Last Winter 230 Days A Compilation

Avid readers of this blog (are there any?) knew that this post was coming. It is based almost entirely on information contained in the 91 posts that described our activities during the period October 7, 2014 to May 26, 2015, compiled for statistical purposes.

We devoted about 1.5 months transiting from City Island, NY to the northern border of FL and the same amount for the return trip, with the remaining 4.5 months in Florida, almost two thirds of the 7.5 months total.

We made 85 passages. These took 89 days because a few were multi-day passages. This means 141 lay days. So on 61% of the days we just stayed where we were. The longest stay in one place was in Ft. Lauderdale, 17 days between five on our southbound and 12 on our northbound stops there. Though given the number of places we stayed in Miami (Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, and on Key Biscayne, all in Greater Miami, we spent 24 days there. And we stayed in many places only overnight, with the longest number of consecutive passage days being five, from Portsmouth VA south through the Dismal Swamp to Whitaker Creek, Oriental, NC.

The furthest ILENE got from City Island was Marquesa Keys, an uninhabited atoll about 25 miles west of Key West. This was 1063 miles (all miles are nautical miles unless otherwise indicated) from City Island, as the crow flies, for a crows round trip of 2126 miles. But we cant sail as the crow flies -- over land -- and we made several side trips up rivers such as to Jacksonville and Washington DC. So our total mileage for the round trip was 3561.5 (equal to about 4095.7 land miles). Average mileage per passage was 41.9 miles, ranging from 268 miles for the first passage, from City Is. to Annapolis MD, to only 1.5 miles from an anchorage at the south east corner of Coconut Grove to the Coral Reef YC, in the NW corner. And the median mileage per passage was only 34. Of the 89 passage days, only 22 were outside, in the Atlantic, though another twelve were in Chesapeake (11) and Delaware (1) Bays, where, with a little luck, one can sail. All the other 55 passage days were in the ICW or on rivers, where sailing is an iffy proposition at best. In fact, the lack of opportunity to sail is the biggest drawback to Florida as a cruising destination as compared with Maine, the Bahamas or the Caribbean. And we were underway for 577 hours, thus averaging 6.1 knots of speed overall.

Destinations: by State:
New York.         1 (City Island)
New Jersey.       2. On the way back
Maryland.          9
DC.                    1
Virginia.             8
N. Carolina.      11
S. Carolina.        6
Georgia.             4
Florida.             31
This adds up to only 73 ports, rather than 85, and the difference represents arrivals in the same port for a second or third time. And significantly, 57 of the ports we visited were "new" ports to us, with the other 16 being places ILENE had visited on prior cruises. In my opinion a new port is many times more challenging than a return visit.

How did we attach to land?
Five nights were at sea - overnights, with no attachment.
Of the rest, 38 were on moorings, 89 were on our anchor, and 98 were at docks. Unlike the kitties who see docks as roaming opportunities, we prefer less docks and we could have had a few less dock nights except for rough weather in some places and the desire for electricity to get heat in others.  Our stops were as different and varied as a few hundred yards off the back side of Miami Beach in the middle of a bustling harbor, to quaint towns like Swansboro NC, and anchorages in tidal creeks where we saw no one and beside islands in the Atlantic such as Rodrigues Key. So it never gets boring.

Dining?
230 days makes for 690 meals. Altogether, 140 of them, about 20%, were taken off ILENE, some on other boats, some in friends homes, but off ILENE. But we had the most dinners off - 88, and only 31 lunches and 21 breakfasts. Our grocery bills exceeded our restaurant tabs

Our ashore activities, in addition to cleaning, shopping, cooking, laundry, haircuts and the usual activities of life maintenance were many and varied:

The Annapolis Boat Show
Sightseeing by auto on Islands in the Chesapeake off the Eastern Shore
Stand up paddleboarding
Car tour of a proposed bike tour
Fast Ferry to the Dry Tortugas and visit to Fort Jefferson there
Evening lectures on Dorothy Parker and on the history of Miami Beach
Snorkeling from a catamaran on a reef off Key West
Concert  by band led by Cab Calloways son
Power boat ride through Miami Beach harbor
Sabbath prayers at synagogue near Fort Lauderdale
Hospital visit to Lenes cousin Naomi with broken pelvis
H.S. Class Reunion (Lene only)
Radio controlled model sailboat racing
College graduation at St. Marys College, MD, because we were there
Tour of monuments on the national mall in DC
Tour of the Capital building and the Library of Congress
One science museum
Twenty seven history museums
Six art museums
Six art gallery tours
Four maritime museums
Three hospital, doctor or vet visits
The Kennedy Space Center
Universal Studios
Two wildlife preserves
Three botanical gardens
Five beaches
Twelve movies
One ballet
Four live plays in theaters

Lene read 30 books and I read ten,

And the best thing about Florida is the number of friends who we met along the way. I counted 28 persons or couples who we had the pleasure to meet on our travels, several more than once, such as going south and coming back. Some we met both in Florida and at their summer homes in Maryland. Connections included family, grade school, college, the navy, work and of course, boating. Nine of the 29 are current or former members of the Harlem Yacht Club. None of our other sailing trips came close in providing access to people from home who you know.

