It looks different with the crossbridge totally removed. Actually it looks kinda nice. There were about 12 to 14 newer posts removed that had been installed in the last two years. Some still had the price tags on them. I suggested that they could be reused by placing them against the wall behind the 500 and 600 buildings to allow better boat tie ups. The posts costs about $80 apiece.

Gus(203) and his twins picked up this 32 inch drum off the back wall behind their condo on Saturday. They caught several smaller drum and several undersized reds.
The boys will turn six on Saturday.

Work began on Wednesday on the crossbridge. With a chainsaw and sawsall, by the end of the day the whole thing was down. The second picture shows Tony on the deck and Chuck in the water as they approached the midpoint. The new pier will be two feet higher and a little wider with ten foot spans. Fishing lights may be installed. Rob has purchased a barge to use to work on the pier. It is being delivered from Port O'Conner on Monday.
The AEP came by today to read the electrical meters. I guess the bills will be out soon.
I understand that Chris Crowley will be in town this week. Presumably, he will address some HOA issues.

The concrete crew started at sunrise this morning and spent most of the day pouring this large section of concrete in front of the 300 and 400 building.

The fish cleaning stand finally got a workout today. George(wintered in 601) and his friend, Mike, came in with 20 trout, 3 reds, and a 22 inch flounder. They had been to marker 13 at the Land Cut. They gave me about 6 pounds of rib meat that they had intended to feed to the seagulls. I will have fried trout tomorrow.
Pat(602) went out too. He said he could only find three gafftop.
The dredge barge is moving inexorably down the channel. They appear to have about 100 feet to go. They have had to remove more sand than anticipated because the sides of the cut are slumping into the deeper water and are having to be removed. Dredging was slowed today because the holding pond was full.
The concrete trucks will be coming in at 7 a.m. in the morning. They will pour in front of the 300 and 400 buildings. They are preparing the area in front of the 200 building for the next pour.

The dredged sand continues to build into a mountain. This is the view from Fulton Beach Road and there is a lot of sand to go.
A plumber from Affordable Plumbing Company came out yesterday morning and opened the clogged sewer. He used a camera to look into the line to see if there were any obstructions . The concern was that the line was compromised between the 100 building and the southeast corner of the 700 building. If that were the case the line could have been replaced before the area was covered with concrete. No problem was found and the concrete work continued. It was not a great day to pour concrete, but only light rain was ever present.
The Kinsel & Company barge pulled out of the marina about noon yesterday. I saw it headed across the bay. They only worked one day on the breakwater and it is not finished. Maybe they will return soon.
I received a notice from the Aransas Appraisal District that said that Aransas County property sales were down, but the sales prices had not changed much from last year. I believe they will leave our values the same as they were last year.

Concrete work was in high gear today. The asphalt was removed in front of the 300 building. Rebar was readied across from the 100 building and concrete was poured in the boat parking area. Justin tells me that the sidewalks will be repaired while the parking area concrete work is being done.
The wind was down on Monday and I tried some of the bay spots where we used to catch fish. I did catch some small trout at Scotch Tom and Sandollar reefs, but no keepers. The water temperature was 72 degrees. It was nice to see the depth finder read 6 to 7 feet in the parts of the channel that have been finished. About 125 yards of dredging are left.
The folks from Kinsel & Company worked on the breakwater on Monday, but have not been out since. I believe they are waiting on materials to complete the repairs.
The dredge did not work today either. They parked it early this morning and worked on the ponds across the street. They are having to empty the ponds when they become full of sand before more dredging can be done. The website for the dredge company is www.jndthomas.com. You can see there what a big company they are. I visited with the dredge supervisor, Keith Ayers, on Sunday evening. He shares my ideas exactly on what needs to be done to protect and preserve our channel. He says if we do as is now planned, he will be back in two years to dredge again. If he does dredge again, he says a beach renourishment permit from the GLO would allow a much less expensive and faster dredge. He feels the shoreguard in deep water will not work as it is presently constructed and that any 'L' should be aligned to the north. One of the problems right now is that there were never any plans or agreements made for maintenance of the channel and shoreguard. There is no triparty interlocal agreement between the three HOA's involved. As of Monday, Sea Shell Shores has not paid anything toward the current channel and shoreguard repairs. I'm sure something will be worked out soon.
Dick Waddell made a habit of feeding a Greater Egret during the winter this year. Now that he has left the egret stays around and waits for a meal. I experimented today to see just how many perch the egret would consume from my trap. When he got to 31 he lost interest and let the seagulls have the rest.
The guests in 304 took their boat out at Port O'Conner yesterday and caught plenty of fish. Today they tried St. Joe Island and, of course, came back with nothing like everyone else has been doing recently.
I guess last week there was some interest in how the construction is coming. This blog had hits from 20 different states and 24 cities in Texas. Austin was first again and Houston fell to fifth behind Dallas.
As I complete this post, I can see another sewer backup between my place and 108. The sewerage is running down the sidewalk toward the beach and into the parking lot. It will really be a stinky mess by morning.

Rob told me this morning that the primary objection that the GLO had to our pier project was encroachment onto seagrass beds. Later this morning a crew from Belaire Enviromental, who is doing the permit application for the pier, came out and surveyed the area around the pier. They had a GPS system, a metered stick for depth, and a large floating waste basket for the GPS backpack should the water become too deep to carry the pack on the back. They used a rather high tech device to check for oysters and seagrass. The generic term for the device is a post hole digger. They checked a grid pattern at ten foot intervals. The process took about three hours. No seagrass of any kind was found. They parked their boat on the HEB shoreline. You don't see that too often.

