5/4/17
New Smyrna Beach, FL
Position: 29 01.635N, 080 55.233W
Posted by Bill

We spent a few days in Vero Beach and after some high winds blew through we left on 5/2. We stopped in Cocoa/Cocoa Beach and anchored at position 28 21.118N, 080 43.219W, really close to where we have anchored in the past. This is a standard stop going both north and south. There is not much to do there, at least for us, and the restaurants are not the best, so Tricia made homemade gnocchi, Matt made jalapeno popper dip, and Shirley made a salad. We had an outstanding dinner on the boats!!! The next day we made our way north to New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona Beach. We have never stopped here before but have heard so much about how nice of an area that it is, so we planned it as a stop this time. Motoring in the ICW can be boring at times, but it was nice to have calm seas for once, but not so fast. We got hit by a nasty squall that lasted around 40 minutes, with 35+ knot winds, blinding rain and 4 foot seas in the ICW!!! It was crazy! Fortunately, waves were on the bow and not on the beam. We saw tons of dolphin and manatees along the way. Here is one of several dolphin that swam beside the boat for about 20 minutes…something we always get excited about:

We pulled into New Smyrna Beach City Marina and went ashore for happy hour. There are some really good places to eat here. Today we hit a great place for breakfast, and great place for happy hour, and a great place for dinner. All were in a short walk from the marina in the downtown area. Another round of storm fronts moved in, or we would have walked to the beach, where we hear there are some really good places to go as well. We’ll save it for next time. The downtown area reminded us a lot of Fernandina Beach, with many shops and restaurants. We will stop here again for sure. It looks like we have a couple of days of high winds again, and we would stay here if we could for another day, but the marina is booked and we have to move on, so we will take a whopping perhaps. The next stop is Marineland and then on to St Augustine for a few days.

Here is a picture of the marina, and of the downtown area:

We can’t seem to get a decent break from the weather this year, but next week is looking really good! We are excited!!

2/22/17
Boot Key Harbor, Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

Well, Tricia made it back from Ohio on the 20th, and the family event went very well. I got up early that day, walked 3.5 miles to the Marathon Airport, and rented a car for a day. I picked up Shirley, from Sofia Jeanne, and Sharon, from Byrd Ketcher, and we went to Miami to provision at Walmart and Costco. It took longer than we expected, and Tricia’s flight was a half hour early into Fort Lauderdale, so mid-shopping, we went and picked her up. Then we finished off provisioning and escaped the insane “real world” and beat it back to the Keys. We then spent the last 2 days finishing the boat prep for the Bahamas, as there is a decent weather window to cross over coming up. It has been a crazy couple of days, but we are ready!

I always find it true that things happen for a reason, and since I didn’t get to go north with Tricia, I was wondering what the reason was going to be. While she was gone, I came back from the grocery and found that our refrigerator was not on and had defrosted. It does that about once a year for some unknown reason, and all I have to do is switch it off and back on, and it works fine again. So I did the normal off and on and all was fine, but, had I not been here to catch it, we would have lost all the food in the refrigerator, which is a lot of food!

Marathon is a nice stop, but we are ready to move on. There are some crazy, as well as shady, people here living in the harbor on boats. The guy next to us is a great example. Here is the boat:

And here is the guy in a crazy outfit:

His is by himself on the boat. He has a little black dog that attacks him, and he yells constantly at him. He also talks to him, and if you closed your eyes, you would think he is having a 2 way conversation with someone answering. The other day he was, as Matt says “slinging buns in the air” at the gulls and pelicans. They were mooching and cawing at him when they wanted more. He talks to them like the dog, and finally says, “You all are lazy beggars. You don’t have Obama any more….you need to get a job!” What a hoot! He is very entertaining. So are the many people that do not know how to anchor properly. The anchorage is a constant source of entertainment.

So the plan is to leave tomorrow, travel up the inside (Florida Bay side) of the Keys, stopping at Tarpon Basin, and anchoring Friday at No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne. Then cross to south Bimini on Saturday. It may be more difficult to get blog posts posted while in the Bahamas, but I’ll keep you posted.

