Farewell to the 2023-24 Florida Season and a Postscript
May 5, 2024. We have left 2thFISH behind in storage and are now in Greenwood, SC visiting Sue’s sister Peggy and her husband Bo. We plan to arrive home in Fredericksburg, VA on Tuesday, May 7. It’s been an interesting season, but more about that later.
In mid-April boaters began to leave Longboat Key for other boater destinations and points north. The dock we were on – I-dock – began to look sparse as friends moved on to their summer homes. This brought about several “goodbye” evening events as everyone bid farewell for the summer. The marina also hosted its last monthly party of the season in April.
As for us, we prepared for a six-day trip to storage accompanied by Gordon’s sister Abby and her husband Bill. They drove from South Carolina to River Forest Yachting Center where we picked them up in our car and returned to Longboat Key and 2thFISH. After a final day of preparation, we left Longboat Key the morning of April 24 (in the wind) and headed for Pelican Bay for two nights at anchor. To give Abby and Bill the full boating experience, we begin the day by topping off our fuel tanks – 207 gallons – and then traveled south in the Gulf Coast ICW where we had to request several bridge openings, some on schedule and some on request. At Venice, we went out into the Gulf of Mexico and continued the trip to Pelican Bay. We had a great time at Pelican Bay with dinghy rides, taking in the surrounding boats and just relaxing. On Friday we headed, again in the wind, to Fisherman’s Village in Punta Gorda. We originally planned to spend only one night there but the high winds caused us to spend a second night. On Saturday evening we had to abandon sitting on the back of 2thFISH because the wind was blowing in the low 30’s. On Sunday morning we left at 7 AM, in the wind, for Sweetwater Landing in North Fort Myers. We had a good time that evening at the Boathouse Restaurant and left the next morning for River Forest Yachting Center. The first event of the trip that day was passage through Franklin Lock and about a two-foot rise in water level. The second and final lock was Ortona and about an eight-foot rise. The lock master put us on the south wall of the chamber and at the front. The turbulence was fierce and Gordon and Sue held the bow line while Abby did the midship and Bill the stern. Gordon and Sue agreed this was the worst locking experience. Upon arrival at River Forest, we began our prep for summer storage. The next day we drove back to Longboat Key to pick up our car and do laundry. We bid farewell to Abby and Bill at Longboat Key as they headed north to South Carolina. We had a great time with Abby and Bill, and they helped us with the boat during the trip. We returned to River Forest that afternoon for final storage prep.
2023-24 was an interesting season. It was the coldest FL winter in 70 years and El Nino kept the sustained winds higher than usual and the gusts even higher. This made for fewer trips in the boat. We started with wind in November and ended with winds in April. Traveling less in the boat makes for less interesting blog posts so forgive our descriptions of mostly social events over the season. We traveled only 470 miles in 2thFISH this season. We hope you will follow along with us next fall as we begin the 2024-25 season in Florida. Enjoy the photos!
Click for movie: Moving south in the Gulf of Mexico
Click for movie: Heading NE up Charlotte Harbor
Click here for movie: Dolphin in Pine Island Sound swimming with 2thFISH
Click here for movie: 2thFISH being lifted for summer storage
Here’s to next season!
A Bad Weather Day!
April 11, 2024. We start this with today’s weather forecast – just about every warning you can imagine. Lines have been checked and adjusted and we’ve settled in for stormy day. So far (as of 10:45 AM) the top gust is 33 mph.
Boaters put together a potluck for Easter and it was a great success with about 35 folks attending. The food and company of fellow boaters made the event a success. Catherine from Dauntless may take the food award with her jambalaya. Sometime back Betsy (Frydaze) organized a Monday bingo game on the porch of Portofino’s restaurant (the restaurant is not open on Mondays) and it has been a big success. The highlight may have been a recent game evening when Tom (Sun Dancer) and Alex (Lucky E’nuff) hosted/moderated the game. Tom called the numbers with style while Alex put many of the moves to a song request shouted out by the players — he says if he hears or sees the first few words of a song, he can usually play and sing the whole tune. Twenty to twenty-five folks usually attend.
