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| Cloudy days at Marlin Bay |
Since the St. Patrick's Day party was held Sunday night, things were pretty quiet around the marina today. The day started out as a typical Tuesday with my playing Mah Jongg as Clark went off to church for band practice.
Last Thursday when we played Mah Jongg, I had three terrible rounds with the tiles. Out of all three rounds, I only saw one joker. So, today, I wished for jokers, and my first hand was so full of jokers, I had trouble figuring out how to play the hand. From that lesson I learned, "be careful what you wish for". I lost all three rounds again today, but at least I got better tiles to play with.
Someone at the game suggested I try "Mahjong 4 Friends" to get practice matching the tiles dealt to a solution on the card. I tried it on my phone and the display is too small to work with, so I tried it on my computer. It is interesting to see what hands are suggested as deciphering the card is the hardest part of this game.
Many years ago I decided to buy some songs online for my mp3 player. I put some $$ in the till and could then download songs until I ran out of $$. After a while I forgot all about it having only a couple of dollars left in the till.
However, every year for the past 20 or so years, they have added a few bucks to my till as a birthday present. I decided to go take a look to see how much money had accrued and found $60 I could spend to buy songs. Given that I spent most of today downloading songs to use up the $$. Each song only costs about $0.10 or so. I downloaded numerous songs, ran out of ideas for what I might want to download, and found I still have about $30 left over.
Every other Tuesday for the past couple of months, we have an MTOA boaters' meeting to attend. I just happened to look at the calendar today and saw MTOA for this afternoon. Given the strong winds have returned after several days of higher temps, sun, and humidity, I suggested to Clark that we walk instead of pulling the bikes out.
We got to the park and saw no one -- just some chickens with a rooster.
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| "No one's here but us chickens!" |
Then I noticed that the place we normally meet was cordoned off with yellow tape and remembered that the MTOA leader, Art, had said that the meeting place would be moved due to the normal place being painted. Fortunately, Clark knew where the other venue was, so we walked there and still found no other person.
Clark called Art and found out the meeting was cancelled. Art had sent email that neither of us saw that said the group would be attending another garden party the night before at the same place as last time. Sorry we missed the email and that event! Since the Community Park Pavilion is being painted, that event was deemed the last MTOA gathering of the season. Sigh!
18 March 2026
Today, being Wednesday, was once again laundry day for me. Today, Clark walked with me up to the marina office. As we walked past the inner basin, Clark said, "I smell smoke". We looked around but did not see anything unusual. A short while later we saw a brigade of trucks show up to work on an electrical problem. The smoke Clark smelled earlier was coming from a burned transformer! What a powerful sniffer he has!
They turned off the power to replace it. There was a text that was sent that the power would go off at our dock at 11:10. When Clark received the text at about 10:50, it had already been off for several minutes, but he didn't notice since the inverter on the boat automatically powered on to cover the loss. Clark enabled the solar panels, and they promptly recharged the batteries before the power was restored around lunch time.
As was the case yesterday, we had strong winds blowing through the marina. A couple of sailboats came in to Marlin Bay with Scouts of America on board - teenage boys and girls. I (Ev) missed all the action as these young sailors handled the boats, so my stories are secondhand.
Yesterday, when a boat named "Music" came in, they caused a lot of concern as their boat blew against the rock wall before they got it into the slip. A slew of boaters came out to help them.
I heard that Pete on Cavara jumped into his dinghy to help tow and push the boat into their assigned slip. Someone was concerned that the line hanging from the stern of the sailboat would get wrapped around their propellor. Lots of folks were pushing and shoving the boat to get it into the slip.
Today, when a sister ship insisted they had to leave regardless of the windy conditions, a collision occurred. Clark saw the commotion from today's event. I was blissfully unaware doing my laundry. As I understand it, the sailboat was bow in to a slip at the far end of the outer basin where we are docked. The captain backed out of the slip, proceeded to back out of the marina, and then stopped thereby losing way and rudder authority. As per Clark and others, he could have backed out of the marina by just maintaining his aft motion.
However, the captain decided the boat should be turned to exit bow first and herein lies the problem. When the attempt was made to turn the boat, the wind caught it, and it ended up pinned along the rocks at the end of the fairway in roughly the same spot as the other was the day before. Ropes and many hands were used to pivot the boat, but it ended with its anchor entangled in the bow pulpit of one of the boats on the west side bending their bow railing.
