Sunday, 1 June 2025 - The first official day of hurricane season. Luckily, there is nothing to be concerned with in the Atlantic, YET! I took down the first batch of clothes that wore hung up to dry and replaced them with the second, then I threw a few dirty rags into the same water. I don't care if they come as clean as the clothes do, but I'll still let them soak overnight. After that I went back up the mast again and finished lashing the "bib" to the spreaders. I'm off to Dockside later, hoping to see Susie there.

Monday, 2 June 2025 - The weatherman predicted rain for most of the day and we got some although it started later than expected. It's a pretty big storm and I think about half of Florida is getting some flooding but we seem to be right on the southern edge of it all. I stayed onboard, finished washing clothes, and mixed up a batch of ant poison made of water, sugar, and boric acid to try to rid the boat of wood ants. This variety, Florida wood ants, don't seem to do a lot of damage on a boat, but I still don't really want them aboard. Any damage is too much. It's cooler today and I realized that the refrigeration had shut off for the first time in months. I wasn't sure that wasn't because of the cool weather until this evening when I realized that it never came back on. I'll be dealing with that tomorrow I suppose. About an 80% chance of rain is expected again tomorrow.

Tuesday, 3 June - I removed the thermostat in the refrigerator. It was about 1/4 full of condensed water but intentionally shorting out the two wires still didn’t start the pump or compressor. I removed the wooden cover to the unit but could see nothing obviously wrong. I observed that, even though the compressor hasn’t been on since yesterday that it is still very warm, but not hot. I met Susie at Dockside this evening.

Wednesday, 4 June - I tried to find a Fuse for the refrigeration system, but could not. The system was turned off overnight, but I switched it on and discovered that both the pump and the compressor got warm indicating they were getting power. I disconnected hoses and opened valves and determined that water was getting to the pump, but not being pumped through, only gravity flow. I removed the pump and black water drained from the stator casing. Water in the casing means the seals have failed and the black means it's burnt up. It’s shot.

Thursday, 5 June - I've spent several hours studying the manual, PDFs about the refrigeration, drawings and schematics, but they just don't give enough information for me to figure out what parts I need to order. Not only that, but West Marine seems to be the only dealer for parts for these units and they don't have matching part numbers for what is in my reefer. I finally called the nationwide distributor to find out some answers and find out where I can buy the parts. I got a pleasant surprise. There is about one more month of warranty left. I filled out their information and returned it to them. I doubt that they jumped right on it and sent the parts on their way to me, but it sure would be nice. My refrigerator is staying colder than I expected but it can't stay cold enough much longer.
                    After dealing with them I returned to the engine room and replaced the sacrificial zincs in the refrigeration pump and in the revers gear transmission. Those zincs sacrifice themselves by dissolving rather than letting the engine or refrigerator be destroyed by small electrical transmissions between the different metals in the units. I also tried to repair two of my three multimeters. The Exetech meter had its connections to the 9V battery totally corroded. I replaced the pigtail on that but it still won't boot up. The Fluke boots up but the digital readout on all the modes just blink and jump around randomly. The salt air here just eats up electronics even when the devices are stowed away in bags or boxes...and the same goes for my tools. Leaky batteries have also ruined several flashlights and other devices. That's what corroded the connection on the 9V battery in the Exetech meter and my Freon detector, among other things. I used to swear by Duracell batteries, now I swear at them. They used to be made in the USA. Now some are made in China.

Friday, 6 June - I finally got tired of having one of the under cabinet lights over the galley sinks fall down so I spent several hours figuring out how to replace one of the two with two new ones and leave the other, old one, in place. It is working, so why replace it, I thought. After finally figuring out the wiring needed using one tandem switch and installing them I realized that the 168 LEDs in the new units are so bright that having the remaining fluorescent light installed doesn't make much sense...but it's still there. I won't remove it until it dies and that may be a long time since it won't be used much.

