5/25-27/2020

After anchoring out for a few days we decided we would stop at the marina in Titusville.  This is close to Cape Canaveral and the first American manned rocket launch was scheduled for the 27^th, so this seemed like a natural break for us.  We tried to get a slip ashore but none were available.  Thus we ended up on a mooring ball out in the river.

I’ve written about mooring balls previously, but they are a really good deal for a boat like ours.  You tie up on your own (we did so in a thunderstorm) and provide your own power, sewage and water.  For a nominal fee ($20 a night) they give you a certified anchor, a dock where you can land your dinghy, and a spot to receive Amazon packages.  That’s a good deal for us.  A couple views of the mooring field are shown below.

The down side of being here was he hadn’t used our dinghy for a long time, and the motor wouldn’t run right.  Probably bad gas, but I struggled with it for a couple days.

On Wednesday, launch day, there were lots of small thunderstorms all day.  We thought it might go, but it was not to be.  Disappointing, but I’m sure the team made the right decision to avoid weather problems.

Our last night we saw another boat come in with a unique name.  I thought my friends at LM-Aero might appreciate this one.

On Thursday morning we decided to move on north.

5/23-24/2020

After a quiet night on Lake Worth we started up the ICW.  The first day we passed through Hobe Sound and Jupiter, and spent the night in an anchorage in Ft Pierce.  On Sunday we continued up the Indian River, and are anchored tonight just north of Melbourne.  We are now about halfway up the east coast of Florida.

This stretch of the ICW is alternately bordered by mangrove swamps and big expensive houses.  The houses are nice to see, but I do wonder where people get the money for something like that.  Some of the mangrove swamps are shown below.  I didn’t get a photo of the houses.

Along the way we saw a number of anchorages that seemed to be full of boats.  One anchorage is shown below.  Some of the boats are derelicts, but there a people living on many of them.  We anchored the first night in Faber Cove.  It was a small area surrounded by houses, and it was a very peaceful night.

We also saw lots of small boats out on the holiday weekend.  A couple views of this are shown below.  My arm got tired of waving at kids in these boats.

Tonight we are anchored on the side of the Indian River, just north of Melbourne and well away from the ICW.  It is a quiet spot, but it has been rainy all day and we’re hoping we don’t get to experience yet another thunderstorm.

5/22/2020

We were ready to begin moving, and we wanted to get out of the Ft Lauderdale area because of the expected Memorial Day weekend boat traffic.  The weather forecasts looked acceptable to go offshore, thereby avoiding the many bridges in this stretch of the ICW.  We would need to have many of the bridges opened on the ICW, and most of them only open twice an hour, so it gets to be very slow going.

The offshore forecast was for 10-15 knot winds and 2-3 foot seas with an 11 second period, becoming a 4 second period later in the day.  This is well within our tolerance limits.  The boat can handle much more than the crew.  Wave heights are measured from the bottom of the trough to the peak of the crest.  The other important factor is the period, or the time between arrival of peaks (or troughs).  Long period swells, like 11 seconds, are barely noticeable as the boat rides up and down 2-3 feet over that time.  Shorter periods mean the seas are more choppy, and the boat gets pounded much harder by the waves.  We normally look for a period at least twice the wave height to have a comfortable ride.

Since the weather forecast seemed acceptable we headed out the ocean inlet at Port Everglades (Ft Lauderdale) and planned to come back in from the ocean at Lake Worth (West Palm Beach).  The trip started out as expected but after a couple hours the Coast Guard broadcast an updated weather forecast for 5-7 foot seas.  We normally try to stay at less than 3 foot seas, so this was an unwelcome development.  There aren’t any other places where we can get in from the ocean, so we pressed on.

Along the way we saw lots of boats fishing on the edge of the Gulf Stream.  They normally have long lines trolling out behind the boat, and some were using kites to pull lines away from the boats.  It was a little difficult to weave our way through them, and probably more so for them to avoid each other.  Some of the boats are shown below.

Finally we got to the Lake Worth inlet.  Along the way we saw waves that were 3-4 feet, but the 5-7 did not materialize.  That was a good thing.

We are anchored tonight in a cove at the north end of Lake Worth.  It is Friday night of the holiday weekend, and there are a few boats running around the anchorage, but less than we expected.  We had a quiet night.

