Final Prep

We’ve spent our last weekend in Ft. Pierce doing final preparations and provisioning for our trip to the Keys. Because we won’t have a car while cruising, we want to get as many of the heavy things as we can: How many eggs, how much canned tuna, and how much wine do we need for 19 days? While in the Keys, all grocery shopping will be on foot or by bicycle.  So here, grocery shopping, Farmer’s Market for veggies, and boat cleaning have all been accomplished.

Cathryn was assigned  the “fine motor skill” task of hand lettering our state registration numbers onto the dinghy. We’ve learned that the stick-on numbers and registration stickers don’t work well on inflatables. We’ll attach the  registration sticker to the black diamond you can see in the photo below. We’re told that “because the state of Florida is broke”, they go out of their way to find “rich” yachties to fine for not having their registration numbers on their dinghy.  We suspect that’s the boating equivalent of the small-town speed trap stories we’ve all fallen victim to or heard of.

Sunday, today, will be devoted to the final steps of doing laundry, and for Cathryn, certain “personal grooming tasks” and then, weather permitting (there are small craft warnings out today) we will be on our way Monday morning.

Recent Events

Four noteworthy events or activities since we returned from our night on the hook:

1. Our Marine Technician, Dave, who has “lived” with us on the boat for much of the last month, finished his List of projects! It’s true that the List eventually had twice as many items on it as when he first began because we kept adding items, but this was a major milestone which we were happy to celebrate. His final task involved climbing into the tiniest of hatches in the floor, only 15 by 16 inches, to inspect the clamps on the black water hoses. He is not only slim, but also a bit of a contortionist, or he’d not have been able to accomplish such a feat. Congratulations, Dave!

2.  The part-time dockmaster here at Harbour Isle Marina, Malcolm, invited us to join Jane and him last night at a restaurant that serves good southern ribs.

After drinks on our sundeck, Malcolm drove the 4 of us to Norris’s where we all ordered babyback pork ribs after being introduced to a new appetizer:  Onion Loaf, essentially a huge pile of onion rings that have been baked in a loaf pan, so it comes out looking like a loaf of bread made of onion rings! We enjoyed meeting Jane and hearing about their 4-month boat trip from here to Washington D.C. last summer.

3.  This afternoon a manatee was hanging out, sleeping we’re told, right behind “Next to Me’!

This ugly/cute 8 or 9-foot behemoth swam around in the vicinity for quite a while, surfacing periodically.

This is the first one we’ve seen one in the marina, as well as the first so close at hand for such a long period of time. Fascinating creatures, these.

4.  When we purchased “Next To Me” she had 25-year-old upholstery on the salon settee, and it was shabby, worn and no longer had any “cush” to it! After debating quite a while, we finally sprung for newly made cushions.

Doug arrived this afternoon to deliver the new cushions, and in addition to looking a WHOLE lot better, they’re also much more comfortable, having sufficient “cush” to them. With this, we hope and believe our pre-trip work really is complete!

Magical Anchorage

Last night as we lay in bed we could look out the hatch above our pillows and see the Little Dipper.  The sky was clear and filled with stars, as we’re far enough away from any city. The current lapped against the hull of the boat and lulled us to sleep.

We each got up only twice during the night to check the boat’s location, wondering whether we’d slipped our anchor. No problems.

This morning as we drank coffee on the sundeck, we saw more than a dozen porpoises circling.

Two platforms on a nearby island are each inhabited by an osprey busy building a nest. One flew by with a fish in its’ claws.  THIS is what we came for!

On The Hook Again

The earlier post of the same title didn’t work out so well. We’ll try again. As always, you can double click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Find the little green boat in the center of the picture: that’s where we’re anchored out tonight.

For the second time since we bought "Next To Me" one month and two days ago, we've left the marina and taken a trip by ourselves. With Cathryn at the helm, which required overcoming some nervousness, and Bob on the deck lines, we pulled out and went north on the Intracoastal Waterway, past Vero Beach.  18 miles and 2.5 hours later, we arrived just offshore of Hole in the Wall Island and set the anchor in 9 feet of water. We’ll spend the night here.

