All Fixed and Back to the East Coast

Pictures: Heidi and brother Jim in Cape Canaveral; vegetable selection at LaBelle grocery store on the Caloosahatchee River; bridge tender manually moves a turnstile on this bridge to open it at Slim's Fish Camp, near the Okeechobee; our dinghy has collected a crop of floating fresh water greens near the Okeechobee; Ken and Mark, our mechanic at Marco River Marina, almost done with the reinstallation; Ken got a good shot of an alligator as usually you only see two eyes and its nostrils. 

The transmission got put back in on Monday, March 5, and we took a test run later that day.  It has been two weeks since then and all is well. Even the weather has changed to just sunny and comfortable from hot and humid.

We have been to Naples and Cape Coral since getting back on track, and have completed the “circumnavigation” of South Florida by traveling through the Okeechobee lake and canal route back to the east coast ICW. Several adventures later we are happy to be heading for home, although it will be another 1450+ miles to Duxbury!

We visited with Josie Stephens in Naples, walked through the beach community near the City Dock, and out onto the long pier there that juts into the ocean. Cousin Connie Eshbach and John Diggin have a condo in Cape Coral and are very near to a lovely basin – Bimini Basin – where you can anchor and access quite a few resources. We had breakfast with Connie and John, and the day before had watched the setup of two television stations’ reporters in a small park there, showcasing a new man-made beach. Connie and Heidi speculated on why the beach is referred to as a “non-swimming beach”. Alligators were one idea we came up with.

On the Caloosahatchee-Okeechobee route (took a while to learn how to say and spell this!) we caught glimpses of the vast sugar cane industry there.  In a grocery store the other shoppers were just as likely to look like they were from Central America and many were guys wearing cowboy hats; the skyline in several directions had large towers of smoke clouds which we learned were from the burning of the cane stalks (after processing?).

Wildlife was abundant, and we saw what we thought was a mink, swimming across the canal in front of us and stopping to make a lot of noise every 30 seconds of so.  We passed two owls in a nest at the side of the canal looking back at us, the first owls we’ve seen. There were about a half-dozen alligators in the side canal we stopped in for the afternoon one day.  And in the same place several colorful birds were in the mangroves, some we had not seen before on our trip. (Back in Cape Coral we saw a bald eagle with some catch in its talons.)

We definitely had our worst night of the trip, so far, in the area west of Lake Okeechobee, near Moore Haven. We got bombarded by bugs, zillions of them, and lots of them made it through our defenses to bother us after dark. Ken kept getting up to find what he could and kill them, Heidi tried covering completely with a sheet but that made it stifling and the buzzing continued anyway. Morning couldn’t come too soon. We found piles of dead bugs everywhere outside the boat, especially on the decks and near the ports and windows. It took two separate cleanings to get rid of them.  We are now gun-shy and take bug spray with us everywhere we go; we haven’t recovered yet!

Most recently we’ve been to Stuart, Vero Beach, Eau Gallie and Cape Canaveral.  All nice places with good city moorings, easy anchoring  or inexpensive marinas. While walking on shore we got caught in a rainstorm in Vero Beach, took shelter in a park gazebo, and soon made friends with the two men and two boys on bicycles who also “huddled” there. Every once and a while it would start to let up and one of the boys would go out for a football pass thrown by one of the men, then it would start pouring again. In the end we had to jog back about a half mile to our dinghy in the rain and got soaked.

We saw Ian and Marlene from GUST O’ WIND for a visit last week and yesterday we spent most of the day with Heidi’s brother Jim and his wife Riko, residents of Cape Canaveral. We went “home” with some freshly baked quiche and a folding beach cart they no longer need.

The future brings, hopefully, continued good weather and a fairly straight line north to the Georgia-Florida border. And a few nice fresh fish for dinner. We have some frozen squid for bait and we are determined to find fish this afternoon!