Read More..

January 11 15 Five More Lay Days in Coconut Grove 1 5 Miles

We spent four nights at a dock of the Coral Reef YC, after one more rough night on anchor in the John Brennan Channel way off from the Dinner Key Marina. We did not even go ashore the day after the botanical garden trip, because it was so rough. This Google Earth picture shows both locations and the route between them, which is not charted, in the northern half of its brief 1.5 miles. (The dinghy dock is clearly visible in the extreme lower left and the well marked Dinner Key Channel -- through which we entered and will leave -- runs in from below the yellow humanoid figure in the upper right, slightly downward to the left, between two islands. The chart does not indicate and I am not sure which of the islands shown is actually Dinner Key.)

 The white dots, right side lower central are moored boats. They are rather orderly, like grave stones, because mooring fields are generally laid out in an orderly manner. We were anchored to the right of them, off the picture, in the anchorage area, where such orderliness does not exist. Our first anchoring attempt (not enough water) was among the white dots at the extreme lower right corner. The dark blue between these two fields of dots is the John Brennan Channel. To got to the Coral Reef YC we motored (1) to the  left through that well marked channel, (2) south of the lower end of the berm that runs sort of vertically past the end of the seven docks of the Dinner Key YC, (3) turned left to pass between the ends of those docks and the island running to the upper right, and (4) hugging the ends of the smaller docks, toward the upper left where we (5)entered and tied on, facing the shore, between the two shoreward docks extending downward from the "E" shaped dock in the extreme upper left.
 After bringing ILENE to the dock we went to the movies seeing Big Eyes (about an female artist who painted children with emotive big eyes and her emotionally abusive husband) and Inherent Vice (which provided a vehicle for actors to act as trashy people doing trashy things which signified nothing and was a waste of time). And we stopped at Fresh Market for take out food to eat at home, i.e., aboard.
We learned the local mass transit system and used it to visit local cultural attractions. This included the rather new, large and very elegant Perez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM).
The 249 bus took us from two blocks from the YC, about a mile, to the Coconut Grove light rail elevated system station which in turn took us to the People Mover, a free elevated loop in the central downtown area, which left us a block from the museum, of which the Miamians are quite proud, having spent $200 million on its construction in prime real estate next to the new concert hall and the new science museum under construction.

Lene hooked up with the same Rhonda who we had dined with on our first night in Miami Beach and three other women. She viewed the art and had lunch with them. I explored the art myself. It rained a lot early in the day but we had our foulies and did not get very wet. Most of the artists were not known to me and most had some Miami or south Florida connection by birth, education, work, residence or death.They had a large collection of pop art, by name brand artists: Warhol, Lichtenstein, etc. which Lene liked. This seemed old to me. These two works, one inside and one out, are based on geodesic domes.

My favorite was this painting, approximately 5 by 8 feet by my guess, by an African artist. Three zig zag lines, two starting in the upper right and one from the top toward the left define the spaces that are painted in. And the bottom represents more, little triangles that I saw as water in this landscape, though the plackard said it could be a TV static pattern. I spent quite a few minutes intrigued by this one.

Another day we visited Viscaya, the seaside mansion of John Deering of John Deere fame, another Breakers-like home of the rich. This one was built during the portion of WWI before the US went "over there" to end it. Deering was a bachelor and imported fountains and whole rooms of walls and furniture from Europe. Quite lovely actually. The big change here in the last century was the erection of a glass roof to cover and hence seal off the central courtyard onto which all rooms of all three floors open -- to keep out the salt air and rain. This, of course, also necessitated air conditioning. And the gardens are not what they once were. I love these marble floors of theseaside and land entryways:

The gardens are nothing to sneeze at either, and here is one of the fountains with "merboys"  --mermaids with boys instead of girls.

A large stone Venetian barge (a place for guests to recline at ease) was built on a sandbank to protect Vizcayas sea entrance, with me at the extreme left and the towers over Government Cut barely visible on the horizon in the between. A bird walked by unconcerned with his proximity to humans.

