As usual, this post is from a long time ago. I just haven’t taken the time to sit down to write it. In other news, we have made some big changes, and we are living in Maine. I’ll write about that separately.

So in the last post we were in Key Marathon, we stayed there till the beginning of June.

“Mission Accomplished”, as George Bush would say, except we really did accomplish our mission, we swam, we relaxed and we took trips to Key West. It was definitely a relaxing month. There is a hotel, that was part of our marina, about 100 yards away with a nice pool. We spent quite a few days there, having a drink, swimming, having another drink…

We took a few trips to Key West. A lot of people don’t like Key West, and more do. I personally like Key West quite a bit. I have been there more times then I can remember.  Older people that have been to Key West, a ways back, before it became mainstream, complain about how it has become touristic, and I can definitely understand their point. There are Walgreens, Denny’s, Express and other chain restaurants and stores right on Duval Street. Cruise ships come in to port almost daily. It would be better if none of the chain stores were there, and it would better if it was not so crowded, but change is inevitable… In general though, I think Key West has retained it’s weirdness. And most of the residents have retained there attitude, of enjoy life first, and everything else comes second. Most people that go to Key West are usually infected by this attitude while they are there, and usually for a week or two after their first exposure. And then some lucky people get infected and have this disease for the rest of their life.

Nadia and I went down to Key West about 4 times over the month. We took the bus there and back, it was around an hour and 45 minute trip each way. It wasn’t bad though, the view is beautiful the whole way. The only bad part, was some of the people on the bus were a little crazy.

We went scuba diving once. We went to Sombrero Reef. The water there gets to only about 30 feet deep, but it was a nice dive. We were supposed to do two tanks, but towards the end of our first tank, I had an equipment failure, and air started pouring out of one of my connections. So we surfaced and swam back to the boat. The dive instructor did not try to fix it, which is probably just their policy. Once we got back to the shop, it turned out that it just needed tightening. The dive guy on the boat was a little upset with us, because we were suppose to be back within an hour, but we were around 13 minutes late. At 15 minutes late, he would have to contact the coast guard, oops…

We also went to a play in Marathon, at the Marathon Community Theatre. The play was interesting, and I would recommend seeing a show there, if you are going to be in the area for a little while. We went to the Marathon Dragon Boat Races one weekend, which was fun. They had all kinds of food vendors, music and the races.

The coolest thing that happened to us while in Marathon, was right before we left. I had to dive on the bottom of our boat and scrape all the barnacles and growth off before we left. We had it cleaned in St. Mary’s, GA before we left, but our bottom paint was around 2 years old, and was completely ineffective. So I rented a scuba tank, and bought a paint scraper, and dove in. The bottom was pretty covered, and the prop was in real bad shape. So I scraped and scraped, and came up and took a break, and scraped and scraped, and came up and took a break. This went on for about an hour and a half, and I was almost done. Then Nadia points behind me and says, “What is that big thing floating up behind you?” At first I thought she was joking, but her tone was serious. That is probably the last thing you want to hear while swimming in the water. The first thing that came to my head was Jaws, then huge alligator, bull shark… So I turn around and it looks like a huge log with algae growing all over it. Then it hits me, “Manatee”. So I dive under the water and sure enough it is around a 1000 lb manatee heading straight at me. And I know manatees are vegetarian mammals, and completely not dangerous, but when you are in the water and a 1000 lb animal is swimming at you, it is a little disconcerting. So I swam back away, and he swam towards me, so I swam back the other way, and he followed me. So I finally stopped and looked under the water, and he was right in front of me a few inches away, staring at me. It was unbelievable. So I put my head out of the water, and he stuck his nose out of the water and gave a good sniff. He had the personality of a dog. He came over and let me pet him, and would give a smell every now and then. He stayed and let me pet him for around 4 minutes. It was such a surreal experience. Nadia got the camera and took some pictures, and she leaned over and petted him. She mocked me later about how I was afraid of him, but she didn’t get in the water. Supposedly because she just got a shower.

