Port of Islands marina has its good and bad
points (which I'll
happily list and share with anyone who is
interested), and we've been
pleased to hole up here during the cold snap,
enjoying the electrical
plug-in for our heater and the $5 buffet breakfast.
The dinner menu is
half the price of the Rod and Gun Club, and the food
is a tad better,
especially washed down with an excellent Cab-Merlot
at $3.75 for a
decent sized glass. It might be a place to return to
when the weather
is warmer, and we can enjoy staying out on the
10,000 Islands for
several overnights in a row, sailing and
gunk-holing.
It's been eleven days since my last blog post, so
this will be a
"Marathon" blog, but that's a play on the name of
our current location:
Marathon Key, right in the middle of the curve of
Keys that stretches
down to the southernmost point of the U.S., Key
West.
We got the boat out at Port of Islands Marina at a
pretty low "high"
tide, and practised "the bump" to get it to sit
forward on the trailer,
with the bow nudged into the rubber V. The "bump"
consists of driving
forward - not too fast - and then slamming on the
brakes so that the
boat jerks forward on the keel plate of the trailer.
Not pretty, but it
worked.
Along the Tamiami Highway we clocked a bird every
ten feet. There were
every kind of heron, ibis, anhinga, hawk and all the
other birds that
you can find in Florida. The Everglades is home to
them all.
We put the boat in at Sunshine Key resort on Ohio
Key, beside Bahia
Honda state park. We tried to camp in the park, but
there were no
online reservations available and we got turned away
when we showed up
at the gate even though they have to hold a certain
number of spots -
by law - for people who do; oddly, the attendant
looked at our boat and
said nothing about the fact that there was a
wonderful ramp and marina
for us to launch and tie up. We discovered that two
days later. We
anchored out for a couple of nights, camping for
free on the water, and
then tied up to the wall inside the harbour,
"camping at the marina",
as they called it, for the same price as tents have
to pay for their
sites. RV's and trailers are more expensive. This is
an option that we
need to investigate at many state parks - there's
virtually always
overnight docking at the marinas, and if not, you
can launch there for
a small fee, usually $10, and anchor out nearby. (In
fact, at Sunshine
Key resort, they raised their rates from $65 to $97
per night on Jan
1st, but the marina cost per foot was half of that,
for us.)
The four boats from POI met up at Bahia Honda, where
we put the mast up
on the water (while tied to the dock, mind you) for
the first time. We
sailed down to Big Pine Key. Unfortunately, the de
facto leader of the
group chose to go down the "ocean" (Atlantic) side
in east and
southeast winds, rather than the "gulf" side, and we
had high waves
that made at least one person on each boat seasick.
By the time we
reached Newfound Harbour we were quite certain that
we had no intention
of following the leader all the way down to Key
West. I would have
chosen to sail in the lee of the islands, but
sailboats can only switch
from one side to another under the bridges of the
Overseas Highway at
certain points, very far apart, because of our
masts, and perhaps
that's why the leader stayed his course in rough
following seas.
Two boats continued westward (and eventually made it
to Key West) while
we and one other boat remained behind in safe
harbour. Safe, but very
shallow for a long way out...and very muddy, but the
anchor wouldn't
hold. We had to deploy double anchors, and sleep
fitfully through a
windy night wondering if they were holding. In the
morning, seeing no
easy way to access the land without a dinghy, we
opted to make a run
back to Bahia Honda in "small craft advisory"
weather. We sailed out
well enough, but had to turn directly into the wind
(or lose time
tacking out further in dangerous conditions, which I
was not prepared
to do) and tried to drop sails until we could point
again after the
next channel marker, which keeps boats away from the
shallow shelf
stretching out from the shore. We were bouncing so
hard that the jib
halyard snagged on a little flag halyard block on
the backstay, and the
mainstay slug stopper fell down the mast and all the
slugs popped out,
so we could do nothing but motor all the way. It was
bouncing too hard
to get up on deck to do anything about the sails, at
that point.
I kept the motor running a little less than flat
out, quartering the
waves and trying to slide easily over them without
having enough speed
to bang the hull down on the other side of each one.
It was slow but
steady progress for about two hours through that
section. My technique
worked, mostly...sometimes the waves came from more
than one direction
on the edge of the shoals, or I got distracted for a
split second. I
saw one ten foot wave start to break just above the
boat behind
Deborah, who was huddled on the opposite side of the
cockpit with her
hood up trying to shield herself from bow spray. I
uttered a silent
expletive. We slid up to the crest of the wave, and
from Deborah, who
hates roller coasters, I heard my same expletive
echoed out loud. She
always says that roller coasters will "break her
teeth" because they
make her grit them so hard. This must have seemed
like riding a roller
coaster backward all the way back to our little
harbour.
After
two nights at Bahia Honda with one relaxing day in
between, the weather
was much better, and we sailed up to Marathon in
beautiful sunshine.
The wind dropped to the level labelled "boring" on
the Beaufort Scale
for one part of the passage, but most of the time it
was "Deborah Wind"
- which kept us moving at a sedate three to four
knots, pointing almost
at our extreme limit to keep our bow aimed precisely
at the waypoint
we'd entered into our GPS for the mouth of Boot Key
Harbour.
We saw a sea turtle slide by a foot below the
surface. And thousands of
dead fish, slaughtered by the coldest and longest
cold snap in 120
years. And we were on the Atlantic side. On the Gulf
side the water
dropped from the 70's down to the 50's as the cold
wind blows over
water that averages only ten feet in depth.