5/19-20/2020

One of the systems on our boat are called stabilizers.  These help prevent the boat rolling in heavy seas or when other boats pass us and we are caught in their wake.  They work extremely well, and after having them I wouldn’t have a large boat without them.  They work by sensing roll and hydraulically moving large fins on the side of the hull to keep the boat level.  They only work when the boat is moving.

Our stabilizers had not been serviced for about 5 years, much longer than we should have had.  The first step in the process is to haul the boat out of the water using specialized equipment called a travelift.  This can be seen in the photos below.  The travelift is a large frame with winches that lift straps placed under the boat.  The unit at this yard can lift 75 tons.  The megayacht yard across the canal from us has on that can lift 900 tons.  That’s the biggest travelift I have ever seen.

The stabilizer fins can be seen in the photos above.  They are just forward of the center of the boat.  The first step in the process is to remove the fins from their shaft.  The company we hired to do this used a hydraulic jack to pull the fin off the shaft, and it made the sound of a small explosion when it released.  The jack and fin removal are shown below.

The seals were then removed from the outside of the boat.  These are large rubber washers that fit snugly in the shaft well.  Inside the seals there was no sign of water intrusion, a very good thing, but there were signs of hydraulic oil leaking from the actuators and displacing the grease.  This area was cleaned and greased as shown below, and the fins were reinstalled.  Then the hard part started.

I thought we had a hydraulic oil leaking from the rams, the part of the actuator that moves the fin.  It turns out we did not, but we did have an oil leak on the feedback cylinder.  This was the source of the oil that was displacing the grease.  Changing this part was difficult because the actuator is behind other equipment and was hard to get access to it.  That seems true for most things on a boat—whatever needs maintenance is always hard to get to.

Finally we were done and ready to go back into the water.  The boat was on land only 24 hours, a record for us.  Usually the yard has other issues and we end up waiting weeks.  It was very good to be back in the water the next day.

Tomorrow we will start off again up the east coast of Florida.

5/19-21/2020

After the storm the previous night, and little sleep, we were ready to tie to a dock for a few days.  We had scheduled service for our stabilizers, a system that limits the boat’s roll.  More on that in a future post.  We’re also hoping to get one of our air conditioners fixed.

After departing the anchorage we cruised past downtown Miami.  The first photo below shows the Miami River entrance that goes through downtown.  We continued on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) past Dodge Island and it’s cargo and cruise ship terminals.  It was impressive to see so many cruise ships tied up at the island waiting until they can get back to business again.

This stretch of the ICW has MANY bridges that must be opened for us to pass through.  They only open twice an hour, so sometimes we would have to hold position in the wind and current while we waited for them.  That wasn’t much fun, but we got through without a problem.  Just before entering Port Everglades (the harbor for Ft Lauderdale) we turned off and went up the Dania Ship Canal to an area where there are many shipyards, docking at a marina there.  We are scheduled for haulout tomorrow for the stabilizer work.

While we were at the marina we saw many megayachts.  The photo below shows Apogee, which is 205 feet long.  That’s a big one, and it is docked directly across from us.  The owner of that boat is the largest shareholder of Xerox, which he obtained when he sold his computer company to Xerox for $6B.  That boat is for sale for a cool $25M, and no we aren’t interested in seeing it.

We also saw the local towing services moving a megayacht into the service facility across the canal from us.  There were small towboats on the bow and stern, and these pulled the megayacht up the canal and into a slip in the service yard.  That was pretty impressive.  The insurance companies for the megayachts usually don’t let them navigate narrow channels on their own, so the towing services in this area do a good business.

Tomorrow we will start on the staibilizer service.

5/18/2020

We departed the Rodriguez Key anchorage this morning in warm, humid weather, and dodged thunderstorms early in the day.  Again, it was an uneventful trip.

Along the way we passed Boca Chita Key which was once the home of Mark Honeywell, the founder of the company by the same name, and is now a national park.  The island is shown below, but from this distance there isn’t much to see.  We had been to this island before on a chartered training cruise.  The island has a colorful history as told to us by the charter captain.

Honeywell bought this island during the Depression and hired local workers to dig and improve a small harbor, houses and a private lighthouse.  He used the island as a vacation property.  In 1939 he was on the island with his mistress when he saw his boat approaching with his wife aboard.  He quickly bundled the mistress off to a small chapel built on the island, and after his wife arrived they went to bed for the night.  During the night his wife got up and saw a light in the chapel, which led her to confront the mistress.  A fight ensued until both women went up the lighthouse and fell off in their struggle.  The wife was killed, and the mistress permanently paralyzed.  Honeywell paid for the mistress to stay on the island with a nurse until she died sometime during World War II.  The charter captain told us he was once on the island when the park rangers had a building open, and he saw an old wheelchair inside the building.  We have no idea if this is a true story, but it is entertaining nonetheless.

