The annual Nautical Flea Market is this weekend. I don't think the crowds were as big as last year. One of the reasons could be that the Saturday Market Days was being held across the street and drew a lot of people.
I did see the yellow cat yesterday. I think he was just laying up to digest all the store bought food that my neighbors left for him when they left to return to Nutley, New Jersey. This cat is so used to dumpster diving I think he just over did it on this rich diet.

Yesterday, Larry Rabe installed this hose bib at the corner of the tennis court. I showed him where the old pipe was buried and he dug it up and tied into it. When we turned on the main supply valve, we found the line had no pressure. The idea was to use this to water the vegetation at this end of the property including the palm trees.
I remembered that Sean Ward was here and did some trenching and broke a water line. I pulled up my blog post from December 22, 2009. I could see there that Sean had breached the line just north of the sidewalk. He had capped it off and left the other end open. We rigged up a hose to pressurize the line and saw exactly where the break was. Larry Rabe dug this open and repaired the break and now we have water.
Part of our problem is that we have three generations of water lines on the property and this hole had all three exposed. We had a sprinkler head and line from the old wastewater treatment operation that we used. It also had a well water line and finally a fresh water line. What a mess. I'm sure we will run into this when we automate and expand the irrigation system that is being planned.

Long Nguyen came by today and removed the last two posts in the marina. Here he ties up his boat to continue work next week to take out the last 20 posts of the old pier. He is meeting Scott in the morning to go over some details and to take Scott out to show him how the old breakwater is still coming apart. The breakwater has proven to be a maintenance nightmare.

Today my good fortune came as a result of someone else's misfortune. Some friends spent most of the day on the water only to return with only this one flounder. They were too tired to mess with just one fish so they offered it to me. Not a bad deal. I put it on my fish cleaning board on the deck and filleted it out.
I took the fillets to Alice Faye's to have it fried. It doesn't get much better than this.

As the bay pier removal nears completion we are disposing of the last posts. There are a still some in the bay that can be seen in the distance in the picture. These are the better ones (newer ones) that will be re-used in our marina in various ways. We have managed to save a few dollars in the last several demo projects by handling the disposal of the debris ourselves. We have found people that find enough value in our debris that they are willing to haul it off for free. This is a picture of Steve Lew loading the old posts on his trailer. Note he is using the bucket on his backhoe to load them. Even the light ones weigh in excess of 250 pounds. Steve has a farm where he will put them to good use. We are glad to have them gone at the right price . . . free.

Tuesday night the wind peaked at 43 mph at the Aransas County Airport. Wednesday morning debris patterns could be seen downwind from the taller palm trees. I don't believe I've seen that before.
After all the wind for the last month, Wednesday morning dawned with a flat bay. I had to take this picture to show those who have experienced the recent winds that it did finally give us a break quit.
During the day, even with a north wind, a high temperature of 99 degrees was reached at the airport. Fortunately, the humidity dropped to only 20%.

I don't think I like the look this fox had this morning as he peered through the fence from the HEB property. The guests in 202 had been feeding the old yellow cat during their one month stay. They left yesterday. They left me two eight pound bags of cat food to continue feeding the cat.(I have never in my life purchased cat food.)
I have not seen the cat today and usually he stays pretty close to my front door. Cats are pretty high on the menu for the fox population. About this time last year the cat came around with a severe laceration on his back, possible from an encounter with a fox. I'll post an update if the cat returns.

We can always tell when Scott has been here. This stack of salvaged wood was on the ground and doing bad things to the grass under it. Sometime this weekend he found the time to stack what appears to be about 100 boards on an old section of pier to allow the grass to recover. He always finds a way to leave the property a little better than it was when he arrived.


These avocado trees that Jim Sykes planted years ago in front of 602 did not handle the winter freeze very well. The one on the right is coming out and will likely recover. The one on the left, not so much. There is some growth about a foot from the ground so maybe it can bounce back, but it will take a few years.

