Jan 22nd -Jan 26th: - News from Marathon’s Boot Key Harbor (Marathon, Fl. Keys)

The new engine on our hard bottom dinghy is proving its worth.  The dinghy is our taxi from our mooring buoy in Boot Key Harbor into the City dinghy dock.  The fiberglass bottom and inflatable sides of this dinghy that came with the boat purchase is a big step up from the all-inflatable that we used with our other boats in the past.  The only drawback is that we are exposed to the weather and must plan our travel to dry land accordingly.  We routinely carry foul weather gear with us just in case of rain.   Unlike NC, if you leave home in clear skies here, you might encounter rain 20 minutes later, and it might stop in five minutes – or not.  There is a large community room ashore with tables, Wi-Fi, TVs, bath house, laundry room and restrooms.   The City of Marathon has done this up right and caters to the traveling boaters.  Actually, they want our money!  Water is 5 cents a gallon.

Our water taxi to shore and restaurants

Tuesday morning the water was the calmest since we arrived last Thursday so we took a dinghy ride for 2 miles to Knights Key at the foot of the 7-mile bridge.  This is where our friends, Marla and Al from Cocoa, FL., will be staying next week in their motorhome.  The ride entailed going out into open water to the Atlantic Ocean and became rough before we made landfall at Knights Key.  The wind and seas were coming up for the day so I thought it prudent to turn back to protected water several hundred yards short of our destination.  We had been going with the waves and we knew that the return ride was not going to be a totally dry experience.  On the way back to the boat we checked out several marinas in case we tired of buoy life.  All were full for January.  We did stop at Burdines Marina for lunch at their tiki bar/restaurant because we heard that they have the best burger in town.  The scuttle was right – they did.

200 sailboats and only 25 to 30 powerboats



Caught napping on the first calm and warm afternoon



Wednesday morning we ventured to the other end of the harbor in the dinghy and made it to Publix, a thirty-two minute walk by foot once we get to dry land.  Unfortunately, there is no place to tie up the dinghy at the Publix site.  Too bad - only a 10 minute dinghy ride.

A cold front came through last night.  We had forewarning via the VHF radio on the weather service channels that said we would be hit after midnight.  Sure enough, at 12:15 high winds; I mean really high winds, came up.  Our boat weaves and wanders all over in high winds when at anchor or on a buoy.  The high canvas and flybridge act like a 17 foot high sail in the wind gusts.  Actually we move all over even in light winds.  We have gotten used to the constant gyrations.  When we go ashore and focus on one spot on a wall, the wall looks like it is rotating.  So we just don’t focus on stationary objects when ashore.  Anyway, along with the wind came heavy rain and lightning.  We watched the storm from the flybridge until lightning hit close and we scooted for the aft cabin.  The storm didn’t seem so severe from our cozy cabin.  

What the weather did next you don't want to know.

It seems that the cool weather and high winds have followed us south for 800 miles.  I have only been in shorts and a t-shirt 6 or 7 days in our 2 ½ months of travel.  The next several days will only be in the mid-sixties here.  That is 12 degrees below the norm for the Keys.  I spoke with our friend Sam in Charlotte today and he said that it is the coldest there in all his 15 or so years of living in the area.  So, we will accept the chilly 60’s with pleasure and feel sorry for our friends at home.

There is culture here.  We walked about a half mile to a small live community theatre Sunday afternoon and watched the play “A Bad Year for Tomatoes”.  Although we enjoyed the play, we were very aware that Davidson Players and The Warehouse provide pretty exceptional community theater back home, compared to the Marathon selection.   Next door to that is a movie theatre and we plan to go see “True Grit” tomorrow evening as the weather is supposed to improve by then, i.e. No rain.  We also bought tickets for a music fest that will take place this weekend.  We hope we can dinghy to that.  The local library is having a used book sale and Colleen hit the jackpot there today.  For two dollars you can fill a bag they give you with books from their back room.  Fun!  Fun!  Fun!