We crossed from the Atlantic to Biscayne Bay through the Biscayne channel south of the island.  This passage is also called the Stiltsville channel because of the fishing shacks built along its sides.  Some of these are shown below.

We anchored this evening in a spot called Biscayne Bight, which is right in front of the Florida White House.  While he was in office President Nixon liked to come to this house, and used it frequently.  I didn’t manage to get a photo of it, but I did get a decent shot of downtown Miami across the bay.  It can be an impressive view at night.

After dark a severe thunderstorm came up.  During the storm a sailboat dragged it’s anchor from about 600 feet away.  They were broadside to the wind, and nearly T-boned the bow of our friend’s boat that was just in front of us, with the sailboat’s anchor dislodging our friend’s anchor.  The sailboat then missed us by about 5 feet, and when their anchor caught in the mud they were about 30 feet behind us.  I had to use the engines to stay away from them until the storm passed, and we were then able to move to a different spot.  It wasn’t a fun evening.  To make matters worse I had an argument with the woman on the sailboat over the radio who claimed we were dragging into them.  I had to point out that we weren’t dragging our anchor upwind, nor were the houses a couple hundred feet behind her moving upwind either.

Tomorrow we will continue on to Dania Beach where we will have some work done on the boat.

5/17/2020

Finally the quarantine was starting to lift and we were able to depart Marathon and continue our Loop.  It isn’t that we don’t like it here, but we were ready to be moving on.  We had planned to depart a week earlier, but bad weather was predicted for the entire week so we stayed put.  That bad weather finally moved off to the northeast and became Tropical Storm Arthur, the first named storm of the season.  We were glad we waited until it had passed.

We weren’t alone in departing this day.  There were about 20 boats in the marina with liveaboards, and about 10 departed the same day as us.  We traveled with some of the group until we got near Miami when we started going our separate ways.

It is possible to stay on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Keys, or to travel along the Atlantic side through an area called Hawk Channel.  The Gulf side is pretty shallow, so we had to go on the Atlantic side.  Hawk Channel is an area between the islands and the reef, and is up to 15 miles wide in spots.  Outside the reef is the Gulf Stream.

The photo below is our last look at Marathon.  This includes the east end of Seven Mile Bridge and the entrances to Boot Key Harbor.  The rest of the trip this day looked similar with low islands in the distance and the sea on the other side.  It was a calm day, so it was a good trip.

We anchored this night at Rodriguez Key near the town of Islamorada.  The island has a long, sandy shallow area where locals like to congregate on their boats as shown below.  They appeared to follow the social distancing guidelines for Florida, so we were glad to see they could get out.  We anchored in about 8 feet of water, so we were able to swim around the boat to cool off.  That was the first time in the 3+ years we have owned the boat that we were able to have a swim.

We will continue on to Key Biscayne tomorrow.

3/19-5/16/2020

Like everyone else, we had to sit in one place for the Covid-19 quarantine.  Because of this our planned week in Marathon turned into more than two months.  During this time we had ample opportunity to observe local wildlife, primarily aquatic species.  I’ll show photos of some of them for our friends in northern climates that may not be familiar with some of these species.

Iguanas are quite prevalent in the Keys, so much so that pest removal companies advertise services to remove them.  They are very prevalent in our resort marina as can be seen in the photo below.  They are actually pretty good swimmers as we discovered when Sinbad chases them down a finger pier.

There are lots of barracuda around the docks in the marina.  One is shown below.  He is a typical size for these small ones, about a foot in length.  They are very fast swimmers, and will sometimes dart away when they see something they want to catch and eat.

Parrotfish are also in abundance.  They look a little like clowns with their bright colors and blue lips.  They also have big teeth that can look intimidating, but they are completely harmless.  They feed by chewing algae and seaweed off the rocks, hence the big teeth.

Several times a week we see a shark in the marina.  These are mostly nurse sharks, and again they are mostly harmless.  A big one is shown below.  He (or she) passed through marina several times while we were there.  The photo is deceiving as this fish was about 10 feet long.  They actually have teeth and can attack a person if stepped on or if they are pestered too much by divers, but for the most part they are pretty docile.