Saturday, 7 June - Our first Saturday of the month swap meet was this morning. I was the only seller there and only two people wandered by. I sold nothing there, but it was a good day to sell something anyway. I was intercepted halfway in to the marina by a fellow that had heard me say that I was going to take a 25 lb. Danforth anchor to the swap. We stopped mid-stream and he paid me $75 for it. Unfortunately, I don't get to keep the money. I was selling it for Doc and Kate Neises, pickleball players that have already headed north for the summer and won't be back till fall. While ashore I also checked to see if, by some miracle, the refrigeration parts had arrived.
                    Well, I was right to have doubted that they would show up. I'd thought that since they were coming from only about a hundred and 120 miles away that they might make it. No, but not for the reason that I thought. I didn't realize that FebEx doesn't deliver to the marina on weekends. I bought two small, two pound bread pan sized, ice blocks to tide me over although I think it's too late for my gallon and a half of milk. I'll know in the morning. I also walked over to the city park to get five Dr Pepper bottles filled with cold water but since I was there last the fountain's bottle spigot has ceased to work, as has the refrigeration unit inside it. I got five bottles of hot water.

Sunday, 8 June - Vacuuming the boat really well was the priority today. It's a hot job in the confined space of the boat. The little Stanley Vacuum that I have definitely has a design flaw. Its exhaust, which is pretty warm, blows in alignment with the hose, which means that it blows around the dust that you are trying to pick up with the hose. It also means that the hot air is always in front of you instead of where you've been. Regardless, it really warms up an already warm boat cabin. Later, I headed to shore to get another small block of ice to tide me over until tomorrow when, hopefully, the refrigeration pump will arrive. I had to throw away more than half a gallon of sour milk that I had open and ruined because it got too warm for too long. I have another gallon that hadn't been opened that is doing better, temporarily.
                    Ouch! I broke out a new batch of razors this afternoon. Here's a warning guys. Don't ever buy Pacehion Triple Blade Plus razors. Their sales slogan should be, "Guaranteed to pull out your whiskers two at a time before clogging up." Satisfaction is Guaranteed. The satisfaction will be in throwing the rest of them away. Worst razor I've ever used, and that includes the old double edged razors. Although I never used a straight edged razor, I'm pretty sure these would be worse.
                    This evening I met Susie at Dockside for dinner and dancing.

Monday, 9 June - This morning I sent out my May update of this letter. Afterward I went to the marina and picked up my new refrigeration water pump, brought it back to the boat and installed it. That took about an hour and a half and I think I got it done just in time to save my second gallon of milk. My first gallon, which sits on top of the other in the fridge went totally bad about halfway through. It will be nice to have cold drinking water, too.

Tuesday, 10 June - For some unknown reason the island is out of power today; in fact, most of the Keys are. It helps to be self supporting for food, water, and power at times like this, but it still slows things down. Quarterly taxes are due soon and I have put it off until the last minute. Since island power is off, phones are off-line, too, so I'll have to wait until power is back up. I did get a small surprise. Since the cell towers are off-line, T-Mobile sent me a message to say that I could still send messages or my location via satellite. I may try that out. Actually, I just took a short break and sent Susie a short message. Unfortunately, she didn't respond immediately so I don't know if the message went through or not or, if it did, she may not be able to message me. I'm on T-Mobile, she's not. I had to go on deck to find a satellite to send the message but didn't stay there long. Susie may have gotten power back way before we did here. I don't know because I'm on the boat. She got power, but not cellular. Her computer messaging runs through her cable connection though so she could message me that way. At 4:30 I still don't have phone service and don't know if Dockside will have power for the band or not.
                    Dang it! I just killed a wood ant here during the daytime. They usually stay hidden until late at night. Apparently none of the poisons I've tried have been effective at all.

Wednesday, 11 June - I have questions that I need to ask about the water pump I got from Isotherm the other day. The box it came in has a part number imprinted on it but there is a label attached with a different part number. I need to know which I received but the guy at Isotherm won't return my calls.

Thursday, 12 June - I tried to renew my FCC license for my VHF radio today. Their website has me baffled. You have to sign up on one part of the site with a username and password in order to sign up on another part. I got it all screwed up and spent about four hours trying to figure it out, then called them and a woman sent me several pages of instructions with abbreviations that I'm unfamiliar with. I followed those instructions as best I could, thought I'd managed to sign up, but was then instructed that they'd sent me an email that I had to respond to in order to finalize the action. I never got the email. Still no call from Isotherm, either.

