The top picture is of one of our chaise lounge chairs from the pool area that awaits its fate in the dumpster. There is no way the repair cost would approach the new cost of this chaise. If nothing else its parts are of value. Yesterday, I visited Castaways and paid $1 for a Diawa reel. It didn't seem to work, but I have three others of the same model so the parts would be of value to me. When I cleaned the reel, it did work after all. Somehow I see a parallel here.
The bottom picture is of the concrete pad for the mailboxes that are to be installed.

The final deck work is being completed. It is interesting that the Aransas Appraisal District taxes us for the decks individually. We are taxed on the value of each deck as some units have two and the one bedroom units have only one. The square footage of the decks is assessed and added to the unit value for taxation purposes. The declaration clearly states the decks and balconies are not common elements. A board member brought this up when the repairs started and was shouted down by the rest of the board. The point was that since the decks are not common elements the repairs should be charged to the individual owner. By treating the decks as common elements, the one bedroom owners paid the same for one deck that two and three bedroom owners paid for two decks(balconies). Some day we will get back to the declaration rules that this HOA was established under.

The race is on. The crowds are coming for the big weekend. The storm is on the way to the Gulf and the tides will be high. The new sand is being spread. How long will it last? Six thousand dollars of sand can be washed out in a matter of hours. The berm near the pier south of the 300 building has been lowered. The sand can now wash directly into the channel instead of the bay.
The channel remains shallow. I saw a small boat go out this morning. They raised the engine and one person went to the front of the boat to tilt up the bow. The made it, but just barely and I'm sure a larger boat cannot get out at this point.

The Phase II pier remains mostly destroyed. I don't know of any plans to repair it. There are three lights that are on a bit of the pier that remains intact.
I had a call yesterday from a winter Texan who said that she was told that her reservation for a two bedroom bayside condo had been subjected to a rate increase. The cost would now be $1,650 per month. The unit has been remodeled since last year. I do think that we were under priced on our winter rates. I talked to the people at Coastal Management and was told that their rates do not change after a reservation is made. They are still posting a rate of $1,185 per month for a three bedroom if the reservation is for at least three months.
I had a call from an owner yesterday also. He said he is having many problems with his energy provider. He has a contract with Amigo Energy. He said contacting them is totally impossible.
The July financial statement arrived today. I don't know why I bother to look at it. There is no way to understand expenditures without some explanation. For example, our security expense for July was budgeted for $968 and the actual cost was $8,861.93. Go figure. I know Pop gets $10 per hour. If he worked every hour for a month that would amount to $7,200. That would be working every hour of every day. I have to think that maybe we purchased some security cameras. Who knows! I have no idea why we go through the motions of adopting a budget when it really has not impact on the coming years' spending practices.

This debris on the HEB beach has now been cleaned up. It took two dump trailer loads to haul it all away.

Scott(702) reported that he found a large school of reds just south of Paul's Mott yesterday. He said they were tailing all around him and he threw everything known to catch reds with no success at all. He and his daughter(Meg) went out Saturday evening and caught many many small trout. Meg caught one keeper trout under the birds. He was encouraged to see the constant action.

We had a tragic development at Kontiki this morning. The ambulances arrived early in the morning at unit 204. Sadly a young mother of 38 had died in her sleep. She had recently had knee surgery and was taking medication for that surgery. She leaves a daughter of only 8 years old. I called the Rockport Pilot to see if they had any further details, but they did not.

I put this box on top of the post in the marina about ten years ago. I had hoped to have Herons nest in it as they do at the Connie Hager refuge near downtown Rockport. I think it may be too small for Herons and too big for gulls. They do, however, like to roost on it.

Between the storms and recent rains our beach sand has found its way back into the bay. Right behind the bench that washed off the pier an encapsulated tie back bar can be seen. I have long advocated the concrete encasement to disrupt the water flow that carries away our sand. The concrete will also retard the rusting of the tie backs.

This is the very end of our pier that has not been repaired. It never was built correctly and I'm sure it was the first to go when the storm hit. I don't know what the plans are for working on this.

Our nearly $400,000 breakwater continues to unravel. I have posted many times about the need to do minor repairs before the whole thing came apart. Just a few nuts could have been tightened on the allthread bolts and this could have been prevented. I can just imagine what the cost will be now or when ever the powers that be decide to fix it.

Our pier is almost completely repaired.

Coldwell Banker has listed two condos on the bayside. Condo 105 is listed at $330,000 and 206 is listed at $339,900.