We have had a catastrophic failure of our inverter/ charger!  This is a 200 watt inverter that runs from two high power golf cart batteries.  With it we can run the TV (if we could pick up anything other than TV Marti, the US broadcast to Cuba), Colleen’s sewing machine, the microwave, and anything else that plugs into an outlet on the boat.  No sound, no generator running.  It recharges the batteries when we do run the generator to cook or to just recharge.   We smelled a burning electrical smell early Saturday as the batteries were re-charging.  Later when running the generator again, the inverter blew out with a loud bang and a lot of awful smelling smoke. Colleen was out the door in a flash – then realized there was nowhere to go unless she planned to dive off the back of the boat.  On Monday we spoke with Xantrex, the manufacturer, and several hours later the 65 pound inverter was placed in  our big laundry bag, loaded into the dinghy, unloaded from the dinghy at the dock,  placed into a taxi and was shipped UPS to Elkhart, IN. for evaluation.  We surely miss it!

We are living in a community of anchored out boaters.  On shore they are conspicuous for their back packs and bicycles.  We’ve walked about two miles east and two miles west over the past five days along highway US1.  During one of Wayne’s walks both directions in the same afternoon he passed by a junk store on his way to West Marine.  There were several bikes out front, one of which looked to be in good condition.  After a test ride and some negotiation, Wayne rode on to West Marine on his new, old $30 bike.  On his way back, one pedal broke, so Wayne stopped at the same shop and negotiated for a new set of pedals.  I, Wayne say that the bike is red.  However, no man is going to steal this bike as it has faded and looks quite pink (fuchsia) now.  With a cable and lock from the boat and a couple of plastic bags over the foam padded seat, it sits ashore with the other 700 bikes in the bike racks at the City docks.

Wayne on his newest Corvette!



January 19-21, Lake Sylvia near Fort Lauderdale to Marathon on Vaca Key

WE'RE HERE!!!!  Judging from the big smile on his face, I can tell that this is where Wayne was headed all along.  The temperature outside today is a balmy 75 degrees.  We have put away our heavy jackets - finally - and now are in shorts and T shirts full time.  We did have quite an adventure reaching this destination though, which will henceforth be known as The Great Fog Event of 2011.  Wayne gets to tell you about that:

We enjoyed a beautiful run from Lake Worth to Ft.Lauderdale.  We started off after an extra day at anchor in Lake Worth to wait out the storm front to pass.  After the high winds of the previous day, we enjoyed a peaceful time at anchor this second night.  When we headed out Tuesday morning the skies were very overcast and a cool wind was directly on our bow.  We were wearing jackets most of the day as we observed local boaters in shorts and bathing suits.  It looked like what you were wearing all depended on wind direction and travel direction.  We passed through quite a few bridges that had restricted opening schedules.  They opened either on the hour and half hour or on the quarter and three quarter hour.  As you might imagine, we waited for several of these to open, sometimes 10 to 25 minutes.  Wayne had anticipated this from the many publications that he had studied and he had set our predicted distance of daily travel downward to compensate.

Our travel throughout the day on Tuesday took us through even more extravagent homes than we described earlier, huge estates really.  The biggest homes on our own Lake Norman pale in comparison to those along this stretch of the ICW.  When we thought we had seen the most beautiful home of all, we found another to preempt the crown.  If the homes weren't built from scratch, then older homes had been demolished only to be replaced with a palace.  It was amazing to see flat roofed 1960s homes sitting next to 3 story mansions which had replaced two or more of 1960s versions.

THE BOATS!!  We do not have words to describe the boats that we saw!  Think multiple millions here!  Our boat would not be allowed in the same marina as these giants.  Boats $$$$$$  Homes $$$$$.  This area has the $$$$$.

