New this year is the addition of the Ripley’s Aquarium to the list of attractions offered through Toronto CityPASS. We are please to offer our guests the ability to save 42% or more and skip lines at Toronto’s 5 best attractions by purchasing … Continue reading →
Limin’
To give Jennifer’s shoulder some time to heal, we took it easy for the week after her collar bone break. We got a few boat projects done, and made sure Jennifer got lots of “medicinal” rum to speed her recovery. Kathy and John Youngblood of Mystic Moon tell us this is called limin’, something the…
Feb. 20 – Jacksonville, FL
Ortega River Marina
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” —Dr. Seuss
We’ve been Jacksonville for a week staying busy visiting with friends, meeting new friends, working on the boat and eating.
Our local friends, Barbara and David, told us about a great place to eat. Definitely not a fancy place, but the food was outstanding. Southern Charm is a down home joint run by a local character and chef that personally greets each guest as they enter his little diner. The place is only open a few hours each day for lunch and then again a few hours for dinner. Friday was his shrimp and fish buffet. Along with the main course we had some of the best sides I’ve ever eaten…mac and cheese, potato salad, cole slaw, collard greens, fried green tomatoes, cheesy grits and cinnamon rolls. Art “Cracker” does all the cooking, he howlers “shrimp up” or “fish up” when each batch is done and his staff brings plates of fresh food to your table as long as you want to keep eating. We were as full as two little ticks when we left.
One of the things we’ve always enjoyed in Jacksonville is the Riverside Arts Market…a nice combination of farm fresh items, crafts, music and food. It’s located near a neighbor called Five Points under the I95 bridge. Today was a beautiful day to spend at the market, along with the normal vendors the market was hosting a chili cook off. There were twenty five booths filled with free samples of chili and cornbread with all the fixings. The sample cups looked small, but after tasting ever contestants chili, a few pieces of cornbread and cookies we were stuffed.
Art busy cooking up fresh shrimp, fish and green tomatoes
This was my plate after going through the line…
then they start bringing you plates of fish and shrimp.
The Riverside Art Market
Vendors of all kinds…
and lots of good food too.
A few of the beautiful winter vegetables
I think these may be the largest shrimp I’ve ever seen. The lady told us the red ones taste like lobster.
The view from the market
The Chili Cook-Off
Living the Dream
Yes we are living the dream. But like all dreams this one has a few interruptions. When we put the boat in storage last May I knew that the generator impeller needed to be replaced. I changed the oil and fished out all of the broken impeller blades from the heat exchanger but I opted to wait until Tourist was back in the water to undertake the impeller change. We’ve now been floating for over 2 months so the time had come.
As you can see it was beyond replacement time.
An unexpected interruption came one early morning around 4 o’clock when our carbon monoxide detectors started chirping. WTF? So up we get and start the process of figuring out what the cause may be. Experience points to a dead battery but the batteries are only 2 years old. Into the lazerette I go to check out the charger. None of the indicator lights are on. Why isn’t this getting any power? Next I go to the breaker panel. (Pam is all the while trying to keep a flashlight pointed in the direction that I’m looking.) The breaker is still in the on position. I know. I’ll get the multi-meter and see if the switch is good. Only problem is that the 9 volt battery in the meter is dead and we don’t have a spare. Undeterred I found a replacement breaker and switched them out only to find that the breaker wasn’t the issue. By now it’s 6 a.m. Only another hour till Publix opens and I can get a 9v battery. Meanwhile I shut down all of the 12v power to stop the incessant beeping.
6:55 a.m. finds me hiking down the street to Publix. I return with two 9 volt batteries, half & half, and a half gallon of milk. Seems I would have been going for half & half anyway so Pam could have her morning coffee!
With a working meter we traced the problem to a non-functioning charger. Power in but no power out thus a dead battery. The remedy was to order a replacement charger and as a temporary fix purchase a small portable charger to use till the replacement arrives.
Through all of this the comedy (for me) was Pam’s displeasure of having to use the bathroom facilities in the marina for a short time since ours are all run from the 12 volt side of the power supply!
Finally the new charger arrived and the switch out went relatively smooth considering it was a “boat” project.
The non-working charger.
The replacement.
One of the items found by the surveyor back in November was that the sea water hoses that feed the main engines were showing some cracks and he suggested that they be replaced. What should be a pretty straight forward job probably isn’t so I elected to have a professional do the work. He estimates that we have roughly 38 feet of hose that needs to be replaced which seems like a lot. but of course this is Tourist and the engineers at Sea Ray decided it would be prudent to place the thru hull at the front center of the bilge then run the hose from there across the engine front, down the outboard side of the engine and into the sea strainer. Then another hose from the strainer to the fuel cooler and then another short piece from the cooler to the sea water pump.
Knowing what a pain in the butt it is to work on the outboard side of these motors is what led me to hiring the job done. Now all we need is the hose which because of the lengths of the runs had to be special ordered from the manufacturer.
Not all of our time has been spent making repairs to Tourist. We made a trip to Walmart where we were delighted to find brand new shopping carts! What a treat to be able to push a cart that rolled smoothly and went in the direction it was pointed.
Look at that shine! It won’t last long.
We also had a great Valentine’s Day dinner at the The Road House Café with friends.
We clean up pretty good.
Of course roses got the day off on the right foot.
We also celebrated Chinese New Year at Ichiban (Ming’s). Pam and Sarah helped out by tending bar but the highlight of the evening is when Ming cranks up the Karaoke. Of course it’s all in Chinese!
Well back to the dream. It’s time to fix a water leak!
A leaky connection at the water heater is the culprit this time.
New connectors in place.
Istaboa’s Waypoints 2016-02-20 19:27:00
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