A couple of other pics from Boot Key, our friends Matt and Shirley taking Grady for a Frisbee excursion ashore, and a great sunset:

2/16/17
Marathon FL, Florida Keys
Posted by Bill

We have found and seen that one of the most difficult things to do when living like this, is plan a land based trip around a definite schedule. A significant, milestone, family event, popped up on the radar a couple of months ago, scheduled for February 18th, in northern Ohio. This is one of those things that you really don’t want to miss, so while we were in Key West, we started to figure out how we could make it happen. Our original plan was to go to the Bahamas as soon as weather allowed, after we left Key West in mid-January. So, we thought about two approaches: 1) Leave the boat in the Bahamas and fly back to Ohio, or 2) Find a place to leave the boat in Florida and fly back to Ohio, delaying our trip to the Bahamas until we return. As with everything else in our lifestyle, weather is the primary factor in decisions, so we favored option 1 if weather allowed us to get across to the Bahamas. We could leave the boat in 1 of 3 places, based on our planned route and our experience with those areas: South Bimini, Nassau/New Providence, or Georgetown in the Exumas. There were marinas in those areas that we felt comfortable leaving the boat, and there were regular flights back to the States. It really depended on how far we could go in the time we had before the 18th of February, and that depended on the weather. If we left the boat in Florida, we could try to find a marina in Miami or the Keys, or we could get a mooring ball in Marathon. If we could get a marina, we would have shore power, but if we used a mooring ball, someone would have to run the generator for us for a couple of hours every day unless it was really windy (in which case the wind generator would keep batteries topped up). Our traveling partners on Sofia Jeanne graciously offered to look after the boat and run the generator. The one thing we didn’t want to do was leave the boat at anchor…for obvious reasons if you read the last post!

If you read the blog, you know that we ended up staying stateside. The Miami boat show is the same weekend as the family event, so every marina in the Miami area was packed full. The marinas in the keys were also booked, as most of them get filled up 4-6 months in advance of the winter season. There was also a fishing tournament in the Marathon area, which put further demand on the marinas. Our only option was to go with a mooring ball. We put our names on the wait list when we arrived on January 18th, thinking that a month was plenty of time to work our way down from our 38th position in the queue. The mooring field employees figured we had a 3 week wait. We set the trip to Ohio up so that we left on the 14th and returned on the 20th. This gave us time to help buy and prepare the food, and help with setting up the venue for the event, and gave us a short window to see our kids and grandkids. The cheapest flights were out of Fort Lauderdale. We had 3 reasonable options to get from Marathon to the Fort Lauderdale airport: Shuttle service, limo service, and rent a car. The cheaper of the 3 was renting a car. Since it is a 2 ½ hour drive, and our flight was at the “butt crack of dawn”, we needed to go the night before and stay in a hotel. The day before we needed to leave, we were number 4 on the mooring wait list. The weather was really good, so we thought there would be plenty of people leaving , and we had a great chance to get one. We find out around 2 PM that we didn’t make it. Since the family event is on Tricia’s side of the family, she has to go without me, and I stay with the boat. I went with her to the hotel and left the next morning, dropping her off at the airport on the way back to Marathon. Three hours after I get back, the marina calls and says “you have a mooring”. I think: great…I can fly to Ohio on Friday and return with her on Monday. However, we find that the cost of the flights have tripled, the cost of the shuttle and limo has gone to close to $300, and because of the boat show in Miami, all of the cheap rental cars are taken. I could probably do it, but it will cost over $600. On top of what we were already spending, this is beyond our budget, so I stay in Marathon.

The really frustrating thing, as if the whole thing isn’t frustrating enough, is that the mooring we were given was open on the day before we actual got it, and that would have allowed us to stick with our original plan! I don’t know why it took the marina another day to assign it to us, especially after we told them our dilemma and asked for as early a notification as we could get. The good thing is that Tricia made it! I am working on getting the boat ready for the Bahamas trip, and will do some major provisioning in Miami on the day I pick Tricia up at the airport. We will hit the high seas for “da Islands” as soon as weather permits when she returns.

