Pam and Darin's visit

We got onto a mooring ball after four days of anchoring, just as my niece, Pam and her husband Darin came to stay with us for a week.  We were excited to share our cruising lifestyle with them and show them our boat.  We wanted to cruise to Key West for a couple of days, but it was race week and no slips available in town.  On what we thought was going to be a pretty calm day, we set out for Sombrero Reef Lighthouse, just a couple miles off shore to see if we could do some snorkeling.  But oh, the waves were nasty and we had failed to batten down properly.  Stuff was flying and we were pitching from side to side, so Captain Steve decided to call it quits before we got there.  The route back into the harbor was calmer, so Pam and Darin rode on the bow.

On the way back to our ball, we passed by the wreckage of the old Faro Blanco Ocean Marina.  Hurricane Wilma took it, and its partner marina on the Gulf side.  The Gulf side has been reclaimed by Hyatt, complete with a new resort, but this one is crying out for someone to rehab it, along with about 50 deserted slips.  

We went to great Happy Hour at Keys Steak and Lobster where all hors d'oeuvres are $5.  They are all great.  Here's the tuna tataki, as close as I come to sushi.  But Pam and Darin liked the sushi. 

Steve and I were talking to a couple next to us at the bar and she asked, "doesn't it get lonely living on a boat?" ... so I had to say: "see all these people to my right, we are with all of them, so no, it doesn't".

Pam and Darin had a rental car for a week, so they went to Key West (we did not).  We all took a drive to Bahia Honda State Park, where there is the best beach in the keys.  Visitors can walk up the old Flagler bridge and take in the view.  A section of the old bridge was removed here to allow boats to enter the Park Harbor.  The current Highway 1 bridge and Florida Bay to the right and the Atlantic to the left.  

From the bridge a great view of the bay side of the Park. 

On their last night we dined aboard.  Pam and Darin were easy to please, and really, very good to have aboard.  

After they left, it was our turn to entertain Brent and Susan and Em and Bev, so Steve made lasagna.  Since we are cruising full time now, we've stocked our galley with equipment and supplies from home that we hadn't brought in previous trips.  Somehow, we've managed to store it all.  Brent and Susan brought Chianti, but oops, no corkscrew here.  Steve had opened a bottle for Pam and Darin using a screw ... screw it in with screwdriver and pull the screw and cork out with a vise grip ... such a clever guy.  

Great food and excellent company.  Bev and Em graciously brought over a couple of folding chairs and we were able to sit 6 for hand and foot, our favorite card game with our favorite card players.  

Our days start with coffee and Cruisers Net on the VHF radio at 9 am.  Tuesdays and Fridays, I go to free yoga in the park and Steve usually goes for a bike ride.  Sunday mornings are breakfast at the American Legion, great food, great price.  Last Saturday we took the Keys bus line down to Big Pine Key for their long running Flea Market.  We ladies had a good time trying on and buying some new clothes and we enjoyed the Fish Fry and ice cream. Big Pine has some cool "free range" roosters and chickens right on the main drag. 

The City Marina, which normally closes their pavillion at 5 pm, stayed open for the Super Bowl.  Great game and a good pot luck, as always.  

We left during the third quarter and found we could stream the game on the computer.  There is no antenna TV in the Keys (why is that?) ... so we've increased our AT&T MiFi to 30 gigabytes/month and are streaming a few TV shows.  

 We are adapting well to being full time cruisers and to life on the ball.  The solar panels are rockin' the watts.  We go most days without turning on the generator.  I'm doing the dishes by heating water on the propane stove, make coffee with the Melitta "pour over" system, and we can use the toaster and short microwave times with the inverter.  Its wonderful to return from an outing and not immediately have to turn on the gen to charge the batteries. The pump out boat comes once a week to empty the holding tank and you don't even have to be aboard for it.  

Our next visitor, BFF Sue, comes tomorrow and we are very excited to have her back aboard.  

Picture success !!

Thanks to Darin and Pam's techie skills, we discovered why the pictures weren't uploading.  We learned that Blogspot users now have to use Chrome to blog if they want to upload pictures.  It appears to be a conspiracy by Google to get us all to switch over to Chrome as our browser, rather than Internet Explorer. Good news is ... problem solved.  So rather than rewrite the previous blog, just gonna post pics and captions here.  This is a floating bait shop on the Caloosahatchee River just outside Fort Meyers.

In Fort Meyers Beach, and here in Marathon, we are on a mooring ball.  Picking up the ball can be a challenge ... Susan shows her technique while Cheryl looks on.

I've likely posted this pic before, but this is the Fort Meyers Beach pirate boat ... for the tourists.

Trico Shrimp Company nestled among the shrimp boat fleet.  Excellent gulf shrimp.

And here is the shrimp fleet.  

The homes on the Naples waterways are spectacular.  Note the "boat garage" on the right side of the first one.

 In Everglades City, this is the interior of the Rod and Gun Club.

 This is the exterior.  They don't open until 11:30, but the porch was open, so we took our own morning coffee up and enjoyed it on the porch.

This is the museum, where we learned how Everglades City was developed as a planned community to house the workers who built the Tamiami Highway, a massive undertaking that connected Tampa and Miami built in the early 1900's.  

