Over the last month, or so, we’ve had quite a few visitors….some for a short stay and some for longer…..some weren’t staying close enough to get more than a quick meal together before they had to depart…but we have enjoyed seeing them all…here’s a few shots of what’s been going on……
Beauties on the bowThrough the mangroves !!Double trouble ….Sue, the manatee whispererColonel Paul….
Rick and Ellen with our Lobster !Johnny and Shari with Toilet seat pass in the backgroundSunset at Lorelei’s
One life ring speaks a 1000 words….
So, toilet seat pass is an area that was originally marked by locals and fishermen to show an area where boats could pass through the shallow area near the end of Tavernier and Islamorada. Somewhere along the way, decorated toilet seats began adorning the PVC poles that were driven into the bottom to mark the small channel.
IMG_0270 <—–click this link to watch the video ! There may have been a few beverages consumed prior to the making of this video…..
Since we had an extra Conch horn lying around, I was convinced to give it a shot with the veterans here at our marina. Not my best work…..we can’t wait to see your video Jan !!
Some Conch related facts…..
The tradition of blowing a conch shell in the Florida Keys began hundreds of years ago. In the 1800s, when the local economy was largely based on salvaging cargoes from ships wrecked on the nearby reef, sailors attracted attention by blowing piercing blasts on the shell.
There is a yearly conch horn blowing contest every March in Key West.
Conch horns are used in religious ceremonies around the world.
Conch horns are also listed by the US Coast Guard as an approved sound making device under the requirements of Rule 33.b and Annex III (C).
I was asked by someone who was reading our blog on an iPad about the link to access the posts. Since I use an iPad I realized that link is not overly obvious and that a photo highlighting the button might help folks out….I’m not sure where it appears on other devices so if anyone uses a Samsung or other tablet and has a different display please let me know. Thanks !!
The prize is a Conch Republic Conch Horn…..you can hear them being blown all over the Keys every evening at sunset….it’s the unofficial happy hour call…..
You have to have a shell that hasn’t been “hammered” to get the conch out first. Then the tip is ground down to make the mouth piece….and viola….conch horn…..!
I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t that smiling fellow earlier in the day. When I opened my eyes yesterday morning, I was already irritated. There wasn’t a real reason, I just knew that I was in a bad mood and wasn’t really feeling up to much of anything. It can happen, even when you seem to be living the dream. I think everyone just has those bad days. I knew I was going to have one.
I had just renewed my fishing license and optimistically added a lobster permit. Kim went for a run early in the day and I went back to bed. After about a 45 minute nap, I woke up feeling slightly better. I decided to go for a run as well and stop for a Cuban coffee. This all elevated my mood and I returned to our boat feeling much better….not quite 100% but not bad….maybe 75%.
I spent some time reading and taking it easy and at about 5:45 I heard a knock on our hull and one of our neighbors was looking for some dinner companions. Kim was in the middle of a few things so I decided to go.
I snapped this photo as we were about to head down the dock….(that was sign #1)
this day just wasn’t going to go down without a fight…..
I reached the end of the dock and spotted four or five lobsters poking their heads out of the sea wall….(sign #2). They tend to be more active during a full moon and it’s about half way there now. One of these was a good sized male. One of our friends at the Marina had a lobster “bully net”….
you lower this net holding a string attached to the pointy end of the net which keeps the net vertical to the handle, and once the ring at the lower end is around your lobster, you release the string and then the lobster, as it attempts to scurry away runs into the pointy end of the net.
A short time later I was holding that lobster and it was the end to a “bad” day…..that was sign #3 and with that the day won….then I saw this….a Nurse shark right where I saw the lobster…..no need to spike the ball “day” I get it ……you win
Recently, we had some very good friends who visited from up North. They arrived with a car, which is always an added bonus for us, since it expands our area of operations during any visit. This time, we made an overnight trip to Key West. Kim and I had a Hotels.com credit we had been struggling with how to use since it was from her high dollar travel for work days, and was worth over $200. We knew we’d probably just end up wasting most of it staying somewhere cheap or it would expire, but this KW trip was perfect timing. We stayed at the Southwinds Motel,
( http://www.keywestsouthwinds.com/ )
which, by Key West standards, was an inexpensive motel ($269) but was still very, very nice. Plus, it was only a block from Duval Street, but far enough south to be away from the core craziness.