One evening some young men strolled past our boat and started up a conversation because they recognized ILENE. Russ and Tom had sailed with my late son-in-law, Julien, and sung his praises and those of my daughter who they asked me to convey their good wishes. Small world.
We spent a pleasant afternoon lounging at the YCs underutilized swimming pool and, after some wine aboard, had a nice dinner at the Yacht Club with Jerry and Louise, who came over from Miami Beach and took us to Publix afterwards so Lene could get some products that the very nearby Fresh Foods does not stock, e.g. frozen blueberries and sugarless peanut butter. We lucked out that this was an all you can eat pasta plus night for only $17.00.  I have yet to learn how to avoid over stuffing myself at such affairs, though. The eighteen percent service charge is added to the bill automatically. This club has lots of helpful friendly staff to serve its 800 members, most of who do not keep boats here. It has fixed concrete piers against which we put up the fender board. The docks are busy by day with contractors and many people in suits apparently use the club day and night as a venue to do business. The only drawback is that on sunny days numerous black birds sit in the rigging and emit the remains of their fruit based diet, staining the deck. I washed it off over and over and will use bleach on the remaining stubborn though by now faint stains.
Another evening we were visited by Janet (who had taken us to the Chihuly exhibit) and another member of Lenes grade school posse, also named Rhonda. Rhonda was in town from New York to visit her Mom. After wine and cheese and a tour of the boat, I had, among other things, a single stone crab leg, my first, a delicacy here, and not as good as other seafood to my taste. This was at the well known but not excessively expensive (except for stone crab legs) Montes, on the water, less than a quarter mile away. Photo to be added. Janet and ?Ed may drive down to Marathon to visit us there, and perhaps to fish, though access to the boat on anchor or mooring will be more difficult for Janet than dockside. Also, yesterdays news about Cuba has started us thinking about getting the charts and cruising guides we will need for such a visit, though our insurer, Pantaenius, has not yet come around on this issue. They have several weeks to do so. Life is very very good.

Read More..

January 26 29 Four More Lay Days in Marathon Zero Miles

Here is a view, looking east toward the mooring field in Marathon from ILENE.

LOTS of masts. and more beyond them. A few of the boaters are at the marinas dock, a seawall.

And the marinas inner dinghy dock with lots of room. They have as much room again at the outer dinghy docks to the right at the rear end of the photo.  And they have "project rooms" where you can sew sails, varnish your oars, etc.

We had a very pleasant day with Bev, who was introduced to us by my friend, Hugh. She picked us up in her truck and drove us back to her beautiful home on Duck Key, about twelve nautical miles back east from here. Bev served us a lunch, let us do laundry and take showers, took me to Home Depot and Lene to Publix and then we had happy hour and dinner with her at the Sunset Grill, at the western end of Marathon, with great sunsets, before driving us back to our dink. It was a very full afternoon, on a day when the wind had moderated somewhat so we were not afraid to leave ILENE unattended. Bev lost her husband, suddenly, less than two years ago. They were boaters so she knows how to treat cruisers. She has five lovely grandkids in MA and in MO, where she will be moving back to soon. Bev is a pretty woman but sadly declined the offer to appear in this blog. Duck Key is an upscale residential community on an island south of Route 1, with mostly waterfront homes on the canals that run through the island. Shopping is a ten mile drive to Marathon. Sadly, we may never see you again Bev, but if you ever come to NYC and we are home, there is a berth for you.

These manatees come to the dock where there is a fresh water hose. But we are not supposed to feed them water because it encourages them to come in too close where they get hurt by propeller blades. You can see a white scar on mommas back (upper left). She is ten feet long! They are vegetarians and will not intentionally harm a human. Sort of a weird cross between a walrus head, a whales body and a beavers tail.

While at Home Depot, with a lot of help from a very knowledegable staffer, I bought all of the parts (except nuts, bolts, washers and sealant -- which I had) to install the aft, 360 degree white running light atop a length of PVC pipe.

The problem was that the base of the light had only a threaded hole for a six mm bolt. I needed to create a stub to stick into the PVC. About two hours of work the next morning in the wind sheltered inner dinghy dock area, and it is done. Until now we had to hold the white light on the top of one of our heads, which gets tiring on the arms after a while. And while I was at it, after looking at MANY other dinks at the dock, I tied a thin short line around the base of the dinks red and green bow light, with the other end secured in the boat. So when, the section cup fails, as it will, the $35 light will fall into the boat rather than into the sea.

Then we met Alex, proprietor of SeaTek. He had come recommended by John and Marcia of s/v Remora. A very pleasant and efficient young man with a beard who lives aboard his boat, anchored here. He advised us to visit Marquesas Key on our way to the Tortugas, and stay in an unmarked place where the water is deep enough. He is also an intelligent and inexpensive marine electrician. He came to our boat, fixed a lot of things electrical and ordered the "combiner" we need to solve our battery charging problem which he will install when we stop here on our way north. I had caused one problem when I installed the batteries: I crossed two black cables causing the Link interface to confuse the two batteries. Another problem was a fuse that took ten seconds to replace. He pointed out a poor crimp which I fixed after he left. I took the aft part of the boat apart before he got here to save time and was very pleased with how much he got accomplished in one $70 hour.

An afternoon of shuffleboard followed by Lene watching her TV shows on the Marinas wifi while I visited the Marathon YC, where, as Harlem members we are welcome to dine. They have 300 members, mostly power boats, and only 20 slips -- no moorings. Most of the members keep their boats at back yard docks in the canals. A rather unforgettable, except for presentation, dinner at Marathon Steak and Lobster rounded out our visit here.

Read More..

March 18 20 Three Lay Days in Lake Boca Zero Miles

Lake Boca is a large rectangle of water cut into the west side of the beach strip of Boca Raton, from the Boca Inlet north for about  .4 miles, along the east side of the ICW, .2 miles wide. The center of it is very shallow with only the edges navigable for keel boats. Anchorage for sailboats is in the NE corner. Access to land is in a park with a boat ramp and dinghy dock on the west side of the ICW, just south of the Palmetto Park Boulevard Bridge, north of the lake (less than half a mile away). We will have to request an opening of that bridge when we leave to head north.

