This is the vacant look our property had last evening. Today, the crowds have arrived. One last big weekend. However, for the next few months, I see not much going on.

Kontiki Beach Management has begun using a new reservation system. Check the link below. However, they may want to check those prices. Change the departing date to about 10/3/2014.


Reservations For Kontiki Beach Management


The appraisal district has their new numbers up. To check on Kontiki Condos, change owner search to "property" search. For address use "2292" and for street use "Fulton". Then search and our condos values will be displayed.


Appraisal Values

 Just after noon today Jerry was changing out a bad light fixture on the pier. You can see he took a fishing rig with him as the reel is just past the next post on the rail.

 I heard him scream and bound down from the ladder. I thought he had been shocked. What he saw was this shark taking off with the perch he had staked out.

He was using a small rod and reel that Marvin gave him last year. There was no way to lift the shark up so he had to walk it all the way to the HEB shoreline. I filleted it out and we took it to Alice Faye's so have some grilled and some fried. We did have a great lunch.
Speaking of Alice Faye's, it has been sold to some Croatian investors. They purchased the whole area, bait stand and all. They will be closing for remodeling soon and the reopen with mostly the same staff. Alice has agreed to manage it for them for one year.

Nick Baker of Baker Air Conditioning came by today to overhaul the system in 202. He is on our list of preferred providers. He noted that the unit was very dirty inside, likely from infrequent changes of the filter. He even replaced the plywood under the unit that had rotted from the moisture from the unit. From what I saw they did a great job and the new owners should have some cold air this weekend.
I asked him what he was getting now for a total change out. He said he charges $3,400 for a 16 SEER, 3 ton,  Lennox system with a 10 year warranty. From other quotes I've heard this year, that sounds like a pretty decent price.
I did check with another owner about their July bill and she said they also were in the $170 range and rented their 3 bedroom condo pretty fully. They also use Infinite Energy as I do. Owners who experienced much higher bills in July either have a poor electrical contract or a low performing AC system since that's where most of our summer energy is consumed. Besides the evaporating coils being clogged from dust and dirt, the other culprit is often the condenser coils. The environment here erodes the heat dissipating fins in just a few years. They can be treated when new for $500 and is well worth it, but who wants to do preventative work on a new system? Shouldn't they just build them better for this environment?

I took some friends out site seeing on Sunday morning and saw this shrimper working about 3/4 of a mile from our condos. I went over to show them what happens in the trawl path. The porpoises put on their usual show and the camera clicked. While those cameras clicked my brain clicked that maybe if shrimp were in this close, maybe I should get out my trusty DOA and check the reef just east of the pier that I had not tried in several years. Sure enough I bagged my first keeper trout of the year, or at least that I can remember. I  got a few more hookups, but didn't get them to the boat except for one 14 incher.
I went back in in about an hour and picked up some friends who wanted to soak some croakers at a well. We tried the well behind Sanddollar. Nothing there.
There was one 22 inch red caught from the crossbridge on Saturday.
Also on Sunday Vic(712) and Jerry went to the surf by way of Cedar Bayou.  They said the workers were getting with the program and on a Sunday. All they caught were sharks and gafftop. They headed back about 2pm. They took the channel though Carlos Bay and just as they cleared the channel on this side they ran out of petro. Not good. Jerry tried to call me for a tow and my boat was in a slip, but his phone ran out of juice. They used the Bimini top for a while until the wind changed direction and then Vic got out his kayak and towed his boat back in with that. I wish I had a picture of that.

My den looks like a rod and reel repair shop. After having young grandchildren here for the last ten weeks, I finally had some time to clean, restring, and repair ten of my most used combos. Little hands always want to help. I went to Ace Hardware and purchased $56 worth of terminal tackle, line, corrosion X, and rod guides. Pretty much used it all. They talked me into some new line at 12 cents a yard that is not mono and has a small diameter for 20 pound test. I'm hope this will help keep the mitigation site reds from cutting me off under the crossbridge. There was one problem somehow one the reels they restrung for me was wound backward. It took me a while to find out why the closed face reel would not take up the line.

Construction in Rockport has made concrete hard to come by. A new house is going up at Sea Shell Shores. Since you have take delivery of concrete when you can get it, they were pouring through this tube at the first light of day. I thought it to be interesting that the profile over John's house appears to be a Masonic symbol.

You don't have to have a calendar to know when school is about to start. This is  how things looked Wednesday afternoon here. Even this weekend is proving to be not too busy.
I took my boat out this afternoon with five friends. We had live shrimp, mullet, and croaker. Of course, I had my trusty DOA. No one even had a bite. That's the way it has been this year. We plan to try again tomorrow morning. The winds should be calm.
I am anxious to have my new neighbors close. Linda and John Pack drove though last weekend and plan to close next Friday. That may be a record for going from driving through to owning. After all these years of relentless crowds and parties next door, I will finally have some folks who use their condo for there own pleasure. Linda and John met our board last Saturday and we all agree they will be a welcome addition to our Kontiki community, although we hate to see Cheryl and Steve leave.

