A Miami New Year

We've been enjoying Miami for the past month; the sights, sounds and vibe. Miami is unlike any other city we know.  At night the buildings light up in full color, the cruise ships are alongside the busy downtown, and the weather (of course) is semi-tropical most of the time.

After a lovely holiday season and a very comfortable marina berth, we are looking forward to heading out for some sailing in a few days.  We have loved being here at Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove.  It has very nice accommodations, a beautiful park area, close enough to walk to the village of Coconut Grove and easy parking that allows us to have our car with us.  The bathrooms and showers are four star!  The staff has been very accommodating and kind and we love our neighbors!

The holidays start the busy "snowbird" season here in Florida and we have been fortunate to share time with several friends that come south for the winter.  Jon and Mary Ellen hosted us at their club in Boynton Beach for a lovely brunch. A few days later they braved the drive to Miami to visit our home and share another brunch with us at Lulu's in the heart of Coconut Grove.  It was so great to see them!  Kevin and Debbie met us in Delray Beach at El Camino for a yummy "Tuesday Taco" night.  The surprise of the night was when friend Ken joined us from Fort Lauderdale.  Delray was jammed on Tuesday night January 3rd!

We met Marilyn and Bob Stasonis at the Loggerhead Marine Center in Juno Beach and checked out the varying stages of turtles in rehabilitation there.  This place is super cool and they do great work getting sea turtles rehabbed and back into the wild, or bringing the babies that didn't make it to the sea, up to a point where they can also go back to the wild.  Here are some of their patients.

Turtle ready for vital signs and health progress tests

Apparently they chew on each other if left
together in the pool

After checking out the progress at the "Turtle Hospital" we enjoyed lunch at a fav spot in North Palm Frigate's.  Unfortunately, the rain was pouring down, so we had to eat inside.  But, conversation was lively and we spent a good long time enjoying Marilyn and Bob's company.  

In addition to seeing lots of friends -

We attended the spectacular Christmas Pageant at First Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale with our daughter, Courtney and her fiance', Paolo.  The show was extraordinary with live animals, live flying angels, fire works, and over 100 voice choir.  It'll be tough looking at these and thinking this is a church!

We made a return trip to Wynwood (see previous blog entry) and really enjoyed seeing the art there. This time we walked for a few hours to see everything we missed before.  Most of the pictures here are entire outside walls of large buildings!

This was inside a gallery.

This and the one below were in the same gallery.

We toured Vizcaya - James Deering's estate and gardens (founder of International Harvester).

Greg forgot to take his foot out of this shot! See Sharon?

We visited the Design District in Miami and gawked at the unusual fashions and furniture. This district houses all of the top end fashion, furniture, and watch designers.  Meet you at Tiffany's?

We shared the spectacular treat of a dinner at the Jean-Georges restaurant Matador Room in Miami Beach with daughter Courtney and soon to be son-in-law Paolo.  We have had the significant treat to be able to show up at Courtney and Paolo's house pretty much any time and have access to their backyard pool, cable internet for downloads and updates, laundry(!), great kitchen for sharing meals and backyard grill.  They are wonderful hosts and we love sharing time with them.  Thanks so much Courtney and Paolo!

It has been fun exploring Miami and checking out all there is to do and see.  However, what we won't miss is the traffic!

We are excited to head out and sail a bit.  We plan to leave in a few days after the present northern cold front leaves the area.  Northers bring very strong winds, which bring big waves.  So, we'll pick a weather window that's best for our week long sail to the west coast of Florida.

We plan to sail down Biscayne Bay to Key Largo and anchor in the lee of the island which should work well with the East wind.  Then, we will head out into Hawk Channel (the channel that runs between the reef east of the keys, and the Keys). Then we'll make our way down to Channel Five bridge where we can cross into the Florida Bay, the west side of the Keys.  We hope to ride the East wind across the Bay, around Cape Sable (SW tip of Florida) and up into the Little Shark River for one evening's anchorage, and then on to Marco Island.  From there, we will take our time working our way up the West Coast.

As always, you can track our progress by clicking on the picture of our boat at the top of this blog and see what the SPOT tracker tells you.