Craig had a better idea about where to go ashore, because the tide runs fast under the bridge and big boats go too fast and make wakes: his boat, Sangaris, pictured above, is docked in a canal at the back yard of a private home about a mile further north. He picked us up there and we got to see Sangaris again, after all her European adventures.

Ive been saying that when I get too old to sail ILENE, a radio controlled sailing boat on a lake may be in my future. Well Kathy had to work, Lene did her phone work from Kathy and Craigs house, and Craig took me to another gated community a bit further north called Kings Point, which has a lake in which his club races such boats. Beauties, one meter long, high aspect ratio,with 3/4 of the weight in the keel. The control box is worn on a strap around ones neck and the right thumb controls the rudder by pushing its joy stick left of right, while the left thumb controls both sails with back to pull them closer hauled and forward letting them fly for the downwind legs of the course. Below is Craig, demonstrating and Erwin, also a Past Commodore of the Harlem and racer, to the right.

All I can say is that it is a lot harder than it looks and I lost every race; actually I did not finish them. When aboard a boat you can easily see if your bow is pointed to the right or left of a buoy; you feel the tension of the water on the rudder; you can see how close to the wind you are. But offset by 50 to 100 yards and at a strange angle, these critical facts are not readily apparent at least not yet, to me. And rudder control is maintained by constant pressure of perhaps a half inch on the "tiller". But these things can be learned and the fifteen guys had a good camraderie going. Kathy is one of the guys and quite competitive when she is not working. I raced her boat, number 3. Erwin brought some beer for the "after". We plan to see Erwin again before heading north.

And in the evening we had dinner with not just Craig and Kathy, but also Mike and Janet. The latter have a Florida home and we will see them again at their home in St. Michaels, off the Chesapeake on Marylands Eastern Shore, on our way home. I forget to take their picture but they are pictured from when we visited them in the Chesapeake in 2012 if you want to take a look. A nice Greek restaurant.

We rented a car for one day for trips to cousin Naomi to pick up a late arriving bundle of mail from home, the pet food store, Publix, the automotive store for things for the dink, the post office, the bank and the beach.

On our last day we toured around Mizener Village, which is a ritzy shopping mall. I got some new shorts because none of my old ones are unstained. We had lunch out and saw The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which celebrates India and aging. Good but not as good as the first movie. The theater is called Ipic and does not really want to be in the movie business. Seats are very large and comfortable and $14 if you want to sit in the first two rows, or $24 if you want even more luxurious seats with free use of a pillow and blanket and free popcorn. And Ipic has a full service restaurant and bar that you can patronize before or after and provides delivery of food and drink to your seat during the movie. And no reduced rate for matinees or for seniors.  The staff said it is a "good place to impress your date on a special occasion". The film is apparently just a gimmick to get folks to come in and spend money on the "entertainment experience package". This hustle offends me and I hope it fails, though we were the only two in the sixteen "cheap" seats while perhaps ten people sat behind us. We have had nice warm dry calm weather while in Boca. Next stop: Palm Beach.

Read More..

March 5 10 Six Lay Days in Fort Lauderdale Zero Miles

Dinner at the Downtowner, across the river, under the Andrews Avenue Bridge, outdoors, ten feet from the River, after dark, with great atmosphere, twice. Here from the other side of the river, by day.

Once, just the two of us, and the second time with Craig and Kathy. Their 45 Amel Santorin ketch, "Sangaris", is now back in Florida after they have spent the last fifteen years living aboard, as far away as the Galapagos in the Pacific, and throughout the western Med. Craig is a Past Commodore of the Harlem, now an honorary member. They have more miles under their keel than all the rest of us Harlemites put together. I was pleased to tell him that ILENE is the second most sailed boat in the Club. I raced a few times with Craig and Kathy on their old boat "C-Jack" and learned a lot about how to do this thing. Yelling never helps when things go wrong, as they invariably will. Quick, calm instructions on how to fix the problem is what is needed. We enjoyed some wine etc. aboard before the Downtowner.

We also enjoyed mango-sweet potato pancakes with Lenes HS classmate, Elissa and her husband Len, This was the advance guard of Lenes Lincoln HS class of 67 reunion in Boca Raton next week.

Since we left New York I have been meaning to shorten the length of the strap at the tack of the Genoa, to pull that sail down

about an inch in order to be able to stretch out its luff (front edge) more fully. I think that the sail has simply gotten stretched out a bit during the many years of heavy use so that unless I lowered the bottom, the top would get stuck and interfere with furling. I took advantage of access to the tack of the sail from the dock on a windless morning to do this job, doubling the bottom of the strap back upon itself to create a new loop to shorten it. It was too difficult to force the needle through the tough doubled multi-layered strap, even with the palm. So I used fewer stitches than I had planned and other methods to attempt to achieve this job. Time will tell whether the sewing will be strong enough.