The day gradually warmed as it went on and our travel slowed for more marinas and homes "NO WAKE" and "MANATEE NO WAKE" areas.  And we did see manatees on a regular basis.  We saw their backs rise from the river and sometimes their tails.  At 4:30 Tuesday we were rewarded for the slow travel with the anchorage that we had decided on.  We anchored in Lk. Sylvia, just 1/2 mile north of the Ft. Lauderdale inlet, Port Everglades.  The lake is about 1500 feet in diameter.  The entry to the lake was discussed in "Skipper Bob's Anchorages on the ICW" and looked appealing to us for its location.   What Bob left out was the sheer beauty and weather protection of this anchorage.  Lake Sylvia is a pond among magnificent homes right in the heart of Ft. Lauderdale Beach.  The anchorage was totally protected and the gentle breezes of the evening made for a wonderful dinner setting for us.  We opened all of the windows and enjoyed the 70 degree weather.  Until 2AM when the bottom fell out of the sky and a deluge fell upon us.  I did not awaken before the the rain had drenched the front berth area.  In all the commotion, Colleen did not wake up to my call for assistance so I just let her sleep and quickly dried up the water wherever it came in.  (Isn't he a special husband?  This from Colleen.)




Lake Sylvia




 

A Lake Sylvia home and attached yacht.



Cruise ship in Ft Lauderdale harbor - A TSA patrol boat keeps boats 500 feet away - and they have a machine gun on the bow!



The Ft Lauderdale commercial channel headg south from the harbor entrance

 The next morning we set out for the Key West area and our next overnight anchorage.  The day dawned with a foggy haze all around and that hung with us through the entire run through Miami until we entered Florida Bay at the northernmost end of the Florida Keys.  Our path through downtown Miami and Miami Beach took us through the "Condo Canyons" talked about in various publications. I hope that our photos depict the huge height of the buildings there.  There was so much water and so little land that the buildings just seemed to be floating on Bioscayne Bay. 



One of the Condo Canyons of Miami


We entered Florida Bay about 11:30 and were finally in the Keys.  We would travel the inside channel between the mainland and the Keys.  Wayne had planned a very aggressive travel distance for this day so that we could get to Marathon in two days.  To make our planned anchorage we needed to increase our speed to 17mph and 2000 rpms.  We do not plan to check our mpg for this leg of the trip.  We don't want to know how bad it is!  We ran at this speed for one hour in one passage and 30 minute in another.  By doubling our speed for 90 minutes, we cut our travel time to our anchorage by 90 minutes and were able to get to Tarpon Basin by 4:30.   Tarpon Basin was our chosen anchorage because it would provide protection from the high winds that we had experienced all day.  We would be able to pick the side of the basin that afforded the right protection.  The basin did its job and afforded us the wind protection that we sought.

The protection was too great!  We awakened the next morning with 30 foot visibility in the thickest fog that I ever experienced in my previous 50 years of living and boating in Florida.  We waited 30 minutes and the fog lifted enough to see our frist channel marker 500 yards away.  We headed out and within 20 minutes the fog settled on us and we could only see 30 feet again.  We anchored out of the channel and waited another two hours and the fog began to lift. 

30 foot visibility!

We sped up and slowed as the visibility permitted all morning until finally seeing open skies around 11AM.  At this point we were 2 hours behind our planned schedule and would need to seek a nighttime anchorage.  At 1 PM the fog settled over us again - how crazy - fog in the mkiddle of the day.  When this fog bank lifted we decided to make up time and sped up at the sacrifice of fuel economy.   We ran at 2000 to 2100 rpm and 17 to 18 mph and we reached Marathon about 3:30.  (Colleen's comment - after weeks of traveling at 8-10 miles per hour, 18 MPH was really weird!)  Our aim was to take a mooring ball within the Boot Key Harbor Marina managed by the City of Marathon. 



7 Mile Bridge - turn-in for Marathon from the bayside channel


By the time that we contacted the marina, received our mooring assignment, Colleen had snared the mooring line and we were secure it was 4PM.  We got the dinghy set up with its motor and safety gear by 4:30 and motored in to register.  We also wanted to eat a meal ashore after 5 days without stepping on dry land.  We walked about a mile to the first restaurant that we came to on our side of busy highway US1 and enjoyed an expensive, mediocre seafood dinner.  We were not impressed.  Then we walked a couple more blocks to Publix to get a Key lime pie and a few other items that we wanted.  Cheetos for Wayne and Sweet Sixteen powdered doughnuts for Colleen have become our junk food of choice over the past two months.  We wanted a lay of the land for future excursions also.  When we returned to our dinghy it was dark and we had neglected to put our required navigation lights aboard.  Thankfully the marine patrol was not around.  I do vessel safety inspections for the US Power Squadron and would have been very embarassed to get a ticket for not having the proper required safety gear aboard.  I will be correctly prepared in the future.