Kim and Shari in Key Weird….haha
While we were roaming the streets we encountered a suitcase on a stand just outside of the Margaritaville Cafe. No one seemed to be attending it. It had a few interesting looking leather bound books inside with prices on them. As we stood there pondering the purpose or detect the presence of an honor box we were approached by a man who was the author. His name was Brett Dean McGibbon. He only had a few books left at this stage of the night and I bought a copy of “The Fisherman and The Mermaid”. Brett McGibbon writes, prints and binds these books on his boat there in Key West. The books smell like a Wilson’s Leather store, the kind you used to see in the mall. As it turns out he, at least initially, bound his books with jackets he bought from a Goodwill or other clothing donation store. Like so many things you find like this, I bought it as a simple novelty, but was very pleasantly surprised when I sat down one day with a cup of coffee to read a few pages. I finished it in a couple of hours after reading and re-reading sections I enjoyed. I have read it twice since. This particular book is a mix of journal and a fanciful event, (which may or may not have been based on a near death experience) that represents a turning point in his life. He is on Facebook under Different Fish Publishing and has links to his online store. I look forward to reading another one of his more lengthy books soon and I highly recommend picking up one for a read.
One interesting thing we got to see in Key Largo was a Buddhist Mandala ceremony. Some of the Monks from Tibet travel the world once a year and in each place they visit, they assemble a sand Mandala, which in these particular ceremonies, is a representation of each of the worlds religions. During the assembly of the mandala from individual grains of colored sand, they meditate in an effort to imbue the mandala with positive energy. At the end of their visit, they conduct a ceremony where they blend the sand together in a display of impermanence (a core teaching of Buddhism). They distribute some of the sand to the attendees and later disperse the remaining sand into a nearby body of water in an effort to spread the blessings and harmony generated by their assembly of the Mandala to the world.
The Mandala sand dispersal ceremony, Key Largo 2016
Old Railroad Bridge next to 7 Mile Bridge in the Keys
When I posted the other day about our visitors and subscribers I received some feedback asking for reviews of the places we have visited.
I wasn’t sure how to tackle this one since we have made a few trips up and down the coast and while I try to post photos of the places as we go, when we are underway it gets lost in to shuffle of watching weather, planning routes, navigating and fixing things as I break them. The downside for us in describing places to other people is that we only see these places from the water….and getting around town can be a bit of a challenge in some places…..we require some contradictory characteristics to make any area nice for us. We like a quiet, laid back area but one with a decent density of service businesses, restaurants and grocery stores. If the nearest grocery store is ten miles away from where we are anchored or in a Marina we have to add the cab rides to our grocery bills. The same goes for sights, entertainment or restaurants….if things are too spread out (like in the upper Florida Keys) we don’t really get a chance to get around and see as much as we would like. The flipside is if some areas are too densely populated (i.e. Too many high rise condos and McMansions built one on top of the other, on top of the other…Lake Worth is like that) or there is nowhere, or few places, to anchor and dinghy to shore, no, or few, marinas and generally no nearby restaurants or grocery stores. Everyone who lives in an area like that drives ten or fifteen minutes to get anywhere they want to go, but it’s not inconvenient when you have a car available.
Here’s some quick impressions of some the “best of the places” we have visited…..
Oriental, NC….this is a great little town. We have spent more time in Oriental than anywhere else. Houses here run the gamut from $150k for half a duplex to $500k, or more, on the waterfront. If you have ever wanted to retire to a place where you can know 90% of the people who live there and they are all super nice, this is the place. It’s close to the ocean, on the Pamlico River/Sound so enjoying time on the water is easy. It is protected from hurricanes being about 20 miles from the open ocean. There are more boats in Oriental than people by some accounts. If you still enjoy the seasons, it does get cold there in January and February but not for long. It gets HOT and HUMID in the summer but if you are on the water there is almost always a decent breeze. The mosquitos can be brutal. The downside is there are only four or five bars/restaurants but that’s how it is so easy to meet everyone…..you can get around town in a golf cart or by bicycle and until recently there was a small grocery and pharmacy in Oriental. The Wal-Mart Express ran them out of business and has now decided to close…thanks for that Wal-Mart….it is now a 15 minute drive to a grocery store/pharmacy. There are, at any given time, about five operating restaurants in Oriental. We really enjoy Silo’s for their pizza, M&M’s Restaurant has a great bar, super nice people there (especially the bartender Karen) and with their pound of peel and eat shrimp ($13) it is tough to beat. We also really like Nell’s, they are the only sports bar in town and they have great chicken wings.
