Sunset a couple of nights ago from Prickly Bay and the same sunset from Chris and Chrystal's looking west across the St George's anchorage.



Hard to believe it's the first of September and in two weeks I'm heading north.

It's been a busy, yet quiet couple of weeks. Thanks to everyone for the kind birthday wishes. It's pretty weird reaching an age I always considered to be old. I feel grateful as I think about all those who never made it to this age. We've had sunny days, squalls, cloudy days, and some rain. It's partly sunny this morning. The frig is running (although using a few more amps than would be ideal) and the new charger puts amps in the battery. Installed a new fan in the v-berth -- a second fan that seems to work quite well.

Lost another glass candle a couple of weeks ago. It was on the table (unlit) when I left the boat and when I returned it was on the floor in pieces. Perhaps the coast guard ran hard past the boat kicking up a large wake or maybe it was just an odd wave. We've had some swell over the past week and at times the boat has been rolling fairly well.

Occasionally, when the bay is calm and the visibility is good, it can seem as though you're floating on air suspended over the bottom with just a small change in color indicating the transition between water and air. If you look closely, you can see turtles surfacing and fish leap into the air to avoid being eaten.

Some great diving over the past weeks. Last Tuesday we dove the Bianca C and the Veronica L, two shipwrecks off the southwest coast. On the first dive, we saw two reef sharks at about 45 meters. It was the first time I've seen reef sharks since I've been diving in Grenada. They were around two meters in length just cruising through the wreck of the Bianca C. We found a sea horse, two turtles, and a nurse shark on the second dive. Last Sunday, we dove the King Mitch wreck south of the island and saw nurse sharks, turtles, and large barracudas. It was a difficult dive with a challenging current but the wreck was worth the effort.

It's never happened before and may never happen again, but my nephew and my niece's husband were both mentioned in the same ESPN story. David and Ryan threw pitches to Tim Tebow.

I always enjoy offshore night watches under black skies filled with stars. Here's an interesting story and video about our need for darkness.

And the danger of too much rain for the aging Lake Okeechobee dike.

Sometimes it feels as though storms are alive -- a sort of entity rather than a phenomenon. This is a picture of a small Arizona thunderstorm from the capital weather gang.



And one more Arizona thunderstorm -- one that produced a Haboob over Phoenix (h/t capital weather gang).