Pictures: Miami-Dade police officers training on the bike trails in Oleta River State Park; our new friends Dave and Jessica and their boat KIANDA coming over for happy hour (they are now in the Bahamas for the rest of the winter); sign seen on the bike rack in Key Biscayne; bottlenose dolphin who swam alongside with two others for about 20 minutes on our cruise from Key Largo to Marathon; colorful fish Ken caught off of Shell Key -- he let it go when we didn't get another to make a lunch
We’ve had a pleasant 10 days or so since Pete and Eri left.
Ken got the transmission running fine again, by changing the fluid twice. But no real adventures to report, so it seems
a good time to report on our challenges, observations and tips.
Keeping a reliable water supply has been a regular chore. We
have a water tank that is undersized for living aboard and using water 24/7. We
haven’t needed to get fuel since just after Christmas and fuel docks don’t
particularly like dispensing water without a fuel purchase. Our alternatives
are finding city docks that have water or taking water jugs ashore in our
dinghy and filling them. Coconut Grove city docks provide water; water spigots
for the jugs were found on Elliot Key in Biscayne National Park, Key Largo
County Park, Oleta River State Park, and Marathon in the Keys. Other anchorages
in the Miami and Upper Keys areas, while wonderful spots to enjoy wildlife or
get a great Cuban meal, were lacking water entirely. Solutions would be to get
a water-maker (makes fresh water from seawater but is expensive and is plagued
with filter problems) or adding an additional water tank or changing the one we
have.
Flying bugs in this area of Florida seem to be limited to a
few areas in closer to the mangroves that have no-see-ums. We have mostly been
able to sit out at night or walk beaches during the day with no flying
disturbances. We have screens and do use them at night, but I think it’s just a
habit formed in New England. Crawling bugs almost never make it out to our
boat, thank goodness, but we did have one or two spiders that eluded us for a
month. Ken thinks he has recently gotten them both.
Our bike transportation has been working out well. We have
split our shoreside traveling about 50-50 between walking and cycling. We have
found some good bike trails and Ken even got a quick adjustment on his bike
from a trailside mechanic set up in Oleta River State Park. We rented a car for
two days in Coconut Grove, got lost a few times, picked up a large grocery
order, and met a nice rental agent who moved down here from Boston after
college. We’ll probably not need a car again; we usually get groceries into a
backpack each and a bike-rack load each and return to the boat looking like
hobos. It’s the case of beer that is the killer!
Speaking of hobos, we have been in two or three anchorages lately
that each has a dozen or so “bumboats”, which are (sometimes but not always)
poorly maintained boats with singles or couples living on them and lots of
grass growing along the waterlines. They don’t usually move their boats and
travel back and forth to shore in rowboats. The same attributes that attract us
to an anchorage is good for them: a water supply and a good place to leave your
dinghy when ashore. We find good guys and bad guys (the drunk ones) and have
experienced their strong loyalty to each other and to “their” harbors. You can
tell they are eking out an existence; they are mostly happy and talkative and
enjoying the good boating life.
Our evening’s entertainment has been pretty meager – a few
dinners out (more often we eat lunch out and save money), an evening picnic and
concert one time, watching recent episodes of TV shows that we can get on the
laptop with wifi, listening to music CDs or our ipod. We play games every once and a while, and Ken
has recently dominated in Mexican Train dominos. After Pete’s visit we are
feeling fat and happy because he brought us a large supply of DVDs. Now we can
watch movies and only have to charge up our laptop first; for internet TV we
have to have our wifi source (our cell phone) charged too, and we have to watch
the use of gigabytes. It has us on the verge of our technical knowledge limit.
But we’ll still be following the latest NCIS and Downton Abbey shows which we
are hooked on.
As to our main relaxation activities (besides reading and
watching wildlife): I am still working on my banjo licks and my slides,
hammer-ons and pull-offs. I’m up to page 173 in my tutorial. It definitely
helps to have a hobby to turn to, to fill in the longer journeys or the windy
days when we don’t go to shore. Ken is back into fishing after getting advice
from a neighboring female boater who has had a lot of luck. He is getting
bait-shrimp and pulling in interesting small fish. He intends to work his way
up to the larger fish by using a smaller one as a live bait.
We traveled yesterday with Peggy and Jack, friends with a
Sea Ray 28 BLUE DOLPHIN, down the bayside of the Keys, watching the dolphins
swim along with us at 10 knots. We arrived in Marathon, got on a waiting list for
a mooring, and anchored about ¾ mile from the city marina outside of the large
mooring field. We’ll probably stay here in this cruiser-friendly harbor for 10 days or so and then continue on
to Key West.
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