I mentioned earlier that long time owners might remember when Jerry Hill worked here as maintenance. I have included below his dad's obituary. The picture was taken about the same age that Jerry is now. I don't believe I've ever seen such a father son resemblance.

Link to Jerry Hill's dad's obituary

After all the travails of the last twenty four hours with the lift station, Jerry had to throw up his hands and call for help. He called PEECO as soon as they opened this morning. Steve told him it sounded like a one way valve was open. He said it is about the size of  a softball and buried somewhere along the line. Jerry asked me if I could recall from twenty years ago just where the valve was buried. Not a chance. Jerry started digging. He located the valve fairly quickly. The valve had a swinging trap door about the size of the silver dollar that had detached itself from inside the valve. Jerry had just the right wrenches to open the thing up and replace a small bolt and nut to allow the inside piece to swing freely. He reassembled everything and was so pleased that everything is back to normal. He saved us a big bill from PEECO had they needed to come out.

Last week I posted a picture of the trench Jerry had dug out behind the maintenance shop to allow the water to circulate. Later he saw this Red Slider land turtle navigating its way down the trench. It's probably a good place for a turtle to shop for a meal.
Today I ran into Jerry Hill, who long time owners may remember, while shopping at Castaways. He is doing well, but he was in town for his father's funeral. He and Donna are planning to retire and move to Belize.

 We were talking this weekend that our two new lift station pumps had survived the long summer and were just purring along. This morning Jerry found that one of the pumps was no longer doing its thing. Instead of calling for help, he devised this A frame device to attach the winch to and reached down to connect to the pump. When he winched it up, it appeared something had stopped it up. He washed it out and reinstalled it. Everything looked good to go. Tonight, just before midnight, Mingo called me to say the tank was filling up and neither pump would work. I told him how to reset it to one pump and he sent a text back to say it was pumping the level down. I guess Jerry will have to start all over tomorrow or should I say today.

 Work on skinning the palm trees continued today. This is turning out to be a lot more work than I think the contractor counted on. This tall tree was not easy with the wind  blowing, but it sure looks better.

 The skinning of the trees produces a much larger pile of debris than one would imagine.

The debris is collected and hauled to the dump. The dump does charge a sizable fee to unload this stuff. It takes only about two trees to fill the trailer.

Steve(702) sent this photo. Ling is one of the best eating fish there is.

My boy Kameron landed this 65 lb ling last week about 7 miles offshore. It crushed a ribbon fish.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife tank truck showed up on Thursday to release 200,000 fingerling red fish. They do this annually and it seems some of these small fry adopt us for a home and hang around until they are keeper size and get caught in our mitigation site.

Also today, Time Warner contractors showed up to replace our cable TV lines. They started at Fulton Beach Road and say they will finish tomorrow.

Today was one of those days on the farm. There was a lot going on and I was the only one on campus to answer questions. Jerry works only two hours on Tuesdays so that he has hours left for the weekend. We had two bad finger piers that had rusted loose and were a trip hazard and he said it was a two man job to fix them. He came by in the cart and picked me up before 8 and we worked on them and it was not too bad. We used a 4x4 for a prybar to lift the pier. My 230 pounds sitting on one end lifted the pier with no problem while Jerry drove in some lag bolts to repair them. Just as Jerry was leaving, D&C showed up to work on the gates. They said they needed the electrical  hooked up to test the gates. Penny was busy with Phase II work all day so I called the electrician who installed our latest pier lights. I think I woke him up, but he came right out and got to work. It was about a three hour job.

The gates were tested and all seemed well, but then they found something amiss. In the picture above you can see a worker laying beside the fence to do some welding. When I went back out later, they had shut the gates down until tomorrow.

We had a guest in 105 yesterday who had been parking his boat across from the condo. Penny called his cell and left a message telling him where he should park his boat, but he never moved it. I had seen his boat windshield must have been broken on his drive in. Today I found his broken windshield scattered on our lawn. Guests like this should not be allowed back on our property.

We are trying to be consistent with our trimming of our palm trees. It's not recommended to skin them like this, but the property manager two years ago started and skinned most of them and now the ones that were not skinned stand out. It's a slow process and creates a lot of waste to haul off and it costs to dump it. So far four trees have been done.

Nathan(709) took this picture from his deck. He says this 4 foot bull snake routinely comes down this palm tree for food and water and them climbs back home. I think he has found a pretty good home a Kontiki. No one is going to do him harm up in that tree. I have posted pictures before of the tree trimmers with their long ladder in the tree to do their trimming. They might get a surprise next time. I truly do not see how  he is hanging on. Must have velcro for skin.

Scott sent me this story about their trip this Saturday.

Amy, Meg, Meredith, and I went out Saturday for a lazy afternoon of bay fishing.  We took live croaker to the gas platforms at the south end of Aransas bay.  I caught a 17" trout on my first croaker.  This turned out to be a deceiving indicator of the day's cast to catch ratio.  15 minutes later Meg caught the biggest sheepshead I have personally seen.  It went 20" and 5 1/4 lbs.  After that the rest of the day was casting practice. 