Friday, 13 June - Navionics is a chart program that I use and I need to update it on my chart plotter. Before I can do that I needed to juggle many gigs of data from one micro SD card onto my laptop and then back onto another SD card today so that the card the update will be on has enough room to fit. That took quite a bit of time. Almost every time I visit West Marine's website I wish I didn't have to deal with it. Their internal search algorithm is terrible. I did a search for "Teak Guard" today and it brought up only one item, a T-shirt. Other times that I've used it I have gotten hundreds of only slightly similar products to my request with the item I'm looking for intermixed throughout up to 59 pages. I also have had problems signing into their site. Every time I logon I instantly get a notification that I have timed out. I finally tried to use their "Chat" to discuss my problems, but that didn't work either so I broke down and called them. I talked to the store manager and he admitted that their employees actually Google search for items on their site instead of using their built-in search engine. He said he'd talk to their main office and have them return my call to discuss my problems. That was about noon and I never heard back from them. Of course, it being Friday the 13th, I won't hear anything until Monday, if at all. I did the Google search and found about a hundred similar teak cleaners and coatings on West Marine's site, but no Teak Guard...and no T-shirts, either.

Saturday, 14 June - Mark Reiter sent me a link to a forum where someone had posted a photo of their The Ski collection. I posted that I had had quite a few myself and thought of a photo that Al Mortenson had taken of me doing a royal christie in the moguls on High Rustler at Alta in the mid '70s wearing The Skis with Spademan bindings, and matching Dimetri sweater, gloves and The Ski Scott poles. I searched through hundreds of photos I have onboard, but couldn't find that one. I did, however, come across one of me jumping off Bounous's Rock with my The Skis, and another of me holding up my The Skis while being presented a medal at the Alta Gelande in 1988. Of course, lots of others brought back vivid memories, too, so it took awhile. It's hard to believe I don't have that 5 X 7 that Al gave me. It's got to be here somewhere. I thought I might post it on that forum.

Sunday, 15 June - I defrosted the freezer and replaced the thermostat. Chris Jasinski, the worker at Marathon Boatyard that installed my new refrigerator almost two years ago assembled it in a manner that made it awfully hard to replace the thermostat. I had to re-route it because I would have had to virtually disassemble the evaporator compartment otherwise. The previous arrangement had the sensor wire run inside the evaporator compartment, then the sensor attached to the inside of the evaporator with a stainless steel clip so that the sensor was touching the metal of the evaporator. Chris ran the wire in the adjoining compartment, then through a hole at the back into the evaporator compartment and attached the sensor to the back of the evaporator out of sight. Since the previous thermostat had a considerable amount of water in it I tried to seal the new one up as best I could but I'm sure condensation will get in, but hopefully, not as much. I finally got in done, then went to Dockside to meet Susie.

Monday, 16 June - Writing this of Tuesday, I have no idea what I did on this day except that I stayed onboard all day. I'm sure I did something constructive.

Tuesday, 17 June - My back just doesn't seem to be getting better so I called the VA to see if I could possibly arrive three or four hours early for an already planned audiology appointment and get to see my primary care physician, too. They made no guarantees but said come on down. I left the boat an 9:15 and arrived there two hours later. My scheduled audiology appointment was at 3 pm and they called me in an about 11:45 to see what the other problem was. I described the pain in my middle right back that hasn't gone away and they decided to send me to Urgent Care of Key West, outside the VA system. We were trying to figure out how I could get there on the bus in time to see a doctor there and get back by three o'clock for my audiology appointment when another veteran over heard the conversation and offered me a ride just as I was about to decide that I could walk the three miles both ways and still make it back in time, assuming my time there was short. He got me there within about 15 minutes and dropped me off. Very nice of him. I went inside and told them my problem and they said there might be a slight problem. Their X-ray technician had just left because of illness. Now I had lots of time so I walked back the three miles to the VA, having lunch on the way. They actually got me in to see audiology early, too, so I thought I might be able to catch an early bus. I had just enough time to arrive at the bus stop if I rushed. I jogged part of the way and was along the route for the last quarter mile so I know it didn't go by me. I actually arrived right on time, then looked at their map that shows the real-time location of the bus. It appeared to be running about twenty minutes late. I waited but when the bus got to the intersection just next to me it was in the left turn lane and had "Out of Service" posted on its banner. What? Apparently, the bus that I was supposed to catch was running about 10 minutes ahead of schedule, which they are NEVER supposed to do, and I had just missed it. The out of service bus should have had its GPS locator turned off. I had to kill another hour for the next bus to pass me going into Key West and then return going back east. I arrived back in Marathon just in time to shower and head to Dockside to meet Susie. An interesting day. I'll have to make arrangements to see a doctor at Urgent Care here in Marathon to look at my current back problem.