Yesterday we toured the
Turtle Hospital, where they took in more
"cold-stunned" turtles in two
days than they normally take in an entire year.
That's basically turtle
hypothermia. Their normal heartrate is about 27
beats per minute, but
drops to 8 when they are "cold-stunned", and they
can't eat, so they
get weaker, and eventually they can die. The lucky
ones beach and are
collected by volunteers and shipped to the hospital,
where they are
warmed gradually (like people have to be when
hypothermic) to avoid
injury.
We learned all about the condition known as "bubble
butt", which can
result from impacted bowels when turtles eat plastic
refuse and other
stuff that they shouldn't. The gas that can't escape
keeps them
floating on the surface, making it impossible for
them to dive down to
eat, and subject to injury from the propellors of
fast sport fishing
boats. Floating monofilament fishing line, which
takes 600 years to
disintegrate, causes other injuries, even flipper
amputations.
The dead fish litter the beaches and float on the
surface. They are
mostly juveniles, and mostly redfish from the
mangroves, but there are
tarpon, bonefish, parrotfish, trunkfish and almost
every other species.
Experts speculate that there are dead larger fish
that are simply down
at the bottom and haven't started to float to the
surface yet.
The birds and other predators who would normally eat
this carrion are
simply too stuffed to keep up with the supply of
food, and they say Key
Largo is beginning to stink. Volunteers and civic
and state employees
are out trying to gather them up. If the turtles eat
them the fish
bones will cause further bowel impactions, which is
a further cause of
concern for the Hospital staff. They predicted we'd
see a lot more
floating turtles in the coming days and weeks.
We passed on the option of a mooring ball (or an
anchorage in the
harbour) at the city marina. We need a dinghy and a
pump-out head for
that, and we haven't got either. I went to West
Marine for a retrofit
(we have the deck fittings for one already, and
there obviously was one
on our boat at one time), but the one they have is
an inch too tall for
the spot under the V-berth where it would have to
sit. So we ended up
taking a slip at Marathon Marina, which - except for
continuing lack of
promised wi-fi coverage - is going to be fine for a
month, during which
we'll go up and down the Keys by truck, and the only
sailing we'll do
will be day-sailing. We have better access to
seafood restaurants and
local events, nature centres, etc, this way. And it
is only costing us
$13/day for a month of mooring with water, hydro,
hot showers, and - if
it ever gets up and running - wi-fi included. We
have a dozen friendly
new neighbours who began introducing themselves
before we even docked.
So much more to tell about this place - great
tropical vegetation,
fauna, temperatures...it's like Ontario in July...
Deborah demonstrates that the Key to Happy Living is
to kiss a dolphin
every day, but actually my title is another word
play - a Key is an
island, originally should have been spelled "cay",
but that's them
Americans for ya...
On Deborah's birthday we spent the morning at the
Dolphin Research
Centre. It's where the original Flipper was filmed
in the '60's, using
their first dolphin, and some of the episodes of the
TV series were
filmed there too. The U.S. Navy used some of their
dolphins in their
training programs down in Key West, but one of them
kept escaping and
swimming fifty miles back home, so eventually they
just let her stay
there.
I have
endless photos of dolphins standing on their heads.
They're quick. Just
as they leap out of the water I press the shutter on
my camera, but by
the time it responds, they're already headed toward
Australia. It's a
game they play: dolphin peek-a-boo...
Then they laugh at you with just their heads
sticking out.
Finally I did manage to catch this fellow in
mid-flight.
We went to Marathon High School for dinner. Their
culinary arts class
made up a great buffet meal of snapper, pork, corn
chowder, ice cream
with fifty toppings...lots of good stuff.
Yesterday we went to a nautical flea market on Big
Pine Key, where I
picked up the perfect stainless shackle to switch
jib sheets from one
clew to another quickly from a guy who salvages
wrecked boats. I paid a
few dollars for it; the insurance company paid the
rest.
Big
Pine Key is also, along with No Name Key, the home
of the tiny Key
deer. They're about three feet tall, not much taller
than my truck
tire. They were almost wiped out by traffic. They're
pretty calm and
fearless, and when tourists began feeding them from
cars because they
were so cute, they learned to wander onto the road
without any sense of
vehicle speed or acceleration. Careful management in
terms of speed
limits, enforcement of same, and laws against
feeding has brought the
population back to over 800, after near-extinction,
but still, there
were 119 killed on the highway last year. So far
only 3 dead this
year...one a week. Kinda pointless, really...not
much meat on 'em...
Today we went to Key West for the day, so I'll post
some photos
tomorrow. That'll be my last blog for a while, as we
intend to slow
down and start taking it easy. Gonna get a new
mainsail boom cover
made, read books, walk on beaches, maybe some
daysailing, some
snorkelling at Sombrero Reef if the water is still
enough for long
enough to clear for good visibility. They have
mooring balls, first
come first serve, so we can just motor out about
three miles, tie onto
a ball and get in the water.
Key West, that is. We spent the day there on Mom's
birthday. Saw lots
of iconic naughtiness on Duval Street, and climbed
the lighthouse for a
view of the entire key. Drank awesome margaritas at
Kelly's. Who's up
there in that little window? "Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
let down your hair..."
In the lighthouse keeper's dwelling, you'll notice
that the downspout
from the eaves runs into a short little house with
no windows on the
lawn. That's to keep your cistern in...and after
all, brethren have
often wished they could keep their sistern in such a
little house
outside in the yard...ba-dum-bump. Actually, that's
a cistern to catch
fresh rainwater - fresh water being scarce on the
Keys.