We contacted canvas shops to try to get what Lene has sought since those cold days on the way south -- a cockpit, fully enclosed by clear plastic, which will warm up without the cold wind blowing freely through it. The boat came with five panels of mosquito screening to keep out the prevalent pests in the hot summery months in the Chesapeake, where the original owner kept this boat, then called "La Vie." I put these panels up once, on a rainy day, about eight years ago. So I knew they fit. But they did not keep the rain out, nor the wind. The plan is to use the existing Sunbrella canvas "frames" or "hems" around the outside of the panels, but cut out the screen material and sew in sheets of clear strong plastic. I put the panels up and took measurements and photographs. We sent what we have back to Doyle Sails on City Island who will do the work and send them back to us. Best price plus friendly knowledgeable local work at home.

"La Vie" is a lovely name for a boat, by the way, "The Life". But it was not as good for us as ILENE. It is said to be bad luck to change a boats name, but I have changed the name of each of the three boats I have had. The Pearson 28 went from "Y Knot" to "Just Cause".  The Tartan 34 went from "Alsterwasser" (the favorite beer of the late husband from whose widow we bought her) to "ILENE", as did "La Vie."

Carlos walked the dock, gave me his card and offered to clean and wax the exterior of the boat including the stainless, from the waterline up.  Cleaning is work that I can do, though in hindsight, not as well as Clarence. And though I can do it, I seem to not get around to doing it and  I have never gotten ILENE as clean and shining bright white as Carlos has. She had not been done since last spring. Carlos worked, with power polishers,  the better part of three days, and the money was well spent.

I learned a lot at the New River Hotel, now the history museum, located in the former small modest cinder block hotel beside the former Florida East Coast Railroad depot. The FEC still screams past, many times per day, over that RR bridge, right outside the hotel, but they are freight trains and do not stop at the former passenger depot. There are plans to run passenger trains from Miami to Disneyworld over these same tracks. But there is some opposition to the plan because it would require the RR bridge  to open an additional 30 times per day with the loud train whistle reverberating at one second intervals while the trains pass through the heart of the city.

The train runs near Cooleys Landing, because Flagler couldnt persuade the Brickell family, who owned Broward County, to sell him a right of way closer to the coast. And that is why Flagler did not build his typical Flagler pleasure palace hotel here and this one was built by others. There was indeed a fort here, three of them in fact, one after the other, named after the commander of the first fort, one a Mr. Lauderdale. Most of us think of this place as a beach town, which it certainly is ("Where The Boys Are"), but the town grew up by the New River, where we are, several miles west of the beach. The river got its name, according two two competing legends, either (A) because an earthquake caused an underground stream to rise to the surface, i.e., a new river, or (B) because the mouth of the river kept shifting, causing it appear as a new river each time it was charted. Neither story sounds true to me. Cooley, after whose landing our Marina is named, was a local merchant and Justice of the Peace. He also operated a large facility extracting arrowroot from the roots of a plant he grew. When some drunken settlers killed an Indian, he had the culprits arrested and brought to trial. But he lost the prosecution because his only witnesses were Indians, and they could not testify in 1835. The witnesses were upset and blamed Cooley. Some time later they killed Cooley and his family. Class dismissed.

We prayed on the sabbath with Lenes cousin, Jeff, at Temple Beth Am (house of the people) in Margate.. Jeff is an officer there. The service was in the Conservative tradition, in which I grew up and belonged for the first 30 years of my life. Many of the melodies were familiar to me. The Rabbis sermon was timely and excellent, drawn from an essay whose author he credited.
The current spat between the Prime Minister of Israel and President Obama and Senator Boehner who invited Netanyahu to address Congress without asking Obama, was nothing but a bunch of politicians ALL behaving badly. They all agree that Iran cannot be permitted to get a bomb and that Israels security must be assured.  He traced the history of the U.S. - Israel relationship and showed that it was not a warm one until the 1967 war; that the chief suppliers of arms to Israel until then were first the French and then The Soviets via Chechoslovakia.  But, having failed to pacify Afghanistan or Iran after almost 15 years of trying, the U.S., under Obama, has moved to a policy of requiring the four major powers of the region to buffer each other and balance each other out, with U.S. air strikes providing a bit of assistance, to assist ground troops of the local rivals. The four powers in this regional analysis are Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Saudis, none of which like each other, and all of which have cause to hate ISIS.  The spat between Israel and the U.S. comes from Israels feeling of loss that that they were the favorite of the US.  Yet there are many hawkish right wing Jews in the US who hate our President for many reasons. Jeffs Rabbi is to be commended for not joining them.

 After services we had lunch with Jeff, his brother Alan and their Mom, Naomi, at a Chinese Buffet that Naomi craved. This was her first outing since our December visit, when she was in rehab for a broken pelvis. After eating too much we were driven back to Naomis house to pick up about six packages which we had shipped there and then back home to ILENE, for the rest of the rainy day.

