Back in Fort Myers

Docked bow-in @ Legacy

We’ve been back at Legacy Harbour in Fort Myers for about a week now, catching up with some admin duties (condo cleaning, medical stuff, auto/truck maintenance, etc.), as well as tending to some additional upkeep on Ghost Rider.  And Michelle & I are both attending the local “Captain’s School” for the next two weeks to obtain our USCG captain’s licenses.  But we are hoping to sortie down to Key West towards the end of the month.  Between now & then we’ve got plenty to keep us busy.  More on that in future posts.

For now, an aside:  A few folks have inquired as to why we dock Ghost Rider bow-in vs. the more common stern-in approach.  It has nothing to do with ease of docking – either way is equal in terms of ease of effort.  For us it’s mainly that we want the dock on our starboard side, since Ghost Rider has the “asymmetrical” layout where we have a walkway only on that side, and that’s the way our slip at Legacy Harbour Marina is oriented.  A secondary consideration is that our shorepower and cable TV hookups are also located on the bow, so the nose-in arrangement means a shorter run of cables.

Groove antenna and enclosure

The boat has had three baths already this week – the first to get rid of all the salt from our last sortie, the second to have her bottom, prop & keel cooler cleaned (below the water line, and a zinc health check), the third just a few days later to wash off all the damned green pine pollen that accumulates in short order down here at this time of year.  That stuff gets everywhere.

I finally mounted our MikroTik Groove Wifi booster antenna in its permanent home on the fly bridge dash.  Previously we had it hiding deep inside a fly bridge locker to protect it from the elements…while MikroTik advertises the Groove as weather-proof, the salt water exposure on an ocean going trawler in hurricane country isn’t likely in their test cases.  So we waited until we could find a custom enclosure and stainless antenna mount before taking this step.  The Groove (technically known as a GrooveA 52HPn – a marketing company MikroTik is not) is actually a combination router and Wifi access point with an omni-directional high gain antenna and gets its (24V) power via POE….so it’s an ideal Wifi amplifying solution for a number of different outdoor scenarios.  I’m a fan of it, along with their indoor routers (which have even more mystifying names, but if they just work – and they do – who cares?)