South Florida Vibes

Pictures: the beach at Oleta River State Park, North Miami, with bilingual signage; Heidi and Digna Meija in Boca Raton; flowers blooming in Stuart (I have no idea what they are but they were pretty); kayaking in the mangroves at Oleta River

They are trying to keep some of the natural wonder in Florida – the slogan for the State Parks is “the Real Florida”. It is working, to some extent. We are anchored right now in a bay just a quarter mile from the Intracoastal Waterway where there are mangroves three-quarter of the way around us. Ken is catching small fish and we are watching other thinner fish jumping clear out of the water.  This is the Oleta River State Park, Florida’s “largest urban park”. Just behind the mangroves rise a row of 25 or 30 story buildings. Last night we were visited by a huge Met Life blimp, the third different blimp we’ve seen this week. They must have a schedule so the blimps don’t bump into each other!

So we have alternately busy days and quiet days. It depends on the day of the week, as weekend days are busy everywhere you go here. And it depends on where we choose to anchor.

In Fort Lauderdale we anchored in Lake Sylvia. We have been here before and we know it is out of the wind and good holding ground. When we arrived it was very full of anchored boats. We were on the far side, close to shore because of the lack of anchoring room. We headed out to a favorite “watering hole”, a bar called the Southport. However, our dinghy route in the canal system was blocked by police boats. We tied up to a city dock about three blocks from the Southport and found that there was a car in the canal near the city dock with a body in it.  (The next day the paper reported that it was a 52 year old man and the car was a white Mercedes convertible. No other information about how it got there.)

The following day a woman came out onto the back lawn of her large house on the edge of Lake Sylvia and asked us to move. She was having guests later in the day and we evidently were not something she wanted her friends to have to see! No use in making an issue out of it; we moved. Anyway, most of the boats that were here the day before had left, probably because it is good weather to cross to the Bahamas.

On our third night in Lake Sylvia we had a car alarm or house alarm going off almost the entire night. It’s time to leave!

In the past ten days we have visited with several friends. We stopped in Stuart, which is near Rio where we were in our last blog. We called Tom Coleman, a Marblehead friend who now has homes in the Stuart area and Newburyport. He also has a boat in Florida. We had a good time catching up on his news. Stuart also has a very nice marina with inexpensive moorings for rent and very clean showers and a laundry. The city is quite interesting; we will try and stop there and stay a little longer on our way back.

We visited with Olga Nohe in Delray Beach. She picked us up near where we had anchored and took us to her house. She and Brian moved there 10 years ago from Cohasset. We had a great visit and enjoyed hearing about the Nohe "children" and getting an update on the new headphone business Brian is involved in, working with ”50 Cent”, the rapper.  The next day, in Boca Raton, I biked to Florida Atlantic University where Digna Meija, a former co-worker at Boston University, now works. She showed me around the Engineering Dept. and we got caught up on what’s been happening since we saw her three years ago.

In Lake Sylvia we found Jessica and Dave, new friends that we last saw just before Halloween when we were all in Chesapeake City and heading south. It was good to see them and find out how they have been. They are from New Brunswick and this is their first trip down the East Coast.

We expect to stay in the mangroves and quiet state parks as long as we can before we head back towards Ft. Lauderdale to meet Tammywhen she flies in there and has a five-day visit with us. We have our kayak off the top deck and have used it every day.  There is a rental place here for bikes and kayaks so we find their orange kayaks circling our bay off and on. There are canals and small rivers to explore, and a university campus on the next peninsula has bike trails and nature trails. The state park beach is beautiful and the water here is aqua-colored. We’ll be visiting Miami with Tammy; it’s just 10 miles from where we are now. Of course there are the South Beach and Little Havana highlights to catch, but we also hope to get to the Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne to balance out the city with the “Real Florida”!