I walked to and on the beach one day, via Las Olas Boulevard. Well, a quarter of the round trip was a ride, from the Post office, where I had walked to send off the screens. to the beach. I passed the art gallery district including Pococks, whose owner, though British, like George Pocock, was not related to that famous builder of cedar rowing shells featured in "The Boys In the Boat." I told him that he would enjoy the book.  On the beach I walked north, past the most crowded spot, called "Beach Place," covered with young bikini clad women and men who desired them, then past a gay section of the beach and finally a much more sparsely blanketed section by the Westin Hotel, featuring older people and families. On the way back, along Las Olas ("The Waves"), I noticed the towns logo: a boat with a spinaker on the bow and a phoenix or rising sun as the main.

I walked past the ends of the many canals that were dredged to Las Olas Blvd. and visited an open house in this almost completed new 7488 square foot home. It can be yours for less than $7M. Nice spot to dock ILENE comes with it. But not for us.

We had wine and then dinner aboard with my only nephew, David, who this lousy under-lit photo does not do justice, sorry Dave. He lives with his lovely wife and two kids in Atlanta where he has a business, but is also a partner in a business in Boca Raton and works here three days (two night) per week. He had a weekend with his father aboard "Just Cause" back in 1996, from City Island to Northport and back, but had never seen ILENE. 
We have several more days here in Fort Lauderdale.

Read More..

November 10 12 Three Lay Days in Charleston Zero miles

A municipal manhole cover. Carol is Greek (or Latin?) for Charles and Polis, as in Annapolis or Metropolis, is city or town, hence Charleston, founded in 1670.

There are only three requirements if you want to cruise like we do, the other things are subsidiary. One is time. You need to be retired or independently wealthy or on a sabbatical or unemployed.  Second is money. Not a lot, but you need to buy a boat and maintain and provision it. And third, but no less important than the other two, is good health. On arrival here I thought we had run out of good luck with the third requirement. Lene was bent over with excruciating pain in her left knee. Every few steps was an attack of acute pain. We cant go on like this I thought. She cant climb over life lines and take big steps down from deck level to dock level or transfer between boat and dink.

I told her that we could haul the boat in a yard here in Charleston for the winter, fly home, get the medical problem fixed and come back here next spring and sail ILENE back to New York. The end of the adventure. But then I thought, before such a drastic decision lets get some medical advice. We consulted with our friend Bill, in Oriental, who is a retired Orthopedist. We took a cab to Roper Hospital where x-rays were taken by the ER doctor who gave us a referral for an ASAP visit with an orthopedist on their staff. The ER physician also gave Lene a soft splint, held in place by foam rubber and velcro, which essentially immobilized the knee, causing a very wobbly gait but the absence of the pain, and a prescription for anti inflammatory/pain killers. And these really helped a lot and Lene was walking, slowly but without pain, up to 3/4 of a mile each way. The orthopedist told her to "sail on," resting the knee when possible and using the pills and splint as needed. Her condition has a fancy name and is exacerbated by cold weather. Surgery, replacement and even cortisone can wait. Here is our sick bay, notice the flowers, and the gekko, to the right, below the clock, with short bits of weatherstripping hidden behind it so as not to mar the cherry wood. He will be a reminder of both our Carribean adventure and this trip.

Fortunately,we had spent a week here in the Spring of 2012 and seen most of the major sights, and can stop here again on the way home, because we did no sightseeing on this trip. We did laundry (it is free for boaters in this municipal marina, The Charleston Maritime Center, purchased a new Ipad to replace the one I ruined with salt water in the Chesapeake, and grocery shopped in Harris Teeters, a pretty good supermarket. We took a walk among the historic homes here

(notice my shorts; a warm day at last!) to

 a memorable lunch at Jestines with great inexpensive southern cooking and named after a domestic servant who died in 1997 at age 112, the daughter of an ex slave and a Native American. Jestine worked for a southern family for many years and the restaurant is owned by a descendant of that family. The Reverend Brown of the nearby Methodist Church and the financial secretary of the church recommended the fried chicken which Lene enjoyed and I had, among other things, fried chicken livers, fried okra, corn bread with butter and honey and southern pecan pie.

And of course there is always boat work: ILENE had a bath, her water tanks filled, her fuel tanks poisoned to prevent the growth of microorganisms that clog the fuel lines, gluing back one of the buttons that hold plexiglass panels in place against the screens of the cafe doors with gorilla glue and the top of the percolator lid with JB Weld, a metal to metal glue that is remarkably strong.

But the two biggest problems required the help of Dr. Bill, who, I told him, enjoys fixing boats almost as much as fixing peoples bones. As to the auto pilot, the most expensive component is the motor with linear drive -- the thinner rod to the left goes in and out of the thicker rod to the right, and pulls the rudder to steer the boat. The squeaking and beeping is a $ign of old age and thiS drive will have to be replaced $oon. Its kind of amazing that a guy who is 6 3" could contort his body to reach this place to copy down the serial numbers. Replacing the unit will be harder, but once replaced this one will be rebuilt and used as a spare.