 

My step dad (Ray Caraway) and his brother (Robert) joined us in Ray's new boat.  If you look close you will see Ray's dog, Libbey, also joined the crew.  She is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.  She spent the day barking at dolphin, live bait, and the occasional bycatch.

Our gates are finally starting to move toward completion. D&C came out to deliver the gates about ten days ago. They returned last week to begin installation.

Pictured here is the housing for the electronics and driving motor. They trenched for the electrical, but we will have to get an electrician to connect to the power at the lift station panel.

The two sided mechanical locks they installed just happened to be identical to the one we purchased for the crossbridge gate.

I noticed that they installed the digital panel and bollards closer to the curb on the left than the end of the fence is. The supervisor looked in disbelief and they had indeed put it too close and now an entering vehicle or boat would have to veer to the right after entering the code on the keypad to avoid hitting the end of the fence.

They then installed an additional bollard, filled with concrete, in front of the end of the fence to protect it from boat fenders, wheels, and such. Our contract did not specify whether we would have a wireless or hard wired control keypad. After talking about it, they offered to install the more costly hard wired version at no additional cost.

The tides for the last month have quite low for this time of year. We usually see this in January. Jerry dug out a ditch for the water behind the shop to drain. If it doesn't drain, it gets stagnant and smelly. He did all this in a couple of hours. That's a lot of shovels full of heavy mud.
Jerry had success getting our golf cart back on the duty. The fuel pump went out two weeks ago and our search for a new one were futile to say the least. There isn't much I can't find online, but this time I found no success after a considerable amount of time. Jerry visited auto parts stores and asked around. We just could not find one with the correct connections. The whole thing is about the size of a screwdriver handle. Our cart is fuel injected and the fuel pump is somewhat unique. Finally one evening while visiting with Mingo, he mentioned that his golf cart had a similar problem and he found a 'T' connector with three different sized ends. This got us to thinking in a new direction. Penny picked up a pump at O'Reilly for $116 and Jerry got to work on it. The manager from O'Reilly even came out to see what he could add. On Monday morning I saw the cart out and called Jerry to ask if he pulled it our or drove it out. He said he drove it out of the garage and proceeded to drag the beach with no problem. He sure saved us a bunch of money. We had even tried the local cart store to see what they could do, but they wanted to sell us another cart.

Scott sent me a recap of their day offshore on Sunday.

Another Good Offshore Trip - Ray (601), his son Esai, and I left Conn Brown aboard the "Luna-Sea" (Ray's Blue Wave) on Sunday morning at 6:00 am for a day in the Gulf.  The weather prediction was 1 foot seas, five seconds apart.  That equates to smoooooth water.  But mother nature gave us something a little different.  We cleared the jetties at 6:15 am to rough choppy water.  After running several miles it was still rough and as the sun rose we could see we were in 2' seas about 2 seconds apart and they were coming at us from several directions.  We had to slow down to 12 to 14 mph to keep from knocking all of the screws loose.  We slowly made a 35 mile run to a batch of rigs approximately 25 miles from shore in about 130' of water.  Eventually the water laid down to being almost slick but the first several hours it was rough!  At the first set of rigs we fished for dog snapper but could not get any to the boat.  We were able to land 4 Strawberry Grouper.  They are a beautiful and tasty fish.  We had several larger fish take us into the rig and break off the line.  The real excitement for the morning was our impromptu engine repair.  The small tiller on the lower unit that sits directly above the prop had come lose and somehow spun around 180 degrees to the point that it jammed against the prop.  It had the prop completely locked up.  If anything on a boat will break it will happen while you are offshore.  So there we were . . . 25 miles from shore . . . 35 miles from the Port A jetties, with a very nice 250 HP four stroke Suzuki engine . . . that we could not use.  So Ray jumped in the water and hanging on the lower unit was able to break the prop free using a 20 oz bank sinker as a hammer.  This took about 30 minutes of trying various techniques before it broke free.  He then wired the tiller in place using a 12" long piece of 240# wire leader.  Ray is now known as "MacGyver" Luna.  Problem solved and we were off to do more fishing.  But I've got to tell you, that was scary for a little while.  There were other boats around and we could have hailed them or called the Coast Guard via a satellite device called a SPOT, but that would have wrecked the day and made for a VERY long boat ride back to shore.  After the motor issue was solved and we spent a little more time fishing the deeper water rigs we headed closer to shore in search of our "State Water" Red Snapper.  Just inside state waters (within 9 nautical miles from shore) we found a rig holding some nice sized snapper.  These rigs were a long ways up the coast from Port A.  You have to run far to find rigs with any decent sized snapper.  Most rigs closer to the Port A jetties have been too heavily fished.  After a few break-offs and a little chumming we got the feeding frenzy going.  Within 45 minutes we caught our limit of 4 per person (12 total fish).  Esai was a trooper and reeled in almost every one.  And some of those were large, strong fighting fish.  This was his first hard core, long day of offshore fishing and he did great.  We had several opportunities at Ling but could not get one hooked well enough to bring them to the boat.  In retrospect it was another great trip.  No one got hurt.  Everyone returned safely to shore.  Good memories were made and many fish were caught.  Thanks to Ray and Esai for letting me go with them on the adventure.