Monday, May 9. We had a nice quiet night at the dock.
We have not seen Allie Gator… I don’t know where she is. But I did see a really big Yertle the Turtle that was about 18” across the back, and it’s nose looked like – I don’t even know! A snout? A snorkel? I had to look it up and found this picture of one. Apparently it was a Florida Softshell Turtle. Check out that nose! And it does not have a hard shell, but more like cartilage covered by SKIN! So there is our herpetology lesson for today (the study of amphibians and reptiles.). You’re welcome!
This morning I discovered one system that we did not check, and it’s malfunctioning. The coffee maker. OH NO! I turned it on, put the water and the K-cup in, pushed the ”GO” button, and it said “pht, pht” and turned off. So, I tried again, it said the same thing, and shut off again. And that was it. It would not turn on again. 😟 If you’ve followed us around for the last few years, you know that we are apparently extremely hard on little single-serve Keurig machines. This one is number three, and we bought it just about a year ago when we were on the loop. We purchased it from Costco in Atlantic Highlands New Jersey, with the help and car-ride from our blog-reading-friend Captain Walt. The bad thing is that it hasn’t done a darn thing for the second six months of its life!! Maybe that’s why it gave up the ship? Well – we bought it from Costco with the idea that WHEN it died, (we knew it would, from experience, right?) we’d take it back and exchange or replace it. 🤷♀️ In the meantime, no coffee for us today! Boooo!
We pulled our lines and got away from the dock around 8:30 for our long day. Here is our voyage log. This 60 miles took us 7.5 hours. With the price of fuel these days, Captain throttled us back to about 1225rpm instead of the 1300rpm that he ran last year, so we were traveling just under 9mph. It took so long because the first five miles (blue line) was no wake, at 5mph. The weather was hot with a little breeze from the north, so we didn’t have much air movement most of the day. 🥵
While we were motoring along, I ordered an off-brand coffee maker from Amazon, to be delivered to the marina tomorrow. There is a Costco in Fort Myers, but I figured 🤔 for the cost of an Uber ride both ways, we could pay for a replacement. And then – what if Costco won’t take it back for some reason? Hmmm… we’ll take it back when we get home in a couple of weeks and see.
Ahhhh – the familiar sight of the Pink Shell resort!!
We pulled into the marina around 4:00 and were happy to see our favorite dockmaster, Dave. He is always so nice and welcoming! We got all settled in and cooled down, then mechanic couldn’t stand it. He searched the interweb and found a youtube about things to check on the mini-Keurig. He took it all apart. Well – what do we have to lose, right? He learned that it could be a couple of things… an overheat switch may have popped, or the water pump died. So multi-meter ready, he got into the guts. It was not easy getting this case off! He might have broken a few of the little plastic tabs. 😏
Sure enough! He found the overheat switch and he reset it. If this is a thing that happens, why don’t they put the switch where you can easily get to it and just pop it back, like the little GFI switches on plug-ins? Weird. I guess they figure you’ll just buy a new one? But – TA-DA! I toldja he can fix anything. 😉 He put it back together, and it’s working and looking normal again!
I had a cup of coffee just to celebrate, then we went over to the resort for dinner at Bongo’s – Pink Shell’s poolside restaurant. It was some good food.
Back at Island Girl, we just relaxed and enjoyed? the sound of water slapping the hull, and bouncing around on the dock. There is about a 10mph breeze out there, blowing right on our bow, so there’s some bouncing going on.
We’ll be here for three nights, just to enjoy the resort life for the last time.