2/10/17
Marathon FL, Boot Key Harbor
Position: 24 42.217N, 081 06.083W
Posted by Bill

We wrapped up our visit with Tricia’s sister and her husband and headed back to “reality”. Our visit was great. Great to hang out with them and some friends that visited from Ohio while we were there. We found a great place to get fresh seafood, and the girls prepared a feast of lobster tails, shrimp and tuna, with fettuccine alfredo:

Man was it good! We also enjoyed a few “drink and drift” sunsets. This is something we picked up in the Bahamas. Participants would take their dinghies out into the harbor, tie them all in a big flotilla, and enjoy cocktails and appetizers while watching the sunset. Here in Buttonwood Sound we used our dinghy, kayaks and a row boat. We had some great sunsets:

We stayed there almost 2 and ½ weeks, way longer than originally anticipated, and we needed to get back to Marathon as we were getting low on the wait list for a mooring ball. You have 2 hours to get to the marina office after they call, or the mooring is given to the next person, so you need to be close. The boat had been anchored out for close to 10 days in the same spot, and we visited it daily to charge batteries and open it up, but we were only there an hour a day. Around day 8, I started to notice a cormorant (sea bird) sitting on the bow, using the anchors as a personal toilet. Not too bad to clean up…but day 8 had 4 birds, and day 9 had 7 birds. Needless to say, the entire front half of the boat was an absolute mess, and smelled horrible. Before we departed on the 6th, we spend several hours cleaning the boat as best we could on anchor. Here is a picture of the bastards on day 8:

We stopped at the anchorage where the Lorelai bar is on Islamorada, and spent the night. Lorelai’s was one of our favorite bars in the Keys, but they have cut back on happy hour drink portions and have no happy hour food specials anymore…damn! It still has a great view and live music, but we have that on the boat…including cheaper food and drink. Too bad. The next day we made it to Boot Key Harbor on Marathon. We were still number 12 on the waiting list, so we had to find a place to anchor. With over 50 boats on the waiting list, the anchorage area is jammed full of boats. Many are permanent residents, with dilapidated boats. The holding is not the best either, so it can be a crazy place to anchor. We found a good area with room for the boat to swing, put down 70 feet of chain and set the anchor well. I ask the guy next to us how much chain he has out, something you should do to make sure that neighboring boats swing evenly and anchor. It also lets you know if someone has too little anchor line out and they could possibly drag anchor and hit you. The guy says “I guess 60 feet”, so I am good. We are only expecting 10 knots or less of wind for the next 3 days, so I am not at all worried. The next day we dinghy to Burdines (restaurant) to get lunch, and in the middle of lunch the marina calls me. “A neighboring boat says you are dragging anchor…can you check it out?” The wind has just shifted from east to west, but there is less than 10 knots. You could almost hold on chain alone in that situation, not to mention the 60 pound anchor we have. We go back to the boat and sure enough, we are right on top of the boats next to us. We didn’t hit anything, so all is good, but the guy starts to lecture me about anchoring. I asked how much chain he had out (again…the same guy as the day before) and he says 6 to 1. That is “captain-ease” for 6 feet of chain for each foot of water depth. We are in 10 feet of water, so it should be 60 feet of chain. I didn’t like being next to this guy, so we moved further down the anchorage. After looking at the track we took while swinging at anchor, I realized that we did not drag at all, and merely swung on our 70 feet of chain when the wind shifted. If he had 60 feet, he would have swung too, and there would have been 150 feet between our boats. His boat had obviously been there so long, I don’t think he had a clue how much chain he had out. So, we pick this new spot and get a good set. We were expecting a front to move through with 25 knot winds, the typical Florida winter pattern. The anchorage is so crowded that I only put out 60 feet, because we don’t have room to swing with more than that. With winds in the mid to upper 20s, I put out at least 90 feet. As always, the high winds and major wind shifts occur in the middle of the night, and last night was no different. We shift from west winds to north and the speed picks up. At midnight, I go on deck to see how we are holding and we are ok, except the guy that was way in front of me with the west winds is now beside me, his boat still pointing west. All of the other boats are pointing north-east into the wind. We keep swinging closer and closer to the back of this guys boat, and I keep waiting for the wind to swing it away from us. At about 4 AM, a fender that is being used as a float for something in the water, pops out from under this guys boat, and the boat finally swings with the wind! We were as close as 15 feet to hitting him. I was watching all night, and if necessary, would start the engine and motor away from him until we could move our anchor. The wind is going to shift to the east, so I can see that this will place us in contact with this float. I don’t know what is under the water, and I know that it held the stern of his boat against 25 knot winds for 4 hours, so I know that I don’t want to get hung up in it! It is 6:30 AM, and I can see that we are also dragging ever so slowly…ugh! I get Tricia, and we pull the anchor up, move it forward so that we can avoid the float, and put out more anchor to keep from dragging. We successfully move and put out almost 90 feet of chain. We avoid the float, stop dragging, and as the wind shifts we see that the guy who we almost hit, has less chain out than the other boats. We swing about 30 feet in front of him in an east wind. If we had not moved, we would have swung into him. Ugh again!!!

