Larry Rabe sent this picture of a four foot rattlesnake that slithered out from under 608 today. Larry Skelton was the first to see it and dispatched it with a shovel. He was sure it was a female and perhaps it was laying its eggs under 608. Maybe we will know more about that later!

Larry got the purple martin houses out on Friday to clean them up. I hope we are not too late. The early spring has had other martins busy nesting already. Maghsoud(407) and I sat on his deck on Saturday and watched martins picking up nesting materials next to Moyra's old house and taking them across Fulton Beach Road to a nest over there.
I did see some trout brought in this weekend. The weather was about as good as it gets and a lot of boats were out. I even cranked mine up to be sure it is ready when the time is right. Everything seemed ok.
I used some really small perch on the pier tonight at the first light and the trout were eager to eat them. I was using a small perch hook because the trout were not all that big. One trout threw up a shrimp about four inches long when I pulled him in. I guess that means shrimp are in the area too. On the last perch I hooked into a big one and the drag made that sound we all love to hear. I knew there was no way to land it, but I did want to see it. After a few minutes, it did come up and roll over to throw out the small hook. It was a really big trout. I didn't mind losing it because I never would have landed it and I did get to see it.
I'll be out of town for a few days and don't plan another post until Tuesday after next unless someone sends me something to post.

It's that time of the year again. The only two cars in the picture are my own.The few that are here will have a good weekend on the water. Linda and Paul(106) went out with guide, Danny Adams, this morning and were back by noon with their limit of trout. I had six poles staked out most of the day and had only one undersized red to show for it.
There were two articles in the Rockport Pilot recently that are of interest. One talks about studies that show nitrogen compounds associated with fertilizers are building up the bays. Many of these are known to cause serious depletion of aquatic species. Another article talks about the end on the lease that the city had for the Rockport Beach. The lease has expired and the Navigation District will take over and more than just the fees for permits will change. It's an article worth reading as is the one about the pollution issues.

At daylight yesterday morning it became evident that our beach had survived the storm rather well. The work we did at each end proved its value. Normally, we would have lost at least four times as much sand in a storm like this.
The high winds did blow over the AC enclosures beside 708. Larry has put them back up.
The worst wave damage was done to the shoreguard near the pier. At least this is not our expense.

Cindy Fulton(104) asked me to let folks know that she is selling her condo. She is asking $255,000.

David asked me to post this note. He and Shadra will be greatly missed. They made many good friends in their time here.

As many of you know by now, we are putting our bayfront condo (# 204) up for sale. This is very bittersweet for us, being that we made so many new friends at Kontiki. A few years ago when we were looking for a place to invest our money ( CD's were bring .25 %, the stock market had dropped 40%) we looked to Kontiki. And we can say we have no regrets. The time we spent as owners/HOA members was a fabulous experience that we will not soon forget. Being part of some much needed improvements, we leave with a great sense of accomplishment and gratification. This has been a better experience than we could have ever imagined or anyone could have prepared us for. If another opportunity at Kontiki were to ever come up, we would not hesitate to invest again in the future!!!

So in closing, we just want to say a big THANK YOU!!! to all our friends and guests.

David & Shadra Pastucha

As usually happens at the vernal equinox we are having a high tide along with high winds. The new wall beside 101 has worked and our spillway by 308 passed its first test. However, it can be seen that we lost a lot of sand because the bulkhead itself is in need of repair and the water and sand flushed out in the openings. Right now this whole area is flooded and the waves are casting water up onto the decks. You have to be here to see and feel the fury of the waves pounding the bulkhead to appreciate the fact that the bulkhead is there at all. The whole beach is one big pond. I'm not sure how much beach will be left by morning.
This area in the corner by HEB has washed out more just today. Soon we will have to build a retaining wall to save our entrance road. The maintenance costs just seem to be greater every year. We had no condos on the market last week. This week we have two bayside units for sale. I think sometimes realtors over state the net earning potential when selling a condo. The buyers soon find that the age and location of our property drive up operational costs that severly impact their bottom line.

Jack Gibbs came out this week and replaced one of the piers under 501. The concrete post is tied into rebar that is in a two foot cube of concrete in the ground. The old post is rotted through and is pretty typical of other posts that need to be replaced. Jack said he can do about four per day at about $550 each if he is selected to do the other 201 posts.

Ray, Meg, and Scott show there were a few fish around this weekend. I did hear there were a lot of keeper trout on the pier on Thursday night. As many as 22 keepers were landed.

Steve Wright picked up this big bass at a public park on Lake LBJ. It was just shy of being 8 pounds.
I've been in SA for a few days taking care of things. Spring Break is not always a good time to be in Rockport. As far as I can tell every condo up for rent, has a renter.
Keith has a contractor lined up to construct one foundation replacement post this week. He will then inspect the result and review the process to see if this concrete method will work for all the other 201 posts. This contractor has submitted the lowest bid and we need to be sure the product is what we need.
I don't plan to be in Rockport until later in the week so I'll not be posting again until Friday. Some people seem to check my blog every day so I thought I'd save them the trouble.

My son, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Anhella, came in for the weekend. Anhella caught her first trout. This one was just over 16 inches. In thirty minutes she landed four trout and two reds from the mitigation site. I have never seen so many trout in the mitigation site. I've seen it full of reds and of flounder, but never this many trout. The action has lasted about a week so far.
Perhaps because of Oysterfest, we had a good crowd this weekend. I mentioned to Keith on Friday afternoon that we have been fortunate we have not had any sewer problems in over two months. Sure enough, Friday night about 8pm, it stopped up next to my condo. I called Keith and he came right out and worked on it. The third try with the sewer snake did the trick. Saturday morning he came out again because he had a message from the Phase II rental office that the sewer had backed up and he was not sure if this was old news or new. Fortunately, it was old news.
I'm still trying to determine if my new insulation is doing its job. I checked my energy bills for the last five years for February and found they are all over the place. 2008-$91, 2009-$158, 2010-$154, 2011-$60, and 2012-$115. There is so much variability in the winter weather I may have to wait until the summer heat to see how it goes.
I almost forgot. Welcome to our newest owners, Michael and Doris Anderson of Yoakum. They closed on 608 last week.

This thing floated into our marina yesterday. I had no idea what it was. Larry Rabe tells me it is from a duck blind. The steps are hinged and the platform floats so the steps lead up to the platform. What about the other part? Larry says these are dog steps. When the dog retrieves the duck and swims back to the blind, he gets on the platform and then uses the steps get back into the blind. I guess it is what he says it is.
The interesting part is that it likely came from Mud Island and somehow threaded the needle by coming up into our channel. It probably shows the sucking effect of our channel when the tide is rising. To fill the marina it must take in a large amount of water through a narrow opening.

Ralph and Cheryl(101) solved their problem with the Time Warner standoff with the local NBC provider. Time Warner is losing a lot of customers over this. The DirecTV installer said they had over 10,000 orders for installations in the area as a result of the ongoing dispute.
Today, Morgan LoCaste, the area sales manager for Dish Network, came out to look over our situation to see if they can provide TV service for us at a competitive cost compared to Time Warner.

Custom Electric came out today to preemptively change out the electrical meter panel in the 200 building. The AEP rep was here before 8 am to shut down the power. He came back about 1:30 in the afternoon to reconnect the power.

Incredible. I went to Steve Lew's for lunch today and I saw this goat looking over the fence at me. His kids said she was up in the tree so she could look over and see what was going on. They opened the gate so I could see what "Annie Oakley" was doing. Sure enough, she was in the tree. As I left I saw her in the photo below walking along the hand rail of their stairs. I didn't see how she got on the handrail or into the tree for that matter.