2023: Marathon FL

 5 December 2023

no boat travel

We noticed some changes at Marlin Bay when we arrived. The pipes that used to stick up on the undeveloped piece of land have been shortened and capped for potential future use without looking unsightly. Also, the huge mound of dirt that sat on that piece of land was being removed as we arrived here.

Clark tackled the dinghy damage first thing. He took a pair of pliers to the drain plug to straighten it out and mixed up some gel coat to patch the scratch on the hull of the dinghy. We also had some areas where we needed to touch up the "bright work", i.e. the wood trim on the boat. He sanded areas in need of work and then started applying coats of Bristol Finish to bring them up to snuff.

Seems like everywhere I look we have places in need of cleaning. I decided to do a bit a day by the time I am done, it will be time to start over again.

I decided to pull out my Christmas elf and Santa and put a Santa cap on my Vermont Teddy Bear. Woody joined in to the fun. Clark's mother made the Santa. My son, Jeff, gave me the teddy bear for Valentine's Day when he was in high school, so it has special meaning to me. Of course, nowadays, many folds have an "elf on the shelf" to play mischief at Christmas. I'm afraid mine is a knock-off!

7 December 2023

no boat travel

It's a bit windy today. Clark added an extra line to our dock arrangement. This one is not to keep the boat in place. It is for me to use when swinging from the side of the boat to the dock (like Tarzan)!

I walked up to the main building, and on my way, I passed two men - one on the ground shouting to the one at the top of a sailboat mast. With the windy conditions I would not want to be the one up there. The motion is amplified the higher one goes!

Man at top of mast on a windy day

Clark found the tender of the bar at the pool huddled up against the cold.

I decided that I should go check out what the library has to offer for programs. As it turns out the schedule is the same as it was last season -- Art on Tuesday and Photography on Friday. Yay! I was happy to see Maria, the art and photography instructor, sitting at the front desk when I walked in.

 

8 December 2023

no boat travel

Today, being Friday, I was excited to go to photography "class" at the library. I even convinced my boat neighbor, Anette on "Bagus", to go with me. We had a fun two hours. Maria reviewed pictures from prior sessions and gave us today's assignment. We walked to Marathon Marine park to see the holiday decorations with the intent to create our own holiday greeting card from what we found to photograph.

I remembered Paige from last year and met Dan and Gary who also attend the classes. Five of us walked to the park with our cameras in hand! Dan decided not to join us and rode home on his motorized bicycle.

We tried to take a timed picture of the five of us. It was pretty much a fail. We were supposed to jump. We all did but not at the right times. Paige is up in the air. Gary looks like he's peaking under her arm. Maria and Anette are laughing hysterically, and I look like a statue. Ah well! Obviously we had a good time trying.

Ev, Anette, teacher Maria, Gary, and Paige

The trick was to set up the cameras (plural) and then run like crazy to position. The wall made a great table for the cameras, and an even greater obstacle for the photographers to get into position.

3 Cameras going - Paige, Gary, and Maria

The park had so many decorations up, it was hard to decide what to photograph. 

Window sticker

Lit tree trunk

I took one of the pictures and added a caption to complete my greeting card assignment.

Walking back to the boat, I passed by a huge iguana who did not appreciate me invading his space.

First he hid behind a bush

and when that didn't work ...

He scampered off onto the rocks to disappear.

When I got back to the boat, I found Clark busy cleaning. Naturally, he was out on a ledge several feet in the air. Where else would I find him?

I noticed that I could see his reflection in the neighbor's boat window - a Hatteras named "Kracken". 

Clark's reflection in boat neighbor's window

9 December 2023 Saturday

no boat travel

I set the alarm to get up early today for the farmers' market.  I took a couple of morning pictures to start the day.

Wind is piling up the sea grass by the docks

I checked my email first thing and saw the list of goodies they planned to have today.

Fresh Picked Bicolor Sweet Corn     dee-lish !  young & tender !

  

 Baby Arrugula

 French Beans 

 Baby Tricolor Carrots

Asian Pears

Asparagus

Sugar Snap Peas - young / very tender

Gourmet Red Beets.  Michigan

Fresh Picked “ Redland Sweets “ onions with tops

                               Italian Eggplant

                               Kirby Cukes

                               Zucchini- beautiful

                               Vine-Ripe Tomatoes

I know from experience that the "early bird gets the worm (I mean veggies)", so I insisted we get there before 9:00 a.m. Since my shopping buddy for the past 6 years is not in Marathon this year, I needed Clark to go with me to help carry the goodies.

When we got there, it was pretty clear the truck had just arrived. No tables were set up, and no food was on display. We were in for a wait, but we got to watch the activity and chat with other shoppers while we did so.

We are literally waiting for the stuff to
fall off the back of the truck!

Tent is up. Veggies are soon to be on display!

I only intended to get tomatoes and zucchini, but I spent $20 and walked away with a heavy bag full of fresh vegetables including an eggplant, corn, French beans, carrots, and cucumbers.

We had other errands to run besides getting vegetables. The Farmers' Market is across the street from Publix, so of course we went there. We needed to print Christmas cards, so we hit the UPS store.  My plastic buckets I use while cleaning wore out, so we then went to Home Depot for buckets and a couple of spray bottles for Clark. Our backpacks were filled to the tippy top when we headed back to the boat.