 We are having a great time with Pam and Darin and they are enjoying the cruisers lifestyle.

report from Marathon

Hello, dear blog readers,
We have made it to Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, FL, in the "middle keys".  I am unable to upload my photos from Fort Meyers to here into the blog at this time.  Not sure what to do next, so I am going to write a brief narrative, just to get something down, and hope we can resolve the issue soon. 

From Fort Meyers, we went to Fort Meyers Beach and scored a mooring ball.  We had a mini Minnesota reunion at Bonita Bills, meeting up with Kay and Bob, neighbor Paul, and Dean and Missy.  Bought 5 pounds of shrimp at $14/pound at Trico Seafood, nestled among the shrimping fleet. 

Next stop was the Naples City Dock, where we had not stopped before, a lovely and very upscale city, we wandered about, went to a great Farmers Market and had some good pizza.  From there we tried to take the old Naples-Marco ICW back channel, but after running around twice, decided there was just too much shoaling, the tide was too low, so we came out and went to Marco Island on the outside.  Calm seas, it was a good cruise, but we still prefer the ICW routes to the open water, just more to look at.  At Marco Island, we anchored in a small back bay, where there was a dinghy dock at the Winn Dixie (nice!) ...

We were traveling with Once Upon a Time, their guests had left at Naples, and by this time we were all sick with a wicked "cold" or "flu" or whatever.  But travel we must, so on we went to Everglades City.  This little community is less than an hour from Naples, but when you go there by boat, it feels like you are in the middle of nowhere.  We wanted to visit the Rod and Gun Club, a historic inn on the water, so we spent the night at their dock.  Overpriced, the shower had no light, no TP, no paper towels.  In the early morning the fishing boats went out with no regard for their wakes, bouncing us off the pilings.  But we saw the Club and toured the museum. 

From there, boats traveling to the Keys almost all stop at the Little Shark River, one of our favorites, in the middle of the Everglades, very remote.  The next day, we crossed Florida Bay and came into Marathon.  There was a waiting list of 20 to get on a mooring ball, so we are anchored adjacent to the mooring field and are now #11 on the list.  We've been out a bit with Susan and Brent, but we are all still recovering our health.  Today our niece, Pam and her husband Darin are arriving to stay with us for a week.  It's been cloudy, but today the blue skies returned.  As always, stay well.

to Fort Myers

The social life at Fort Pierce continued.  We had dinner on our boat with Jim and Gloria, who we spent time with last winter in the Bahamas, and Susan and Brent. 

 

We went caroling one evening on the docks, I lip sinc'd and played my toy tambourine from the Dollar Tree and Steve opted out altogether, but it was fun.  We had a quiet Christmas Eve with Susan and Brent and their visiting friends, Bob and Lynette.  Susan and I organized a pot luck Christmas Brunch, which was delicious and well attended by about 35.

 

Our plans were to leave on 12/28, but when Steve went to fire up our engine, we got nothing.  A bad starter was the diagnosis.  He pulled the 60 pound beast out and began researching replacement/rebuilding options. 

I just set the beer bottle next to it to illustrate how big it is, but must admit, after wrestling that thing out of the engine room, Steve did drink the well deserved beer.  After having no luck finding one at the typical places, he brought it up to Tim at Florida Marine Diesel about 2 blocks from the marina.  It's the kinda place that looks like a complete mess with piles of stuff every where, but when you go in and ask "do you have one of these thingamajigs", Tim walks over to the thingamajig pile and pulls out exactly the right one.  So he got us one, added the new starter to the old nose piece on ours and Steve put it in.  We were just three days behind our friends and booked across the Okechobee waterway to Fort Myers (150+miles and 5 locks) in three days.

 

We giggle about the way the lock chambers are filled  and emptied.  No fancy pumps here, the lock master just opens the door a foot or so in the direction they want the water to flow and lets it rip. Here it is raising us up. 

We fueled up at American Custom Yacht where diesel was a remarkable $2.71 a gallon, cheaper that it was when we did our Great Loop.  New Years Eve was a quiet night for us at Indiantown Marina.

 

We love seeing the Cypress trees with Spanish moss drapped over the branches....

 

 

... and the occasional air boat. 

 

 

 

The marinas in Fort Myers are all full with the annual Gold Looper Reunion coming up in a couple of weeks.  So we joined Once Upon a Time,

 

Quimby,

 

 

 and new friends, George and Mary, from Green Bay, on Beach Quest

 

in a great anchorage just across the main channel from downtown.  The Fort Myers Yacht Basin (aka City Marina) has 6 mooring balls in the anchorage and there is room for many more boats to anchor.  We have use of their dinghy dock, just blocks from the vibrant downtown and Publix.  The mooring balls are only good for boats less than 22,000 pounds and even the humble Shingebiss, the smallest boat in our little fleet, is bigger than that.  The solar panels have been very efficient in meeting our electrical needs and it's great to not listen to the generator run first thing in the morning and last thing at night. 

 

The last few days have been a whirlwind of shopping, social hours, dinners, and dining out.  We had lunch with Tom and Diann, who we looped with, great to see them.  The weather has been stellar with near record highs and it feels great to be out of the marina bobbing on anchor.

 

Our plans are to head to Fort Myers Beach with Brent and Susan, Once Uupon a Time ... unfortunately, it's their turn to have boat problems and they are awaiting a part to be delivered tomorrow.  If it fixes the problem, we'll be outa here.  Meanwhile, a relaxing day aboard, maybe town later.