Wednesday, 18 June - I called Anthony Kelhauer at Onboard Rigging again this morning to see if he could come to Island Time and take a look at the radar and wind indicator. He said he'd call me back between 2 and 3 pm to let me know his schedule. That set me free to go to the grocery store to replace the milk that has gone bad because the refrigeration was off for so long. While there, I bought fresh bananas, some canned peaches for desserts, two large bottles of V8, and one gallon of milk. That's about all the basket on the back of my bicycle will hold. In fact, it wouldn't hold that much weight. The rack bent and, after I had gone about 50 feet started rubbing on the back tire. I rearranged things and suspense the gallon of milk on my wrist to get home. I took the groceries to the boat and still had time to return to shore and repair the bike. Anthony never called.

Thursday, Juneteenth - Right after breakfast I finally decided to try even harder to diagnose the radar problem so I started disassembling the binnacle. The binnacle houses the steering wheel, chain and cables, the compass, and supports my navigation pod. That has my auto helm control and my chart plotter in it. The chart plotter can show me my charts, where I am on the chart, my heading, my speed, depth of the water, who the other boats around me are, and several other things...including my radar imagery, either by itself or overlaid on the chart. Or, at least, it's supposed to. The electronic compass sits on top of the binnacle and I removed it but didn't expose any wiring except for its own. I was a bit reluctant to remove the whole top section of the binnacle because there were two bolts that I was terrified that the retaining nuts inside might fall off down into the engine room and bilge. Luckily, that didn't happen...there were no nuts. The bolts went into threaded support lugs. Whew! Removing the whole top exposed most of the wiring and a fuse. The fuse is good, but I couldn't tell what it protects. All the rest of the wiring looked good and I could tell that the radar cable has a coupling to the electronics for the chart plotter. That coupling is encased in a small protective pod of its own and the end of each wire or cable has connectors much like a communications router connector. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to test those pins out. The electronics technician that was supposed to get back to me never did, and I guess he celebrated the holiday today. He never got back to me at all even though I tried to call him again today.

Friday, 20 June - I finally got ahold of Anthony Kelhauer this morning and he said he'd come by "after noon". That freed me up to go to shore and have the reports of the X-ray and MRI that I had taken last October printed so I can take them to my doctor's appointment on Monday. Anthony finally showed up at 3:30. Although he was later than I had hoped for, he did make two trips up my mast and resolved my wind indicator problem. Actually, what he did was replace my sensor with one of his, which proved mine faulty, then came down and replaced the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) with a spare I had. When I told him I had a spare PCB for the unit, he was amazed. He said that over the years he must have replaced over two hundred of the sensors, but never just the PCB. The whole unit costs over $250, the PCB about $100. I was glad I had the spare. Unfortunately, he didn't have a cable to test my radar units system with. I showed him what I had done and found nothing wrong and he agreed. He called Raymarine and explained the problem and their answer was the same as they had told me; they would repair mine for a flat fee of $700 or discount a new model for about $2500. I'll pass on that for the moment.

Saturday, 21 June - Anthony had said that he might have another radar cable at his shop and needed to be back here in the harbor again today so he would swing by if so. He came at 5:30, but as he started to step onto Island Time from his boat he realized the cable he had had the wrong connector on it so he didn't even come aboard. I tried to update my Navionics charts this evening. The app indicated that it would take four hours but I thought surely not. I started at about 7 pm and gave up at midnight, shut the inverter off and went to bed. I'll try again tomorrow.

