Sarasota

Hello from Marina Jacks, in beautiful Sarasota, where Spray occupies slip Delta 19.

Our week-long stay at this deluxe marina is a splurge for us. The facilities are great and the location is right downtown, so we can walk to everything we need, including a Whole Foods a few blocks away.

We arrived last Thursday after 2 long days travel from Naples. The perfect cruising weather we had enjoyed between Marathon and Naples continued, with cloudless skies, light winds, and a smooth Gulf of Mexico. From leaving Naples Inlet Wednesday morning we cruised 25 miles NW to Fort Myers Beach and turned behind Sanibel Island and continued in more protected waters another 20 miles or so to the tightest anchorage we've ever experienced, called 'Punta Blanca South' at Cayo Costa State Park. As you see below its a small lagoon surrounded on 3 sides. There was barely room for Spray and a 2nd boat already there (from Maine, surprisingly).

There was a tiny sandy spot to land the dinghy and then walk the dogs in the small clear areas you see south of the lagoon. A very protected spot and, what with all the mangroves, we were surprised not to be bothered by gnats at night. We hope to revisit this park on our southward travel in a week or so and further explore it.

Thursday's run to Sarasota was 46 miles, the first 30 miles outside in the Gulf after exiting Boca Grande Inlet, then 15 miles inside after entering Venice Inlet. If the Gulf is calm then traveling out there is preferred as we avoid drawbridges and idiots in fast boats tearing up the channel (I joked that I wore out my middle finger on the inside runs).

We have been living large here. The marina delivers a newspaper to the boat every morning (an actual paper one!). There are many restaurants nearby, and parks all around. We stocked up at the Saturday farmers market and Sheila has visited Selby Gardens. There is much culture here including outdoor art, which we have all been enjoying.

We've had guides too since good friends (and Active Captain founders) Jeff and Karen Siegel have been docked here for the past month and we've been sharing daily dog walks with them, plus Sunday Brunch here. They travel with their 2 blonde labs and you can read about their stay in Sarasota on their blog. They left this morning, headed south and about to complete their Great Loop odyssey.

But there are many more Castiners here, mostly of the snowbird variety. Last night 18 of us gathered at the condo of Jeryl and Alex Huppe for drinks and snacks, then all walked to a downtown restaurant for supper. Lots of fun and great to see all the familiar faces.

We are paid up here until Thursday. Sarasota was the 2nd of 3 major destinations for this trip (1st was Marathon, 3rd is Castine) so now our travel schedule is quite open. Eventually we'll be slowly working our way back down to Ft Myers, and then across Okeechobee. Stay tuned!

 

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Off the grid, and back on it.

Hello from Naples FLA. Spray is tied to a city owned mooring, the Internet and cell phones work fine, our bellies are full of take-out pizza, and we just had hot showers.

 

Three days of travel from Marathon have brought us here, with much beautiful wilderness in between. We left Marathon right on schedule Sunday at 10 am, traveled a couple miles west and then turned straight north under the famous 7 mile bridge.

We cruised 27 miles, in water that averaged 8 ft deep, and in wall-wall sunshine and easy seas, to drop anchor off the beach of Cape Sable. Winds were from the NE but there were small rollers from the NW so we put out a stern anchor to force Spray to point into the waves. Sheila's iPhone actually worked well enough for texting at least but I had no Internet at all (the horror!).

 

As remote as Cape Sable is, we weren't alone. There was a group of campers on the beach that had arrived in several fishing boats, and a guy in a small open sailboat came in and anchored not too far away (he slept in the boat). Due to Spray's 4 ft. draft we anchored maybe 1,000 ft. from shore and dinghied in to walk the dogs. Sheila picked up much plastic that had washed ashore.

We had an hour to walk the dogs, then back to Spray to feed them supper, then later back to the beach for final purging of the dogs and enjoying the sunset (top photo). We all slept well.

 

Monday we brought the dogs to the beach at first light and pulled anchor by 8 am for a long day's 50 mile cruise to the NW, typically 2 miles off shore (Everglades National Park) Again solid blue skies and calm seas. The only downside was opposing current of 1/2 to 1 knot all day long. Our goal was Camp Lulu Key, just past the end of the Everglades and with beaches for landing the dogs. Here's a Riggs-eye view of Sheila rowing us to shore there.

Again we weren't alone as there were 2 or 3 groups of beach campers, all of whom had arrived via kayak from Everglades City. We were glad not to be sleeping on the sand and away from the gnats, although since I was too lazy to deploy the stern anchor we had a couple hours of uncomfortable rolling during the night.

 

Sheila and I first encountered Camp Lulu on 12/31/1999 when we camped there over the New Years with my sister and BIL and maybe 90 other folks.

 

Today we pulled anchor about 9 am and headed SW for over an hour so we could round Cape Romano Shoals and then turn NW to pass outside of resorty Marco Island. Civilization!