When we got to our boat the full moon was rising and the skies were crystal clear.  What a beautiful sight.  We sat on the front lounge seat on the flybridge and enjoyed the view.  We opened the cabin windows and drank in the thick cool tropical breezes.  Colleen went to bed before me. 



Full moon over Marathon


When I turned in, an unexpected rain started about 5 minutes later.  I hopped out of bed and closed all openings.  Again, I allowed Colleen to sleep.  I owe her lots of trips to the bridge with food or snack in hand.  Though this is nowhere near a payback for all the catering.




Our mooring field at Marathon



Anyway, we are IN THE KEYS.  Colleen did the laundry this morning and chatted up the locals to find a decent place to get our next restaurant meal here.  I am merely the packhorse and dinghy driver.   It should be noted here that Colleen can also start the 6hp dinghy motor and handle it with competence.  I feel confident that she can will rescue me if I fall overboard.

Wayne

Vero Beach to Lake Sylvia, Fort Lauderdale - January 16-18

We set off on Sunday morning  and had a good trip to the north end of Lake Worth near Palm Beach by five PM that afternoon where we anchored among a large group of sailboats.  Along the way we stopped for fuel in Fort Pierce, taking on 162 gallons for an average of 1.89 miles/gallon.  Not as good mileage as we did at our last fuel stop but we have used the generator quite a bit over the last month or so and that also sucks up fuel.  We enjoyed meeting fuel guy Doug and his dog Sammy, a large, beautiful boxer.  Sammy is pretty ferocious - toward birds - and delights in chasing them right to the end of the pier, putting on the brakes just in time to avoid a twelve foot plunge into the water.



Sammy the Terror of the Sea Birds

 Our stay in Lake Worth lasted two nights due to a prudent decision on the part of the captain not to travel in inclement weather that lasted all day Monday.  He further distinguished himself by diagnosing and curing a toilet problem that cropped up on Sunday night.  I had a great day Monday, sewing from morning until evening and completing a final section of a large quilt I've worked on for the past year.  Thanks, Pam from Quilter's Loft for your clear explanation that helped me correct my earlier mistakes.  I can't wait to put the rest of the pieces together when we get back to North Carolina.




These blocks will make up the corners of my quilt.  I wish you could see more of the detail.




Wayne ready to pull the anchor in Lake Worth.  After many years of muscleing anchors aboard boats we now hit a button on the deck or at the helm and a motor does the job.



A few large enormous gigantic boats

 We've been agog all day looking at the hundreds of multimillion dollar houses and boats that line the waterway between Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale.  Everytime we think we've seen the biggest, most elaborate house ever built, another one shows up that's larger, with more elaborate grounds, a fancier pool, fountains and statuary on the lawn, a courtyard you would not believe and a bigger boat parked out front.  Most of them resemble Italianate palaces.  The one below was a very modernistic exception.


This is a house.



A small part of the view surrounding us tonight



More of the view out our "back door" this evening



We've anchored for the evening in Lake Sylvia, a small lake off the ICW just north of the Fort Lauderdale inlet.  It's a beautiful spot in calm water and we're surrounded by palm trees and lovely homes.  We sat on the back deck tonight in shorts and T shirts to watch a full moon rise as we ate shrimp salad I prepared earlier today.  Tomorrow we plan to get to the Key Largo area and  the next day we plan to make it to our destination for a while, Marathon.


Wayne plotting our route for the next few days.  Take note of the sunshine.



Jan. 11 - Jan. 15 Vero Beach, FL

It really does get cold down here.