St. Augustine….this is a fantastic, historic, easy to see town. There are a lot of great restaurants and bars near the water, walking or biking around town is easy and there are a variety of transportation options available. For us, it’s the mooring field that really makes St. A great. We can take advantage of the security of a mooring ball (which is much cheaper than a Marina) and take full advantage of our boat’s systems designed for independence. At a minimum, we like to spend four or five days here as we pass through….I’d like to spend a month, or so, this time. I don’t know where to start restaurant-wise in St. A. There are so many great ones. We always make it to O.C. Whites, the A1A Alehouse, Meehan’s back patio and the Teeny Martini bar. Don’t miss the fort and make time for the reenactment and the firing of the cannon !!
Merritt Island/Indian Harbor Beach……this area is pretty pricey…..houses run about $400k into millions…..especially the Merritt Island side. The Indian Harbor side is better but still $200k+ even for a house away from the water. The upside is the beach is less than a mile away. It is between the Banana and Indian Rivers and the fishing is amazing. You can catch stone crabs right off the dock, shrimp, mullet and a great variety of other fish. It can get down into the low 40’s in the winter here for a few days at a time. Most things are within a three mile bike ride or walk so there are a lot of convenient things about this area. Pizza seems to be the popular food choice as there are quite a few non chain pizza places. Tony’s Famous New York Pizza and Wiseguys are our favorites. Lou’s Blues is literally the only bar with a view of the beach (which I think is odd for a beach town) near where we dock, plus they have good food. The night crowds and music at Lou’s are pretty hectic so we usually only go for lunch or happy hour. We also love Squid Lips Restaurant/Bar since despite the fact they are on the river side, they put in a small beach.
Beaufort, NC….(pronounced BOW-fort) this is about a five hour boat trip from Oriental and is usually our first stop on our way South…..the waterfront area is nice….a few cool bars and restaurants are in walking distance. The marinas are nice and the people who own the one we stay at (Portside Marina) are amazingly nice. Once you get away from the waterfront it seems a little isolated and residential.
Beaufort, SC ….(pronounced Buford)….. Beaufort is one that you don’t want to miss….it also has a mooring field and a small anchorage. The Marina is nice and they keep the facilities pretty clean as marinas go. The waterfront bar/restaurant/shopping area is unparalleled for a smaller town. The houses are beautiful and the neighborhoods are interesting to walk around. The Marina has a courtesy car which makes West Marine and hardware stores much easier to reach. We haven’t had a bad meal or experience at any of the restaurants or bars in Beaufort so you can’t go wrong no matter where you pick it seems.
When we head north or south, we skip most of the rest of South Carolina and all of Georgia. We go offshore from Cape Fear and enter at Port Royal, SC to get to Beaufort, SC. We then go back offshore to Jacksonville and once we come back inside it’s less than 8 hours to get to St. Augustine. We skip SC because a lot of it is shallow (until recently when a LOT of dredging was done in the worst areas), and the recreational boat traffic can be pretty heavy. In Georgia the ICW is so curvy you go a long way to make what would be much shorter straight line distances, plus it is shallow and the tides are more extreme. If we are inclined to visit there in the future we can always duck in at St. Simon’s Island for a few days.
Tavernier, Florida….this winter has been our first stop over in the Keys. We weren’t overly familiar with Tavernier aside from having heard the name before. We got lucky and found a Marina in an area where there is a good density of restaurants, a grocery and even a hospital. The Marina has been nice since the weather, this year, has been uncharacteristically cold and really, really windy. All of the long term people in the Marina are super nice and I can see why visitors end up living here. The big downside to the Keys in general is the lack of beaches, how spread out things can be in some places and how hard it can be to get around if there’s a serious wreck on US1 which is the only primary road through the Keys. We did make a quick overnight trip to Key West with some visitors which is always entertaining even though it is “touristy”. There is a nice restaurant close to us called Old Tavernier, the food is great but it’s pricey so we don’t go there often. It is nice that you can get spiny lobsters for $9 a pound, or catch our own, weather permitting.