This pine tree outside 706 looks as if will not recover. It was been there at least 15 years, but the cold did it in.
The wind is so strong as I write this, I hear things blowing around outside. This is about as bad as the wind gets outside of a tropical depression or hurricane.
Despite the wind today the guests in 207 took their big Carolina Skiff to Cove Harbor and ran across to Blind Pass behind Mud Island. They had heard that cut shad was working for reds and sure enough. They got their limits. They plan to try again tomorrow.

We had a rather full and active Easter at our complex. Above we see another example of a renter not being very considerate. We had a lot of kids who would have been playing basketball, but he chose to park with his trailer exactly under the basketball goal. I called his rental office at 4 pm on Friday and was told they would have him park elsewhere. The vehicle and trailer were not moved until noon on Saturday. That was just the beginning.
There was a large number of guests in 704 with several cars that were not properly tagged. Complaints came from all directions. Contact was make with their rental company and the guests were counseled about their disruptive activities. Two desk clerks contacted our security, but there was not a lot he could do. One of our owners told me Sunday that this was the last straw for him. He will be selling his condo soon. He said he just wants to get back what he paid 18 months ago during the "liquidation sale". He has a very nice unit and will have no trouble selling it. I don't want to identify the owner or unit since he would start to receive calls from realtors. If any readers here are interested, let me know and I will put you in contact with him.
Later Friday evening, some friends of mine called to say the guests in 103 were grilling on a charcoal grill inside the outside closet. Pop went over there and they said they were trying to get out of the wind to cook. He told them this was not allowed. I was told that after he left, they continued the cookout. The picture below is what I found on that deck today right in front of the closet door. This is where owners who do not rent have a problem with rental operations on the property. I don't know the answer to this, but we will have to work on it. At the four hour board meeting on Saturday, the board had full agreement in declaring there will be no open flame cooking allowed on decks. Signs will be purchased to post on the decks to remind renters and owners of this policy.

After the big weekend the dumpsters were full and , as usually happens, Allied Waste Services didn't make it by today. I guess when there is a big weekend in town, the trucks have to make more trips to the landfill and just don't finish the routes. I called about 4 pm and they said they would make it today, but that did not happen. Now we have trash blowing around and Larry Rabe will not be amused by the pickup delay.
I visited with a roofing company agent last week about having our storm damaged roof replaced. He works for a Houston company and tried to make me a deal whereby he would turn in a large bill to our insurance carrier and then refund a part of the inflated price to us. Clearly this would be defrauding the taxpayers of Texas. I would hope the board does not choose this company to do the work for us.
The last winter Texan, Joyce, left today. She will stopover in Grandbury to visit with the Gormleys before heading back to Minnesota.
Chris(101) has been here for a week and says Karra will be in this week. I'm sure they enjoy coming here to visit and not have to put up will all the rental management problems and HOA issues.
Pete and Joyce(710) took me to lunch at the new restaurant that replaced Back Forty. It was pretty good. The servings were large and the price fair. I will definitely go back. Last Thursday, Dave and Hanne(307) took me to China A. They had not been there. They were pretty happy with the food and price and say they will try that again. I always like China A.
The tide today is as high as I've seen since last fall. With the high tide and strong winds. Long Nguyen will work on the spillway until better conditions allow him to complete the pier work.

We have been on the lookout for another golf cart for maintenance operations here. This Saturday I saw one, pictured here, down at Fulton Harbor next to Long Nguyen's bait stand. When I took a closer look, I saw that it was our old one that we sold about a year ago. It was determined at that time that it was not worth repairing. It still has the "security" label across the front and the orange light on top that was used by the night security years ago. I'm glad it did have some more life left in it.

Cousin Chuck and I fished in the 30 to 40 mph wind weekend of 8th and 9th. Saturday after 2 hours without a bite I got swarmed by feeding reds and limited in 15 minutes. We broke several off that day in Copano.
Steve(702) sent this email and picture above about his success even with the wind. This weekend we had owners and guests trailer their boats here only to find the wind was just too much. Today we had gusts of 40 mph and tomorrow it is forecast to be worse. The only boat to be able to do any fishing was this beautiful 30 footer with dual 250 hp four stroke Yamahas. Their only problem was that they could not fit into a boat slip. It is still tied up there at the cleaning station.