One day I was working on our boat and saw a stingray beside us.  He was upside down, showing his white underbelly, and thrashing about in the water.  He ran into our boat once, and then into a piling.  After that he flipped upright and we watched him circle around in the marina for a bit before departing.

After the restaurants could open again we had dinner at a local spot with friends, Keys Fishery.  This is a spot where the fishing and crabbing fleet docks and offloads their catch, so it is a great place for fresh seafood.  They also have a small harbor with charter boats that weren’t in operation at the time.  After we had dinner we discovered there were large numbers of nurse sharks in the harbor languishing in the warm water.  The darker fish above them is a tarpon.  It looks dark in the photo, but it is very silver when viewed from the side.  The tarpon is 5-6 feet long.

3/19/2020-???

While I was gone to Wisconsin we became concerned with the news reports of the Covid-19 illness.  All reservations at the Navy marina were cancelled by order of the base commander, and Tim and Susan cancelled their trip to Key West.  We made the decision to switch to a monthly contract at Marlin Bay.  As it turns out, this was wise.

Just after returning to Marathon the mayor of Monroe County, Florida (the county that encompasses all the Keys) closed all tourist rentals except for those with a long-term contract.  Because we had switched to a monthly contract we were allowed to remain here.  Had we not done that we would have been forced to move elsewhere, either up towards Miami or back towards Ft Myers with no certainty of finding a marina.

Monroe County has only about 200 hospital beds, and around 15 ICU beds for its 70,000 residents.  The mayor’s concern, I think, is that people fleeing the areas with significant infections could inadvertently bring the virus to the Keys and quickly overwhelm the local medical care system.

As a further protection the county instituted a 24/7 roadblock on the roads leading into the county.  There are only two roads, so this wasn’t as hard as one might think.  They are also used to closing off the Keys after a hurricane to prevent looting.  The news reports say they turned away about 850 cars and 2000 people on the first day of the roadblocks.

So here we are, prisoners in paradise.  We are healthy, and the same is true for the 50 or so people still in the marina.  The rental condos are all closed, so it is only the boaters now.

As of this writing, on April 5, there are 43 cases in the county and two deaths from Covid-19.  We hope it will not get any worse.  There is only one case in Marathon, but our concern is that person was a clerk at the local Publix grocery store where we buy food.  She has been quarantined for several days now, and no other new cases have turned up in Marathon, so maybe we all dodged a bullet.

Please stay safe and healthy.  Marilou is madly making masks with her sewing machine to give to the marina employees, their familes and other boaters.  She is over 150 masks now.

And as you can tell from the photos below, Sinbad is very stressed by the whole situation.  He gets regular visits from his friends, Lily and Lola who live on another boat in the marina here.  He doesn’t quite get the notion of social distancing, but he’s working on that.

3/14-19/2020

After leaving the anchorage at Little Shark River we continued on to Marathon.  This town is spread over seven keys, about halfway between the mainland and Key West.  Our plan is to stay here for about a week and then move to the Navy marina at Key West Naval Air Station where we will meet our friends, Tim and Susan Floyd.  They plan to travel with us as we move back up the keys towards the mainland.  Our ability to access the Navy marinas is new and due to recent administrative rule changes, so we don’t know how this will work out.  If it is too hard there is a very good marina on Stock Island, the next key towards Key West from Boca Chica Key where the Navy station is located.

There wasn’t much new to see on the transit.  It isn’t very deep in this part of Florida Bay, so we had 50 miles or so of shallow water.  As we approached Marathon we were greeted by a view of Seven Mile Bridge, which is, as you guessed, seven miles long.  After a long cruising day it was good to see this.

We are staying at Marlin Bay Marina, a newer resort and marina on the north (Florida Bay/Gulf of Mexico) side of Marathon.  It is a half built resort, and the resort condos are partially filled with tourists.  Most of the boats here are cruisers like us.  A really nice place as the photos below show.

While we are here I managed to make a short trip to our house in Wisconsin for doctor appointments at the VA.  I got to visit friends in Wisconsin as you can see below.

After flying back to Key West I was greeted by some of the local invasive species, shown below.  I don’t know the history behind the chickens, but they are everywhere in Key West.

As the coronavirus situation is getting worse, it was good to get back to the boat.