Sunday, 22 June - I tried again to download the Navionics charts but it said it would take 27 hours. It was a sunny day here so I went ashore to the marina to use the wifi at the marina to download the charts and data for Navionics. Four gigs of data downloaded it about 15 minutes and I spent some time keeping track of the books I've read. About 3 o'clock I headed home but got waylaid by a person, who turned out to be my next boat neighbor, that was having trouble getting his outboard motor started. He had purchased a new carburetor and installed it but the engine wouldn't run right. It would start but acted as if the choke was on. I realize that something must be keeping the choke plate from opening so he took the carburetor again and realized that the spacer between the carburetor and engine block had a hole that was too small and was interfering with the choke plate. I had not been expecting to be away from my boat for long and did something that I rarely do because of the unpredictability of the weather here; I left two of my hatches open when I went ashore. Just as he restarted his engine, I looked up as saw that it was impossible to see more than about 4 hundred yards across the harbor. A squall was headed our way. I had loaned him a couple of tools. He handed them back to me and before I got them put away it started to rain. I headed back to the boat as fast as I could but still got pretty wet. Island Time is only about two hundred yards from the docks and, luckily, the squall only skirted us. It almost stopped raining by the time I tied up to the boat. I dashed to the foredeck and closed the hatches and went down to the saloon. The floor was barely wet. I was lucky. About an hour later I showered and headed to Dockside to meet Susie for the evening. We are both in awe at the high performance levels of the musicians here that come to play for free on the Sunday night open jam at Dockside. Musicians come from Islamorada to our east and as far away as Key West to entertain us. Great music indeed.

Monday, 23 June - Another doctor's appointment was on the schedule today. I headed to Key West and arrived in time to determine where the bus stop for the return trip would be in case I might be running close to the buses arrival. The doctor looked at my shoulder MRI and determined that he didn't think I should rush into surgery. Of course, I couldn't, the MRI was taken last October. Anyway, he suggested a medication to reduce swelling of the bursa in the shoulder. He left the room and wasn't planning on returning. I caught him in the hall and said that he needed to look at the X-ray of my lower back, too. He was surprised. He doesn't do that. So much for getting both done in one trip. It looked like time would be close to catch the next bus, in fact, I was pretty sure that I was too late. I rushed toward the bus stop and saw three people standing there waiting. Perhaps I was in luck! I checked the bus app on my phone and it looked as if the bus was sitting in downtown Key West about three miles and ten stops away. My smallest bill was sa $20 so I though I had plenty of time to run into the closest store in the strip mall just a few feet away to get some ones. The first store was out of business, the second store was vacated and the third store was...a nail salon that was open. They were nice and broke my 20. I rushed back toward the bus stop, but the three people were gone! Just as I was about to quit cursing the three people returned with information that the bus was delayed by about 40 more minutes. That's a lot better than waiting an hour and a half for the next scheduled bus. We settled in to wait and about 5 minutes later the bus pulled up. What? Yay! I looked at the app again and the bus still appeared to still be stuck downtown. That bus must have been in an accident and left its GPS on while another bus quickly replaced it, without its GPS on. I told the bus driver he didn't have it on but he paid no attention. Including the three that got on with me there were only 6 or 7 riders and during the 40 mile ride all the others got off and the driver only had to pick up one rider. He highballed it and by the time I got off in Marathon, I was the only rider and he was now ahead of schedule. It was 4:00 and I hadn't had lunch so I walked across the street to the Florida Keys Steak and Lobster and was surprised to find a seat next to Liz Dixon at the bar. I had Buffalo shrimp and a Coke then headed back to the boat, leaving Liz there ordering another beer. Another interesting day on a small island.

Tuesday, 24 June - Defrosting the refrigeration was on the agenda today. How exciting! I joined Susie later at Dockside. She comes in her car, I arrive by dinghy.

Wednesday,25 June - In the '70s I used to highly recommend Duracell batteries to clients that came in to Howell'l Photo where I worked at the time and I have used them for years in all my devices. Within the last few years, however, I can't remember how many flashlights and other devices they have ruined by expanding and/or leaking. Today I was replacing the batteries in a small flashlight and noticed several of the batteries in the package of AAAs had already started corroding and leaking. The package indicates the batteries should be good until 2032. They've started having some of their batteries made overseas but, in fact, these were made right here in the good ol' USA. I now Highly Recommend that you DON'T buy Duracell batteries. Actually, I had already decide that myself. The last AA batteries I purchased are Energizers.

