1/28/15
Marathon FL, Harbour Cay Club
Position: 24 42.631N, 81 06.590W
Posted by Bill

Yesterday, we picked our anchoring spot based on the forecasted wind direction. It was supposed to blow around 15 knots out of the NW until 10 PM and then around 20 knots out of the N until 10 AM. We picked a spot in the lee of Rodgriguez Key in preparation for the N winds. In reality, it blew out of the W between 15 and 22 knots until 3 AM and then shifted to the N blowing up to 26 knots. It was really uncomfortable until the wind shifted to the N and our anchoring strategy paid off. So goes the forecast.

We were up at 5:30 and got underway before 7, and had 23 to 28 knot winds and 3-5 foot waves on our starboard quarter (right rear for you landlubbers). Our SOG (speed over ground for you landlubbers) was between 7.3 and 8.1 knots…a fantastic sail.


Sea state during passage.

This lasted until we got to the ocean side of Marathon and then the winds dropped to 15-20 knots. We sailed through Moser Channel and under the 7 Mile Bridge, back into the ICW in Florida Bay and over to the marina.

Houses on the shore of Boot Key, Marathon.

Approaching the 7 Mile Bridge

Approaching the marina.

When we got to the marina the members worked together to lead us in. Our slip is at the end of two parallel piers with space between them only 3 boat widths wide. There were boats on both sides, so only room for one boat to fit in between them. Our friends on Island Spirit warned us in advance about this, but I was still really skeptical that we could pull in, make a hard left turn, and turn our boat around to face out. As we got to the turning point, everyone grabbed a line or some part of the boat and got us turned around without any major incident. This is what it looks like:

We made great time getting there and had time to tour the facility, which is really nice. We met at least 10 other couples, and attended a happy hour at the Tiki Hut. We will be here through the month of February.

1/27/15
Rodriguez Key/Key Largo FL
Position: 25 02.549N, 080 27.142W
Posted by Bill

At 7 AM, we made the break from Dinner Key. The forecast was not optimal, but it was the best we had for who knows how long. It is frustrating. You see a weather window a few days out, so you wait instead of leaving, and in a day the window gets slammed shut. Or, you don’t go because it looks like a bad passage, and the weather turns out to be just fine. So, we decided to go.

We cruised across Biscayne Bay and headed for the Biscayne Channel that leads to the ocean. The waves and wind were noticeable, but not too bad. The channel is just south of Key Biscayne and cuts through an area known as Stiltsville. As early as the 1930’s and for decades leading up to the 60’s, houses were built on stilts on the water in the area south of Key Biscayne. As the story goes, there was much gambling and debauchery, as the owners lived by their own laws. Hurricane Betsy took it’s toll on the area in 1965, and the building laws didn’t allow rebuilding of the houses. There are several still standing that are now part of the Biscayne National Park. Here are some pictures leading up to the channel:
Key Biscayne:

Stiltsville:




Looking back at the tip of Key Biscayne:

As we exited the channel, we went out into the Atlantic. Here you can see Key Biscayne and Miami in the background:

We also started to encounter 3-4 foot waves and winds to 25 knots:

Fortunately, it was behind us, and we averaged over 7 knots for the entire trip to Key Largo. After we got to Elliott Key, we were in the lee of land again, and the waves subsided to around a foot. There wasn’t much boat traffic, but we did see a couple of big boats like this one:

Around 2:30 in the afternoon, we made it to Key Largo:

And then anchored off Rodriguez Key:

It is still very windy and the boat is rolling through the waves, but it isn’t any worse than what we were having at Dinner Key. Tomorrow we get up early and head to Marathon.

Today’s sunset:

1/26/15
Coconut Grove FL
Posted by Bill

OK…so one of my brothers is part owner of a dive shop in Cincinnati, and he is a certified dive master, and he has been leading people on dive trips all over the Caribbean for years. He tells me the fish that landed in our dinghy is a member of the Needle Fish family. Apparently, they will jump over stuff in the water if it is in their way vs. swimming around it, and it must have mis-calculated the jump over the dink! The latest Ass Captain award goes to the fish!!