Later this morning Keith Hoelscher, an electrician, came out from Robstown to take a shot at making repairs to our lift station control panel. He is the third electrician to give it a try. We had the new lift station pump installed two weeks ago, but could not power it up with our panel. This panel has been a big problem for years. I had heard that Keith is an electrical guru. Sure enough, it took him five hours, but he was able to diagnose the problem and repair it. We have been running on only one pump since November and if that one had failed, we would have had a problem. It takes six weeks or more to have one of these shipped in. It is nice to have both pumps on line again.

Today started off with Tony(lawn service) finding Larry Rabe and I over around the 500 building and telling us he sees a sewer leak under the 700 building.
We went over there and sure enough. There was a large pool of water under 707 and 708. It had been leaking undetected for some time. We checked it out and the line in back of 700 had backed up.
Larry broke out the auger and cleared the line. There were large chunks of grease that came out. Some were as large as a small football. Grease down our kitchen sinks does bad things for the sewer lines.

Long Nguyen has finished pulling the old pilings from the marina. They are piled next to the boat ramp. We will sort through them to see if any can be reused in any way. Most are in really bad shape. The longest ones are 18 feet long.
He has about 20 more left to pull from the old pier. I believe these are the newest and longest and will offer the best opportunity to be reused.

The forecast varies from day to day as being very windy to extremely windy. Last weekend even some of the AC enclosures were disassembled by the wind. It has been windy for at least a month now.
Welcome to our newest owners, Dr. Ed and Sharon Bruno in Maine. They have purchased condo 302 from Lou and Kitty Voelckel. We will miss Lou and Kitty, but certainly welcome the Brunos to our Kontiki community.
This has been a very busy week and it's not over yet. We are trying to do repairs while the unit occupancy is low during the week.
Fishing remains very slow with only small trout off the pier. There have been a few keeper drum brought in, not nearly as many as this time last year.

In a recect post I mentioned a sunken oyster boat. Rodger(602) sent me some more images. The limit for oyster boats starting the season was 80 bags at 100 pounds each. Now with only a couple of weeks left, the limit is 40 bags. This smaller boat tried to bring in 30 bags and overloaded itself.
Inner tubes were used to refloat the boat and the wrecker winched it closer to shore so that pumps could be used to pump out some of the water. The boat was then towed around to our boat ramp and loaded up. I want to know what happened to the bags of oysters!

Phase I guests Anne and Jim Teeling caught these reds a few days ago while fishing with guide Brett Hopkins. The put in at south Cove Harbor and didn't go far. Cut bait did the trick for them. One red had to be tagged.
http://www.aceintheholeguideservice.com/

I'm tempted to write a report here that this wrecker is parked at our pier to be available to tow away some of these vehicles that come in here without parking permits, but I'll resist the opportunity. The truth is the wrecker is here to try to winch in an oyster boat that sunk just off our pier this weekend. They applied some buoyancy devices to refloat the boat and hope to get it close enough to shore to be pulled up and hauled in. The work is ongoing.
The electrician came out to work on the lift station electrical panel today. He installed the new contactor, but there was a problem. The new pump was drawing over 100 amps when trying to start. He feels the pump is connected to expect 440 volts on the supply. Maintech will send someone out Tuesday morning to be sure this is not the case. They will have to remove the pump and check the wiring to be sure it is set to be hooked up to 220 volts.

Long Nguyen and his crew started on the pier in the marina last week. They thought they might be able to use this gas powered water pump to water jet the posts up and get them out. This didn't work. The posts were just too heavy.
Today they came out with two boats and rigged a winch in the larger boat. The smaller boat holds the water pump and loosens the post while the winch pulls it up.
.This is the first post they pulled and moved to the boat ramp.

Julian worked on the termite and water leak damage in 507 today. He feels he can finish tomorrow. This is costing the HOA $300 and the time for Larry Rabe to take the old damaged parts down. We have about five more condos that need repairs like this. This is the time of year to tackle this as rentals are at a seasonal low.