Boaters have started leaving for the season and it’s always bittersweet. There is a pull to get home and the regret of leaving boater friends. Jerome and Janice on Sassy left last Sunday and that spurred an impromptu event on the flybridge of 2thFISH. Our plans are to depart LBK the morning of April 24 for leisurely cruising that include anchoring at Pelican Bay and marina stops in Punta Gorda and North Fort Myers. Gordon’s sister and her husband Bill plan to join us for the trip back to storage.
Starting the Homestretch of the 2023-24 Season
March 29, 2024. We start with St. Patrick’s Day. Several boaters gathered at the member’s building for a pot-luck St. Patrick’s Day dinner and drinks. The weather was cooperative, and everyone enjoyed the get together. The next social event was the March Marina Happy Hour, and this was well attended. Our resident boater Alex provided the usual good entertainment and was joined by two special guests for performances. Gordon got a special treat on March 24 when he, Alex and two other friends from I-dock went to Clearwater for a Joe Bonamassa concert. This was the first time Gordon had seen him in concert and it was spectacular.
Our slip neighbors John and Diane on Duetto left this morning for the season. We will miss them as they head to storage with their boat and then drive on to their place, and other boat, in Connecticut. In three more days, four more boats will leave I-dock and this is a sign of the season’s end.
Today, our friends and neighbors from home, Stu and Cindy visited with us. They are traveling in their motor coach, and they too will be heading north in a few days.
Click for movie: Ron, Julie and Alex perform at marina party
Click for movie: Joe Bonamassa in concert
Good Weather, Great Times
March 18, 2024. What a difference good weather makes! The marina is more active as more boaters are out and about enjoying the warmer weather and the diminished winds. We have renewed our frequent visits to the pool where most live-aboard boaters gather at 4 PM each day.
We pulled out of our slip Monday, March 11 around 9:45 AM and headed south to Pelican Bay for the week. While it was somewhat windy, conditions improved as the day moved on. We traveled in the Gulf Coast ICW the entire trip. We originally contemplated traveling in the Gulf of Mexico from Venice to Boca Grande, a distance of about 30 miles, but the strong winds made for four-foot waves on the Gulf and we didn’t see the point in getting beat around when we could travel the full trip in the ICW. While staying inside means slow zones and waiting for bridge openings, it is always an interesting trip. We dropped anchor in Pelican Bay at 4:15 PM. Our friends Mike and Margret, who are spending the month in Bokeelia relaxing and fishing, came over in their center console boat and we had drinks and catch-up conversation on 2thFISH. Before retirement Mike was President at the American Sportfishing Association and Gordon was Vice-President, so they had lots of catching up to do and fished the next day. A good number of speckled sea trout were caught, but to keep them they had to be between 15 and 20 inches. None-the-less, pretty good on the grill. The week’s weather was perfect and after fishing and dinghy touring, we pulled up the anchor on Friday morning and headed out Boca Grande Pass to travel north in the Gulf to Longboat Key Pass to renter the ICW and back to Longboat Key. The Gulf was calm and the trip was enjoyable except for the groups of crab pot markers that meant taking 2thFISH off auto-pilot to avoid getting the marker lines wrapped around one of our props.
We hope to get in some more small trips before we travel to storage the end of April.
Click for movie: Zipping along in Mike and Jeff’s boat
Click for movie: bait fish along 2thFISH
Click for movie: Bait fish schooling
Into March
March 6, 2024. March is here and we are hoping for more cooperative weather. To escape our slip, we took a short trip, about 8 miles, down to Otter Key. Otter Key is what we call an urban anchorage as it is a small bay just off St. Armand’s Key and is a good place to go for a couple days get away. Surrounded by homes on all but one side, it makes for a nice anchorage that probably can accommodate no more than six boats.