That’s about it for now…..I’ll be sure to get more photos for future entries like this…..
The featured image is of a Stuart, Florida sunset.
These are some photos of “Stiltsville” just inside the Biscayne Bay Inlet south of Miami….this area, once known as “the flats” began seeing structures rumored to have been constructed as early as 1922. The structures ranges from grounded barges and yachts supported by concrete pilings to straightforward club style structures used for gambling, liquor distribution and other interesting escapades. Most were almost completely destroyed by a hurricane in 1965 one notorious one burned to the waterline shortly thereafter, and as usual the “fun police” slowly shut down or annexed the rest of the area into the Biscayne National Park.
We spent a few days motoring south on the ICW in order to reach Lake Worth where we planned to leave Florida and re-enter at Biscayne Bay just South of Miami. We enjoyed a visit from my youngest sister and even convinced her to pilot the boat for a short period …….sadly, it was the first time we can recall not seeing any Dolphins or Manatees…..it was weird. My sister was understandably disappointed, but that just means she has to come back sooner. Hurry back Sis!!!
We we spent an unexpected three days in Ft. Pierce due to the New Year holiday (who knew some marinas closed all day on New Years Day?) and discovering that the wind was going to be pretty heavy plus we had developed a stalling issue with our diesel. We discovered the issue while trying to pick up a mooring ball in Vero Beach…..it is a VERY SMALL area with two and three boats on some mooring balls…….a pretty exciting few minutes there…..my apologies to the residents of that mooring field….we couldn’t slow down and when I did, we stalled so I had to come in at about 4 knots and then once we went to neutral we stalled and coasted up to the ball.
We did get to meet a VERY nice and professional TowBoatUS Captain named Al, the next day in Ft. Pierce, which was our first ever tow….if you don’t have BOATUS Towing insurance I highly recommend buying the best package you can afford….we use the unlimited Gold and its only $180 per year and worth every cent….this tow alone would have been $370.
A great by product of this mechanical misadventure was that we discovered what we have decided must be manufactured from voluntarily donated unicorn blood, or some other mystical creature. Our diesel started fine….ran fine for hours…..then when we tried to shift for neutral we would stall……after some research and consulting with the folks at Trans Atlantic Diesel (a big Thank you to our diesel guru Marcus Neville) we acquired the magic juice…..
It’s called “Stanadyne Performance Formula” and your diesel can actually run on just it, but it’s about $80 a gallon, so if you have that kinda coin, can you float me a little?? Long story short, we drained our fuel filters and filled them with this additive, ran the engine at varying RPM’s for an hour ….and …..VOILÁ !!!! SHE RAN LIKE NEW !!!!! We couldn’t even cause a stall…..
We left Ft. Pierce on January 2, 2016 after ringing in the New Year at Cobb’s ….a great restaurant and tiki bar in Ft. Pierce. If you ever get near there I highly recommend that stop. We made a quick one night stop in Stuart where the winds howled again that night. We had the chance to catch up with some friends from our old sailing club, Rick and Cathy.
We arrived arrived in Lake Worth the next day and spent five days in a Marina since the winds kicked up yet again and were blowing 30 knots. Once that settled down we proceeded on our trek where we anchored just South of Peanut Island (where the JFK Cuban Missile Crisis bomb shelter was built) and we spent five days there again riding out 20+ knot winds…. And rain….and heavy chop…..did I mention that I think the wind is following us ? Lake Worth stretches between North Palm Beach, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach…..
Peanut Island is a man made island constructed from then dredged material created from the digging of the Palm Beach Inlet and Basin and is also the home to JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis Nuke Shelter. It seems his family owned a home nearby and the Secret Service chose this spot in the event of a nuclear attack to protect the President.