Termites are showing up all over. These are on the outside of 602 and 603. They have probably eaten all the wood in the walls and are now starting on the fascia and soffit boards. Hans(707) found a lot of live termites in his condo this weekend. I have Royce Roy of Bedingfield coming out on Tuesday morning to dispatch these and whatever shows up tomorrow as these termites seem to be popping up daily.

Jim(210)sent this note with the picture of their catch on April 2nd. Jim's son Weston is on Jim's left.

Larry, Thought you might want to put our fishing success on your blog. Dr. Loden was our guide since he has fished Rockport for years. He also brought his boat down from Waco just for one day of fishing. Luckily, the wind that had been howling on Thursday and Friday, dropped off at about 4 am Saturday morning so that we had a great day on the water. The big man on the left is Brian who just lost his 16 yr. old son to leukemia about 2 months ago and really needed the fun fishing trip. Mike Loden really has a great time finding fish for everyone on the boat. When some one hooked up with a good fish, he was the first to grab the net to help you land your fish. Wish we could come down to fish with Mike more often but he has a busy schedule.

Looks like you are staying busy yourself with all the repairs that are going on. Larry Rabe sure is doing an excellent job of repairing all the things that are needed. He seems to know a lot of electrical, carpentry, and other skills that are necessary to help us. Keep up the good work. Jim

Andrew and Bryan arrived from Maintech last week to install our new lift station pump. We had been working with just one pump for the last four months.
Unfortunately, we found that now the control panel had a problem. One of the contactors was not working properly and we could now use either pump, but only one could be operational at a time. A new contactor was located in Corpus at a cost of just under $700. Larry Rabe picked it up on Friday and the electrician, Charlie, will install the contactor on Monday. It will really be good to have both pumps operational again.
I heard this last weekend that one long time owner had a concern that Larry Rabe might be doing work in my condo on HOA time. That is true. On October 7, 2010 I posted a picture on this blog of the work that had been started to repair the water damage to my sheetrock from a roof leak. J.R. hired Marcelino to do the work. The HOA has always had the responsibility to do repairs to condos where roof leaks or termites have caused damage. In the picture you can see the baseboard was taken out too. Marcelino could not match the design of the existing baseboard. When Larry Rabe became employed in December, I brought an eight foot piece of baseboard from San Antonio that was a match. Larry then installed and painted this baseboard. There are many posts on this blog of inside repairs being done at HOA expense for damages caused by factors that could not have been controlled by the individual owner. My condo is no different. In fact, end units tend to have more rain and roof related damages than interior units. It would be my preference that any issues such as this be addressed directly instead of rumored among other owners.

Royce Roy came by today to treat the termites in the 100 building. Larry Rabe holds the ladder while Royce applies his magic potion.
Work started today to repair the termite damage in 507. The rash of roof leaks after the new roof was put on has led to several walls like this where the leaking moisture led to termites having a perfect environment and they didn't waste the opportunity. Here we can see the outside plywood is completely comprised and the outside stucco will be next to the insulation.

Jim(401)and Scott(504) worked on Sunday to remove some of the old pier posts that are being removed. They are really heavy, at least that is what I am told. I did notice it took a big effort from four guys to lift them over the bulkhead after they pulled them up. By today the same stack is pictured below. I appears there were about 120 posts or a really big pile to be removed. After today it looks as if we have about 50 more to pull out.

This is the time of year for termites to swarm and they are on the move. This group under the fascia in the 100 building is just one of the places they can be seen. I have called Bedingfield Pest Control to come out and take care of them for now.
The Aransas County Appraisal District has issued the new property appraisals for this year. It looks as if Kontiki values have not been changed.
By my count 19 condos were owner occupied this weekend. Most were anxious to get back into their condos when winter Texans left.
Fishing has been hit and miss. Personally, I have not caught a keeper anything so far this year. I don't try all that hard, but I would think that every now and then I would get lucky. I didn't see any keepers caught off the pier this weekend.