In the last of the big projects of the season, Gordon rebuilt the overboard discharge pump and replaced its lines with new sanitation hose. With that done, Gordon has turned to tuning up his fishing gear and more mundane boat projects such as cleaning. This week he cleaned and polished, with protectant, all the strata glass on the flybridge. He says this is his least favorite boat task as the outside portion of the windows are difficult to reach. Next, he will apply protectant to the boat’s finish – an annual task – but doesn’t take long.
There was another marina hosted monthly lawn party and we had the chance to catch up with more boater friends as the improving weather brought many folks out. Our friends Bill and Catherine from Maine and boat Dauntless arrived for the balance of the season and we enjoyed catching up with them on 2thFISH and today a lunch at the Anna Maria Oyster Bar.
On March 11 we plan to travel south to Pelican Bay near Boca Grande to meet friends. Fishing, dinghy exploring, and relaxation is on the schedule.
Major Project Completed!
February 23, 2024. We’ve been tardy in posting but here goes. We left off with our trip to Stuart where we enjoyed time with friends. What we didn’t say was that the place where we ate lunch apparently gifted Gordon with food poisoning. So, if you look back to the last post and see Gordon looking happy, it is because he didn’t know what was coming six hours later.
Gordon has completed installation of the forward toilet and is glad this major project is behind us. The pictures pretty much say it all, although the forward toilet was easier than the one in our stateroom, it still took about four full days to complete as the old toilet, pressure tank, pump and lines had to be removed first. It was one month to the day between completion of each toilet project. In the meantime, the weather wasn’t any better. We now know this is the coldest winter in Florida for 70 some years. We did have two great visits with our longtime WV friends John and Mary at their February condo in Indian Rocks Beach. Again, it was cold.
This week friends John and Theresa from our community back home visited with us on 2thFISH and we hope to see them again during their stay at Holms Beach.
With major projects completed and hopefully better weather we hope to do some boat travel. Because of weather we canceled our boat trip to St. Petersburg.
Click here for movie: Couldn’t resist this. The first flush.
A trip to Stuart
February 5, 2024. We drove to Stuart on January 30 for Sue’s eye appointment and stayed with Ed and Beth on Gandalf for the night. It’s about a three-hour trip across the state by car and we frequently stop in Okeechobee for lunch at a favorite restaurant there. We had an enjoyable evening at Sunset Bay Marina visiting with Ed and Beth and Chris and Frank from YUP. It was good to catch up with friends. Chris and Frank had planned to leave for the Bahamas in mid-January, but the weather has not cooperated. As we have mentioned before to go to the Bahamas you need a spell of southerly winds flowing with the northward Gulf Stream current. Any northerly winds make for opposing current and wind and create rough water and an uncomfortable trip.
We are looking forward to better weather and planning a boat trip to St. Petersburg next week – weather cooperating.
Back into Cold and Windy Weather!
January 29, 2024. We are back into the cold and windy weather, with nighttime lows around 50 and winds gusting close to 30. One thing this weather does is make for good indoor project time. The new toilet is completed. With tons of help from Bill (from Miss Eva) all electrical connections are complete and the new toilet works like a charm. During this not so much fun to be outside weather, we selected, and Gordon installed a new galley faucet. Our friends Don and Jackie rented a nearby place for the month of January and we had several visits with them over the month. Also, friends that we went to the Bahamas with several years ago stayed over a couple of nights in their boat here at the marina. January also began the monthly marina-hosted lawn party. Enjoy the photos.
Happy New Year! But where to start!
January 16, 2024. It’s been a while since the last post and things have been whizzing along. We left off with the last post on Christmas Eve. That evening we went three slips north to Sassy to spend the evening with Jerome and Janice and we were also joined by Tom and Doris. It was an enjoyable Christmas Eve with friends. On Christmas Day we hosted three other couples for Christmas dinner on 2thFISH. Yes, eight folks made it cozy but the company and food were great. Everyone got the same take out – traditional turkey dinner – and we served it family style. It had been raining all morning but about 20 minutes before the folks started to arrive, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and the sun was out the rest of the day. As you can see from the photos we had plenty of food and a great time. One reason we have gotten behind in posting is that the trusty MacBook Pro (only about a year old) had some problem and we took it to the Apple store and it was sent off for repair for about three days. We were impressed by the quick turnaround and over a weekend!
