12/19/15
Harbour Cay Club Marina, Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

One of the only bad things about staying at Harbour Cay Club is the northern exposure. When winds have a northern component, especially northwest or due north, and the winter fronts move in, we get hammered by the wind and waves in the marina. Today we are getting winds to 36 knots (so far) from the north-northeast and we have been rocking and rolling like a bucking bronco. Not much sleep last night and we will have to endure this weather for another day. Thankfully, it looks like the winds will move further east, which should calm it down a bit. We decided to hang out in the club house for a bit to keep from getting sea sick! To put in my usual terms…we are getting our asses kicked…at the dock!

Up until today, this week has been absolutely gorgeous!! Here are a couple pics from one of our walks that typifies the weather we have been having:

The other day we took our dinghy around the west end of the key, under the Seven Mile Bridge and into Boot Key Harbor. Hundreds of boats in there. On the way back we stopped and enjoyed a couple of happy hours. It was a fun day getting out on the water.

We started one day this week with breakfast and mimosas:

And then we put up our Christmas decorations:

Our friends Hayden and Radeen finally made it here and we have been making more friends at the infamous “Cone of Knowledge”, the tiki hut where everyone socializes for sun down and happy hour drinks. One night I even pulled out my guitar and played with one of the other boaters here that has an acoustic, and can sing very well. It has been great fun.

The temps have started to get into the mid 80’s during the day and only going down into the mid to high 70’s at night, with a decent amount of humidity; so we decided to switch on the air conditioning. We only run it when we have to, to save money on electricity, but it was getting to be 87/88 inside the boat in the afternoons, and lately the winds have been very light, so we broke down. Much to my dislike…the condensators, the small plumbing fixtures that suck the condensation water out, were not working. So…I manually pumped the water out (every 40 minutes for several hours), launched the dinghy, used the dinghy and a water hose at the dock to spray into the water exhaust ports, and viola…it started working! Yay! Not so fast though…it only worked for about 3 hours and then started failing again. Those of you who follow the blog may remember this happening in Southport this summer. I will need to run acid through the raw water system of the air conditioners to get the flow back to the point that the condensators will work. I set about doing that today. Step one…prep a bucket to feed the raw water pump…done. Next, dig a section of spare hose out of the cockpit locker (big enough for a small family to live in, and completely full of stuff…aka not fun to have to dig out spare hose) to run from the bucket to the pump…failed. Rain was threatening and we are getting blown away. It is cool enough to not need the air conditioning for a few days and I am going to delay this project, hoping for better weather tomorrow! You may also remember that I absolutely hate dealing with hoses, so that may have been a factor as well…lol!

It just doesn’t feel like Christmas here…mostly sunny, warm and green…and I can’t believe the big day is next week. We have several options for how we are going to spend Christmas Eve and Day, and we need to figure out what we are going to do……..decisions, decisions.

We will post before and/or around Christmas to wish everyone well. I hope your shopping is almost done and your cookies are baked. Not so much of that here on a boat…