The trip up was beautiful. We sipped lemonade (Cathryn) and coffee (Bob), watched dozens of dolphins, cormorants, egrets, blue heron and pelicans, waved at every boat we passed, and enjoyed the sights of towns, elegant homes, mangroves and spoil islands, the small islands created as a result of dredging the channel where the "spoils" are dumped in a pile in shallow water.  It's sunny and warm, a little windier than we prefer for our first night anchored somewhere other than a protected cove, and very beautiful.

Maybe when we get done with the Loop, we’ll buy a place on the Intracoastal.  Look!  This place even has a little guest cottage on the right.

Our “MiFi” is working well; last month with fairly intensive use, we only used 5 gigs. Because there is no internet in the marina where we’ve spent the past month, we were reliant on this Verizon MiFi for internet access.

Look closely:  see the signpost just to the left and further back of the island in the foreground? That’s the channel marker for the ICW.  We hope to find it in the same location relative to the boat when the sun comes up in the morning.  We wonder when we will get a good night’s sleep while on the hook for the first time?

Next To Me

The former “Golden Dolphin” is now officially re-named “Next To Me”!  The first step was changing the name on her Coast Guard documentation, which was initiated at the time of purchase.

The second step was selecting the size, font and colors with the sign-makers and ordering the vinyl lettering for the stern and the signboards mounted on the port and starboard sides.

The installation took place while Cathryn was gone, and the final step was carrying out the appropriate nautical ceremony which occurred yesterday after Cathryn’s return from Houston.

Houston

Last Thursday, February 9, Cathryn flew to Houston for 3 nights with her parents, sisters and extended family. Cathryn and her parents went to sister Anne’s home for a delicious dinner with Anne, Eric, and their irreverent 30-year-old  son,  Jeff, with whom Cathryn tends to become overly loud and rambunctious.

Friday Cathryn, Dad and Mom all went for pedicures, and ran a bunch of errands.

Saturday’s highlight was a trip to nephew Brad and Kate’s home to meet Great-Nephew Clay Crawford, only 3 weeks old, for the first time, and see sister Susan and her husband Bob, along with new parents Brad and Kate.  Cathryn’s parents, newly minted Great-grandparents, were thrilled to see Crawford’s namesake for the second time since his birth.

 

Bob stayed on the boat in Florida while Cathryn was gone to continue handling repair and upgrade projects, go to the Farmer’s Market, and write blog posts!

The Things That Cruiser Do

We’ve posted about how we have been expanding our knowledge base to get prepared for doing the loop.  Well here is an example: We’ve been trying to learn  about how to keep the boat from developing a list as a result of different  fuel usage rates from  of our port and starboard tanks.

This drawing explains why starboard tank drops faster then the port when all the valves are fully open.  (It really does.)Now we need to sort out how to manage the valves to keep the boat on an “even keel” as they say.

Can you imagine Bob and Cathryn having detailed discussions over such a drawing while drinking their evening glass of wine? We certainly couldn’t, at least until recently!

On The Rail

Ft. Pierce Saturday Market

A few pictures from the Saturday Market.

I wasn’t the only one taking pictures.

Indian River Road

The Indian River Road is a twenty mile,  a scenic alternative to Highway 1 between Stuart and Ft. Pierce. Here are a sample of photos of the Indian River and some of the houses you can see along the way.

The Indian River Lagoon is North America’s most diverse estuary with more than 2,200 different species of animals and 2,100 species of plants.

 

The Lagoon varies in width from .5 to 5 miles and averages 3 feet depth. It serves as a spawning and nursery ground for many different species of oceanic and lagoon fish and shellfish.

The lagoon also has one of the most diverse bird populations anywhere in America.

Nearly 1/3 of the nation’s manatee population lives here or migrates through the Lagoon seasonally.

In addition, its ocean beaches provide one of the densest sea turtle nesting areas found in the Western Hemisphere.

Some houses are classic.

Some try too hard.