Gordon’s sister Abby and husband Bill arrived on December 30 for a five day stay. We had a great steak dinner at Conners Steak House in Sarasota on New Year’s Eve and then a beautiful, but cool, New Year’s Day with a boat ride around Sarasota Bay. During the ride we also tested our newly repitched props which performed as expected. We much enjoyed Abby and Bill’s visit and they may return before the end of the season.
The outboard that came with the dinghy when we purchased the boat is a 2019 model and we’ve had nothing but trouble with it and have learned that Suzuki had a manufacturing flaw with the exhaust seals. So…we now have a new Yamaha 8 hp outboard for the dinghy. Anybody interested in a maybe fixable Suzuki 6 hp?
As soon as Abby and Bill left, Gordon began the toilet transformation for our stateroom. This entailed taking out the old vacu-flush system, mostly, and installing the new electric toilet – a Raritan Marine Elegance. How is that for a name? As of today, the project is complete except for the final electrical and Bill from Miss Eva is coming tomorrow to assist with that part. Once this toilet project is finished, Gordon may replace the forward/guest head as well. Even though it should be easier he has to recover from the seven days of labor it took to do the master toilet. Much of the work was done through two access panels in the floor of the head and sore hands, shoulders and a variety of cuts and bruises are now healing.
And finally, the weather has been stinky! Rain, cold and wind as high as 48 mph. Everyone says they have never seen a stretch of poor weather that has lasted so long. We are ready for sustained sunshine and warmer temps.
On this Christmas Eve, A Merry Christmas to All!
December 24, 2023. Early in the morning of December 17 we had a high tide combined with sustained 25 mph winds and gusts to 35 mph and all from the east. This pushed water out of Sarasota Bay and over the marina basin wall between the Bay and the basin so that for a brief time water flowed across the east side parking lot and road. Since it was dark we couldn’t see this, but Gordon slept in the salon so he could periodically check our lines. Water rose about four inches over the docks, an event that has not occurred before outside of a hurricane or tropical storm. So, imagine boats floating slightly higher than the docks! By the next morning water had dropped about 18 inches. Another memorable boating experience and we were at the docks. A reminder of the power of mother nature.
On the maintenance front Gordon replaced the raw water pump impellers on both engines, doing one a day and we got our propellers back and installed.
A marina member from another dock hosted an impromptu Christmas gathering at the marina club house and everyone enjoyed being together. Today three couples will spend Christmas Eve on Sassy (Jerome and Janice) and on Christmas day we will host four couples here on 2thFISH for Christmas dinner – no, Sue is not cooking for the crowd as we are all getting takeout from a nearby restaurant. On that note we hope each of you have a very Merry Christmas!
And the Second Round of Cool Weather
December 14, 2023. We see the temperatures in Fredericksburg have been down as low as 17 so we can’t complain much because we’ve had more 50-degree nights again. The low temps this go-around have also been accompanied by winds of more than 30 mph. So much for the weather. We’ve been busy with more boat maintenance. Gordon replaced the impeller in the generator water pump. He found the current one in good condition, but this is one of those items you replace periodically because if an impeller fails you no longer have an effective cooling system for the generator engine and it will automatically shut down. This job was a breeze as the generator water pump is easy to access. Next will be both engines and they aren’t as accessible. The great news is that we understand our props will be back on the boat by Christmas. This means we can leave the slip for some actual boating, provided the weather calms down.
As we said in the last post most everyone on I-Dock who stays on their boat has arrived and Betsy (Frydaze) organized the annual I-Dock Christmas get together. The marina shuttle took us all to Daiquiri Deck for an evening dinner and drinks. We then had a passerby take our photo at the base of the Christmas tree on St. Armand’s Circle. Many folks are leaving for Christmas but three couples, including us, will remain here over the holidays. We are deciding what the remaining couples may do for Christmas day. We are, of course, greatly anticipating the New Year’s visit from Gordon’s sister Abby and husband Bill. Stay warm!
