A tropical system near the Bahamas has produced rain and gusty wind in the Florida Keys, portions of Southwest Florida and parts of the Bahamas. The weather forecast is for Thursday, Friday and possibly part of Saturday. The wind picked up late Wednesday night with heavy wind and rain for all of Thursday. The wind pushed the rain sideways causing a steady leak in the bedroom slide. Fortunately we caught it early, so no damage was done, but we will have to keep an eye out to make sure there is no damage to the gasket. Randy had checked the gaskets around the slide the previous day, so he does not think anything needs fixing. The leak is probably just from the sideways-driving rain. But still something to put on the maintenance list.
The rain knocked out our Dish, but fortunately the Internet was fine so we could stream movies and have our video appointment with Danielle for our checkup. She is mailing us some lab slips so we can go in for blood work next week. I will try to make it at the same time as my mammogram that is due. I had Dr Ryberg fax the order to the Fisherman’s Hospital in Marathon where I had my ultrasound on my kidneys done last week. Hopefully they can handle everything at the same time. And even more important, hopefully they get these tests right. When I had my ultrasound done, I think they switched the sides when reporting on my kidney stones. I have always had stones on my left kidney. However this report shows the stones on my right kidney. I called to verify but the tech said that is what he saw. He justified his findings by saying I probably passed the original stones and must have new ones on the other side. I don’t think so!! I think he reversed his findings, especially when the sizes are about the same from previous diagnostic reports. Dr Berger even questioned the results, so he will have me repeat in a few months. If we go home, I will have another ultrasound done in his office. Or down here again, if we stay. Either way I will talk to the tech to make sure they get the right sides on the next report.
While we were in Marathon, we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some needed supplies and some more flowers to add to our planters. After reading about the Ti Cordylite plants that we have in our planters, Randy cut back and transplanted several cuttings to the other plants that Katie left us that we have out near the road. Hopefully they will survive! We even found some Critter Ritter at Home Depot. i hope that helps keep the iguanas out of our plants. I would hate to lose all of the beautiful red and white blooms on the new Rio Dipladenia and Blue My Mind/Blue Daze plants that we added to our planters. The Rio Dipladenia plants are supposed to bloom all summer and are very drought tolerant so they should be beautiful. Randy also worked on getting our new sunshade on the Dirt Yacht. Rebecca sent us several panels of 90/10 mesh that we can use on hot, sunny days to help cut down on the sun that shines directly on the side of the RV. We had to ask her to send a new piece because we had not measured the channel. We assumed it would be the same diameter as all of the other sunshades that Rebecca has built for us in the past. The awning has a small channel so she made a second piece that these shades slide into. Randy ordered a few small bungee cords so that we can tie the shades down to the concrete patio. We will have to remember to turn the automatic wind sensor off when using the shades, so that the awning does not try to roll up when we have the sun screens attached. Hopefully it will keep our electric bill down a little with this summer’s heat.
This is the first major rain that we have had here for a while. Our weather for the last several weeks has been mostly hot, sunny days; but still comfortable with the breeze. We are still having some breezy days, but we have been able to get out fishing several times. We have returned to our favorite seatrout spots, as well as finding some new ones near where Gary showed us. We did not get keepers every day, but still had a great time. I even caught one nice 19” sea trout that we gave to Terry and Marcia. Marcia said it was delicious. We have been eating a lot of meals with them, so I try to make sure we contribute too. Hopefully they liked my pot roast, meat loaf, pork roast and salads I have shared. Restaurants are starting to open up here again, so we hope to get to Geiger at least once before they leave next week. I will be sorry to see them go home, but know they will be back next Fall! We have been catching a LOT of Lady Fish and Jacks. Fun to catch, even if not something we keep. We try to do catch and release with the Lady Fish before they are even in the boat. I found if you give them some slack once they get near the boat, they can usually spit the hook without us having to handle the fish. This keeps the boat cleaner too. The Lady Fish like to poop all over everything when they are taken out of the water. Much less work for Randy! The one day when we were fishing the 20′ deep hole near Niles Channel, we were making enough action catching Lady Fish and Jack’s to attract several sharks. I did not like the large 8’ lemon shark circling the boat. We had a few other smaller sharks taking our bait and chasing our catch, but I never got a good enough look to identify. When we got back to the dock we even had a manatee drinking the runoff while Randy washed and flushed “Sweet Thing.”
We even had one exceptionally nice day when we tried our luck catching Yellowtail Snappers. We had to stop for fuel so we did not go out following Gary and Sandi. Unfortunately, even with Gary’s instructions, we did not do very well. All we caught were some file fish and remora’s. The file fish are experts at stealing your bait, without even tugging on the line, so we had to move to get away from them. The remoras were another fun fish to catch, but definitely not something i want to catch. The remoras are large, gray, parasitic fish usually found stuck to the sides of sharks, manta rays or other large species. We did not see any sharks so we were not sure where they came from. Just glad that we did not have any sharks near the boat! I still enjoyed the day, but we were not able to even bring any Yellowtails to the boat. Definitely different than when we go to Looe Key and Yellowtail are all around as soon as you throw out a little dog food! We did learn a lot though so we will be trying again. Gary even gave us a dummy guide on catching Yellowtail! Next time we will take more chum in a larger chum bag and try to find a spot closer to one of the patch reefs. We saw a nurse shark at our dock when Randy was cleaning out the chum bag once we were back. I don’t mind seeing the nurse sharks but prefer when we get manatees at our boat. Hopefully we will have better luck next time!
The toughest part about staying in the Keys is that i have really missed my kids. We have had several video conference calls or FaceTime calls to stay in touch. That was especially important on Mother’s Day. I hope they get a chance to come visit us sometime later this summer!