'Til next time -

Boca Raton and the Miami Scene

Hoping everyone had a yummy Thanksgiving spent with those you love and in a place you love.  Ours was special as we spent it with daughter and fiance', Courtney and Paolo.  We enjoyed sharing the cooking duties with Chef Lu, Paolo's uncle, and Chef Nubia, Paolo's mom, as well as the cleaning up duties with Lu's wife, Selma, and Paolo's Grandmother, Natalice.  There was a heap of leftovers - the best part!

Chef Lu (personal chef to the Lauder family while in Florida)
and an all around really nice guy! Don't forget to click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Lu's butterflied turkey - wow!

Paolo and his beautiful family - sister to his right, brother sitting in front next to his Mom

 The day after Thanksgiving, we took advantage of a free day and the availability of a car and headed north to Stuart, Florida to share a bit of time with friends on Island Spirit, Hayden and Radeen.  It was so great to share time, see the cool upgrades they have done on the boat and share a wonderful meal at Sailor's Return.  Thanks to Hayden and Radeen for your hospitality.  Always a pleasure to see you and share time!

Hayden (King of Selfies), Sharon, Radeen and Greg

We had a nice respite at the Lighthouse Point Yacht and Racquet Club.  This would be a great home for Dream Catcher if we ever decide to stay in one place for the winter.  Nestled in a lovely neighborhood threaded with canals behind each home heading to the waterway, it offers two restaurants, tennis courts, Olympic size swimming pool and fitness center.  It was a nice place to hang for a week, only twenty minutes to Courtney.  But, we decided to move on after the holiday and made our way south along the waterway.  Sunday on the ICW in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami is crazy!!  We had 19 opening bridges to navigate - traveling from one to the next with openings on the quarter, half, three-quarter and hour - each about the right distance apart to make it on schedule.  Of course, along the way, we deal with motor boaters with no concept of a "No Wake" zone.  One guy came flying by and literally shook us up - the boat took a 45 degree angle heel after he went by and stuff went flying belowdecks.  Another guy did the same while Sharon was sitting on the cockpit combing and she got totally drenched!  Greg pulled out the airhorn and let the guy know he was not happy and the guy immediately slowed down - after the damage was done - but kept his speed down the rest of the way through the No Wake zone.  Whew!  Wish there was a way we could have these guys fined!

This was party central Sunday afternoon along the waterway in North Miami
 - a sandbar that attracts all the motorboats; they even had food boats! 

By mid-afternoon, we crossed Government Cut (the major shipping inlet for Miami), with six cruise ships at dock, and made our way south into Biscayne Bay.  It is always a treat to sail into the Bay.  The water is clearer, the sailing is great and there's lots of room to roam.  We enjoyed a couple nights on the hook off Key Biscayne, but weather was forecast to turn very wet and windy.  So, we made our way over to Coconut Grove Sailing Club where we were able to snag a mooring for several days.  This is a true sailing club where they do lots of sail and race training.  We saw classes on the water as we entered the harbor.  There are always races on weekends.  Another local yacht club, just a mile away, is home to some world class sailors.  One member won this year's Star Worlds.  The Star is an old olympic three-man sailboat, about 18 feet long and has lots of sail, so very fast.  The local guy beat luminaries from around the world.  How cool is that!

The Club is walkable to downtown Coconut Grove, a sweet village in South Miami with restaurants, cinemas and shops.  While there, we took in a movie (Dr. Strange - which we thought was really good), enjoyed a couple lovely eateries and accomplished some boat chores.

The downside of CGSC is the crows at this time of year.  They are awful.  All the neighboring boats that had no owners aboard had birds sitting in the cockpit and on the spreaders making a mess of their boats.  The birds eat berries from local bushes, then their droppings soil the boat decks in purple! We ended up tying green ribbons (Christmas color!) to a halyard that we hoisted to the top of the mast to try to keep them from lighting.  Then Greg went up the mast and secured several bird spikes to the horizontal surfaces and wire ties to vertical shrouds.  It was an endless battle!  There's more!  As our mooring was 50 yards across a channel from a long line of fishing boats, we were awakened at 3:30AM when the owners revved up their engines to log engine hours in order to comply with the local ordinances to keep their slips - all on the sly!

During the day, local motor boaters turn on the music and cruise the harbor before making their way out of the marina. We didn't get a good night's sleep for a week.  We finally gave up and headed out on Monday.  Back to a quiet and lovely anchorage off Key Biscayne where we enjoyed our first swim and some peace and quiet.