We continued 10 miles past Marco up to Naples Inlet, then through 3 miles of channels that was a raceway for idiot boat drivers, until we reached Naples Public Dock. They require a pumpout of the holding tank on arrival, which is good as we would have needed that soon. Next we tied to one of their mooring balls ($10/night which is cheap). Time for a nice walk of the dogs to a local park, then getting takeout pizza and racing back to Spray to eat it while still hot. Finally back to the City Dock for showers.

 

Tomorrow we'll get going early and retrace the 3 miles of channels to get us back into the Gulf of Mexico, then head NW to Fort Myers, where we go inside to continue up the ICW towards Sarasota. It's 100 miles to there by boat so we'll take 2 or 3 days to get there. Stay tuned!

 

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Adios a Marathon

Hard to believe we've been here in Marathon for a month but we have. The weather is looking fair for cruising North tomorrow, so that's what we'll do, after stopping at the City Marina to fill Spray's water tanks and get our bicycles. We should be heading out by 10 am.

 

Marathon has been great, with generally fantastic weather. Most days in high 70's or low 80's with lots of strong sun. Sheila would have liked it a bit cooler.

 

Since the last blog entry we've done a day trip by bus to Key West (local teenager pet sat for Katie & Riggs), taken several bike rides including a neat one down the old 7-mile bridge to Pigeon Key, made several dinghy trips to Sombrero Beach for dog play (see above), taken dozens of walks through the park next to the marina, and generally enjoyed Summer in Winter.

 

We had a nice surprise a few days ago when we were dinghying in to the marina. A fellow on the outer dock sees our Maine registration and waves us over and as we get close we see its someone we know from Castine. Dale Young is a mason and has worked on half the houses in town. We're pretty sure he built the chimney in our house (in 1982). He had towed his sailboat down from Maine, launched it in Flamingo (bottom of Everglades) and sailed it to the Keys and into Marathon. Since then he's paid to stay here a month and is settled in. We had him over for supper 2 nights ago and had fun swapping stories.

 

Tomorrow we hope to anchor off remote Cape Sable in the Everglades, then Monday cruise up the western edge of the Everglades to Camp Lulu Key, and on Tuesday make for Naples FL. We should be at our next goal, Sarasota, by Thursday or Friday, and we'll stay there a week or so. While we're in the Everglades we'll probably lose contact with the cell phone system (no Internet!) but our SPOT tracker should still function.

 

The adventure continues!

 

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Day Trip

Yesterday we untied from our rented mooring for a couple of errands and a short cruise out in the ocean.

First we went to the Marathon City Marina to take on 100 gallons of fresh water. Drinking water in the Keys is all piped in from the Everglades and is expensive (Castine residents can relate) so dockside water is not free but instead costs $.05/gal. Not too big a deal as our fill-up cost $5 and lasts us for 2 weeks here on the mooring. I hear that fresh water in the Bahamas runs around $.50/gal.

Next we left Boot Key Harbor and stopped at Burdines fuel dock and bought 90 gallons of diesel @ $4.40/gal which is probably the most expensive fuel we'll buy on the whole trip. Still beats rowing.

Then we headed out in a SW direction to Bahia Honda State Park, about 10 miles down the Keys. Here's the SPOT record of our route :

Notice that our route there was fairly direct while on our return trip we 'tacked' to avoid rolling in beam seas. After 2 hours of cruising, mostly parallel to the famous 7 mile bridge, we arrived at Bahia Honda and passed through a break in the old Flagler railroad bridge. The old Flagler Railway was the first connection of the keys from the Florida mainland to Key West and this particular bridge was quite a construction challenge.

 

We dropped anchor between the old RR bridge to the south and route 1 (also a bridge) to the north. We then dinghied into the park's lagoon and enjoyed 3 aspects of the park :

 

1) Most importantly we bought ice cream at the park concession. They have great ice cream at surprisingly good prices.

 

2) We walked through the butterfly garden :

3) We walked up the old RR bridge for a view of the park and the adjacent Keys. Hey, there is Spray at anchor!

We couldn't stay too long if we wanted to return to our Marathon mooring before dark, so back to Spray, haul the dinghy up on the davits, pull anchor and another 2 hour cruise which included a nice sunset behind us and clipping back onto our mooring just as it got dark.

 

All in all a nice trip even if it was bouncier out there than we expected. Plus with Spray's fuel tanks now full we are ready for the next leg of our trip when we leave Marathon in a couple weeks.

 

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Marathon Cruisers Net

Seven days per week, 9am, VHF channel 68. It's a moderated discussion between local boaters. There are maybe 7 different moderators, mostly year-round boat dwellers here, who take turns. This is the program :

 

1) Good Morning! Quick introduction and listing of the rules (only 1 rule really which is when you want to speak you give just your vessel name and wait for the moderator to come back acknowledging your vessel name). Maybe a quick weather report.