Kim seated at JFK’s Bomb Shelter DeskMe …running for the bomb shelter!!!The JFK Nuke shelter entrance
We we noticed after four days of the bucking bronco that our anchor snubber …(snubber: a device made of dock line and a saddle or slotted plate that rides on the anchor chain that is used to absorb the shock of the boat pitching and pulling on its anchor)
….had worn through the starboard side thimble ….(a thimble is curved section of metal fitted into a loop of spliced line to protect the line from strain and chafe)….so we had to get that replaced at Florida Line and Rigging….another great cruiser friendly place in Palm Beach and Erin really hooked us up, had the new line done in an hour and did a great job on our new snubber line.
See the really rusty loop at the end of that line ?? Rust bad….
The winds and tides at Lake Worth so often ran against each other that our boat and anchor line looked like they were practicing yoga or twister…..I made a rough diagram of how it looked on one day……the yellow line is our anchor chain…the red part is the chain and anchor that was buried in the sand……its no wonder people often think their anchors are set when their boat doesn’t drift away but many times it’s just the tide and wind working against each other plus the weight of the chain and anchor holding you in place….that’s why we always back down (i.e. Reverse and pull) against our anchor to be sure we are set.
We left Lake Worth and cruised down the coast with 15 to 20 knot winds behind us and following seas…..sadly, not as comfortable a ride as the old saying would lead you to believe. After we came into Biscayne Bay and crossed over into Key Largo, we stopped over at Gilbert’s resort for a night and met a nice couple who worked there, they are also interested in living on their own sailboat….it was great to meet you Lorenzo and Kate…..
First and foremost…..Merry Christmas from the crew of Kitty Hawk……
The casting net Christmas Tree ….an ingenious design by our friend Joan….
Well….this month has been a busy one….we’ve had a total of seven visitors on board Kitty Hawk and have two more on the way. We’ve done a lot of work to Kitty Hawk to get her ready for the next leg of our journey. Like any aspect of life on board, using any system can and eventually will, expose any deficiencies or lack of maintenance.
During this month, we rebuilt both pump assemblies of our forward and aft heads. For those not up to speed on nautical terminology, a head is a bathroom and also the name of the actual on board toilet. So if you say “I’m going to the head” you just mean you’re going to the restroom. If you say “the head is clogged” you mean that the toilet has failed to deliver whatever was deposited in it to the intended destination, decided to stop the flow of other materials in the future and by extension, ruined the Captain’s day.
Now, you may ask yourself, “Why call it a head?”….good question. In the old days when ships could generally only sail downwind, the placement of the head was in the very forward most area of the ship. Also, near the figurehead that many ships of that day sported for numerous superstitious, decorative or identification reasons. The natural wave action of the boat moving through the sea provided a “flushing out” as the seawater moved into and out of that space through openings in the hull just above the waterline. Also, since the vessel was sailing downwind the smell was being carried away from the rest of the boat.
During our rebuild of our heads, (which are Raritan Compact II manual heads, which means they must be manually pumped to drain and introduce water as opposed to electric heads which just require the push of a button) we ran into an issue where the pump assembly, simply would not stop leaking. We disassembled and reassembled the unit about a half dozen times. It had what we thought was just a difficult seal around one of the bolts that holds the pump to the base. My brilliant wife said “could there be a crack in that we can’t see?” Well, long story short even thought we couldn’t see or feel a crack…there was one…..once we we replaced the pump housing….voilá…no leak.
Once the pump was removed we could see the hairline crack on the backside….it looked like a mark from a wrench…..we made sure to inspect all of our spare units and discarded any with a similar mark….so we threw away three of them….which will cost about $110 a piece to replace….ow.
Since we had two sets of visitors it was only right that during each visit one of our heads clogged. Our aft head was first during the first set of visitors and then our forward head lines clogged. Maybe two heads really are better than one ? Haha….you don’t want to be without a head at all. I had even made the comment that “if the aft one has clogged the forward one can’t be far behind” how regrettably right I was. We were glad it happened where we were, rather than away from easy access to transportation and parts. Plus, I had assistance from one of our guests when the forward head clogged. The upside is we have rebuilt pumps and brand new lines for both heads now. These clogs are mostly caused by calcium build up from using salt water to flush the heads. We are considering changing to composting heads in the future but for now they are just too expensive plus we should get four or five years of use after this rebuild.
On the upside…between clogged heads…..a neighbor and I landed an enormous Redfish….so two heads did work better than one in that instance……sadly, it was over the size limit to keep but may have been a state record…..