The First Cool Weather
December 3, 2023. The weather turned cool for several days with nights down to 50 and days in the low 60s. We know that may be rubbing it in for those of you who endured nights around 20, but everything is relative.
Gordon has completed two projects. The first is changing the starboard and forward shore power hook-up receptacle on 2thFISH to a Smart Plug unit and changing the plug on the end of the power cord to a matching plug. We can get shore power from the front of the boat on the starboard side and the stern on the port side. Here at Longboat Key we use the starboard side since that is easier for how we must be in the slip. The disadvantage is that the 50-foot cord (110/240 volts and 50 amps) is quite heavy when you must lug it around for hook-up. The stern shore power also has a 50-foot cord, but it is powered so it pays-out and retracts automatically. More on that in a bit. The advantage of the Smart Plug is that it has more contact area and clamps in place more securely than the older turn and twist plug. When we purchased the boat the stern power cord system didn’t work properly, so Gordon purchased the appropriate switch and a new relay or control and now it works like a charm. In the photos you will see the large white container that the stern shore power cord coils into for storage.
All but one of our friends on I dock have now arrived, so boaters Tom and Julie on Sapphire had a get-together on their boat. You will see from the photos that a good time was had by all. We also spent an evening with Jerome and Janice on Sassy. As we have said before, marinas and especially the dock you are on, are little floating neighborhoods.
Click here for movie from Sapphire
Click for movie: Manatees off the stern of 2thFISH. Bubbles are from one of the marina aerators
Thanksgiving Follow-up
November 24, 2023. Thanksgiving has past and it was good. We had a great meal and evening with Mike on Thanksgiving eve. If you are ever in Sarasota, we highly recommend Conners Steakhouse and Seafood Grill. On Thanksgiving Day, we had the turkey meal here on the boat. Instead of a full bird carcass we had a turkey breast and the usual trimmings and sides. As expected, there are leftovers for our enjoyment the next couple of days. The weather was a comfortable 70 degrees and sunny and we lazed around outside and watched football. A good day all around.
The diver who cleans our boat has removed both propellers so they can be re-pitched. We are doing this because we are not reaching the specified RPMs for the engines at wide-open throttle. We are supposed to turn 2,800 RPM at wide-open throttle but only turning 2,600. It’s important to get this correct as the lower RPMs work the engines more. The bad news here is it may take three weeks before we get the props back in place. In the photos you will see diver Harrison and the props. The props are 28 inches in diameter, are made of bronze and weigh about 70 pounds each.
We’ve included photos of a vintage MG parked in the lot here; the waterbird rookery that harbors pelicans, herons, egrets, and ibis. It’s pretty large and we can hear birds in the morning and evening as they stir and settle in. On Thanksgiving Day the basin had a lot of manatees, perhaps because the water temperature in the basin is higher than Sarasota Bay and they always seek out the warmer temps.
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 22, 2023. We hope you are ready for Thanksgiving. We are. We arrived at Longboat Key two weeks ago and have been busy settling in and organizing. We will go to a restaurant tonight with friend Mike for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner and have our own meal here on the boat on Thanksgiving Day. Mike was gracious enough to take us to River Forest to pick up our car the week after we arrived to LBK. Thanks Mike. Having our car, of course, means we can easily go to the grocery store, hardware, etc. Plus, we can go to visit Florida friends. Since arriving we have given the boat a thorough interior cleaning and have arranged the items we brought by car. We leave most of our clothes on the boat during the summer, so we bring minimal clothing by car. Of course, all other items needed to exist are left on the boat.
In the photos there are shots of the marina and the recovery of a sunken boat. The boat is a small “flats” boat that the owner just had a new engine and electronics installed, but whomever did the work left a through-hull open or the plug out. It was interesting to watch TowBoat US recover the boat. After towing it out of the marina to suitable location the boat was flipped right-side up.