1/26/15
Coconut Grove FL
Posted by Bill

We spent most of the day yesterday researching batteries, where to get batteries, following up with Walmart about the bad batteries, and researching a place to rent a car. In my research, and contrary to what my Battery Minder Smart Charger said, it looked like we might be best to try and equalize the batteries. Wet cell batteries build up a coating on the plates over a period of time that rob the battery of efficiency. This is called sulfating. Equalizing is a process of applying a high voltage charge over a long period of time, usually 4 to 8 hours, that causes the battery solution to bubble and break up the coating on the plates. In our boat you can only do this connected to shore power. We have our Honda generator, which is sufficient to provide shore power, so I topped the batteries off and filled up the generator. I hit the buttons on the Link 2000 panel (which controls the charger) to engage the equalization process, and nothing…it still stays in float charge mode. After 4 additional attempts, and a waiting period of about 30 minutes each time to see if the voltage starts to move up, I gave up. I researched why this could be failing and it points to the cable that goes between the Link and the charger. I have a spare! It is in the inventory list! Too bad the storage location is not filled out. So begins the mad search through all of the storage lockers on the boat. Hours later, we have still not located the spare cable, but…the batteries have been charging all most all afternoon, which may be helpful.

Finally we decided to go ashore and get a shower and something to eat, but after a shower we decided to stay on the boat for the sunset. Good move…we had the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

The batteries held up better last night, so we are going to keep up our charging routine and push to Marathon so we can use shore power to do some more testing before we buy something else. The weather looks pretty good for a run to Marathon Tuesday and Wednesday, just a little windy to start the trip out, but out of the northwest which is great. We are planning to leave just before dawn tomorrow. Marathon is a 2 day trip. The first stop is a small key off of Key Largo called Rodriguez Key. We’ll try to anchor south of it (see the blue arrow in the map below), and should have great protection from the north-northwest wind.

The next day we go to Marathon and will be at a private marina called Harbour Cay Club (see the arrow in the map below).

I know…I know, the arrows look like a 1 year old drew them, but the wind is blowing 25-30 knots right now and the boat is being thrown about like crazy. Good thing we delayed our trip south for a couple of days!

1/25/15
Coconut Grove FL
Posted by Bill

Well, we had hoped to be in the Atlantic Ocean by this time and headed to Key Largo, but the weather for Monday has worsened. Looks like winds over 25 knots most of the day and over 30 knot gusts. Passage rain check please! The latter part of the week looks really good, so we will sit out a few more days here in Dinner Key mooring field.

Yesterday was really windy, winds over 20 knots and out of the south, which made a nice washing machine type of sea state. After a few hours it shifted to the southwest and then west, which was much better. We went ashore and went to the farmers market in Coconut Grove. There was a ton of good looking produce, most grown locally; but they never mark prices on them, which annoys us…lol. We didn’t buy anything, but then went to one of our favorite places to eat, Flannigans. They have the best ribs, which we got again, and split. They also have a 2 for 1 happy hour on everything behind the bar, and on weekends it goes from 11 AM to 8 PM. The staff is friendly and smiling, the food is fantastic, and they play great classic rock music. Other restaurant owners/managers take note…this is a recipe for a successful restaurant, and the places is always busy. Yesterday at 3 PM there was a wait for a table and it was that way the whole time we were there.

This morning it is a little chilly…54, but it will be in the low 70s later. The sun is shining and the wind is laying down. We’ll probably put a plan together to replace the batteries tomorrow, which will entail renting a car and dealing with Walmart, and then we’ll make a run to Costco. I do miss Costco!

The damn batteries have consumed my time the last 5 days and I am looking forward to having to work on something else that breaks…lol!

1/23/15
Coconut Grove, Dinner Key FL
Posted by Bill

Last night I went to bed and I caught a fish while I was sleeping!

I got up today and looked out at the dinghy which was tied to the back of the boat, and there was this fish sitting right in the middle on it’s belly…lol! I have no idea why it decided to jump in here and have no idea what kind of fish it is. Pretty funny!