This tree - and it is all one tree, mind you - grew
beside the
lighthouse tower. It has well-known pharmaceutical
properties to aid in
foot care...it is, of course, the banyan
tree...(wait for it, it'll
come to you...yeah, it's "corny")
The
Disney Magic cruise ship was in town, that had a lot
of people out
gawking at the western edge of town, but most were
there to do the
traditional sunset-viewing, with street performers
to keep everyone
amused until the final spectacular moments.
So here we are in the marina at Marathon, "the Heart
of the Keys", for
three more weeks, paying $13 a day. This is a photo
of our friends'
boat in one small section of Boot Key Harbour,
swinging on a mooring
ball; we're in a slip at the mouth of the harbour.
Enjoying Happy Hour
$3 margaritas, $1.75 for a tasty dark pint of beer,
$2 for a basket of
six fat chicken wings. Who says the Keys are
expensive...? Except for
one blog to follow about a stowaway from
Scarborough, this'll be my
last blog for a while, as we learn to relax and
chill out for a few
weeks before heading up to Miami and Fort Lauderdale
to meet with Deb's
father. But next, we'll enjoy this weekend's three
day "1st Annual
Florida Keys Traditional Music Festival" at the
Sombrero Resort, just
across the harbour from here. We might even attend
by boat! And on
Sunday afternoon, a $5 all-you-can-eat chili
cook-off at another resort
on Big Pine Key. Chili competitors eat for
free...we're considering
entering Peter's River Camping Chili - we know
that's a winner, because
we already won one cook-off with that a few years
ago.
I'm Gnorman. How do you do? Yes, Gnorman with a "G",
but of course the
G is silent.
It
was
late December. The snow was coming...I couldn't
stand the thought of
one more year buried in snow in that frigid planter
in my garden in
Scarborough. My boss, Greg Martin, was a kind man,
but just didn't seem
to notice how pale I was getting. He'd never miss
me...he'd never even
know I was gone - he'd probably think I was just
buried in a snow drift
all winter. A kind couple in a passing truck allowed
me to climb on
board. Man, they had a lot of luggage! I think
there's a kitchen sink
in here somewhere...
I
enjoyed
the long ride south. I had my first cup of Tim
Horton's and my
first good night's sleep in a comfortable bed of my
own...except for
the snoring in the other bed.
When
I
saw my first palm tree, I knew my dreams were coming
true.
Finally
we
launched
the
boat.
I was promoted to the rank of captain...
Cap'n Gnorman, that's me! I quickly learned the
local dress. Looks good
on me, right? But I'm still very pale. I'm going to
concentrate on
getting some sun.
In
the
meantime, I'm ready for some serious fun. Looky
here: I was obviously
Born to Fish, even though I've been Forced to Guard
a Garden all my
life. I'm going to find a new line of work down
south, just you wait
and see! Green card? What's that?
This
is
what I was made for! Check out my moves in a hula
skirt...the
natives have really taken to me, look at their huge
smiles...like
crocodiles...some of them have an odd little glint
in their squinty
gator eyeballs...sort of a "hungry for a snack"
look...? Maybe I should
find another line of work.
Here I
am, dressed for my job search. A new suit of
clothes, some colour in my
cheeks...I'm beginning to look a proper salty
sea-captain, aren't I?
I got
the job! This is my new boss's funky truck - he
rents bicycles, as you
can see. That's me on the roof.
This
is it! My new job. It suits me perfectly. Obviously
I'll have to work
just as hard at this one as I did guarding my
garden...and I'm sure
it'll pay just as much...eat your hearts out, you
frosty northern
gnomes!
This
is
a flock of ibis perched on the wire. They're usually
on the ground,
pecking out food. I call them Key West chickens, and
you often see them
mixed in with a flock of chickens in someone's back
yard. You know why
a flock composed of no other kind of bird but ibis
has nothing to be
sorry about? - No egrets....
Deborah has already wondered out loud if we should
book another month
here at the marina, or come back next year. It is a
laid-back place
with enough to do, friendly neighbours, and
shorts'n'shirtsleeve
weather. Our routine tends to be: shower, breakfast
on the boat, read,
surf and do email, pick one highlight for the day,
and have either
lunch or supper out - trying out every good
restaurant at least once,
even if just for their Happy Hour snacks (cheap,
tasty protein), and
we've been twice to magnificent culinary spreads put
on by the students
at Marathon High School. Then we eat fruit back on
the boat for
dessert, and retire early - sometimes after watching
a little tv on the
multi-media computer that I have set up inside the
boat. We have power,
water and a cable connection right at our slip;
morning coffee at the
office, hot showers and clean new laundry machines.
Our wi-fi
connection was sketchy at first, but this morning it
is performing
brilliantly - I'm on my tower and Deb is using her
laptop right now,
from right inside the cabin of our boat.
"Daily highlight" activities have included the
traditional music
festival, which was great - finger-pickin' guitar
styles from different
regions, cajun fiddle, boogie piano, Texas country
harmony singing,
etc. There's Sombrero Beach and Pigeon Key, and this
weekend the Pigeon
Key Art Festival, which has grown from humble
mangrove roots to become
one of the most significant in the country. We
enjoyed a chili cook-off
with the Abate motorcycle club at one of their
favourite bars - one
large section of the parking lot is reserved for
Harley-Davidsons.