The wind finally gave us a break today. The breakwater has really been taking a beating. To our surprise the barge above belongs to Marco Dominguez who did the repair on the breakwater in December.The barge arrived in our marina this afternoon and I believe they are going to try again to repair the breakwater. They received only half their fee last time because the repair fell apart before the second half of the fee could be paid.
I'm not hearing good things about our "super pier". Jennifer Stephens and Amy Nunez from the GLO office in Corpus talked to Richey on Thursday and updated him on the pier permit process. I don't know what was said, but I'm hearing that they want to seriously scale back our plans. The new pier would be not a lot different from the old one. What our board misses by not keeping owners informed is that owners have a wide swath of experience and acquaintenceces and that is never utilized to help us. I know of at least one owner who has a good friend high up at the GLO and could, perhaps, be of help in the process. I'm hearing that the GLO does not want the pier 'T' to exceed 50 feet in length. The Fulton Pier 'T' is 300 feet in length. We don't need that much, but 100 feet would be nice. I think Justin has a good idea. He feels that if we qualify as commercial, then we may be granted a larger pier. It can not be underestimated the attractive nature that a super pier presents. If we had a pier anywhere close to the Fulton Pier, our rentals would be much better.

At least some folks thought fishing was pretty good today. This is Conner, Randy's(308)grandson. A guest in 301 went wading at first light of day on the HEB point with no success. He went back in the afternoon and picked up a 17 inch trout.

Garfield is still doing well. Here he's filling up on small perch that I caught in my trap. I didn't see him at all while the winter Texans were here. I think he prefers to stay on the harbor side. Now, that they have departed, when he gets hungry he goes to wherever he can get a handout. The winter Texans left me A LOT of catfood. I think I have enough to last until they get back.

It was a busy day here. The concrete pour started early this morning. There is rain in the forecast for the next two days so this may be it until next week.
The dredge operation resumed early today also. The company flew in a technician from California to work on the electrical components. It took him ten days, but today was the day and it all worked. Yesterday they removed most of the earlier dredge material from the settling pond to create more volume for the current work.
A small dolphin washed up just south of the north pier this morning. It was only about five feet long and had what appeared to be a basketball sized shark bite just behind its head. Ron put it in the dumpster of Phase II because they have a pickup sheduled for tomorrow.

Work began on the parking area this week. I heard from Any Nunez of the GLO today that the Army Corps of Engineers will be involved on our pier project. I believe this usually means a delay in obtaining a permit to proceed. This could put us well into the summer before completion. I suggested to Justin that maybe we could rebuild immediately under the old permit and just raise and strengthen the pier as it was originally permitted. Later when we have approval for the upgrades, they could be added at that time. Summer guests are not going to understand what has taken us so long.

Moyra is selling her classic Cadillac. I told her I would let folks know and maybe she could sell it to someone we know.

1984 Cadillac Seville. One owner. White leather upholstery. Garaged since purchase. Can be seen at 9 Sea Shell Shores, next door to Kontiki. $3,500 or best offer. Jardon 790 9483

I did meet with Justin on Monday and we went over some of the bills that I had questions about. About the only one that we agreed to disagree about was the one where Phase I was charged for the repair to the HEB fence. He reasoned that it was a goodwill gesture to HEB since they have agreed to let out owners and guests walk on the their beach. He also felt that the vehicle that caused the damage had veered from our easement road. No one knows what caused the accident, but the best guess is the giant speed hump for the dredging. If that were the cause, I would think that the repair is a dredging shared cost. The two posts that were destroyed were up near Fulton Beach Road. I don't know that Phase I would bear the cost alone. The cost was a gigantic $100. Justin said he will check with the board. Another thing that I learned is that Phase II shares the labor cost with us for Ron Layton. I have seen Ron spend some time at Phase II, but I did not know that we were reimbursed for 25% of his salary.
Work continues on the dredge barge. The replacement computer arrived on Wednesday, but dredge work has not resumed.
The permit process for the new "super pier" is in the works. The new pier will be 485 feet long, 6 feet wide, with a 10' by 100' tee on the end. Another 50' by 10' arm will be attached at the middle and run north. I talked to Amy Nunez at the GLO on Thursday. She said that with all the changes it may not qualify as an amendment to the existing permit. If that is the case, the Corps of Engineers has to get involved. Even with everything going right the School Land Board meets twice a month to consider permits and the likely earliest date for us may be June 2nd. I don't think we will see the pier in operation before the end of July. Justin loaned me two catalogues on lighting to look at possible fixtures for the new pier. I believe the lights on the Fulton Public Pier or the Rockport Public Pier would do just fine.
Justin is looking at proposals to hardwire internet service for us. He has one that will run about $6 per month per unit. The wireless that we have now is just too unreliable to advertise the service.
Work started this week on the remodel of 306. Some work had already been done in this unit, but it will now be finished.
A realtor told me on Monday that she had a scheduled showing of 203 on Tuesday. I must have missed them. She did say the asking price is now $299,000.
Scott(702) went to Carlos Bay this morning. He went to the same place that we caught some trout two weeks ago. Today, he caught only one undersized trout.

I took this on Wednesday. The wind was too strong to go out on the pier, but I wanted to show what was happening to the end of the breakwater. The individual pieces of shoreguard can be seen high in the air as they unravel from the structure. Many thousands of dollars could have been saved if someone would just have used a wrench to tighten the allthread bolts that hold every thing together. I blogged about this last spring on several occasions(see blog post of May 5th) and told anyone who would listen that this required immediate attention. This is probably one downside of our HOA not having any board meetings. There is very little dialog between owners and the board. I talked to one board member who told me that during his time on the board he has not received any communications whatsoever about Kontiki business. I know that many owners have told me that they depend on this blog to find out what is going on and I sure don't have any direct access except what I hear on the campus. Last week 95 individuals logged on an average of 2.5 times each. There were hits from 17 states. Houston for the first time sent more traffic than San Antonio or Austin.