We're Alive!!

Sorry for the long delay in posting after Irma. It's amazing how busy we get after a major storm hits both our new house and old boat!! Short story is both homes made it through with very minimal damage. Only tree and brush clean up at the house and some minor water leaks on the boat. Funny how you find new leaks when you have all the canvas off and the rain is hitting the boat sideways at 100 mph.

We'll start by backing up to the week leading up to Irma. We began by getting out our extra dock lines and tying up the boat like she was in a spider web. We are fortunate to be in a marina with floating docks so (in theory) storm surge is less of an issue. Next we stripped off all the canvas and moved everything we could inside the boat. By the time we were done the inside looked like the storm had already hit!

Extra Lines and Fenders

Lots of 100 MPH Tape

Once the boat was as safe as we could make her and we had closed on the house there wasn't anything to do but wait. Our friend and real estate agent Betsy invited us to stay with her at a "safe house" in Naples so we loaded up the car and headed closer to the storm....why not??

The house was newer construction with all the hurricane ratings and storm shutters so we felt we'd be pretty safe there. Funny thing about the way the house is situated the wind hit the back of the house for most of the storm so we were able to stand safely in the front doorway and record the events every hour. Jill took a short video about every hour starting at noon. The following is one taken about an hour before the eye got to our location.

Next picture is a screen shot from my phone taken about the same time. We were already without power but the cell service held up for a bit longer. We're located at the blue dot just above the eye.

I have to tell you that the stories about being in the eye of a hurricane are all true! After spending the afternoon listening to the wind howl louder and louder and hearing things hit the house suddenly it is silent...very eerie!!! A quick look outside the front door confirmed things were calm...just look at the poor stunned duck walking down the road.

 

Before too long we could see the sky darken again and moved back inside to prepare for the other side of the storm. While initially the winds were very strong from the west they died down much more quickly than it took them to build up. By about 9:00 the storm was down to a few strong gusts and there wasn't anything more to do until morning. 

The next day was sunny with a light breeze as we set out to survey the damage around the neighborhood. We had a few tools and saws available so we cleared drains and cut back some downed trees so vehicles could get through. 

By late morning we said good by to our safe house and headed North to survey the damage to our new home. Seeing the tree and roof damage on the way home had us both nervous about what we would find when we got there. There had also been much more rain than usual in the weeks leading up to Irma so we also had water to contend with. The following is from a street in our neighborhood.

 

When we got to the house we were amazed and thankful that there was very little damage! The Live Oaks in front of the house were still standing albeit with a few limbs down. The house itself was fine, no water had entered and even the screens around the pool were intact. The power was out of course and would remain so for a few days. Luckily since the house is new to us we had nothing in the fridge to spoil!! (little victories)

We spent the rest of Monday starting the clean-up around the house. The boat would have to wait one more day for inspection. After a bit more work around the house Tuesday we headed for the marina wondering if our luck would hold....well it did! Not only was the boat right where we had left her the marina already had power back! We were so happy to have A/C and a comfortable nights sleep after all the work. 

So why has it taken so long to post you ask since everything was fine?? Well, besides a week of cleaning up we had all the usual things associated with buying a new house....buying furniture...a trip to Cincinnati to clean out our storage unit...Oktoberfest in Cape Coral...opening day at Stan's ...a road trip to the Ft. Lauderdale boat show...another trip to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving...we've been busy!!!

So that's where we are and what we've been up to. We'll be back boating around the end of January with a trip to the Keys and maybe the Bahamas. Till then we'll try to get another blog out on the progress of the house. I'll leave off with a few realtor pictures of the house as well as one from the "only in New Orleans" file. Enjoy!!

I've done some dumb things but....

...closing on a house in south Florida 2 days before the mother of all hurricanes may very well be my finest accomplishment!! Hey, what's the worst that can happen?? Insurance is in effect and we'll have a hell of a story to tell someones grand kids!!

Seriously, the house is beautiful and I'll post more pictures in the next post. I just want to let everyone know that we're OK and have a safe place to stay as well as offers from friends so we'll be fine. The boat is at Legacy Harbour in downtown Ft. Myers which is about 20 miles up river from the gulf. We've tied a bunch of extra lines and will strip off all the canvas tomorrow as well as bring in anything that can blow around. After that we head to the house and make sure it's ready...not much to do to an empty house though!