Twenty different varieties of chili...we stuffed
ourselves, and
wondered what sort of road kill might be in each -
lots of dead iguanas
around, not to mention the occasional Key deer.
If we come next year, I'm going to bring bicycles,
tennis racquets and
a softball glove. The roads are flat and the
distances perfect for
cycling, and many people use them, including most of
the sailors at
anchor or on mooring balls at Boot Key Harbour. They
have a real
community spirit at Boot Key. A partial list of
their activities
includes yoga and tai chi every mid-morning, which
Deborah has
attended; softball every Tuesday morning, tennis
courts in the Marathon
Community Park, a Meet-n-Greet pot luck every
Wednesday evening and a
musicians jam on Saturday evening. There's a good
library, and free
wi-fi at City Marina, the library, and several
restaurants and
businesses around town - when we want to place a
phone call on the
road, we just pull into a parking lot beside The
Brass Monkey, or
similar places, and use Skype on our laptop.
A
couple of manatees were here this morning - a
neighbour began emptying
yesterday's horrible all-day downpour from his
dinghy, and they showed
up looking for fresh water, which they crave. He let
his hose run for
them (which is highly illegal, just as feeding them
is, because it
encourages them to come up to boats where they often
get cut by
spinning propellers), and Deborah took this photo of
them competing for
the hose.
Here
I
am reading "Honey, Let's Get A Boat" in a deck chair
on my deck, at
high tide. Tiger Moth is sporting her new brand new
boom cover, behind
me, and you can see the pop-top open above the
cabin, and the sunshade
system for the cockpit. There's also a solar shower
which we use to
warm water for dish-washing - not that we have many
dirty dishes. And
someone else cleans the spacious, tiled marina
shower rooms. So, life
on a small boat has some advantages: it rocks you to
sleep at night,
and the smaller the boat, the cheaper the cost of
marina camping, which
is charged by the foot but includes the same
amenities no matter how
large or small your boat. We were the smallest boat
in the marina until
a couple of days ago, when "Doc" and his wife, both
closing on 80 years
of age by the looks of them, showed up in a little
Steiger Craft that
might be a foot shorter than our Tiger Moth.
While
we
were in Key West, after days of looking in every
jewelry store for
miles, we finally concluded a five year search for
just the perfect
pair of earrings for Deborah. We had to buy the
perfect sailboat
pendant in one store and its twin in another store,
then get the
jeweller to turn them into earrings, and then get
another jeweller to
solder them so they wouldn't ever get lost after
five years of yearning
for them.
Deborah
has
begun
collecting
photos
of sunsets. She took this one a few steps
from our table at Lazy Days restaurant at our
marina, where we had
dinner two nights ago.
And
of
course, here's Gnorman enjoying the sunset after a
long day of snow
shovelling...
Deborah
caught
a
photo
this morning of something rarely seen above water:
manatee lips. A neighbouring boater was cleaning his
boat and put down
the hose, which sprayed a stream of water off the
deck. This manatee
arrived quickly to take advantage. You'll notice
that they have a short
cornered snout rather like a stubby elephant's trunk
- maybe like the
annoying little elephant in Rudyard Kipling's story
"The Elephant's
Child". Sure enough, the closest relative to the
manatee is the
elephant.
In the upper photo you see the philtrum (space
between the nose and the
upper lip), and in this photo the manatee's mouth is
open and you can
see the bottom lip and either the top lip or the
tongue. Fresh water
pouring from the sky - must be like manna for a
manatee.
This place is for the birds. One of the most active
industries in
Marathon nowadays, after a history of railroad
construction followed by
commercial fishery, is now fishing tourism. We were
at Sparky's Landing
the other day when pelicans flying in formation
landed and commenced a
conference at the fish cleaning station, and a heron
(or a Great
Egret?) as big as Deborah came in for the leftovers.
We saw
another, smaller one waiting on tables at Burdines,
a famous local
waterfront boat service joint, bar and eatery. I
went back with the
camera and neither of them was around, but this
afternoon an obliging
heron settled on the pier just beside my cockpit, so
here he is.
What I
was doing in my cockpit was creating rope oarlocks
for my
just-purchased origami dinghy. I took it for a test
run, then packed it
away until we need it. It'll ride along on the deck
just inside the
stanchions and lifelines. As you can see, I need
Deborah on the back
seat for a little counter-weight...
Here
it is folded up...see? Origami dinghy.
You
can
tell the Key's mentality by the speed limit road
sign on the way
into Keys Colony. This is a county road, mind you,
not a private
driveway.
Speaking of birds, these are the ever-popular
"bare-footed,
bare-breasted boobies"
Our dock neighbours are extremely affectionate...and
not shy at all...
Another of Deborah's sunsets...
No photos today - just links.
Plans evolve. Our intention to leave Marathon Marina
at the end of our
month here is evaporating. We considered some
marinas with "transient"
dockage or mooring in Biscayne Bay, which is a good
sailing area for
small boats, but with the daytime temperatures only
in the mid-sixties
all week and the nightly lows in the low fifties,
our resolve is
weakening. The problem boils down to the fact that
it is simply too
comfortable here. There's just enough to see and do,
an easy drive to
nearby sights and activities in Islamorada, Key
Largo, etc - the
Theater of
the Sea,
snorkelling
trips,
week-long bicycle and kayak rentals, concerts,
musical jams, and lots
more. And although those temperatures don't seem
like much to complain
about for Canadians, when you're out on the water in
a stiff breeze in
those temperatures, with the windchill and the
spray, sailing doesn't
seem as much like a vacation - it's a bit more like
an Outward Bound
endurance course.