The last couple of days we have been exploring Coconut Grove and dealing with our boat batteries. I was able to isolate each battery one at a time and use the smart charger powered by our Honda generator, so we didn’t have to dock in the land of $3-7 per foot per night. I thought for sure the smart charger would find a culprit, but noooo, everything checked out. After talking to the electrician who installed our new inverter in South Carolina, the only thing it could be was the batteries. I got them at Walmart thinking that it would be easy to find a way to replace them if I ever needed to and where ever I needed to. So, I made a call to 6 different Walmarts in the Miami area. The people on the phone could barely speak english and did not understand what I was asking about. I called the Walmart in Ohio who understood me, and I understood them, and asked them how the warranty process worked, and it works like this: Bring the batteries in to Walmart, we will load test them, and if bad we will replace them. Ok…we live on a boat, with no car, the closest Walmart is 30 minutes away, and if we remove the batteries from the boat our refrigerator and freezer will not work and rot all of our food. How do we deal with that?! After much angst and research, we decided to push on to Marathon FL in the Keys, take a dock and have some local people there help us deal with the batteries. I also called Walmart customer support (central number) and they are trying to find a way for us to get a refund (just like Obamacare was going to reduce everyone’s medical expenses and you could keep your own DR). We’ll see. In the mean time, we are charging the batteries 2-3 times a day and praying they will support the electronics that run the boat as we move on to Marathon. The plan is to leave Sunday and arrive Monday, weather dependent.

Coconut Grove is a pretty good place to hang out. Most of the streets look pretty much like this:


There are some reasonable places to eat that we really liked, including this dive bar, Barracudas:

The mooring field is very uncomfortable in a wind with southerly components, but otherwise a good alternative and affordable. We had 15-17 knot winds last night and this morning, out of the southeast, and we were damn near seasick from the chop. Winds are supposed to move to the southwest tomorrow, which should help. Then, on to Marathon. The first night is a stop off Key Largo at Rodriguez Key, and then on to Harbour Cay Club where our dock is.

1/19/15
Dinner Key/Coconut Grove FL
Posted by Bill

Did some exploring today around Coconut Grove, mostly scoping out grocery stores, Home Depot, and Liquor Stores. It is only a 20-30 minute walk to really good options for all of those, and there is a Fresh Market only 2 blocks away. The marina here is huge, 582 slips and 225 mooring buoys, and it is pretty much full. The mooring field is exposed to the wind and waves except to the west, so it gets really bumpy in here and dinghy rides can be pretty wet. It is really bumpy when boats come in and out of the channel next to the mooring field, throwing a wake. The facilities are dated and in need of a refresh, but they are working on new ones, so that should be remedied. We’ll try to get some pictures in the next couple of days.

In preparation for our cruise, I did EXTENSIVE research about what it would be like, where we should go, and how to prepare. A big part of that research was searching and reading blogs of other cruisers, and one of the blogs that was most helpful was from a boat named Kintala. The owners, Tim and Deb, lived in the mid-west and bought a boat to retire on, moved it to the east coast and started the cruising thing. They went down the ICW and over to the Bahamas and back. They wrote about the whole process from start to finish, and in a way that really helped us understand what we were getting into. In addition, both are very good writers and do an excellent job of capturing the emotions, both good and bad, and tell it like it is. Over the last year I have reached out to them via email and phone, and they have been very helpful. There are only a couple of other blogs that we had interactions with like this, and when you read their stories you really feel like you know them…kinda like you know your friends. Knowing they were in Dinner Key, I made contact and told them we were coming and would like to meet them in person. As fate would have it, the mooring that we were assigned was right beside them! They invited us for sundowners yesterday and we had a great time talking to them and getting to know them in person. Looking forward to more of that.

Now to the battery saga. As you may recall from previous posts, we are not getting the full amp hours out of our batteries. There are 3 “house” batteries rated at 105 amp hours for a total of 315, and after 60 amp hours of use, the resting voltage of the batteries is 11.5 volts. We charge them back to trickle charge rates twice a day which takes about 2.5 hours in the morning and again in the evening. After much reading and testing, I think we have some bad batteries. We replaced them in October of last year so that we wouldn’t have to be dealing with these kinds of things…hah! I need shore power to hook up my smart charger to each individually and see if it can fix them. If not…we’ll probably have to rent a car and return them to the nearest Walmart. We had this same brand of battery for 4 years prior and never had a problem. So now we have to figure out where the best place to pay for a slip is, here in the land of $3-7 per foot per night…ugh!