We'll see what the morning update is before deciding to stay or vamoose but as it stands now we'll be better off here than on the roads!! We have plenty of food and water (beer) stocked up so we're good there. It's amazing to see the rush on the grocery and hardware stores...just like a blizzard warning up north. Nice thing here is that after the storm it's back to 80 and sunny, nothing to shovel!!

I've packed the tracker and will turn it on tomorrow afternoon. You'll be able to see what we decide (and send help if needed)....Just click on the locate us link on the right.

Update next week, wish us luck!

FL Keys Trip

Sorry for the delay but retirement keeps us busy! As stated in the last installment my sister Kathy & husband Ron drove down to visit and we took a boat trip to the Keys. One little thing overlooked in our planning was that the day we planned to arrive in Marathon was the day before the start of mini lobster season so finding a slip was a bit tricky.

The day after they got to Ft. Myers we drove them around to show them the area. Our mutual friends Gretchen & Mike with granddaughter Addie happened to be in town also so we got together in Naples. Addie was the photog so ended up not being in the picture...sorry.

We left on Monday for a nice run down to Marco Island before heading toward the Keys. There were a couple of Fish & Wildlife boats in the marina getting ready to head down also and patrol the lobster hunt. I'm not sure what all they get into out there but their boat seats look like something NASA designed!

After Marco we had planned to anchor at Little Shark River for the night before heading to Marathon but Mother Nature had other plans. By late morning we could see storms building right where we intended to go so the decision was made to press on all the way to Marathon. It was a good call since we could see the storms all afternoon and there was a ton of lightning.

The dolphins agreed with our decision and helped guide the way to Marathon.

We were lucky to get a strong enough cell signal to call the marina and let them know we were coming before they closed. We stayed 3 nights and explored a bit by dinghy before moving on to Key West. It was our first test of the new dinghy and it rode very nice and dry with 4 people in it.

On Friday we moved down to Stock Island for a night before continuing to Key West for a few days. We'll be spending February at Stock Island/Key West and wanted to check out the marina (very nice).
The ride down from Marathon was a bit lumpy but not too bad....we thought.

In Key West we stopped at the Margaritaville resort & marina for a night and WOW was it a rough experience! We expected it to be rocky during the day with all the para sail charters going in and out but we rocked all night too!! By morning I had decided to move the boat to a marina in Key West Bight for more protection. It was a much better spot and we were able to sleep much better there. Unfortunately between the trip from Marathon and the rocking night in Key West Ron had gotten a bit seasick. We tried about every remedy we could think of but he was never able to get comfortable. Sadly they decided it was best to rent a car and return to Ft Myers via solid ground.

He's still smilin'

From the "things you only see in Key West" file...

Jill & I ended up spending an extra day in Key West as the un-forecast TS Emily had stirred things up in the gulf a bit. We decided to make the run straight back to Marco and got an early start. This allowed me to take a very rare photo (for me)...sunrise!!

The ride back was pretty calm and the great news is the engine repair seems to have done the trick. We expected it to with the price we paid but you always wonder if things are really fixed until you give it a good test.

So now we're back in Ft. Myers with no big plans until the trip back to the Keys in Feb. I'm sure we'll find something to keep us busy. Well....we did buy a house but that's a story for another blog....

We're Still Here....

As we said in previous posts we're now in Ft. Myers and plan to be here for several months. There hasn't been much "blog worthy" going on but thought it was time for a quick update anyway.

Shortly after we arrived we hopped a plan to Cincinnati to attend a wedding and catch up with friends and family. Our plane was late to arrive and looking at flight tracker we began to wonder if we wanted to fly with this guy or not!

Once the plane got in they made a quick turn around and we were on our way. They were nice enough to give us a fly by of our marina on the way out.

The visit was nice but went by quickly, sorry, no pictures. We are fortunate that friends have an extra car that they wanted moved down here so we drove back and now have the use of a car for the first time in almost 2 years!

Jill's sister Amy was down to her place in Hudson so we drove up to visit for a bit. Having a car is pretty cool. It was a short stay also but she and Alyn have plenty to do to get the house ready for retirement and we didn't want to slow them down.

Once back we made good use of the car and have been checking out the Ft. Myers area. Our friend Mike came in for a few days and we covered even more ground. Of course we were able to find some local breweries...

And took a nice boat ride down to Ft. Myers Beach to get fuel and give the engine repair a good test. All seems to be working fine now but our fingers will remain crossed for awhile longer.

The marina is very nice and an easy walk into downtown with it's many shops and restaurants. It's the rainy season they say and we're treated to showers and thunderstorms about every afternoon. They usually break up in time to give us a very nice sunset.