A dock neighbour, a retired engineer from Indiana
who writes articles
for a sailing magazine and sails with the trailer
sailors in the North
Channel in the summer, claims that there are five
distinct climate
zones between Key West and the northern border of
Florida. We're
sitting in the southernmost of the five right
now...and beginning to
doubt the wisdom of moving even a hundred miles
northward.
Miami and Fort Lauderdale are within easy reach by
truck if we want the
big city amusements. We went to the science centre,
watched a 3D Imax movie about
Arabia, and then watched
Avatar
on the same screen - five stories high, with 16
channel sound, it was
an awesome 3D experience. And yesterday we were at
the largest annual
boat show in the world, in Miami. We sailed for an
hour on a
Presto
30 - very interesting
boat in many respects, but we were more impressed
with the finish and
price of the
Seaward
26 and 32,
which
are
both
trailerable
and
have only fifteen and twenty inches of
draft, respectively - perfect for Florida Keys and
Bahamas sailing.
We spent two nights in Fort Lauderdale
"couch-surfing", and one further
night in a hotel. Now, "couch-surfing" requires some
explanation. Years
ago we joined an organization called Servas which
vetted people through
an interview process and then introduced them to
each other via mailing
list, with the idea that people around the world
could meet and provide
hospitality to each other. In the summer of 1996 we
stayed with Servas
hosts in Bulawayo and in Durban, and another host
took us on a tour of
a game park in her car.
Now there is a website called CouchSurfing.com
which does the same thing, much more efficiently. We
stayed for free in
a 1200 square foot condo apartment a block from Fort
Lauderdale beach,
owned by a friendly single guy who wasn't even there
for most of the
two days. I'm getting ready to line up another
experience, possibly
with a couple who have an apartment in Miami Beach,
for this month.
Couch-surfing hosts don't expect you to repay them
directly - it's more
of a "pay it forward" system. When we get home to
Toronto, we'll
reciprocate with other strangers. The fellow we
stayed with in Fort
Lauderdale has had a series of guests from Europe,
some of whom he has
picked up at the airport at 5 a.m., who were
onward-bound to Haiti to
do volunteer earthquake recovery work.
In the meantime, we're going to enjoy more of what
the Keys have to
offer, including the things I mentioned earlier,
plus Marathon's annual Pig Races
- I'll try to get photos of that! - and continued
tinkering with
improvements to the boat, and more time relaxing in
a deck chair with a
good book. There are free "take-one-leave-one" book
nooks at almost
every marina and campground. And here's a great
link: click on the
video half-way down this page to view some of the
things we've seen and
done in Marathon already. There are links to other
sections of the
Keys, too - all within an hour's drive in either
direction from here.
You'll get a sense of why we're so comfortable
here...
http://www.fla-keys.com/marathon/
The paradox is this: that in a laid-back small town
covering an island
a few miles long with a bridge at each end, with
friendly small town
people and distances that are flat and comfortable
to ride anywhere on
a bicycle, there is so much going on.
Speaking
of
a
"pair
a docks", our dock neighbours for the last two weeks
have
been a family of extreme fishermen from New Jersey.
They left early
each morning and returned at suppertime with a huge
catch to filet and
freeze. On their final day, they stayed out until 4
a.m. the next
morning, and returned with a real trophy fish. The
youngest son had
pulled in a 155 lb swordfish (which are usually
caught only at night)
measuring 70 inches from his tail to his lower jaw,
from a depth of
1600 feet.
We've enjoyed a string of parties and concerts, our
most recent
favourite being a jazz quartet in Sunset Park, on
the beach. This
weekend we'll attend a 7 hour "Gospel Explosion" at
the community park
band shell. Two nights ago we had a one hour lesson
in East Coast Swing
dancing, followed by two more hours of dance party.
Last night we went
to an all-you-can-eat fish fry at a local RV resort,
a benefit to
support Multiple Sclerosis, where the food was
delicious and fresh,
with several fish fry recipes and literally 128
square feet of desserts
made by the ladies of the park - four 4x8 tables
end-to-end with every
square inch covered, including some tasty Key Lime
pies. There were
hors d'ouvres, and the vegetables were all fresh
produce, too. The men,
from every corner of the northern states and with a
fair sprinkling of
Canadian residents as well, were watching the Canada
U.S. men's Olympic
hockey final on a big screen TV in the corner, and I
have to say that
when Canada won, that was pretty delicious, too.
We
have begun our caretaking duty on Cypraea, a Union
36 made in Taiwan,
rich with teak and mahogany. It gives us a lot more
space, a sense of
seclusion and privacy, a place to read and relax,
and play my trumpet
out on a mooring with less chance of upsetting a
neighbour - at the
marina I always worry about bothering a dock
neighbour who doesn't
really like the sound of a trumpet.
This is the salon - very comfortable...
On our
own boat, a fellow trailer-sailor, Gord Lepert, who
is here with his
wife Betty in a Catalina 25, nudged me into building
a bi-pod gin pole,
with his help and tools. He's a retired engineer.
Gord and Betty enjoy
our North Channel in the summer months.