Our few days in Vero Beach have stretched into a week.  The weather is beautiful today, although we had some really cold nights a few days ago.  We plan to pull out tomorrow (Sunday) after taking on water and pumping out our holding tanks but we've had a great time with Howard and Donna, getting to know Vero Beach and tackling some big projects.

You know that old saying - A boat is a hole in the water into which one pours money.  Here's a story to prove it All during this trip we have had qualms about our dinghy motor.  It's 42 years old and, in spite of several repairs and carburator rebuilds by Wayne, it has not been reliable.  We finally decided it would need to be replaced before we reached the Keys and had to depend on it to get to shore.  Wayne and Howard went shopping for a new one early in the week.  We now have a new dinghy motor and Wayne even managed to sell the old one.  Wayne is very happy and he is teaching me how to drive the dinghy.  I have not crashed (yet) and I have mastered the tricky motor cord pull thingy.



Wayne and his new motor



Saying goodbye to the 42 year old great 6hp Evinrude that my Dad gave to me in 1972!  It ran flawlessly over to the dealer's dock.  The head mechanic gave me $100 after hearing it run as my brother Howard and I approached the dock to pick up the new motor.


As you heard in our last entry we were facing a major problem when my sewing machine broke earlier in the week.  A crew mutiny on Cool Change was a distinct possibility.  We found a repair shop and I was thrilled to get my machine back yesterday afternoon.  In the meantime, Donna had the bright idea that I should make a few pillows for the couch in the salon and for the outside aft deck.  I liked the idea too and it became even more appealing when Donna showed me fabrics she had left over from a pillow project of her own and offered to share with me.  We went shopping for eight pillow forms and I started the project yesterday morning.  Now, as you may or may not know, Wayne also owns a sewing machine.  He very generously allowed me to use it to make the pillows, since my machine wasn't back yet.  All eight are now finished and they look great!

Two sewing machines are not too many, right?

The pillows in the salon (boat talk for living room) are a washable suede.

These sunbrella pillows are for outside use.  Right now they are on the lounge area in front of the captain.  This is a handy place for the "nagivator" to relax when we are underway.

Vero Beach's public beach

  Today we met Howard and Donna for breakfast and afterwards went to a weekly Farmer's Market - local fresh strawberries and other vegetables are in season right now.  I wish I could send a strawberry to all of you who are braving snow and ice up in Charlotte.  Even the scent says "spring."


Cool Change at anchor, early morning



The white tents are the Farmer's Market.



Jan 4 - Jan10 Vero Beach, FL

We left Harbortown Marina in Merritt Island on Thursday, Jan.4, waiting out the weather for a bit and leaving in a cool drizzle.  Our stop for the night was an old favorite place on the waterway, Marker 21.  We did a lot of boating in past years with the boys in that area and have many happy memories that we reflected on that night.  We anchored behind the island, hoping to have protection from the wind for the night but it was quite a windy evening.  Fortunately we've become pretty used to a rock and a roll while we sleep.
We experimented with using only one engine during the 7 hours of travel to see if we could save fuel.  The boat actually performed very well on one engine.  At 1000 RPMs we managed 7.4 mph.  With both engines at 1000 RPMs, the speed increased to 8.6 mph only.  We are hoping that this indicates that we might save a good bit of fuel by alterating between engines in future travel. 




The girls out for lunch, Marcy, Colleen and Marla



Marker 21

 
Friday morning we traveled on to Vero Beach.  Wayne's oldest brother, Howard, and his wife, Donna, live in the Vero Beach area.



For a few days we kept company with some pretty fancy boats at the Quail Valley Yacht Club.  We've moved now to a buoy at the Vero Beach City Marina.

 We've traveled sixty-five miles from our last stop in Merritt Island and have been in Vero Beach for the past three days.  On Friday afternoon Howard and Donna spirited us off to their house to treat us to real showers and loaned us a vehicle.  What luxury!  We've had two days of hanging out with them and are looking forward to seeing more of them before we leave here around Thursday.

Howard and Donna joined us for supper on the boat.