Friends Tom and Julie (boat name Sapphire) spent yesterday evening with us over smoke salmon and other goodies. We had a great evening of catch-up and trading boat storage/maintenance stories.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving!
On to Beaufort, SC and Boarding 2thFISH
November 9, 2023. We are a bit late in posting. We left McCormick,
SC mid-morning of October 31 bound for Beaufort, SC to visit our friends Jim and Sandi. Jim and Sandi live on the Beaufort River and their home is outstanding. We had a great visit and Gordon got to see Jim’s high-performance plane and his flying business and fleet of aircraft. Gordon and Jim are high school classmates and Jim is far from retired as he runs his business and pursues his love of flying. On Wednesday morning we departed Beaufort for Okeechobee, FL, and a stay at the Hampton Inn. We selected the location because it is only about an hour from the River Forest Yachting Center where 2thFISH is stored for the summer. Upon arriving at River Forest, we found a crew still working on 2thFISH replacing zincs in both engines, so we had to work around that while loading the boat with our gear from the car. The work spilled into the next morning, but we were able to shove off for Sweetwater Landing around 11 AM for the short 32-mile trip, that included two locks and three bridges. Sweetwater Landing is in North Fort Myers on the Caloosahatchee River and one of the few marinas in the area operating since Hurricane Ian in 2022. While at Sweetwater we continued to organize 2thFISH and all our gear.
Did we mention it is windy? We began our 52-mile trip to Pelican Bay at 8:10 AM on Saturday morning. Because it is windy, we don’t encounter many boats early in the day. Fort Myers is a busy boating area on weekends and sometimes in slow zone areas it is a train of boats. We arrive to anchor in Pelican Bay about 1:30 in the afternoon and the wind has dropped to around 10 –12 mph but picked up that evening so we could enjoy the 15 to 20 mph winds with gusts to 25 all during the night. We call this a lumpy night. While at Pelican Bay we did see our former boat, the Mainship 34 Trawler, and briefly spoke with the owners. Getting in and out of Pelican Bay is interesting as the channel is right along a long sandbar and it is only about 7 to 10 feet deep, depending on the tide stage. We pulled up anchor just before 7 Sunday morning and entered Charlotte Harbor Bay and the three-foot waves stacked up the length of the bay. Fortunately, that part of the trip only lasts about 30 minutes as one cruised north along Boca Grande Island. We arrived at Longboat Key just before 2 PM and were assigned to a different slip than last year. This year we are in I-13, and we like being close to the pool and laundry. Life is good!
Click here for movie: Passing by Boca Grande Island
Click here for movie: Lemon Bay near Englewood
The 2023-24 Season has Started.
October 29, 2023. We left home at 6:35 AM Friday, October 27 and drove to McCormick, SC to visit Gordon’s sister Abby and her husband Bill. Since our sisters only live about 30 miles apart, we will also visit Sue’s sister Peggy and her husband Bo. The weather is perfect with nights around 60 and days in the high 70s. We enjoyed a fall boat ride on Clarks Hill Lake, (also known as Strom Thurmond Lake) yesterday evening. We also checked-out the annual Halloween golf cart parade in Abby and Bill’s neighborhood. Some folks went all out for the event. On Monday we will spend the day with Sue’s sister and her husband in Greenwood and on Tuesday morning we will head to Beaufort, SC to visit friends Jim and Sandi. We will then drive from their place to Okeechobee, and on November 2 on to River Forest Yachting Center to board 2thFISH, hopefully finding everything in good order.
Stay Tuned
We are scheduled to Board 2thFISH November 2, 2023 at the summer storage facility River Forest Yachting Center. We will depart River Forest Yachting Center on Nov 3 or 4 and travel the magenta line to Longboat Key. If the weather is good we will travel in the Gulf of Mexico from Boca Grande to either Venice or Little Sarasota Bay. If weather is poor, we will stay on the Gulf Coast ICW all the way. About 135 miles and we will make the trip in two days.