The gin pole should give us a more stable way to
raise and lower our
mast, not only on the trailer but even on the water,
to go under low
bridges; the spare main-sheet pulley system I have
on it will allow
Deborah to stand on the deck to raise or lower the
120 lb mast with only
40 lbs of effort at its heaviest point, with me
under the mast in the
cockpit guiding it into a mast crutch on the stern
(and controlling a
second safety line run from the fore-stay back to a
cockpit winch). You
have to be able to go under the Overseas Highway to
get to the lee of
the weather here in the Keys, and there are lots of
other coastal
sailing areas where mast-lowering capability in the
absence of a mast
crane is a great advantage.
I promised to tell you about the Marathon National
Pig Races, but as it
turns out, Deborah wanted to tell you about that, so
here is her
account:
Stuffed Pig Restaurant's National Pig Races
featuring Rosaire's Royal
Pigs
Well...shut my mouth and kick me in the pants! This
is the most
exciting event I have been to in a long time! Maybe
it is because
Marathon is a cross between a bustling metropolis
and a laid-back
country village. Maybe it is because we have been
here for nigh onto
three fortnights, and frequently hunkered down
trying to keep warm,
avoiding rain or howling winds. However, yesterday's
forecast was for
"abundant sunshine"* and about half the town showed
up at about 5 p.m.
to check out the action at the Stuffed Pig Eatery.
Now, what you must
know is that the Stuffed Pig normally serves only
breakfasts and
lunches, and they are a top-notch establishment - if
Fodor's had a
homecooking department, they would rate 5
stars*****. It was their idea
to invite Rosaire's Royal Racers this weekend for a
"Marathon"
fundraising event to benefit Grace Jones Day Care.
We learned that 5
years ago, Hurricane Wilma went through Marathon and
destroyed much
property, including the daycare. According to the
information told to
us at the opening event, they rebuilt, and now will
be able to access
more funds from the government ($100,000) if they
can raise $300,000.
Apparently they are about $40,000 away from that and
so this event may
help them to get closer to achieving that goal.
A very professional-looking race track had been set
up at the side of
the restaurant's property, complete with flags,
starting gates, fencing
and a wood chip racing surface. There was also a
podium and sound
system where the owner, Wayne Rosaire did the colour
commentary. There
were 3 heats, five pigs in each. Bets were made. The
races began with
the novice piggies - mixed breed pigs (Berkshire and
Hampshire?) - 8
weeks old. Their colouring was half blue and half
pink, and they are
known in the business as "blue butts". Like all
young things, they were
adorable. They made an appearance in the holding
dock - all snuffling
around for the goodies buried in the wood chips.
Then they were loaded
into the starting gates and racing silks with
numbers were attached.
The signal to start the race was given and they were
off. They all made
a swift run, but my pig came in last!
The
next heat featured the 6 month-old experienced
runners. Again my pig
came in last!
The
final heat was the best! It was billed as the
"Orient Express",
and it featured
Asian Pot-Bellied Pigs - fully, and I mean FULLY
grown - you can
clearly see what a great sense of purpose and
direction these
"swine speedsters" had! They were
"tearing up the track!" - literally rooting for the
grass hidden
beneath the wood chips that covered the racing
surface. The colour
commentary for this was so funny, I nearly split a
gut laughing. He
built them up to be incredible speedsters, and then
they came out,
and...walked - in every direction but down the
track.
So,
are we having too much fun? Our new neighbour Kevin
is a fellow we've
befriended for the past few weeks, who has just
moved his catamaran to
the slip beside us. He wants us to crew with him a
bit - his wife is
recovering from an accident and surgery to her leg.
So we'll be
cruising out to Sombrero Light to do some snorkeling
on the reef, and
Deborah will get a taste of sailing on a "flat"
boat. She's trying to
think of new names for our Mirage. One of her names
is "Tip-Sea", which
is a clue as to how much she enjoys mono-hull
sailboats that heel in the
wind; the downside to that name, of course, is that
it might invite
boarding by marine police, or being invited to join
Alcoholics
Anonymous.
"Oink, oink" until next time...
Charlie Brown has $100,000 in medical bills for head
trauma from a
motorcycle accident; Stu Philcox needs to be brought
home from
somewhere; then there's Multiple Sclerosis, and high
school athletics,
and homeless furry felines, the list goes on and on
- and just when I
begin to feel overwhelmed at the number of
"fundraisers" going on all
around us, it hits me: this is their social safety
net. It gets around
having to raise taxes, to which the populace would
not take kindly. It
makes me a little queasy to think that getting help
could depend so
much on public sentiment and a local community
consensus of who is
considered "worthy", not to mention donor fatigue.
But we've done the
"fish fry", and had a great dinner of stone crab
claws - a famous local
item of cuisine - had the truck washed, eaten pork
and rice, and church
dinners, entered numerous draws (and won a dinner
gift certificate),
bought Boy Scout coupon cards, and on, and on. Local
businesses are
under constant social pressure to display their
civic responsibility by
providing discounts and prizes for fundraisers, and
they cough up
pretty generously.
Yesterday
we
had
a
tour of five exceptional homes courtesy of the
Marathon Garden
Club. We paid a stiff entry fee - the event was a
fundraiser for the
club, which does a lot of local beautification,
including such things
as the signs on the town borders. Municipal tax
dollars apparently
don't cover such niceties.
Here's a resident of one garden who is a southern
counterpart to
Gnorman. Not nearly as nattily dressed,
though...island garb, I
suppose...but obviously better fed.
Alligators
are
becoming
quite
a
nuisance in the Keys...sometimes they apparently
"go Postal", and run off with mailboxes.
