More Miami

Pictures: Ken in our small kayak that we carry onboard, tooting around No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne; Florida Lighthouse, Bill Baggs State Park, also where No Name Harbor is; outside the German Pub on Lincoln St. in Miami Beach where we watched the Patriots playoff game (interesting that they face some of the TVs to the outside tables); Pete and Eri Mico on the flying bridge of RISING TIDE; Coconut Grove street scene, with sailors returning their boats via sidewalk. There is an Olympic Training Center for sailing in CG.

We finished up our time in Key Largo by biking to John Pennecamp State Park. We snorkeled there and checked out the hiking trails. And then we headed back up to Coconut Grove and got in good position to pick up our son Pete and his girlfriend Eri for their visit starting on January 19^th (Pete’s birthday).

We’ve been in the Miami area for so long we’ll be the ones giving advice on where to go and what to do!  We have found the best hardware store (Shell Lumber), the best gelato (some Argentine place), the best bike trails (Bill Baggs State Park), and lots of other bests!  The hardware store owner took us under his wing and we got invited on a boat ride up the Miami River, right down the middle of the city, at night so we could see the buildings all lit up. We had dinner in the city and then screamed back over the black water as only a local could do.

We had a shared dinner with the Mahoneys (from Hull) at the Coconut Grove condo they are condo-sitting at this week. Our friends from KIANDA joined us. We also had a picnic supper on the lawn at The Barnacle and the Mahoneys joined us for the live music there. Before our Massachusetts guests arrived we installed another solar panel and got caught up on laundry and grocery shopping.

Pete and Eri had great weather for their visit. The slightly chilly weather we had been having became warmer and it was clear and sunny every day. Some highlights of our time together:

--A birthday celebration with gelato on their first night here

--A trip across Biscayne Bay and a stop at a sandbar to wade around and look for sealife

--Dinner at the Boaters Grill in our Key Biscayne anchorage, serenaded at our table with live accordion and violin music (it was good!), sharing a whole large fried Red Snapper and dancing

--Snorkeling and sunbathing on the beach at Bill Baggs State Park

--Getting Pete and Eri on our folding bikes for a ride to tour the lighthouse at the park

--Seeing some wildlife, including loggerhead turtles off of Key Biscayne and fish swarming and jumping in the entrance to Miami harbor

--Eri helped us find Lincoln Rd. in Miami Beach (a closed-off-street pedestrian mall of gigantic Miami proportions) where we watched the Patriots win their way to the Superbowl (!!) and had dinner at one of the sidewalk cafes

We said good-by to Pete and Eri yesterday as they climbed into a cab in North Miami (after a short boat trip north to show them some of the ICW in the area). We had said good-by to Dave and Jessica on KIANDA the day before, as they are heading to the Bahamas. The Mahoneys are done their condo-sitting stint and will move on to other areas of Florida. So now we are back on our own. It’s a little quiet.  Not boring, however, as we seem to have a problem with our transmission that has cropped up in the late afternoon yesterday. Stay tuned; our fingers are crossed as we hope it is a minor problem with an easy solution!

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.  

Happy New Year 2012

Pictures: Tammy and Heidi in our cockpit; Jessica, Ken and Dave on New Year's Eve; motorcycle visitors to Dania Beach; Tammy and Little Havana regular (He offered us $20 if we could stump him on state capitols, presidents and dates, or World Series winners in the last 80 years. We couldn't!); our view of Coconut Grove, with spoil islands on the left and right

It seems like a good omen to be celebrating the new year in warm waters, watching the fireworks over Miami and the Chinese candle lanterns over our anchorage in Coconut Grove! I’m not sure how they do it but the candles floated up over the harbor and into the night sky before extinguishing. At the same time the half-moon was setting down over the skyline of high-rise buildings. We cooked a dinner on our boat for ourselves and Jessica and Dave from KIANDA. They brought a great potato salad, a salmon appetizer and champagne for midnight. We both contributed desserts so we ate well!

We’ve had a great holiday week, good weather and a visit from Tammy for 5 days starting on Christmas Eve. With Tammy we hopped around from Dania Beach to Miami Beach to Key Biscayne and back. Tammy likes the beach and bicycling and we did both, as well as swimming off the boat on one hot day. Tammy also speaks very good Spanish so on a side trip, by bus, to Little Havana in Miami she was an interpreter.

While in Key Biscayne we met Tammy’s boyfriend Mike Mangan, his mom and step-dad. They drove down from the Orlando area where Mike was visiting. We had a good time getting to know them, taking them out for a boat ride in Biscayne Bay and serving barbequed shrimp and steak kabobs before they left.

After Tammy left it was a little too quiet and lonely but the next day we moved back to Oleta River State Park and caught up on end-of-year paperwork, read our mail (that was delivered by Tammy), and set up our next plans. We had never been to Coconut Grove and KIANDA was here waiting for a mechanic to help them with an engine problem. We decided that they could use moral support. This is a section of Miami – in fact Miami City Hall is right here on the waterfront in a building Pan-Am Airlines used to use as a terminal for a major seaplane operation. There are many restaurants, shops and parks. As we arrived we saw the last small boats being towed in after a week-long regatta for youth sailors from 23 countries! Just the kind of place we could explore and enjoy for a couple of days.

Our anchorage is outside of the mooring area, near a spoil island. The spoil islands are places where they have dredged and left the material (sand in this case) as a new island. These have been here for a while and have palm trees, bushes and grasses on them. Signs on them indicate that they have been recently cleaned up and are being incorporated into the harbor as recreation areas.

We will hang around Miami and Biscayne Bay for a while; our son Pete will be visiting in about two weeks with his girlfriend. We don’t mind cycling from one resort town to another and then to a National Park!

Tying up loose ends: a website for the Thanksgiving Dinner at St. Mary’s Georgia is at http://cutterloose.com/?p=2049   Ken is standing in the foreground of the picture of the buffet table with all the food (click on the pic if you don’t see him); Heidi is sitting in the background of the second picture of people eating.