1/18/15
Dinner Key FL, Biscayne Bay
Position: 25 43.2N, 080 13.780W
Posted by Bill

We finally shook Miami Beach. We had been on a waiting list for a mooring buoy at Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove, which is the south side of Miami. The anchorage at Miami Beach was really well protected and we had lots of room, plus it was very convenient to most of the land based stuff we need/want. We really needed a pump out of our holding tank and didn’t want to pay $20 to have it done at a local marina when we could pay $24 for a mooring buoy, get the pump out, water, and have access to showers and bathrooms. So that is what really gave us the push when Dinner Key Marina called with an opening.

I know I mentioned in a previous post that we should never travel the ICW on a weekend in Florida. Today I really learned my lesson…again. The boat traffic is really bad on the weekends and there are lots of huge boats flying around making wakes and a lumpy sea state. It is really not fun.

Anyway, we went south trough the Venetian Causeway bridge and down past the city of Miami. Here are some pics. Cruise ships along Government Cut:

A great shot looking down the length of Government Cut and out the inlet to the ocean:

Random shots of Miami along the waterfront:

When we got past the Venetian Causeway bridge we thought we were home free from the bridges, as all but a railway bridge is taller than our mast. The railway bridge is rarely ever closed, but just as we got close to it, a horn went off and the bridge started to close…damn! We had to wrestle the current, wind, and all of the boat traffic, cruising around in circles for almost 30 minutes until it opened, all for this:

After our last bridge, we motored into open Biscayne Bay, where all kinds of boat traffic was going every direction. There were also several regattas going on, which made for some good pictures:

Coming through the Dinner Key channel to our mooring field we saw a couple of derelict boats.

I have read about how plentiful they are and how much of a problem they are, but we haven’t really seen that many of them.

Here are some shots of the mooring field we are in:

Looking over to Coconut Grove:

Looking back at Miami:

Looking south into Biscayne Bay:

When we got here, first we went to the marina docks, did a pump out, and took on water. Then we tied up to the mooring buoy and went ashore for dinner. There are dozens of restaurants, so after walking around, having a drink at a dive bar, we had dinner at Scotty’s Landing right on the water. I liked the feel of the place, and it was what I expected more of in Florida, but haven’t seen. We’ll try to get some pictures to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.

1/16/15
Miami Beach FL
Posted by Bill

I’ve been wanting to check out the Holocaust Monument here in Miami Beach since we got here, and today we finally made it. It was a short walk from where we land our dinghy and I have read that it is really well done. Let me tell you…it is very well done. I’ll attempt to give you the low down through the pics that Tricia took:

This is one of the first views you get as you come up to the monument. The sculptures are fantastic and really depict the emotion:

It starts with a historical synopsis of the period between 1939 and 1945 when the Nazi regime plotted to eradicate the Jews from Europe and eventually the world. The history is etched into marble walls. This is followed by pictures that support the synopsis and tell more detailed stories, also etched into the walls like this one:

Then you walk into an area with the names of people and families that were murdered during the Holocaust period, which were submitted by their families. It represents a fraction of the 3 million plus Jews that were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. You can see the walls on the right in this picture. There are 57 sections with names here:

Then you walk through this corridor that has the names of the death camps engraved on both sides, that leads to an area that has sculptures and more sections of names of victims.






It really made you think hard about what happened to those people back then, and it is really kind of unbelievable that anyone treated people this way! It was horrible, and even more horrible that no one on earth did anything about it for years. In spite of it all, you are left with these words by Anne Frank:

It was very emotional and very well done. My heart goes out to the people that suffered during this time period and to their families.

Right next door is the Botanical Gardens, so we checked that out too. Tricia caught some great pics here too:





Look…bananas!

And then this chameleon. They are everywhere down here. We thought the grandkids would like this:

Then we walked to the beach. We took the good camera today so we could capture what we have been experiencing better than the cell phone cameras:

Then we walked up Lincoln Road (that we have talked about in previous posts) to try and capture what it was like and catch some of the interesting people we have been seeing.

Your sister wears combat boots…

I am always interested in the shoes people wear:

Especially black socks and sandals…

Great see-through commando look:

Finally back to where we have been tying up the dinghy:

Then it was back to the boat for sundowners and a great sunset:

Tricia cooked another gourmet meal and we drank to a good day!