HOT Conditions

Pictures: Old tree in the southern Everglades, with bromeliads in the branches; Joel and Heidi at Marco Island Marine; snowy egret on our bow; nature walk with leaders in green t-shirts and their cart with samples and buckets for more discoveries; Sand Spit at Tigertail Beach and the deep layer of shells in the foreground

Transmission problems caught up with us on RISING TIDE and we have been in Marco Island for a week trying to get everything fixed and put back together. Marco is just north of the last visitor center in the Everglades National Park. It is a very well developed island with tons of housing and commercial properties, but it has a good boat yard for service and a great west-facing (Gulf of Mexico) beach. The weather this week has been setting records for the hottest February.

Before the transmission tanked we did cruise across Florida Bay from Marathon to the southernmost part of the Everglades, Flamingo. There is a Visitor Center there, bike and hiking trails, camping, boat rentals and tours, and great wildlife. We watched crocodiles and manatees there in the boat basin where we had a slip. Neither species was looking to get too close to humans; the crocs were sunning and the manatees were feeding. We didn’t, luckily, see any of the pythons that are non-native species and are said to be living and breeding in the area.

We had two more days in the Everglades, at Little Shark River on the Gulf of Mexico side of the park and at Russell Pass, near Everglade City at the northwest corner of the park. The gnats in Little Shark River were horrendous and only allowed us about an hour outside watching wildlife. After that we hunkered down behind screens and could still watch the dozens of bird flocks skimming over us and over the water flying north at sunset (to rookeries?) and heard dolphins passing in the dark. Before the gnats overwhelmed us we were entertained by a large loggerhead turtle with a huge orange head (we both thought it was an orange float ball at first). The turtle popped up when we first set our anchor and then about every 3-4 minutes, just quick enough to see if we were still there, circling our boat, too quickly diving  before we could get any pictures. Loggerheads are said to weigh several hundred pounds at full adult size.

At Russell Pass we anchored with several other boats. We stayed as far from the edges of the pass, lined with mangroves, as we could and had less bugs this night. The sunset from there was beautiful and it was a very peaceful night. Earlier that day Heidi had kayaked through Oyster Bay off of the Little Shark River, trying to find one of the chickees that are provided by the park for the overnight kayakers and canoeists. It was an unsuccessful search but good exercise paddling against current and wind. When we googled “chickee Everglades” we found a picture of a wooden structure built over the mangrove roots at the waters’ edge, just a platform with a roof and an outhouse.

 The transmission repair has been dragged out partly because we arrived on a Friday at noon and partly because Ken drove the old transmission to Miami to be rebuilt and it takes another day pretty much to drive back to pick it up. Thanks to Scott Stephens and Linda Wallace for a car. But it saved $2000 over the quote from the place the boatyard was going to send it. It has been a hot, uncomfortable week to be working in the bilge. Ken and our mechanic Mark deserve a lot of credit.

Here at the marina where the boatyard is, there are lots of distractions: a fast catamaran to Key West (like the Boston commuter boats), day trip sightseeing boats, captained small catamarans for half-day sails, fishing charter boats, a large Ships Store, and two small bars. We also have lots of birds and a resident snook that swims around the docks (it’s a large-sized protected species of fish) .

There’s a beach in Marco Island called Tigertail that has a great lagoon and a “sand spit” to wade to. The lagoon is full of birds and small creatures; there’s a nature walk-and-talk every weekday morning to point them out.  Many invertebrates, sea worms and egg cases were seen and examined, as well as some “new” birds such as the reddish heron with a long pink bill, tipped with black. There’s an osprey feeding fresh fish to its chick in a nest. The sand spit has piles of small shells washed up there and lots of beach walkers.

Strangely enough we have had visitors here! Joel (Heidi’s brother) and Marie drove over from their vacation condo in Ft. Lauderdale, Jack and Peggy (Canadian boating friends) stopped by after driving to St. Petersburg to look at a possible new boat, and Scott Stephens (long-time friend of Ken’s) is staying in Naples and took Ken to the Goodland Sunday Afternoon Celebration, in the next town over, and also took us by boat to Naples.