First swim in  Biscayne Bay and bottom cleaning

The Miami scene is interesting.  It is definitely not Boston!  People love their loud music.  It is just the way it is.  At a local restaurant in Coconut Grove, Monty's, they have salt shakers with peel off/stick on tops to combat what happens to salt in humid weather.  We went to Glass and Vine, a lovely restaurant just up the street from the sailing club and watched while every bartender flipped easily from Spanish to English depending on the customer they were dealing with - so jealous!  We wish we had better language skills.  We also had a nice breakfast at Bouchon, a French Bistro downtown.  It was heavenly!

We found the Wynnwood Art District in downtown Miami.  Wynwood is an old warehouse area that has been totally rehabbed into an art area including galleries, restaurants and shops.  High end artistic graffiti is one of its hallmarks.  The buildings are used as blank canvases by up and coming artists.  It is so cool!

This was taken from the street looking up at the ceilings of each floor.  

With dicey weather coming in again, we were on the search for a protected area.  Marinas in Miami are many, but most are full and will not take reservations.  Several city owned marinas are doing construction right now and so the time they let you stay is limited.  We were able to get a slip at Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne for a few nights.  The 20 knot winds and constant rain made it worth the money to be plugged in with air conditioning and battery charger working.  The park has walking paths and nature trails through the mangroves.  A good place to walk, run or cycle.  Greg ran in the rain one day - and his wet shoes had to be dried at Courtney's house.

Crandon Park trails and views

Greg has taken a couple trips up the mast.  The cell antenna was pretty rusty and he replaced it with a new better version.  He also added more bird spikes and monofilament to areas where the birds like to perch.  As mentioned in the past, the mast climber we invested in a few years ago makes the task considerably more tolerable.  He was up there for two hours each time!

Some random guy came by in a small motor boat
and sent us this photo he took - nice!

Greg working above

The rusty cell antenna

With bad weather continuing to be predicted and knowing we wanted to travel back and forth to Boca during December, we kept bugging the dock master at Dinner Key Marina and she finally found a slip for us. So, we braved the wind one morning (fortunately behind us) and motored the five miles back across the Bay to settle into a nicely protected slip here in Coconut Grove (right next to the CG Sailing Club - but far enough from the noise to make it comfortable).  This marina has enjoyed a huge upgrade over the past year with a new three story building offering beautiful new bathrooms and showers, laundry facilities, wifi lounge with TV and lots of parking, as well as a new and electronic pass-protected dock system.  We have enjoyed having Sharon's car available to us since mid-November.  So basically, we are land-living, we just live in a tiny house that happens to float.  We will be here until early January when the plan is to move south through the Keys, then travel up the West Coast of Florida to explore new areas.  

'Til then, we wish you all a blessed Christmas and Happy New Year!

Beaufort, North Carolina to Florida

A few weeks ago we were enjoying a lovely ride up the Neuse River in North Carolina when Sharon got a phone call from her Aunt Gale (just after we passed Gale Creek) who with my uncle was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary (amazing!) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  They had that perfect beach week weather that so many of us were enjoying late October.  They went in search of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to get a glimpse of what it looked like.  Gale said it looked like a creek.  Yes - that is what the ICW looks like most of the time.

We have been meandering the creeks and rivers of the ICW since late October.  It has been a lovely ride.  After three fairly lazy days in Beaufort, North Carolina, we made our way south.  Each evening, we found a remote creek in which to drop the hook.  Then, we got out the computer and checked the Active Captain website for information regarding shoaling in crucial areas, missing navigation markers, bridge opening times, etc.  We weren't as diligent doing this until we transited Mason Inlet just south of Southport, NC and hit a sandbar hard in the center of the channel.  It was a yikes moment!  Sharon was driving, (as she often does) and had slowed down as she approached the inlet, where it is typical that sand bars build up from the rush of water in and out of the inlets from the ocean.  We had 2 knots of current with us, so we were getting pushed (also not unusual) and bam!  We were hard aground!  We backed up, spinning the boat on the sandbar, heeled hard over from the current's push and finally got the boat to move.  Whew!  But the worry of course is what damage might have occurred to the boat.  After that, we started checking the notes on Active Captain religiously.  It has paid off!  We take the risky areas at high tide, we go slow, we take the advice given by others who have been through it. And we've been adding our own comments on this great crowd source website in order to help others.

