It was Rudy’s 10th birthday on the 31st By-the-way, Rudy is Tom and Sue’s black lab…another reason for a party.!! Sue actually made a real meatloaf with bacon
Sue, Rudy, Maggie & Tom
'cake' for all the dogs attending the party - hell, I thought it was dinner for us. 
Michael, Margaret and their Jack Russell, Baileys.
Corky was getting his licks in early. A good time was 
had by all - even the adults. Week of August 1st How the heck can it be August already ??- we’re due to leave the marina on the 6th. The circuit boards arrived and installed. Time to try another start up. This time, Wayne disconnected one of the inverters and tried the start up on only one - same outcome-fried!…how can this be? The company sent him a brand new inverter this time. The good news? One inverter is operational which means we can leave on Friday. I continued sanding and painting the window frames. On Thursday, Nymah had us over to her boat for happy hour and dinner. Wonderful night. On Friday I made the rounds for food, liquor, wine and medication refills. We got permission to stay until Saturday so we could attend the 1st Friday events but by the time I got home from all the errands, I was too exhausted to go. We LEFT THE DOCK At 12:15 on the 7th !! We anchored (on the ‘hook’) at DeSoto park, relatively close to the marina & easy for us to pick up the parts for the fried up inverter. Nice breeze, a bit overcast but still hot. We had to adjust without the a/c and quickly. Sleeping wasn’t bad once your body was relaxed and the fan was on. We were in the water a lot and took the girls to the beach. Basically, we did very little of anything. It was great. Week of August 8th Tom and Susan 
Getting back onboard can be such a hasstle !
invited us to go fishing and shelling on the tour boat. Of course we‘ll go…do bears shit in the woods?? I gathered my pole, net, bucket, tackle, put on my bathing suit, gathered towels, water, drinks and off 
we went. We wound up on Rattle Snake Island…little creepy sounding huh? Susan was happily digging for treasures -Tom & I got skunked. HUGE storm coming in all around us! We had no protection from the torrential rain, thunder, lightening all they way back to BLUE MAX - then it stopped. Go figure!
We were SO cold !
Week of August 8th-con’t It was very hot and humid, despite that, it was really great sleeping with fresh air blowing in. We also had intermittent rain showers and cloudy…all in all it beats being at the dock. We did just what we wanted to do - mostly nothing. Wayne spent much of his time on the fly bridge in his lounge chair with both girls on his lap. He also chased wires to find out if there was a problem with his wiring. I was finally able to copy my pictures to a DVD thanks to my new Toshiba. We should have received the new circuit boards by Wednesday at the latest. TJ (friends staying @ the cottage) emailed to say that the parts were sent to the house in the Keys !! Dumb shits! I created a UPS label and emailed it to Jennifer @ the shipping store in Big Pine - TJ, the dear that he is, took the box to her and off it went. On Tuesday, we packed up the dinghy and took the girls to the beach. It was like bath water but being wet all over was a relief…We also dunked in off the swim platform almost every day to get cooled off. I had some medical issues that made feel simply awful and terribly tired - this too shall pass.
Week of August 15th Tom called, they were going to Passage Key, did we want to join them? I still wasn’t feeling all that great yet so we passed. I tried a cup of warm water with ground Flax - that seemed to settle things down and I felt much better. We pulled anchor and took BLUE MAX to the Key - a nudist sandbar - the tide was down exposing a beautiful beach. The first sight we encountered was a lively
game of volley ball (I have ultra-zoom)… Unfortunately, I can’t show you the rest of the pictures taken - some of us should never take off our clothes ! Wayne spent most of the day on the beach talking to all the women and, as a payback, he received a severe sunburn on his butt. The girls visited everyone on the beach - begging all the way. The majority of the people were in their 40’s to 80ish. We really did have a great time until it was time to leave when I realized Wayne was a bit ‘over the edge’…all that sun, all those beers then the fatal vodka drink while on the tour boat. I’ve never seen him in this condition - I took the helm. Even though it was still light out, I took the wrong set of markers home. Obviously, I was also somewhat impaired as I didn’t notice the 1st marker I encountered. See the tiny 
little yellow triangle? this means you're in the ICW & (I took this pic in the daytime but it was dusk when the grounding happened) & the red markers should be on your left. (obviously, I didn't see the triangle) The red markers going into the Manatee River should be on your right. I thought I was entering the River so I kept the reds on my right. I went hard aground at marker 60. Even though it was a soft bottom, we could not get ourselves off. It was dark now. Thank goodness for Tow Boat US who, with great effort, pulled us out. I still don't know how we ever found our way 
back. The goldsmith received the form for my ring-it was pretty dismal but after they worked their magic,here's the result.