All I wanted to do after our morning activities was take a nap, but somehow that didn't happen.

I found some more things to take pictures of around the marina. 

Egret walking on the piled up sea grass
(near our boat)

I missed a few photography sessions between March and December. I had some homework to catch up on.

Dominant Color: Green

Composition in Black & White

Compositions of odd number: 3, 5,or 7

5 Dock Carts

3 Old Fish Traps

10 December 2023

no boat travel

I decided that I had chores to tackle today. The laundry likes to sneak up on me, so that got on the queue. Also, the wind blows in all sorts of dirt, so even after I vacuum, it looks like I need to vacuum, so I worked on keeping the debris down to a minimum.  The rest of the day, I spent on updating the blog with our travels to the Dry Tortugas part 2. It is amazing how hard it is to remember the details and get all the pictures and information in the right order of events.

Meanwhile, Clark worked on prettying the outside of the boat. He mixed his Bristol Finish varnish and got to work on that project. It allows a coat every hour, so he manages to get in about 3 or so a day. I had to have him close the door to the salon where I was working on the blog because the fumes were giving me a nasty headache. 

I spent some portion of my day chasing birds off the dock. My dog friend, Whatley, is not here this year to keep the birds away. I guess the wind direction sent the birds all over to our side of the marina to do their fishing today.

Meanwhile, the sea grass continues to pile up by the dock behind our boat. 

11 December 2023 Monday

bicycle travel only

The winds gusting to around 15 knots are still blowing in from the north / northeast and bringing a chill with it. 70 degrees feels more like low 60s. 

Some of the slips are worse than others for sea grass. The one below even has a trap float included.

We are seeing it collect around the hull of our boat. It won't leave until the wind changes direction, and we can give it a push to send it on its way.

We had lots of errands to run today, so despite the wind, we grabbed our bicycles to get busy. Christmas cards we printed a couple of days ago had been folded, put in envelopes, and stamped, so we needed to get to the post office. Two cards go to England, and we never have the stamps for that. Clark stood outside with the bikes while I ran in to mail the cards. Thirty minutes later I finally had my 2 stamps and could leave. The line was long and the one person working there was working at a snail's pace. One guy ahead of me waited 15 or more minutes to find out that she couldn't help him with what he needed. Pity him!

With the cards on their way, we next went to Walgreens to get a prescription filled. Our next stop was Publix to pick up a couple of things I forgot on Saturday.  A stop at Home Depot proved disappointing as they did not have the varnishing supplies Clark needed. We decided to bike the extra mile or so to West Marine to see what they might have in stock. Clark got brushes he needed but not the mixing cups. 

Since we were directly across the street, we decided to poke our noses in at Faro Blanco to see who we might see. We found 3 boats we recognized - none of which had friends onboard that we could see. The only person we saw that we recognized was Mike - a dockhand that we have known for years. 

Mike gave us a hard time. He was bundled up in a sweatshirt, and we were in shorts and t-shirts. That's New Jersey versus Florida blood for you. Honestly, I was on the brink of putting on a light jacket, but when I'm biking, I'd rather be a little chilly rather than too hot. The weather was perfect for biking several miles as we did today.

It used to feel like "coming home" when we got to Faro Blanco. Now it's hard to recognize the place in terms of the boats and boaters located there. Over time folks we knew have sold their boats, passed on, or moved to other, less-expensive marinas. Some folks lost boats due to the hurricane that hit the west coast of Florida hard a couple of years back. We heard that one family I was expecting to see decided to travel the Great Loop again. Alas, the Faro Blanco of yore is no more!

Now coming to Marlin Bay feels like coming home. We know many more people here now than we do at Faro Blanco. Two more friends came in today, and we saw them to talk to as we were leaving to do our earlier chores. "Avalon", Del and Robin, is here now as is "Califrenchies" with Lou and Donna. "All Talk" also arrived in the last couple of days.

12 December 2023

no boat travel

The boat is in perpetual motion from waves caused by the never-ending wind. Sometimes it is subtle, and I can only tell there is motion by looking at the curtains swinging to and fro.  Other times I feel a little like I'm tipsy when I walk around. Other times it's much more noticeable, and I'm glad I'm sitting down. Sleeping is definitely not a problem as we get rocked to sleep each night.

Today I escaped the boat for a couple of hours to attend art class at the library. It is conveniently located only two blocks away, so it's an easy walk to get there.

Maria gave a presentation on abstract art focused on Wassily Kandinsky. He had synesthesia and saw numbers and sounds as colors. Today's art lesson after learning his history was to paint some abstract art based on what we learned.

Maria suggested painting an abstract tree. I was happy with the background, less so with the tree silhouette, and far from pleased with the abstract balls hanging from the tree. It certainly will not be on display any time soon. Going to the class is fun as I get to try things I would never think to do on my own. I discovered it is really hard to paint concentric circles!

When I returned to the boat from art class, I found Clark happily playing his guitar. I got serenaded a bit before we ate a late lunch.

After lunch I managed to do the last of the 3 blog entries related to our trip to the Dry Tortugas and the Marquesas Keys. 

In the evenings we have been watching either "Harry's Law" episodes or Hallmark / Christmas movies.