Anchoring is almost an art. The benefits are worth the troubles, but in an anchorage like this, sometimes it can suck bad, for days at a time. We do have a nice view of the harbor from here though:

1/30/17
Buttonwood Sound, Key Largo FL
Position: 25 07.095 N 080 26.645 W
Posted by Bill

The Tuesday after the storm provided very settled weather, and the forecast for the week was pretty awesome, so we moved the boat just outside the west entrance to Tarpon Basin. There is a large area of 7-8 foot depth with mostly sand bottom, that has excellent protection from the north through east winds, moderate protection from south winds, and is exposed to the west. Winds were expected to be light, starting from the south, moving west, and then building at the end of the week to 25 knots out of the north. This provided a fantastic place to anchor. We can see the boat from the house we are in, and it is 5-10 minute dinghy ride between the two. As stated in the last post, we weren’t planning to stay in the house, but there is a small apartment type setup in the bottom floor that we could have all to ourselves. It gave us a place to be where we didn’t feel like we were imposing on Mark and Diane, and we got to hang out. With the boat in view and securely anchored, we took advantage. Unlimited water and power, a large bathroom with a fantastic shower, stores and restaurants within walking distance, and the use of a car!!! If you are a cruiser, you know what this means!!!! We have been getting spoiled. I have run out to the boat every day to run the generator, and there were a few days where the wind generator and solar panels have kept up. The winds picked up on Friday out of the north as forecasted, and a front came through yesterday bringing wind and rain, but the boat held fine. It was really nice to be inside a house and not stuck on the boat for 2 days.

While walking one day, I noticed this house with a trampoline on the outside corner of the 3rd story. I wonder who thought that was a good idea???

1/23/17
Tarpon Basin, Key Largo FL
Position: 25 07.249 N, 080 25.847 W
Posted by Bill

Well, the blog site is back up and running on new technology. I hope it improves the speed.

We had a hard “stop” on our slip in Key West. The key hosts a big sailing regatta (race, in case you are not a sailor) and all of the marinas in Key West are booked for at least a week. For us and Sofia Jeanne, we had to vacate our slip on the 15th of January. Kurt and Sharon on Byrd Ketcher had a reservation in Key West until the end of January, so they were staying for a bit longer. The winds were blowing out of the east up to 25 knots for about 10 days, creating a lumpy sea state, so we opted to move to the next key up the chain, Stock Island. There is a really nice marina there, but it is really expensive ($4 per foot per day, plus electricity). We tied up at position: 24 33.906 N, 081 44.24 W. It was a short 2 hour trip, which was a good thing, because the sea state was 3-5 foot waves with a 4 second wave period…aka…very uncomfortable. We have gotten to the place in our cruising that we don’t like to be in an uncomfortable sea state for very long, so we bit the bullet and paid to stay in Stock until it improved.
View from our slip in Key West:

Some pictures coming out of Key West:

There is not much to do on Stock Island, a direct contrast to Key West, but they have a shuttle that regularly goes to town or to the grocery store if you want. We did some grocery shopping, but after a month in Key West, we were ready for a break. There are two really good restaurants within walking distance of the marina, Hogfish Bar and Grill, and Roostica. We hit both while we were there. Hogfish is known for their seafood, and Roostica is known for their pizza and Italian food. We had never been to Roostica before, and the pizza was absolutely fantastic. The best travel day in the weather forecast was Thursday the 19th, and we took off and motored to Marathon.

