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. 

1,780 miles to the Tropics

Pictures: The "soil" in Marathon and most of the other Keys is composed of coral.{except where they have trucked in loam, or have paved it over, just like in the the Bahamas); Mike and Mimi Powers with us on the Harbor Walk in Key West Bight; juggler on a tall unicycle at the Sunset Celebration in Key West; moonrise over Boot Key Harbor in Marathon; one of the sharks we saw while snorkeling at Sombrero reef off of Marathon; Ken surfacing, with Rising Tide in the background, at Sombrero reef.

Wow! A lot has happened in this past “blog time”. The Patriots have played in the Super
Bowl. That’s enough said about that.  We have been spending time in the Keys, mostly Marathon and Key West.  We had companions with us from Ft. Lauderdale and now they have gone. We were visited by very good friends Mike and Mimi and got to explore Key West with them. And we’ve been snorkeling several times and are enjoying the proximity of the reefs off of the Keys.

First of all, the mileage to this point deserves a comment. We have circled about a lot the past two months but now we have reached the southernmost point in our trip and will be heading north! So 1,780 miles is the number that we have come up with to account for our last 4 ½ months.  And these last two weeks have been tropical: very warm, very bright sun, beautiful plantings and lush greenery, birds and fish at every turn. The fruits and veggies are delicious here, and widely available, especially the citrus, mangos and avocados. We need to wear light colored clothing. Navy blue and black would be way too hot.  We need to have sunglasses and hats on at all times. Not complaining now, just reporting on the conditions in these tropics!

Our friends Peggy and Jack were with us for more than a week, traveling in their recently updated Sea Ray, keeping us company at a few restaurant meals in Marathon and letting us stop by their dock site at the city marina for a few drinks now and then. Just as they were leaving to go back to Ft. Lauderdale we got a phone call that Mike and Mimi were flying down to Florida from Massachusetts and would be in Key West for almost a week. They arrived in Marathon and spent a night and then drove to their hotel in Key West. We moved RINGING TIDE to a city dock there a few days later and overlapped with them so we could enjoy their company, take a few walks, eat out, and catch up on their news. The weather during their last two days in Key West was especially perfect.

Back on our own after Mike and Mimi left we took some bike rides through the neighborhoods in “the Conch Republic” and attended a sunset celebration in Mallory Square. We also loved the lunch on our last day at a Thai restaurant that was on a floating barge right next to our dock.

We have snorkeled at Sombrero reef, about 4 miles off of Marathon, and at Looe reef (4 miles) and Newfound Harbor Sanctuary reef (1/2 mile) off of Big Pine Key.  All three times the sea conditions were a little rough, with 2 ft. swells, but the diving was really memorable. There are moorings provided so you don’t have to anchor, and the reefs are full of fish and interesting corals. Our first glimpse under water on our first dive was of barracuda, sharks, and colorful reefs fish looking for shelter under our hull.

The weather should be stable enough tomorrow or the next day for our next direction, into the Everglades National Park. We are preparing by having enough fuel, food and water to get us through a week in an area that is full of wildlife but not full of supplies.  We had a preview of the quieter side when we were in the harbor at Big Pine Key on the way back from Key West. The water was perfectly clear, the stars were very bright; we expect more of this in the Everglades as there are no cities near and the boating activity is lighter.

It’s time to head north, to the 130 miles of Everglades coastline in southwestern Florida.  

RISING TIDE’s Cruising Tips

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.

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.