Quiet Time

Pictures: Everything has to come by boat including your own portable domino table, Boca Chita in Biscayne National Park; view from the top of the lighthouse on Boca Chita; Peter and Diane Mahoney visiting us in Key Largo; the lawn and extra comfy chairs at the Barnacle in Coconut Grove; Dwayne Wade on the Metromover in Miami

The past week or so (we should call it a “blog time”) has been peaceful and uneventful. Our weather  has been sunny, with calm winds, and flat seas. But we’ll try and remember some activities that are worth reporting!

We started this time with replacing some underwater zincs that we need to keep maintained. There is one on the propeller shaft and one on the hull. The water temps in Coconut Grove were warm, and Ken was able to make a few dives in shallow water and attach them.  Also while in “The Grove” we visited Ralph Munroe’s house, built in the late 1880s and now a state park. Ralph was a boat designer from the Northeast but spent a lot of time in the Biscayne Bay area in the winter, back when there wasn’t much there but a rooming house and a post office. The park has the most comfortable chairs we’ve ever sat in, set up on a beautiful lawn looking out into the bay. We learned that there were fresh water springs in the bay until Florida decided to start draining the Everglades.

After two nights back at No Name Harbor in Key Biscayne, and a bus trip to Miami, we have mostly been in Biscayne Bay National Park, stopping at islands that are 7-10 miles apart. So that means not using too much fuel, but running the engine enough to heat water for showers.  At Boca Chita we joined a crowd of mostly families on a Friday night, camping, playing music, setting up domino tables and and running generators. We met two women from Key Biscayne who came out to camp and who knew a lot of the history of the area. This island reminded us of Bumpkin Island back in Boston Harbor.

The next night we stopped at Elliot Key Harbor. It was shallow and we couldn’t get into the harbor with our boat, so we anchored a ways outside and took our dinghy in. It was just as well that we weren’t staying as there were more families and more Cuban music. Fun to watch for a while but we were in the mood for a quiet evening.

One more day and night in the National Park, on an Angelfish Creek side channel, convinced us that we were ready for more company. It was too peaceful! We did have the diversion of catching a Spanish Mackerel in the bay this day; and four Florida Environmental Police boats buzzed us repeatedly, looking for a fishing boat that had gotten out of control and rammed into the mangroves somewhere in one of the side channels. (The fishing boat was finally found and an injured fisherman was airlifted out by helicopter.) But other than that and an awesome kayak route we found in one of the smaller channels, it was time for civilization. We needed food, water for our tanks and gasoline for our outboard, so we set off for Key Largo.

So right now we are anchored in a protected harbor on the west side (bayside) of Key Largo; it’s called Tarpon Basin. Key Largo is the first key you get to when driving from Miami to The Keys. There are about 8-10 liveaboard boats here—boats that probably don’t leave the basin much—and about the same number of cruisers like us. There’s a town dock and a park with a community center on shore. Plus we have a shopping center and lots of souvenir shops and diving companies in this area. We had a visit yesterday from Peter Mahoney, a lobsterman from Hull that we know, and his wife Diane. They brought the lobsterboat down south last winter but this year decided to drive.