Thursday, 26 June - I went to Dockside to have dinner and listen to Candace Widgeon perform this evening and ended up sitting and conversing with a group of the harbor boaters for the evening; something I don't do often enough.

Friday, 27 June - I need to replace the float switch that turns the bilge pump on and off so this afternoon I started by digging out my spare float switch which I purchased at one of the harbor swap meets a couple of years ago, getting tools out to do the job, and looking up the wiring diagram I made for the switch that is currently installed. There are significant differences in the installations so I decided to copy the old schematic and modify it to fit the new unit. It looks like it can't work the way they indicate, but that may be because I can't really tell how the auto/manual switch on the control panel is wired inside. Doing the illustrations is time consuming but make it easier for me to understand how things work.

Saturday, 28 June - I tried almost all day to figure out the wiring on the bilge pump system. In spite of the fact that I own three multimeters, two of which don't work, that doesn't make me an electrician. For the life of me I can't figure out the wiring on the pump, float switch, and automatic/manual control panel. The old float switch had just two wires and worked fine for several years. The new unit has five wires. I found a schematic of the controller that the maker of the new float switch and discovered that it is wired almost opposite of the way my Rule Bilge Switch is. My positive is their negative but I still can make neither heads nor tails of how it can work. There are lots of superfluous and dead end wires in my bilge left over from previous owners different installations making it hard to keep track of where wires go and which ones to use. I removed some to simplify the wiring. I wired up the system as best as I could , tested it, and nothing happened. I gave up around 5 o'clock. Susie got wind that the house band, the JibSea Cowboys, are playing at Dockside this evening instead of Glenn Harman who is on the schedule, so I met her there at 7 pm. Sherri Thilmont and her current boyfriend had caught several fish today and invited us to his boat after Dockside to share. I thought we'd be joining several others, but in fact, when we arrived in my dinghy no one was on his boat. Since it was Sherri and since she was three sheets to the wind earlier, that didn't surprise me too much. We had a nice, short dinghy ride anyway.

Sunday, 29 June - I got up at 7:30 this morning thinking I might have screwed up one of the connections on the wiring that I did yesterday since the pump didn't come on when I tested it yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, I tried it again and I realized that it is so quiet that I may have just not heard it come on yesterday. I saw the pump move caused by the torque as it started this morning. That was a great relief. I had thought that I might have time to replace the connection that I believed I had possibly screwed up before the net this morning and if it still didn't work I was going to get on the VHF and ask for help. It turned out that that wasn't necessary, thank goodness. However, the manual and auto settings were reversed. I took the control panel down and reversed the wires and everything worked as intended but there was still work to do. I needed to create a base for the float switch and as I was doing so I accidentally inverted it with the bottom removed and the float dropped into the bilge. The float is as black as tar and so is the water in the bilge. I could see it and made a scoop to retrieve it. That float rides up and down on a rod and it appeared as if there was a washer missing so I spent three hours having to drain the bilge with my oil removal pump. I finally found a black rubber piece and thought I was about done. However, on closer inspection the piece I had found was a rubber vibration damping foot for a ShurFlow fresh water pump that someone before me must have dropped years ago. I never found anything else even though I got in the engine room and port lazarette to dig out my vacuum oil pump to suck out the last inch of water in the bilge. I still can't figure out how the system works. In fact, I don't think it should work the way I have it wired, but it does. I think there is some magic in there somewhere but at least I have a schematic that works illustrated for future reference. I assembled the float switch and hope it works anyway. I finished at around 5 o'clock and started putting away tools.
                    I met Susie at Dockside for the evening's entertainment.

Monday, 30 June - I stowed the rest of the tools that I used yesterday then defrosted the refrigerator. This afternoon I went ashore to check mail and to pick up 60 feet of 1" X 1/4" rubber gasket that I had ordered from Home Depot to replace the gaskets on the refrigeration compartments, the hatches on the deck and hatch covers for the engine room.