They hand them off to hapless manatees, who just
stand around looking
confused, not sure what to do with them; or to
dolphins, who are a
little more astute.
Stone crab claws are interesting, as well as tasty:
someone (me)
invariably asks, "but what happens to the rest of
the crab?" Turns out,
crabs tend to lose their claws on a regular basis,
in fights with other
crabs. Crab fisherman simply take the biggest claw
(subject to
regulation sizing) and toss the rest of the crab
back in the water,
where it feeds itself with the smaller claw, which
quickly becomes the
larger one, while the one that it lost regenerates.
It's an entirely
renewable food source.
Spring
has
come to Marathon, and the plants are blossoming,
including many
varieties of cactus, like this one just up the lane.
Did you know that
you can click on any photo in the blog and see a
larger version? I'm
embarrassed to say I didn't either, for several
weeks.
Those
blossoms are pretty, but you can't pick 'em; that
rule is "prickly"
enforced, just as trespassing is enforced in this
sign on a nearby
fence.
Finally, there may be some who suspect that I've
grown my beard mostly
to annoy my mother; but here's a bit of blatant
discrimination on the
front door of the Hurricane Grill, a favourite lunch
spot, that might
encourage me to get a haircut and shave.
Hippy no longer...a sure sign that summer has
arrived...my mother will
be pleased, and I'm welcome to enter by the front
door at the Hurricane
Grill now.
On
Saturday
we each put in five hours of volunteer labour at -
you guessed
it - another fundraiser, this time by the Chamber of
Commerce and the
Organized Fishermen of Florida, with the Wounded
Warriors and others
being the beneficiaries. We served seafood: lobster,
mahi-mahi, and
clams. I made change, and Deborah passed the plates.
The line got
longer, and longer...stretched right across the
playing field by the
time I left my post, four hours after we'd opened
the till. I took in
about a hundred dollars a minute for that whole
time, and we were only
one of a dozen or more booths. Five hours was more
than we'd signed up
for, and we were tired, but we got free entry to the
festival and a
fish dinner for lunch out of it.
Soon
we'll
no longer wake to this lovely view from the "porch"
(cockpit) of
our "floating cottage". With the help of a fellow
trailer-sailor quite
experienced at the task, I've spent two miserable
days inspecting the
wheel bearings on the trailer, repacking all of them
and replacing two
sets - hammering out the races that showed fretting,
dremmeling off
some galding on the seats below the races, hammering
new races back in,
sanding and cleaning brake shoes and drums, etc. And
we had a wiring
problem on the trailer - no right turn signal -
which we spent ages
tracing only to discover that it was a fuse in the
truck specifically
for the right turn signal circuit for a trailer
wiring harness. I felt
dumb, but none of my dock neighbour-advisors had
predicted that,
either. Now we have to spend the afternoon sorting
out the load on the
truck, dropping the mast, and preparing to haul out
the boat tomorrow
morning. We might stay an extra night, sleeping on
Cypraea while Tiger
Moth sits on the trailer, ready for an early morning
start on Thursday;
I'm hoping to squeeze in a tour of
Pigeon
Key and the watercolours exhibition, as well.
Here's
a mystery photo for you. I love it - looks like
modern art brush
strokes. I might make a canvas out of it some day.
The first blog
reader who guesses what it is wins a prize...
New friends come and go on the water. They're the
kindest, most jovial
and open set of people, and you'll know them for a
few days...then it
is like "ships passing in the night". A cruising
newfie couple had us
in their cockpit, trying to help me with a wi-fi
range extender
antenna, when the husband let out a guffaw and
called to his wife,
"Would ya look at these dirty feet, my dear!" He was
looking at the tan
pattern on Deborah's bare feet. This the cause of
Deborah's "dirty
feet":
Back to the west side of Florida, we joined the
WCTSS (trailer sailors)
once more for a cruise out to the island of Cayo
Costa, a State Park
that only boaters can reach. See all the masts? Each
belongs to a boat
that was part of our weekend fleet.
We
anchored on both sides of the beautiful spit of sand
which forms
Pelican Bay. We hiked six miles to
the other side of the island and back, to the beach
on the Gulf. You
can see how few people have to share the beach. Most
of these people
came over on a ferry, however.
Dolphins fed beside us right at the beach.
There
were osprey, black snakes, armadillos...and a
fisherman in a small boat
caught himself a bull shark after a four mile
struggle. He let it go in
our bay shortly after making it grin for the camera;
parents watched
their children very carefully for the next hour or
so. It was a lovely
weekend and we enjoyed kibbitzing with the trailer
sailors, and sharing
a campfire on the beach for two nights.
Extreme De-rigging: A
small craft warning got
us away early on Sunday, back to the marina where
we'd launched. I
didn't get the boat as high up on the trailer as I
should have, and it
was overbalanced at the back. It was a busy ramp, so
I thought I'd just
do the "bump", as described in an earlier post. The
boat wasn't having
any of that, it wouldn't budge an inch, so I decided
the only choice
left was to circle back on the one-way driveway to
the ramp, and back
the boat and trailer into the water again. I drove
away
determinedly...and suddenly there was a tremendous
bang and a flash of
light, rather like a clap of thunder and lightning,
behind me; then a
crashing sound, and in the rear view mirror I saw my
previously
vertical mast suddenly horizontal, balancing
precariously on the stern
pulpit. My $400 mast-top navigation light was
smashed into dozens of
pieces of glass, metal and plastic all over the
pavement. My stainless
steel forestay cable had been neatly severed by a
high voltage cable,
bringing the mast down in an awful hurry. We were
very lucky that we
didn't damage any marina or county property, or
cause any more damage
to the sailboat.