Hiatus

We probably won’t post again until early next week. Tomorrow morning (Thursday) Cathryn flies out of West Palm Beach to Houston to visit her parents for 3 nights, and see her sisters and meet her new great-nephew Clay Crawford, 3-week old grandson of Cathryn’s sister Susan.

Bob will stay in Fort Pierce, Florida on “Next To Me” and continue working on his list, have Dave the marine tech continue work on his list, and deal with one other company on another project. Or who knows: maybe he’ll host a party, take the boat out all by himself, and do other fun activities and post photos and stories on the blog in Cathryn’s absence. For those of you who know him: what do you think is the likelihood of that?

First Boat Visitor

Fifteen years ago, Cathryn met Cynthia (see her 40th birthday party above) when they both had 10-year-old daughters in gymnastics class, so began to carpool together.  They  quickly became fast friends, running partners, and adventure buddies on the ski slopes and hiking trails. Sadly, two years later Cynthia’s husband was transferred to Milwaukee. Since then they’ve seen each other a few times, always picking right back up where they left off, feeling as close as ever.

This past Sunday, Cynthia flew from Milwaukee to Fort Myers, Florida for a long weekend with members of her Book Group, one of whom owns a condo there. She rented a car at the airport and drove straight to Harbour Isle Marina to spend 3 days and 2 nights on board the boat with us.

Unfortunately, it began raining the day Cynthia arrived and finally quit 30 minutes before her departure today.  We took long walks each morning, talked until the wee hours of the night, played a fun card game called Quiddler in the evenings, ate delicious grilled shrimp and veggie skewers courtesy of Bob, went to dinner at Tiki Hut by the marina in downtown Fort Pierce, and shopped for fabric for new cushions on the L-shaped settee in the boat’s salon, during which trip Bob was immeasurably patient and helpful. 

We caught up on all the news of family, travel, jobs and life, and hope to do it again in late August or early September when we arrive in Chicago, only a couple hours drive from Cynthia’s home. A great time was had by all, and we enjoyed having our first visitor to “test drive” the guest stateroom and tell us what it needs to make it completely comfortable.

Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway

We find ourselves fascinated by the differences between recreational boating on the Pacific Coast and Atlantic Coast.  Our boat at home, Always Ahead, is suitable for inland salt waters such as Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, Canadian Gulf Islands and places further north, all waterways which are protected from the treacherous open ocean.

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, which runs from the southern tip of Florida to Boston, is also almost entirely protected water. Only a few short portions are not separated from the ocean by barrier islands. The whole route is 3,000 miles (4,800-km) along the Atlantic and continues along the Gulf coast of the United States, called the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Some lengths consist of natural inlets, salt-water rivers, bays, and sounds; others are artificial, man-made  canals connecting the natural segments. It provides a continuous navigable route along its length without many of the hazards of travel on the open sea.

Following World War II, when the Germans sank many U.S. commercial ships just off the Atlantic coast, the U.S. government and many state and local municipalities decided to fund its’ dredging and marking with navigational aids (signage)  to complete this coastal route, which had been originally proposed in 1826, just 50 years after the Declaration of Independence, but had only built piecemeal.

It was initially designed as a 12-foot deep channel, 150 feet wide.  Over the years, as other forms of transportation became dominant,  funding to maintain it has dwindled at times and in places, so portions of it, including long segments here in Florida, are now only 7 to 9 feet deep, and occasionally narrower than 150 feet. If  you  enlarge the picture, above, you can actually see the dredged  channel.  The Waterway itself is much wider – often a mile or three miles – but the safe, marked, navigable stretch is narrow and requires constant attention to avoid running aground.

Our training Captains, Chris and Alyse  repeatedly stressed the importance of our looking ahead AND behind us as we weave our way up the channel, to visually line up the channel markers to determine whether we’re inside or outside the channel, as the wind and current can quickly move us into shallow water, even grounding. This is not like our boating experience in the Pacific Northwest where most channels are miles wide, hundreds of feet deep, have few obstructions and few Aids to Navigation except when entering a bay, cove, marina or inlet.

While there is some commercial traffic on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, it is mostly recreational boaters, including gigantic yachts like the one in the photo above.