The other problem was the lack of charge into the starting battery. Its sole purpose is to power the starter motor which turns on  the engine. So it discharges only for less than a second each time, but it uses a huge amount of power when it does. And the problem was that it was not being charged by any of the solar panels, the engine or shore power. So the voltage had gradually reached the very low level of only 12 volts. Bill talked me through a series of tests, via phone, which showed that either ILENE does not have a needed "combiner" or that component is not working.  The short answer is that periodically, when we are (A) on shore power with the built in battery charger turned on, or (B) running the engine, we have to combine the starting battery with the "house bank" (which consists of 6 six volt golf cart batteries), so that the starting battery can get charged. This is easily done using a small red plastic key.  Last winter the old starting battery died because I did not know this and erroneously assumed that when I hooked the boat to shore power with the battery charger on, it was charging both batteries. So many lessons to be learned. Thanks again Bill.

Read More..

April 30 May 1 Two Lay Days in Portsmouth Zero Miles

Lenes finger, at the right, is pointing out our slip on F Dock at this Marina, a huge one. In 2012 and 2014 we stayed at a free dock by the Radisson hotel, a couple hundred yards to the upper left of the poster but this time we wanted repairs and might have had to haul the boat so a marina was needed.

Gaston showed up with his assistant promptly as scheduled. I had cleared out the aft cabin to give access to the area of concern. He laid a pencil on the shaft, so light that it would easily detect vibration. Nothing. It does not happen at the dock, even when, tied onto it tightly, we run the engine in gear up to 2500 rpms, trying to drag the dock. He dissembled the flexible coupling again, tested for alignment with feeler gauges, reassembled it and pronounced that it was within tolerance. So the problem is outside the boat, at or near the propeller end of the shaft. He suggested that we wait until the fall and when the boat is hauled, we check the cutlass bearing and remove the propeller and ship it to California for what will be an expensive reconditioning job. He said that we are not in danger from the current situation.
Then he lent us his truck and we visited the supermarket, the drugstore, and a law firm where I signed a document and got it notarized. I spent a few hours planning the places we could stop along the Potomac on the way up and down to Washington DC. It is slim pickins for anchorages and marinas with water deep enough for ILENEs 58" draft. I have asked the 6500 members of a "private group" on Facebook for more information.
Later Gaston came over and paid us a social visit. He was born in France, raised in Israel and is an excellent mechanic. He was affiliated with and sailed in the Caribbean 1500.

The weather has been rainy most of our two days here and so we did little. I had visited the nautical museum and lightship in 2012 and toured the historic district. It rained then too!
They also have a Childrens Museum and one honoring Virginia athletes. I took a pass on those. There is a small Jewish Museum and a historic 1812 house, both of which can be toured, but only in season, not now.
So we took showers, took on water, cleaned the boat, blogged, read, cooked, ate and watched the first two episodes of the PBS series Wolf Hall, based on a novel by Hillary Mantell, which my book group read a few summers ago, about Thomas Cromwell, an attorney in the time of Henry VIII.

We would have left the second of these two days but the forecast of rain and 25 knot wind in our faces deterred us and the forecast came true.

Read More..

January 22 26 Five Lay Days in Marathon Zero Miles

Mike and Bev are in the Marathon Community Theater -- operating since 1944!  Well, they have only been in it for seven years; he is an actor and she is lighting crew. We went to their production of "Harvey". Actually, they drove us there. They had to be there early which gave us time for pre-theater dinner at the nearby Cracked Conch Cafe. I pigged out on conch chowder, conch fingers and key lime pie -- and a local beer! If you are going to eat native, go all the way. (ful disclosure: the conch comes in from Turks and Caicos and most key limes are not grown in the Keys.)
Other friends drove us to the local Publix, a little over a mile away, at which we stocked up on everything except Boars Head cold cuts; they sell -- for $3 less per pound than anywhere else -- at the nearby liquor store/deli, where we stocked up. Cab ride back: $4.00
We volunteered to help kids make "projects" out of materials donated by Home Depot, as part of a Family Fun Day at the adjacent municipal park, but the event was cancelled due to adverse weather. It didnt actually rain but threatened and there was a strong wind. We had a mango pancake breakfast on ILENE with Marsha and John, of the Saga 43, "Remora".

Nice folks and we compared our boats; theirs is six years younger and some improvements were made but other good features had been discontinued. They are from Houston and had sailed across the Gulf.
Around noon, the wind came up very strong and our anchor dragged -- a very bad thing in this crowd. We would have gone aground or crashed into other boats (even floating at one knot, ten tons can do a lot of damage to both boats). Luckily we saw it, got the engine and windlass on and Lene steered, I picked up the anchor and we moved to a slightly better location where we dropped again, let out more scope and held while the boat hunted back and forth, getting close, fifty feet, from "Selkie",

an aluminum hull from Cork, Ireland. Selkies captain came over in his dink and we invited his son and daughter, age six and ten (and their parents) over later, to play with our felines.
We were more lucky than a nearby boat, behind us -- facing the wrong way and heeled over -- that dragged into the sandy mud.