Hurricane Dolly did not do any good for Cedar Bayou. The pass is still totally closed. This is the pass that separates San Jose Island from Matagorda Island. At this point in time they are just one big island. The Aransas Bay water quality has to be impacted by the closure of the bayou. There is still an effort afoot to have it dredged open. As recently as last fall the bayou was open. More images of the bayou can be seen at texascoastgeology.com/passes/cedarbayou.html

Aransas Bay is just not producing many trout right now. Pat(602) went out Wednesday and came back with two trout, but one was 18 inches. He said shrimp were going for $14 a quart at cove harbor. Thursday, he stayed more in north Aransas and went through two quarts of shrimp and came back without any keepers. Pat and others have reported a short in the wiring at our fish cleaning stand.
Some friends of mine went with a guide yesterday. He took them to Sailboat Pass and they quickly loaded up with their limit of reds and several trout up to 22 inches. They went back out this morning in their own boat. They called about 10 this morning to see if my boat was available to tow them off a really shallow reef.
John and Justin went into the Gulf this morning in Justin's boat. The water was great and they picked up three King Fish.
Scott(702) started early this morning and fished from Big Bayou to Long Reef and did not get a keeper.

Randy(308) sent these notes on his latest trip. When they got back to Cove Harbor, the Texas Parks and Wildlife folks were doing a creel survey and asked a lot of questions. They said Randy's haul was the best they had seen that day. I think that means the fishing is pretty slow right now.

Took my Aggie daughter and her Aggie husband fishing Saturday morning on Estes Flats. We threw piggy perch and ended with 4 nice trout. The bigger two, both females with eggs, were 21.5 and 19.5 inches.
The other two were skinny males, 16 and 15.5. This is not great but better than what I have been doing. Went to fillet them at the cleaning table and thought my knife had burned out. Went back to the house and tried it there and found it working. The electricity was out at the cleaning table and when I checked it
The next day I felt a tingle when I put my finger inside the cap that covers the outlet. Ended up going over to the motel side to clean the fish.
We ate them the same day, they were great along with homemade fries and onion rings. Had to be giant boost for my cholesterol. Will have to work it off this week.
Todd the trailer guy did a nice welding job for me on my trailer. My J B Weld attempt failed. Randy Schulte-Agent
President's Club
Columbus, TX

It looks like the storm has slowed the fishing. Randy(308) went out to Estes yesterday and came back with one trout. It appeared to be about 17 inches. Merlin(506) went south too and came back with one 26 inch red.
I thought John was using Robbie's pontoon boat on Tuesday, but I learned that Robbie sold his boat to John when he went back to California. Robbie never really liked it in Texas.
Justin and Richy probed the depth of the channel last week. I think they were surprised that it was very shallow, just over two feet in many places. Justin has a dredge company lined up to look at our situation. They are working at Goose Island right now. I don't see that dredging will do any good at all until we do something about the breakwater.
Crowley Properties is having a big garage sale this weekend for a lot of their furniture and furnishing from their properties. From what I've seen discarded, this must be some really good stuff that is being sold.
The Kontiki Beach website is still down. It's been under reconstruction for at least two weeks that I have noticed. I'm sure the new site will look great.
The June financial statement shows that we are $98,133.96 over budget for the first six months of the year. Our association equity was a negative $4,598.57 at the start of the year. Now it stands at a negative $185,366.71. I hope it will all come out in the wash at the end of the year. It is a concern that we collected $135.24 in late charges from owners last month. At the declaration established 10% per annum rate this amounts to $16,228.80 that owners are collectively in arrears. I have no idea how many owners this covers. In Texas it is very easy for an HOA to foreclose on owners who are behind on dues and assessments. They don't even have to go to a court of law to complete the process.
There was an HOA board meeting held on Wednesday. Had I known about it, I would have attended. I understand the meeting lasted for three hours. Discussion centered on what to do about the recent storm damage to the pier. What ever happens, it means a lot of money. Kinsel gave a rebuild estimate of $90 per linear foot. I saw a truck from S&S construction on site yesterday. The owner, Steve, built a lot of our breakwater. I guess he was giving an estimate for the pier too. I think we are looking at upwards of $100,000. The options would be to simply repair what's left of our pier, build a completely new pier, or build a super pier in conjunction with Phase II. Any option other than a repair will require a special owners' meeting. That would probably be held before the annual meeting in November although they could be combined by moving up the annual meeting date. I'm not sure, but I think the original paperwork called for the annual meeting to be in June and it has slowly migrated over the years to be held late in the year for whatever reasons. Maybe we don't have as many deer hunter owners as we used to.