Here are some typical scenes along this section of the ICW - click to enlarge them:

The beauty of the ICW through South Carolina is amazing.  Photos, though lovely, still don't do it justice.  We found some gorgeous spots to drop the hook and enjoyed starry nights, gorgeous sunsets and sunrises and beauty as far as the eye can see.  We wish we could take you all with us to see how peaceful and special it all is.  One night while anchored in the Coosaw River, out there all by ourselves, everything open to enjoy the night air, we all of a sudden heard this wooshy breathing.  It was a dolphin (or two) coming up for air over and over again, just next to the boat - probably night fishing!  These amazing things happen all the time on our travels.

The damage casued by Hurricane Matthew, however, was everywhere. Here are a few pictures:

Evidence of the destruction from Hurricane Matthew is everywhere.  Myrtle Beach has an area of very low lying homes along the ICW that still had flooded yards and you knew the homes had flooded.  Charleston Maritime Center, where we love to stay, was closed due to damaged docks.  Because so many places all along the waterway were affected by Matthew, marinas were filled to capacity in Charleston when we got there.  We ended up staying at the Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina across the river from downtown Charleston.  Though this wouldn't have been our first choice, it was a nice choice.  There is a water taxi and free hotel shuttle that take you across the river to town.  It is close to the Shem Creek area where there are several nice restaurants and a long boardwalk where you can walk out into the marsh.  There is a beautiful new pool at the marina.  We only stayed four days, but it was a good stay.  We enjoyed an evening with friends Jim and Cynthia on Neverland, dining together at Blossom.  It is always good to see them and share stories.

The pool at Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina

We left Charleston on Tuesday, November 1st, and made our way south on the waterway.  As we were motoring up the channel to take a left to get back onto the waterway, we saw this symbol on our chart plotter.  Both of us looked overhead and listened but saw no helicopter.  Maybe a drone??  Interesting.

See that little picture of a helicopter?

We enjoyed one overnight at anchor and then we pulled into Wexford Plantation on Hilton Head Island where we spent a couple days with our friend Karen at her lovely home.  She is always so gracious and welcoming and it was fun to check out the galleries and gift shops, enjoy a couple yummy meals and walk around her beautiful community.  As always, thank you Karen.  It was great to share a bit of time with you.

For the next week, we kept up a pace of about 60 miles a day.  Up at 7am (we are happy that the time change has made it lighter this early), catching the favorable tides and hitting the skinny water at high.  The anchorages in Georgia are just as lovely as those in North and South Carolina.  Our biggest challenge in Georgia was transiting Jekyll Sound.  To stay on the waterway, you have to go pretty far out to the ocean and then make a hard right back West to get up into the ICW.  The wind was out of the Northeast, the water is shallow and we were taking fairly large waves broadside.  Fortunately, it was short lived and as soon as we made that turn, the wind and waves were behind us.  We were feeling happy we had not decided to head outside for an ocean passage.

The destruction of a marina on Hilton Head Island
from Matthew

Transiting Jekyll Sound 

Cumberland Island

Jupiter Light

We crossed the Florida line on Nov 6th.  Last Thursday, we realized we might have pushed the limits of our fuel tank.  The gauge at the ignition panel was getting achingly close to Empty.  The gauge on the fuel tank down below the floorboards was still between 1/4 and empty.  We each must have checked it every half hour to see if it was creeping towards empty.  We called one marina in our path for fuel but their docks were too damaged to sell fuel, so we had to go another 12 miles to Vero Beach.  Then, once we got there, we had to idle for about 15 minutes before the guy at the dock was finished.  We took on 74 gallons for our 90 gallon capacity tank (a little bit less than the fancy motor yacht that took on 2,000 in Beaufort!)  Wow!  More than 10 gallons to spare.  What were we chewing our fingernails for??!!

The next morning just after we hauled anchor and hopped back on the waterway, a slew of fishing boats blew past us - a race?!  Some had really cool paint jobs.  There must have been at least 50 of them.  The funny thing is that these guys barely leave a wake as they skim above the water, while a deep vee'd trawler makes you bounce and roll for several minutes when they pass you.  Everyone waved and seemed like they were out for some fun!

Over the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing time with our daughter and fiance', Courtney and Paolo, spending the holiday season in and around Boca Raton.  The water is bluer, the air is warmer, the sun is shining.  Greg's work has been all consuming and Sharon has been doing the driving.  A land break will be welcomed, but will be interspersed with sailing days.

'Til next time -