Petting Manatee

Manatee

Manatee Smelling

Manatee

We left in the beginning of June. Nadia was going to fly out of Fort Lauderdale, and I was going to take the boat from Fort Lauderdale up to Jacksonville. I wanted to try handling the boat by myself. We had to be in Fort Lauderdale for a certain date, so we had no choice but to leave, and of course the weather was not good to go, but we went anyway.

This time we decided to go on the ICW side the whole way. So we actually had to go the opposite direction for about 6 miles, to go under a bridge. Those 6 miles were nice, because the wind was with us. Once we turned and started heading in the right direction though, the wind was right at us, and we had to motor into it. We broke the trip into 3 days. The first day we stopped at a mooring about 45 miles away. The Keys are nice, in that they have parks, where they have free moorings for visitors. This benefits the boaters and bottom, since people don’t have to anchor. The second day we went really far all the way to No Name Harbor, on the north side of Biscayne Bay. This is a little tiny harbor, where people wait to cross over to the Bahamas, and some just come over to have fun. There was a lot of boats and not too much room to anchor, but it was a very calm night. It was pretty rough going in Biscayne Bay. The next day we went all the way up to Fort Lauderdale, to the marina we stayed at before. We had 2 days before Nadia had to catch her flight, so we went out to eat and toured the area again.

After Nadia left, I stayed one extra day to get ready to go, and then left as early as I could the next day. The bridges on the New river don’t open till 9AM, so I had to leave later then I would like, but I had no choice. I decided to go on the outside because of all the bridges, and I wanted to go in the ocean for fun. So it took about an hour and half to get to the inlet, it was really busy, boats everywhere, a huge freighter was getting turned around, police boats… But I got out without any problem. Once I got out, I put the sails up and I was moving along very well. After a little while, I must have hit the gulf stream, because I saw over 7 knots. I thought it was going to take around 8-10 hours to get up to Palm Beach, but it ended up taking around 6 hours in the ocean. It was perfect. I pulled into the inlet and anchored right there, with the plan of going outside the next day and knocking off a lot of miles. The whole trip was around 450 miles from Lauderdale to where I was going near Jacksonville. I was feeling pretty good, everything worked out well, and I was past the busy part of the trip.

The next morning I got up early and pulled out of the inlet. I knew the weather wasn’t going to be too good. They were calling for light North East wind till the afternoon, and then it was suppose to pick up and turn East. When I first got out, it wasn’t too bad, and I was motoring into the wind. There wasn’t that much chop, but after about two hours, the wind started picking up, and so did the waves. The waves started getting more steep and bigger. Eventually they were really slowing me down. I started only going 3.5-4 knots and at points I would get knocked down to 2 knots. It was not comfortable. I tried heading out farther, changing my direction, but it was pretty uncomfortable. I had a long way to go still, and at the speed I was going, it looked like I would be getting in very late. The motion started to really fatigue me, so I looked on the chart, and there was the Jupitor Inlet. I had planned to go up to the Fort Pierce Inlet. The guide books said not to attempt to go in the Jupitor Inlet without local knowledge. So I called Boat US up and asked for local knowledge. He did not recommend that I go through the inlet. At this point I was still around 45 minutes from the inlet. So I figured I would just tough it out and go all the way to Fort Pierce. By the time I was close to the Jupitor Inlet, I figured it was worth the risk to go in. So I called up Boat US and got the directions to go in. I turned left and headed for the inlet. The waves were very confused at the inlet, but I didn’t really feel it was much worst then before. Right were you pass through the two break walls, two waves came over the transom. Not very much but enough for me to stand up and get out of the way. Once I was inside the break walls, the waves were gone, it was beautiful, sunny, and I felt good. But the directions the Boat US guy gave me were not very clear. All he had to say was follow the markers, but he gave all kinds of directions, so I did circles and called him. He was on his boat and saw me, so he told me where I had to go to get to the ICW. Basically it was to follow the markers.

So I got on the ICW, and went all the way to Cocoa Beach, and got a mooring. I was happy to be secured, and I stayed 2 nights to give myself a break. I went out to eat, and went and saw a movie.

I’m going to end now, and continue in part 2.