So that's what we've been up to in case you've been wondering. This weekend my sister Kathy and hubby Ron are coming down to spend some time with us. We're planning a trip to the Keys so should have some "blog worthy" material in a few weeks. The tracker will be live again starting next Monday so tune in if you want to follow along. I'll try to remember to send out a Tweet also for those that are following @mvchasing80.

One other notable event was Jimmy Buffett's 50th show at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati. I'll have to say I made at least half of them. While we couldn't be there this year we were able to enjoy the festivities courtesy of YouTube/MargaritavilleTV.

 

Engine Update

Well it turned out the engine problem was bad....not terminal but still bad. It seems that a bad oil cooler will put oil in the coolant but not coolant in the oil. It didn't take the tech long to determine the problem was in the head.($$$). He didn't really think the head was cracked since I had not had any overheating issues before the problem started. He suspected leaking "injector cups" which are a molded part of the head. It could be removed and sent to a shop for rebuild. Problem with that is it takes time which we didn't have a ton of & the shop could still find a crack which means it is no longer rebuild-able and we're back to square one. The cost of getting a new head versus a rebuild wasn't much in the big picture and labor is the same either way so we decided to go with the new head.

The head weighs about 250 pounds so they rigged up an I beam to pull it out.

 

The next pic is the top if the cylinders...more than I ever wanted to see of our engines!!

And the old and new heads on the trailer. Some parts are taken off the old and used on the new. 

And finally all cleaned up and going back together.

I will say that I was more than impressed with the guys working on the problem. The first mechanic arrived about 10 on Wednesday and we made the call to get the new head by noon. 2 mechanics worked on Thursday and had everything back together by noon on Friday!! One small problem though....1 of the injectors decided it didn't want to work in the new head. All were running fine before but only 5 were working now...they say it happens sometime....we were so close. They tried several tricks (none of which worked) and in the end they locked out the bad injector and we were going to Ft. Meyers on 1 engine...dammit!! At least we could run the engine long enough to maneuver in and out of marinas but the trip down took 2 long days at 7 mph.

So we're now in Ft Myers which will be our home port for the foreseeable future. The little bits we've seen seem very nice...when it's not raining...which it has been doing for the past 2 days...like record totals.

We did get over to the park near the marina between storms today.

So that's where we stand for now. We have the Detroit shop here in town scheduled in 2 weeks for the new injector. This should give the sting of this last bill time to wear off a bit. For any of our Cincinnati friends that still follow along we'll be in town for a few days starting next Monday. Hope we can catch up. After that we'll be down here and hope to do some boating in the area once things are all up and running again. 

Milestones...

During the past couple of weeks of traveling we've crossed some significant milestones...some good, some not so good. I'll get into the events a bit later.

After leaving Orange Beach Alabama we crossed back into Florida at Perdido Key. We stopped at the Oyster Bar Marina and took the dinghy over to the Flora-Bama for a fun afternoon. Next stop was Pensacola where we celebrated 1 milestone, my 54th birthday. As usual we celebrated with a pint (or 2) at a local brewery.

We next moved on to Destin where we were lucky that our timing coincided with a vacation trip for my brother and his girlfriend. They were accompanied by her daughter and her husband and we had a great visit with them! One day we went out to Crab Island and spent a fun afternoon. The water here is more like something we've seen in the Bahamas, not the panhandle of Florida.

We stayed in an "interesting" marina in Destin where we did some creative docking. When it was time to leave I was glad there wasn't a crowd watching....

After Destin we moved along pretty quickly toward Carrabelle FL. which would be our jumping off point for the gulf crossing. Carrabelle makes for a shorter crossing than Port St. Joe where we left from in 2015. In fact, it cuts about 10 hours off the trip and allowed us to do it in (mostly) daylight this time instead of overnight.

One day while traveling toward Carrabelle I heard a familiar voice on the radio talking to a barge behind us...naw...couldn't be...they live in Nashville and didn't plan on doing the loop again! Sure enough, when the boat catches up to us we get a call on the radio from our friends Carol & Tim who we had traveled much of the Great Loop with...talk about a small world! Turns out they were helping friends move their boat to Florida and were just along for the ride this time. It was great to see them again and meet new boating friends. They travel quite a bit faster than us but we still got to enjoy docktails in the same marina at the end of the day.