 

2) New Arrivals. Any vessel newly arrived introduces themselves, usually tells where they arrived from, how long they plan to stay, and where they are headed next.

 

3) Departures. Any vessel leaving Marathon says goodbye and tells where they are headed.

 

4) Announcements. Typical announcements are for 3/week yoga classes, softball games in the city park, about local theater, a myriad of events. For the last 3 days someone has announced about a flyover of the International Space Station at dusk.

 

5) Comments / Questions / Need Help. A couple of days ago we asked for advice on repairing our Honda Generator which was running poorly (only ran when choked). Apparently a common thing as many boaters came back with recommended potions to clean the carburetor, and advising only use of no-ethanol gas. We since bought a bottle of SeaFoam which seems to have done the trick.

 

6) Buy / Sell / Trade / Giveaway. Probably the most popular part of the show with people selling or buying all things boat related. We used this a few days ago to buy a used kayak paddle for $15.

 

7) Trivia. Usually time for 3 trivia questions from the audience. We have offered up 3 or 4 and guessed at several.

 

8) Final Business. Last chance to get in a question you forgot, or to get someone to repeat a phone number that was given.

 

The 'show' usually lasts 30-45 minutes. Afterwards some people hang on and go to other channels for follow up discussions. For example we moved to channel 72 for a 10 minute discussion on our generator problem.

 

This time of year the City mooring field is usually full, with 226 boats. There are maybe another 80 or so boats anchored in the area and maybe 200 at marina slips. So the audience for the Cruisers Net is pretty big. We try not to miss it. My only complaint is that I wish it was an hour earlier.

 

 

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Your taxes.....

..at work? ..at waste? You decide!

 

Every couple days or so we four hop in the dinghy and head south out of Boot Key Harbor via Sisters Creek, headed for Sombrero Beach for dog play and swimming. On our way we pass an island surrounded by fences and 'U.S. Government - No Trespassing' signs. On the island are 4 large radio towers.

 

There is one bridge to the island which we came across on a bike ride. The bridge is blocked and posted as follows :

Apparently this is a medium-wave radio broadcast station for Radio Marti, which began in the 1980's Cold War under President Reagan, and still goes on, broadcasting the 'truth' to the people of Cuba. You can read about the program here.

 

While now the facility is protected by fences and a gate, a neighbor there we spoke to says that until a few years ago there were 24-hour armed guards at the bridge.

 

So in beautiful Marathon FLA the Cold War is still being waged in a small way.

We've met a few boaters here that have, or plan to cruise to Cuba, which is only 100 miles from here. Mostly Canadians. They speak of great natural beauty, low crime, and friendly people.

 

 

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What's on the big screen tonight?

Many of the cruisers we see, especially on powerboats, have a flat screen TV for entertainment. On Spray we use something different in order to save precious space and for minimum power use.

 

It starts with this, made with a piece of shower curtain, two dowels, and some tape.

When its rolled up it stands in a corner near the lower helm and takes up very little space. When its unfurled and hung from the salon ceiling it looks like this:

It's our projection screen and it measures 55" diagonally. To project on it we use this :

This is a small projector (about 4" x 4" x 1") that uses an LED for illumination, so it only uses 15 Watts of power. It runs directly from Spray's 12 VDC and has an HDMI video input. We use this cable setup

to connect it to Sheila's iPhone. As long as she has a decent AT&T cellular connection she can stream Netflix content to the projector, and the entertainment begins :

We've been watching mostly old British police dramas (Inspector Morse and the like) and occasional movies (latest was Margin Call).

 

The system works pretty well, with only a couple of issues:

- These little LED projectors work well in a dark environment, but aren't really bright enough for day use. That's not a problem for us as we only use this in the evenings.

- If you've ever streamed video then you know it moves gobs of data, and unless you have an unlimited data plan you'll overrun your limit in no time. Fortunately Sheila has a grandfathered AT&T contract with 'unlimited' data. You can't get such plans anymore.

- ATT's 'unlimited' data plan has some limits. After we've used 5 Gigabytes (about 5 hours streaming) within a month they 'throttle' the data, meaning they slow the data rate (those bastards!). The Netflix system actually handles that OK. If you've ever noticed when streaming Netflix it takes maybe 10-20 seconds to start a stream. During that time Netflix and the iPhone app are checking the data rate that is available, and if its fast then Netflix will stream a sharp video, but if its slow they stream a somewhat fuzzier video that requires less bandwidth. The result for us is that at some point into the month we notice the picture is less sharp. Still watchable though.

 

So we can be anchored almost anywhere and enjoy big-screen video in the evening, without draining the battery much. In Spray's small salon the screen seems huge.

 

So who can suggest a good movie on Netflix Streaming?

 

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