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| Bent railing on Outside Time |
Apparently there was no fiberglass / gelcoat damage, but the railing is pushed in, and the Gold Looper flag is now lying over sideways. I talked with the owners, and they have things under control. They are in contact with the boat captain for insurance reasons and already talked to someone about railing work here in Marathon. They are not leaving for a few weeks and hope to have things resolved before they depart.
After lunch today, as Clark was busy multitasking on his laptop, I left the boat and went for a walk. Ultimately I wanted to end up at Bingo at 5:00 at the Club House, so I had lots of time to kill. As I walked past the spot where the utility trucks sat earlier in the day, I saw several dogs playing on the grounds with their owners. Both owners and dogs seemed to be having a great time.
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| "Something good here!" |
The three black dogs playing on the grounds live on a relatively small boat together; the two white dogs live on another. It must be crowded to have such large dogs on board. To me, one large dog seems possible, two large dogs surprising, and three large dogs amazing. Watching happy dogs playing makes me happy, so I stood and watched for a while before continuing on my way.
At the Club House, I found our concierge, Grace, at her desk and pulled out the rocks I painted recently to show her my artistry. She was away when I completed painting them, and when she gave me the rocks to paint, she told me I had to show her the results. I had them with me in my backpack in case I got a chance to talk with her today.
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| House, Boat, Island |
Very few people were out and about today, most likely due to the cooler temps and high winds. Grace was not busy, so I chatted with her until folks started coming one after the other to check on packages, etc. Then it was time for me to leave.
As I talked with Grace, Hannah came by to see if Grace wanted to order coffee from the coffee business that Hannah and her sister operate out of their boat. They take orders, make lattes etc., and then deliver them to the customer. Quite enterprising for girls just entering their teen years! I asked Hannah if she would be at bingo, and she excitedly said, "Yes!" She calls the numbers as the balls drop down. She has her hands full with a bunch of rowdy adults, but she keeps things under control with good humor.
Just before 5:00 I headed upstairs to the bar (indoors today due to weather) to see who had arrived for bingo. Only three people were there. I grabbed a seat and waited for the fun to begin. When Bingo started at 5:00, the room was full of folks anxious to try their hand at winning a round.
Hannah handed out bingo cards to the players. She makes the rules. Today she gave us multiple cards to start and set herself up on the pool table so that she could be heard over the noise of the rowdies attending the game.
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| Hannah setting up |
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| Hannah, "Let the games begin!" |
We had played a few rounds and just started another when, from the hallway, we hear, "BINGO!" Hannah has a rule that if a person calls bingo and does not have bingo, they have to wear the "Basket of Shame". When the person from the hallway walked in, the basket was immediately placed over her head!
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| Barbara wearing the "Basket of Shame" |
Barb did not have to wear it long, however, as shortly thereafter, her husband randomly called, "BINGO!" even though he was not playing! Barb quickly transferred the basket to his head.
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| Roger wearing the Basket of Shame |
Hannah's mother told me that being here at Marlin Bay has helped Hannah realize her strengths. Hannah is outgoing and fun, and she has made lots of friends here with the boaters who admire her talent for dealing well with people of all ages.
Hannah called several rounds of bingo today, and I actually won a round. Hannah had two prizes left when I won - a snack voucher for the pool bar or a free drink at the bar. She closed her eyes and picked one, and I got the snack voucher.
The snack voucher is not a coveted prize as many of the snacks have been around a while - often found to be past their expiration date. So, in effect, I got the "Stale Crackers" award. Yay?
Folks at bingo were exceedingly loud making it hard to hear the numbers called. Someone at our table decided that for each number called, we needed to have a rhyme to go with it, so for example, Hannah called B7 and this person replied "I'm in heaven", and so it went!
When I left Bingo, I had a raging headache aggravated by the loud yelling at my table. I normally plan dinner well ahead of time, but today I forgot to even think about it until I was standing in front of the refrigerator at 6:15. Since most everything was frozen solid, I fell back to hot dogs and baked beans for my dinner plan. Since Clark is not a baked bean fan, I made a mountain of stir fry veggies as well. Basic, but it worked!
The only network television station we get in the Keys is CBS via Paramount+. Wednesday night for CBS is game show / reality TV night, and we are not a fan of either. Clark put on Netflix and found Season 7 of Virgin River had been released, so we watched that. I am not sure how many episodes we watched tonight, but at some point I fell asleep on the couch and decided I better put myself to bed. Clark continued watching TV long after I retired for the night.
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