Our plan after Key West was to hole up in Boot Key Harbor in Marathon on a mooring ball until we left for the Bahamas. This time of year there is a waiting list for mooring balls and we ended up being number 36 on the list, with an estimated fulfillment time of 3 weeks. We ended up anchoring in the Sister’s Creek entrance to Boot Key at position: 24 42.216 N, 081 06.190 W. The anchorage was packed full, but we found an area to drop the hook. I tried several times to get the anchor to set properly, to no avail. The night we arrived had very settled weather, so we decided to set on the anchor and try to reset it the next day. We enjoyed dinner and drinks on the boat together with Matt and Shirley on Sofia Jeanne. It was a good night. Two other things were factors in our planning for the near term…Tricia’s sister had rented a house on Buttonwood Sound in Key Largo, just southwest of Tarpon Basin, and we wanted to spend some time with them; and there was a major weather event coming for Sunday through Tuesday, one which we needed decent shelter from south and west winds up to 40 knots. We were nervous about our anchor not setting well in Boot Key and how crowded it was…both not good for a nasty storm, so the next day we headed for Key Largo.
We left on the 20th, and had 2 to 4 foot beam (hitting the side of the boat) seas half of the way there, and we were rolling badly. At one point something fell and hit the water knob on the sink in the aft bathroom and flooded the sink, soaking everything inside it. Thankfully, Tricia noticed it before it dumped a bunch of our fresh water into the bilge! We made it to Buttonwood Sound and anchored a couple hundred yards off of her sister’s house, at position: 25 06.362 N, 080 26.632 W. The house has a small lagoon with a protected dock, and we were able to dinghy right in and tie up. She and her husband had a cocktail waiting at the Tiki Hut beside the dock, and since we hadn’t had a decent shower in 2 days, we took a shower in quick order. It was awesome to have this big shower to ourselves, and one that was not a public or marina bathroom!!!! We hadn’t intended to stay at their house, but the weather was still calm, and our boat was securely anchored, and we enjoyed a night in a real bed!!! We lived close to her sister (Diane) and husband (Mark) when we lived in Ohio, and we were always good friends and doing fun stuff with them, so it was really good to see them. Here are a couple of pictures of the awesome house and property they rented:



The wind was going to start to pick up the next day, so we moved the boat into neighboring Tarpon Basin in anticipation of the impending storm. Tarpon Basin has good protection from all compass directions, but has notoriously bad holding due to the amount of sea grass on the bottom. We had dragged anchor badly in 25 knot winds there several years ago, so my anxiety was up. Anticipating 35-40 knot winds from the south and west, we picked a spot close to the south and west edge of the basin and found a large patch of sand with no grass. We have 2 anchors, a Delta plow anchor and a Bruce anchor. The Bruce is better for the sea bed we had in the basin, so I used that, and we got a great set in the sand. Winds were 15-20 knots, but we had enough protection to go to the dinghy dock where Diane picked us up, and we spent the day at their house, returning that night to the boat. The anchor held great, so we joined them for breakfast the next day and then returned to the boat to get ready for the high winds and nasty storm front that was coming.

It hit us pretty much as projected. 15-25 knots Sunday evening, 25-35 knots Monday into Tuesday. The storm front moved through about 4:30 AM and the wind shifted to the west. Lots of rain, lightning and a tornado watch. It was probably the worst storm we have had at anchor. The anchor held great, even through the wind shift. Right now it is blowing into the mid-30s and there is 2-3 foot breaking waves in this protected basin. There are not many boats in here, maybe because of the known holding issues, but no one seemed to have a problem dragging anchor here during this weather event. We heard from Sofia Jeanne, who is still in Sister’s Creek, and they are doing fine. There were several incidents with boats dragging there, and also dinghies floating away from the mother vessel! Thankfully, not with them. Tomorrow we will be able to go ashore again and rejoin Diane and Mark, and then Wednesday when the winds shift, we can anchor off of their house again. Here is a sample of the sea state in Tarpon Basin:

Here is a picture of our boat in the distance, anchored off of Mark and Diane’s house: