Boating with Sunset Delight: 2023: Docktails Spam and Projects in Marathon

January 11 - 21, 2023

We have spent the last ten days busy traveling between marinas for docktails and working on projects or hobbies. The main event for this past week was the Faro Blanco "Spam-o-Rama" contest. Fifteen participants took up the cooking challenge and entered their SPAM cuisine for sampling and voting. Besides coming up with a dish to share, the participants had to give their entries eye-catching names.

The choices got rave reviews. Voting was based on applause; however, without a meter to measure the volume of applause, it was difficult to discern the winner. After deliberation, it was decided the "Spamcy Pants" got the loudest cheers.

Given Clark is allergic to pork, he did not partake of the cuisine. Since I knew I would have to cook supper later, and not being adventurous when it comes to canned meat, I too passed on the sampling (except for the brownies offered up for dessert).

The Winner!

We had a good-sized crowd at the event. Even the dogs came to enjoy the party.

Instead of biking to this event or docktails at other marinas this past week, we have traveled by dinghy. Whenever we bring our dinghy to Faro Blanco and Mia Wilson is around, she asks Clark if they can go for a ride. Spam-o-Rama was no exception to this rule. Ella, Mia, and Clark took the dinghy for a trip to visit Sunset Delight, and as usual, Ella piloted the boat and Mia assisted as Clark enjoyed being a passenger.

Any time Clark spends with the girls turns into some educational discussion.

I managed to get their attention long enough to snap a photo.

Clark, Mia, and Ella

Besides attending docktails at Faro Blanco (to the southwest of Marlin Bay) on Wednesdays, we have been traveling by dinghy to Banana Bay (to the northeast of Marlin Bay) on Thursdays. Clark has discovered other boaters who play the guitar that he can "jam" with when we go to Banana Bay docktails. This past week, he did not get away from the guitar for the entire time we were there. I had to drag him away when I wanted to leave.

Guitar in the dinghy on our way
to Banana Bay for docktails and Jam session

Docktails at Banana Bay

When not busy socializing, we have been working projects. Clark always has a list of chores.

For example, we have had some issues with our instruments. The display that tells us the port side engine health went dark making it nearly impossible to read. Clark took it out and sent it away for repair in Miami. The man who does this work fixed and returned the unit rapidly!

Dark spot on glass precludes
viewing port engine instrument data

The display on the lower helm VHF radio went "wonky". Now there is no way to know what channel we are on unless it is 16 or "up one" to 17. Clark took the unit out and examined it for repair. He remarked that the installer must have thought it would never need to be serviced as it was glued to the wall. After careful examination, he said it was too difficult to fix here in Marathon, but he might take a shot at it when we are home in Rumson. Looks like a new unit is needed here!

VHF Radio Screen Display

Recently, a few weeks ago, Clark installed the Ultrasonic system to keep growth off the bottom of the boat. He used glue and some temporary supports to hold the transducers in place until he could arrive at a permanent solution. He decided he needed custom-made mounting brackets. He found a place in Marathon, a short bike ride away, and visited him with his measurements showing where mounts were needed.

The fabricator told Clark to come back with the measurements of what he needed made not what he needed to work around, so Clark had to put on his thinking cap and come up with a plan. He stewed on it for several days before he put pencil to paper. Fortunately, I had graph paper on hand for him to work with.

When he reviewed his drawings with the fabricator, he was impressed that he found a couple of mistakes that Clark had made. Very quickly, the fabrication work was done. Clark did a final consultation with the fabricator before the final bending into shape was done. As soon as he got the plates back to the boat, he crawled around in the bilge installing them.

Since the fabricator did such a nice job on the brackets, Clark took our door off the side of the boat to have the hinge repaired. The door had been stiff to open and close for a while until one day a piece of metal broke off the hinge. After that the door opened more easily but listed a bit. Hopefully, a new hinge will make it all better.

Side door waiting for repaired hinge

On one of our rockier dinghy trips back to Marlin Bay from Faro Blanco docktails, the metal pole supporting our anchor light got bent. It took Clark a lot of research and phone calls to find a replacement pole. He was told that the exact replacement part is only sold in lots of 50 to retailers. Apparently, no retailer wants 49 of these sitting around, so Clark can have one. Finally, he managed to find a reasonable substitute which appears, now that it has arrived, to be a workable solution. Yay!

When we attended the Spam-o-Rama event, Clark met up with Steve on "Low Country Lady". Anyone who knows Clark well knows he collects "junk" from other boaters. If another boater doesn't want something, there is a good chance Clark may take it off their hands. In the past, we have been given an old anchor, some well-used dock lines, miscellaneous spare parts for our boat from someone who sold their boat of similar make and model, replacement parts for our satellite dish including a new dome, ... The list goes on and on.

From the Spam-o-Rama visit, Clark came back with a used satellite TV dome, controller, connectors, etc. His next project will be piecing the parts together to see if it works. The person giving it to him has decided to install Starlink and has no need of the DirectTV setup his previous boat owner had onboard. I only hope that when Clark is done playing, we still get TV one way or another!

Project waiting to happen

Meanwhile, I have spent a bit of time on hobbies.

My doll got a new dress for casual wear.

I attended an art workshop at the library just down the street. The session for the day was to pick any book from the library, and based on its title, create a book cover for the book. Since our work room is next to the children's section of the library, I found a book entitled "Clem and Crab".

Pencil sketch of book cover

Acrylic Paint Version

Most of the attendees worked in watercolor. One person brought chalks. I opted for acrylic since that is the medium where I am most comfortable. To create a picture in only 90 minutes is pretty difficult and does not give much time for correction. My boat is a little lopsided as is my crab trap, but I enjoyed the session and that is what matters the most. Since I ran out of time, I did the finishing touches back on my boat. That's where I noticed that my picture had some issues, but it was too late to address them.

The library also offers a photography session which I have attended twice. The most recent topic of discussion was on f-stop, depth of field, and lighting.

Since I have never tried to manually set any of these on my camera, the session turned into more frustration than anything else. While I used the teacher's camera to take some depth-of-field pictures in the library, she played with my automatic camera to see how it works. At the end of the session she gave me homework to go read the camera manual to learn how to set these parameters.

I spent quite a while searching through the more than 100 pages in the manual for the Olympus Tough TG-6 but could not find anywhere that explained how to set these particular values. I finally found a YouTube video that gave instruction on how to set these values when taking pictures under water. I have no plans to use it under water, but it did give me some idea of how to work with the settings.

The bottom line is that the camera has many set options that tell the camera how to optimize a photo whether it be a portrait or a sunset or anything in between. It is not really designed for manual override. Although allowed, it is not obvious and the options are minimal.

During the session, we did take time to analyze the lighting of some pictures I took for class.

Walking back and forth to the library, I have noticed some things I don't normally notice when biking.

Traps ready to have bait added

The sea grass is heavy at present. A little dog at Faro Blanco did not realize that it was sea grass over water and jumped to the grass. He went under water. Someone fished him out but he was shaking with the shock of going in when he thought he was jumping onto land.

The egrets love to fish off the rocks by the Marlin Bay docks. How they can see the fish through the sea grass is anyone's guess!