess it was but I didn't. I did take some ofter the clean-up, however, so you can see what a reverse gear heat exchanger is. You can see those at the link below.

Wednesday, 29 May - We've lost so many players to the north country that only three of us showed up this morning. We played for about an hour and a half, but it was so humid that we only got in three games before I had to quit to walk the short distance over to the fitness court to workout with only two others that showed up for that class, Susie, I and one other girl. This afternoon I checked the spark plugs and reset the idle on the Yamaha outboard a little higher. It isn't running smoothly and tends to die as I idle up to a dock or to my swim platform on the boat. Sometimes I have to glide the last few feet and sometimes I have to restart the engine to get the last two to five feet to my destination.

Thursday, 30 May - I was afraid that we wouldn't have anyone show up for pickleball this morning but five, including myself, showed up. That made it so that one person set out each game which let that person cool down and that was much appreciated. The temperature was at least 86 degrees on the court and the humidity was around 80% so we only played for two and a half hours. I then went to the marina and paid for another month of mooring rental. This afternoon I opened the compartment under my bed that contains the steering hydraulic system and bled the system and refilled the reservoir, then engaged the autopilot to make sure it is working properly.
                    While I was in the cockpit working on the steering I heard a big splash that was big enough to think that someone had fallen in, but I'm the only one onboard. Then I heard something bouncing on the deck just outside the cockpit but I had the window panel of the dodger down so I couldn't see what was going on. I stepped out of the cockpit on the starboard side and walked around to the port. There was a mullet about 10 inches long flopping around on the deck. I suspect that either a porpoise or one of the six foot tarpons in the harbor was chasing it and when it jumped its tormentor jumped, but missed the catch with the mullet on the deck of my boat. It would have been a real surprise if I'd ended up with a six foot tarpon or a 150 pound porpoise on deck, too.

Friday, 31 May - I played a couple of hours of pickleball before going to the fitness court to be dominated and punished by a fitness Nazi for an hour along with Susie and two others this morning. This afternoon I spent several hours trying once again to stop the gasoline leak at the connector between the fuel line and the male connector on the engine. I've replaced the female connector several times and the male connector, too, but it just keeps on leaking. I made gaskets out of shower underlayment which is 1mm thick but it leaked. I added another but the connector wouldn't lock on. I tried using o-rings of various sizes but they won't stop the leak. I tried one layer of shower underlayment and one of a soft, 2mm thick rubber inner tube, but that wouldn't lock on. I tried two layers of 1mm rubber inner tube, but that wouldn't quit leaking. I finally got tired and put one 1mm layer of inner tube on it and hope that the gasoline will saturate the rubber and make it swell up enough to seal the connection. We'll see, but I doubt that the inner tube rubber will last long. What I think I really need is a 2mm soft piece of silicone, but that's not readily available.
                    Susie and I are going to Dockside this evening because our favorite singer, Popeye, is playing tonight. I think I'll go a bit early so I can have dinner there.