When we got to Carrabelle it looked like we would be stuck there for a week as the winds and seas were forecast to start building the next day. In looking at different forecast models it turned out the building wouldn't start until late in the day so we decided to head out early the next morning and stay ahead of the weather. The forecast actually was accurate this time and we made the 17 hour crossing with no drama. 2 days later the weather buoy NW of Tampa was reporting 9 foot waves!

It was along the crossing that we hit one of the milestones. In the almost 4 years that we've owned Chasing 80 we have now passed the 10,000 mile mark!! I know it doesn't sound like much from a car driving perspective but most boaters don't travel that far in a lifetime. We're still enjoying it and looking forward to the next 10,000....

After the crossing we spent a few days of R & R in Tarpon Springs and are now in Gulfport FL about 100 miles from our destination of Ft. Myers. This brings me to our next milestone...the "not good" one. After leaving Tarpon Springs the starboard engine temp. started to creep higher than normal. I shut it down and continued on one engine for a bit before trying it again.... same results. I suspected a stuck thermostat (the easy answer) and went down to investigate. In checking things out I found that it was low on coolant and high on oil.....very much not good! Somehow the coolant is leaking into the oil and I suspect through the oil cooler which we just had serviced in Orange Beach last December. Soooo it's our first mechanical breakdown...on a holiday weekend...no chance of seeing a mechanic before Tuesday...flight out of Ft Myers in 10 days kind of milestone!! Wish us luck!!!  

I'll leave you with a few parting pictures while we head off to see what Gulfport has to offer for the weekend. The first is an interesting take on the pedal bar we've seen in several towns. This is the pedal BOAT!! looks like it could be a really fun time on the water with friends.

The next is a sign we saw in a brewery in Apalachicola...Just call me Exploding Candidate Lager...what's your beer name????

Do You Know What It Means.....

To Miss New Orleans? As the song goes... Well we ended up staying about 2 and a half months in New Orleans and that's a long stay anywhere for us. While we don't "miss" the town yet we both agreed we were not burnt out and could have stayed longer. We also agreed we were both ready to go boating again.

The last few weeks topped off our stay with the annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. This is 7 days of music and food over the last weekend in April and first weekend in May (including Thursday the 2nd weekend). Weather was mostly great and we started off with a visit from our friends Ann & Grant. They got in Thursday afternoon and we headed right to a free kick off concert in City Park.

The concert had 3 great acts including Paul Sanchez and his Rolling Road Show.

In the crowd this night I spotted a familiar "hat" from the last post. I had to go introduce myself and let him know how "famous" he was having made the Chasing 80 blog!!

Next morning we headed to the fairgrounds for the 1st day of the fest which included a stop at a local bar and kick off Bloody Mary's.

One stage we visited was the Gospel tent to get our church on for the day. While there we saw a cop that reminded me of Jake Blues when he "saw the light".

Sunday morning we awoke to find severe storms approaching New Orleans and decided to just drive into the Quarter and let them pass. We later got the notification that the fest opening was "delayed"...good call. The storms were pretty wicked but moved out about 1:00 so we kept an eye out for an opening time which ended up being at 3:00. Pretty amazing considering the record rain that fell. We headed back to the boat and gathered up our tickets and Ann & Grant dropped us off at the fest on their way to the airport (damn, that was a quick visit!!).

Once at the fest we saw a sign that left us a bit disappointed but we went in anyway...

Turned out OK though since the crowd was light and we got to see the act I had been looking forward to the most. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers put on a great show on their 40th anniversary tour!!

After a few days rest we were back for the second weekend and the weather was perfect. The crowds were back too but we were able to get around pretty well.

The attendance totals were announced this week and came in at 450,000 for the entire fest. I figured out that we had seen at least 33 acts between the 2 weekends. everything from singing Mardi Gras Indians....

....to up close with Buddy Guy!!

All in all we had a fantastic time and really enjoyed being there for the whole fest. And, in the interest of full disclosure, yes....we have fest hats too.

So, we are now on the move again. We left New Orleans this past Tuesday and took advantage of great weather to cross Mississippi sound in 2 long travel days. We are now back in the more protected ICW in Orange Beach Alabama heading east. The plan is to take about a week getting to Carabelle FL where we'll decide if we want to take the long Gulf crossing to Tarpon Springs or the "scenic" route around the big bend. The bend route will take 3 days but eliminate the long overnight trip. Weather will decide as usual.

On the Mississippi Sound we were happy to see the dolphin escorts return to our travels. We take this as continued good traveling omens.