That night we stayed on a site at a nearby RV
resort. The skies opened
up and we were ankle deep in water. Deborah
remembered that we'd packed
rubber boots, so we used those. Our neighbours
reminded her why she has
often repeated that she wants to be "trailer trash"
in her retirement -
they were friendly to the point of being
overwhelming. It felt like we
were in a remote outpost where new people are a
rarity. The fellow
across the way invited us for drinks and supper:
green beans, shrimp
and scallops, and pineapple upside-down cake. His
friends kept dropping
by to greet him and meet us, and one couple caught
us making our way to
the washroom with our toothbrushes and dragged us
into their trailer
for a drink and a visit. The following morning a
fellow who'd lost out
on a chance to monopolize our presence the evening
before came by on
his bike and insisted that we visit his RV for a
chat and to look at
his photo albums. Then he went to breakfast with us.
We were three or
four hours late getting away that morning. We began
to feel as if we
were being slowly eaten, bit by piece, by the
emotionally-starved,
lonely walking undead. But that sounds ungrateful,
and truth to tell,
we were astounded - yet again - at how open-armed
trailer park
residents are.
We
spent three nights at Homosassa Springs upon the
invitation of Janet
and Doug Bagshaw, fellow members at Highland Yacht
Club. We had an RV
site right behind theirs. They took us to great food
spots with such
dubious names as "The Shed" (great catfish!) and
"The Freezer" (great
shrimp!). It really was a restaurant inside a
commercial freezer. We
visited Dave and Kay Huntley in Crystal River, also
HYC members. I
played road golf down the streets of the RV park
with Doug and his
friends, drank Janet's delicious coffee for three
mornings straight,
and Doug serenaded us one morning with his guitar.
We enjoyed our
visit. We didn't snorkel with manatees this time,
but we'd done that
once on a previous visit - this is where that's
done, and there's a
nice wildlife park, worth visiting, next to the
Turtle Creek RV Resort.
At the end of a drive through miles of flat salt
marsh down to Ozello
Island we saw an example of how nature mocks man's
construction efforts
in Florida.
This
house sports an ironic sign claiming to be an
example of quality
construction, "Where Craftsmanship is not a lost
art".
The ferocity of storms and storm surges in Florida
is the reason why
most homes in this region and many others are now
built on stilts with
nothing on the ground floor but the car you'll use
to evacuate, and the
boat you might have to use to get to the grocery
store if you choose to
stay behind. Even new trailers and mobile homes have
to be mounted
three feet above the ground.
Way down upon the Suwanee River
As we left Homosassa this morning Doug suggested
that we should check
the pressure in our trailer tires. He was right,
they were
underinflated. While I was adding air at the first
gas station we
stopped at, Deborah spotted a nail sticking out
between the tread
ridges. We turned around and headed back to the tire
garage in
Homosassa. Luckily the nail was short, and hadn't
gone through. All we
lost was an hour of time. Finally underway by 11
a.m., we drove for a
half-day and then decided to visit a place we'd
always promised we'd
stop at on previous trips:
the
Stephen
Foster Folk Culture Center State Park. We saw
some of the best
dioramas - animated, too! - either of us has ever
seen, and listened to
the world's largest carillon (tubular bells) playing
a medley of
Stephen Foster songs. Now we're holed up in a motel
with wi-fi (hence
the blog updates) while it rains pretty hard
outside. I'll finish this
blog with a few random photos of interesting plants
you'd find in
northeast Florida.
Our Florida winter is over. We might do it again,
but because it was
the coolest winter they'd had in thirty years or
more, we didn't do as
much sailing as we expected, and although we took
our snorkeling gear
and wet suits, we didn't get them wet even once. On
the positive side,
as we frequently reminded ourselves, we didn't move
a single
shovel-full of snow, all winter...we had fun of one
sort or another
every single day, and we loved the people and their
laid-back, smiling
sunshiny ways.
Cruising home, we passed by the
Kentucky
Horse
Farm, saving that for another trip - it looks
pretty
interesting, but a bit expensive, and it looked like
it would take a
big bite out of our travelling day. It was
mid-morning when we passed
through Lexington, and I was reluctant to stop when
we'd only been
under way for an hour. We also saved
the Lost Sea
(a huge underground
lake) for another visit. We did stop to gawk at the
Union
Station
in
Cincinnati, however. The link takes you to a
google
image page of this incredible example of art deco
construction.
So that's it. Now we negotiate the border and
customs declarations for
things we picked up along the way over the past
three months, and then
settle in at the house and the yacht club for three
months. We have
summer trips planned and decisions to make about
which boat(s) to keep,
what to do with our house, where - and how - to
travel next winter, and
so on - who knew that retirement would require so
many complex
decisions and changes?
Our phone is reconnected - give us a call. Come by
for a BBQ and sail...
P.S. for those returning to Canada via Detroit's
Ambassador
Bridge, don't
waste time looking for gas to fill your tank or
cheap booze anywhere
else than right at the border. There's a large,
beautiful duty-free store just before you enter the
bridge lane
that has the cheapest gas within a fifty mile radius
and the best
prices on spirits that I've seen anywhere south of
the border (and it
goes without saying, north of the border).
