The Life and Times of Captain D and his Pretty First Mate

The little gym at the fitness center is tight, but has nice equipment.  They also have a "yoga" room, but their primary focus is outside on the tennis and pickle balls courts, along with a large community pool for aqua aerobics.  Nowadays I get my forehead temperature check when entering with a mask on, but can remove the mask when working out.  We also have sanitizer to clean the equipment after use, which truly needs to be a thing after the pandemic. I'm solo for about half the time I work out, so I pedal to the center on my trusty cruiser, all 1 mile of it. There's ample parking for my cruiser, on the rare occasion there is maybe half a dozen bikes if there is a tennis or pickleball event going on.  Most folks arrive on golf carts, followed by cars or on foot. It's a short walk to the center from the parking lot. The courts take up most of the property off to the east (right). For right now, I'll do a fast walk for a couple of miles and then cool down.  I...

With the upcoming repairs and renovation, "G" Dock is all but vacant, with just a few transients tied up and soon to be gone.  Many of the boats slid back to "H" Dock, to the west/left as space permitted, with our SV-Time and Tide among them. It's a mixed bag on H from the looks of it. Much more active with many of the boats sporting old, retired guys "fixing" things and such. One such sailor had all his chain out and was marking it with a "better" color scheme. Personally, the older scheme seemed to be just fine to me, but everyone is the Captain of their own boat. The winds were a bit gusty, but this captain managed to "twirl" the boat between the docks and glide her into her new slip. The First Mate took over the helm as I left the cockpit to secure a few initial lines. Easy-peasy. I have got a few items to check off my preparations list, then the First Mate and I will cruise a bit on Charlotte Harbor, and anchor out as the winte...

The First Mate and I were on our usual cart tour of the marina and spotted a rather large yacht that was a bit out of place.  It is a late model Azimut Megellano 66 and costs more than $2,000,000 used . They must be slumming, lost, or just like the food at Cass Cay. I figured they may be just waiting for a good time to fuel up as they'd take pretty much the entire fuel dock just to come alongside the pumps.

 The dawn of the year 2021 at last! I decided to start a new blog to capture what information may fall between the cracks, between what I may post on Facebook, Instagram, and what few things I may post on Twitter.   Life has been busier this past month as both Moyia and I have started to move our primary physician visits locally to Burnt Store Marina.  As of today, I've seen my primary doctor twice (blood work is fine), also twice for my gastrologist (office visit and colonoscopy) and once for my cardiologist to set up a stress test, echocardiogram, and CT calcium test (which I tried to explain to my doctor in Tennessee).  Nothing is wrong, other than my cardiologist calling me fat and that I do not drink moderately at one or zero drinks a day (He's right on both counts of course, but he's a tough love kind of guy).  I just wanted to get a good baseline going into my 60s. Other than the doctor visits, we hit a grocery store (Wal-Mart, Publix and/or Aldi's) ...