One terrible piece of news - my sewing machine is not working properly!  AWK!!!  We may have to stay here long enough to get it repaired.  It is absolutely an essential piece of equipment on Cool Change.
The weather has finally become the warm, balmy tropical temperatures that we've been chasing for almost two months and we're loving it.  It reached 80 degrees here today while we hear of 4-8 inches of snow from friends in North Carolina.



Palm trees in the background, shorts and short sleeves on Wayne.  This is what we came for.



Harbortown Marina, Merritt Island, FL, December 26-January 3

Our month on Merritt Island has flown by and we're preparing to continue our trip south this coming Thursday or Friday.  We've had so much fun catching up with friends and family and the past week has been very busy - enjoying a traditional seafood feast and movie (The Time Traveler's Wife) with Roger and Marcy on New Year's Eve; undecorating Marla and Al's Christmas tree and going to dinner and a movie (The King's Speech) with them tonight, taking Roger and Marcy's family for a boat trip and on-board lunch last Sunday, traveling with Marla to our old home town of Windermere to have lunch with long-time friend, Mary and, at least for me, working on a variety of sewing projects.  More about those later.

Florida finally decided to deliver some balmy weather and the past four days have been lovely.  It should continue for about five more days.  Wayne had shorts and a T-shirt on all day yesterday.  After breakfast at Denny's on Cocoa Beach yesterday, we took a walk on the beach.  I stuck my toes into a chilly Atlantic Ocean but felt absolutely no itch to take a swim.  It was also nice enough on our back deck today for me to move my sewing machine outside to work on a quilting project.  I decided that we needed some place mats about a week ago and have been working on those.  The pattern I selected was a traditional one, called Storm at Sea.  Seemed an appropriate choice for place mats we'll be using on the boat.  I've also been working on the border for a big quilt that was part of a year long class last year at The Quilter's Loft, my favorite quilt shop in Mooresville, NC.  Running a close second place, though, is a shop Marla took me to in Rockledge, The Quilt Place.  Other projects - Granny photo pockets, little snap closed purses, Christmas aprons from dish towels, baked potato pockets, and, of course, doll clothes for the grandgirls.



Storm at Sea, our new place mats.
  I like the way the red triangles and diamonds (all straight lines) suggest a circular shape


Boat news - Wayne did the first oil change on the port engine, which was the hard one to do.  It took 15 quarts of oil and major furniture moves in the salon to get to the below-floor-level engine.  After experiencing some limitations on removing the oil, Wayne has purchased some hoses to make the job easier and cleaner when he does this  again.  He also found a third overhead light in the bilge which makes it much easier to work down there after replacing a burned-out bulb.  Our repaired bow thrusters performed flawlessly on our Sunday trip with Roger and Marcy.  When backing into our slip in the marina, we were able to control the bow of the boat as the high wind of the day continuously pushed the boat out of position.  What a difference the thruster made in this maneuver!
 
We ran into a problem on the Sunday trip down the Indian River when we began to raise the anchor.  Roger was at the helm and Wayne was on the bow to assist in the event of a problem.  And a big problem we did have.  As Roger switched on the anchor windlass to winch in the anchor chain, the chain began to run out uncontrollably  Watching the anchor chain rapidly going overboard put Wayne into action.  He had earlier made up a four foot line with a 10 inch eye in one end and a chain hook in the other so that when we're at anchor he could use this contraption to take pressure off the windlass.  By quickly looping this rope onto the bow cleat and then catching the chain with the chain hook, we were able to prevent all of our 100 feet of anchor chain and 200 feet of anchor line from going out.  With all temporarily secure, Wayne had time to figure out how the windlass clutch worked and to reset the tension of the clutch to regain control of the winch.  It was a very steep learning curve that day.  We do not want to be asleep at anchor without relieving the pressure on the windlass clutch.  We will implement measures to prevent this from happening again and to have a backup in place to secure the anchor if it does occur.

It's been a fun month here but we are about ready to move on.  Our next stop is Vero Beach, where we'll visit Wayne's oldest brother, Howard and his wife, Donna.


Wayne at work on the blog



Marcy and her grandkids, Savannah, Nathalie and Christopher

 

Christmas at the Flecks