 Fortunately, they were afloat again the next morning. We would like to be on a mooring which is more secure against dragging, but no one is leaving until a weather window opens up for the Bahamas.
The daily radio net on VHF channel 68 creates a community among the boaters. It has a section called "Activities": movies,  theater, daily specials at restaurants, archery lessons, bible study, astronomy, meetings on human trafficking, passages to the Bahamas, etc. get announced. I asked whether anyone else sailing with cats wanted to  get together to share stories. But we had to leave our radio and did not get the replies, if any, which were to be shared on Channel 69 after the net. But next day s/v "Mardi Gras", from St. Louis, MO, with Barry and Linda aboard, hailed us while leaving Marathon by yelling, and gave us their phone number, so we could later exchange cat stories. Their stories were about Pearls swim one night when she got distracted while chasing a moth, and the crazy obscure hidden places in Mardi Gras  in which Pearl was able to trap herself. Similar to our cats adventures with variations. Their blog is sailmardigras.blogspot.com. We may see them in Key West or the Tortugas.
Our new pencil holder arrived and is installed. Lene hadnt liked the idea until now. I had thought this would be useful for several

years, to avoid having to open the hinged top of the desk and look under it for a pencil but didnt get one until now.
The movie "Red Dot On The Ocean" a documentary about Matt Rutherford, was shown on a sheet hung at the outdoor Tiki Lounge, next to the main marina building one evening. Matt, who had a troubled past with school, family, substances and the law, sailed an old Vega 27 -- a 27 foot boat -- around the Americas, departing from Little Creek Virginia and returning back there 309 days later, including west through the northwest passage above Canada to the Pacific and around Cape Horn -- (1) alone, (2) without stopping or going ashore and (3) on a short budget. He was met twice by other boats who brought him food and a replacement hand powered water maker. He had essentially no spare parts, sails, etc, and when he got back the boat was filthy and almost everything was broken, except his spirits. The film was highlighted by the presence of its director and producer,

Amy, from "Mary T", on a mooring. Needless to say this movie was appreciated by the audience, including us. Free admission! A real treat.

Technically, we are in Boot Key Harbor, formed by Marathon to the north (on which Route 1, the black line, runs), Boot Key to the South and Vaca Key to the east. We entered between the two red dots in the upper left (The upper one is a green buoy) and motored 1.2 miles east to between R"16" and R"18", shown just below the word "MARATHON."  From here it is a .6 mile dinghy ride, first continuing west and then north to the the land jutting south from Marathon by the buoy "5B". The greenish spot extending just below 5B called PA is a shoaly sea grass area, too shallow for even the dink. Thus, the harbor has room for expansion if people have the money to spend and the Corps of Engineers would permit this large squarish area, perhaps 200 yards on each side, to be dredged.
One morning we dinked through Sisters Creek which is the other entrance to the harbor, for dinghys and boats of up to four feet draft, to visit Sombrero Beach. The Creek is shown on the southern part of the chart and separates Boot key from Vaca Key. The water at the beach was warm enough for barefoot wading but  the air was cool enough for the sweatshirt. When I was in Key West for antisubmarine training in the fall of 1965, the type of seaweed that lines the shore here was made wet by daily rain and rotted in the intense heat, giving off a sulfurous gas that peeled the paint from peoples houses! No such problem here.

The municipal marina is next to the city park where they have tennis courts and shuffleboard courts and equipment and probably lots of other things, available for rent, if you can call it that, because they are free.

Readers may recall my friend Hugh, from my navy days, who sailed with me with his grandson, Levi, in Boston Harbor in early August 2013 and who visited us with Levi in NY in 2014. Learning that we were to be in Marathon through this blog, he put me in touch with his Machetonim (Yiddish word to describe ones childs in-laws), Beverly, who lives here. We contacted her but our first proposed meeting had to be cancelled by us due to excessive wind making the dink ride uncomfortable, and to be here in case of dragging.
We have spent two, non-consecutive days aboard here due to high winds. In the later, our extra scope and the shifting direction of the wind put us in the channel and we were directed to move and did so, to a new spot about .2 miles further from the marina. Our plan calls for us to stay here a few more days.
When I drove to and from Key West in 1965, the keys were largely unpopulated, just a few bars and low budget motels is all I recall. The place has filled in with the rest of Florida.

Read More..

ovember 22 and 23 Two Lay Days in Fernandina Zero Miles

Pretty lazy lay days. We had a delicious breakfast with Dean and Susan

followed by a very productive shopping trip at the multi-vendor farmers market. We are looking forward to boiling the likes of home made sweet potato fettuccine -- the eggs and other filler replaced with the pureed potato.  Afternoon and evening plans were replaced by the threat of a storm so we hung out on ILENE with some cleaning and polishing and a quiet night at home. The rain came, and heavy, but not until about 2 am and continued until morning.
The second day was warm, with a very light shower in the evening. After bailing many gallons of rainwater out of the dink I visited the Amelia Island Museum of History,

located in the former county jail and took its 2 pm "eight flags" tour. The ninth flag, except that they did not have one, would have been that of the  matriarchal peaceful people, the Timucuans, who the Europeans wiped out. (The Seminoles, who married with escaped slaves -- slaves escaped to the south, to the Florida wilderness, where the Spanish left them alone -- came later, from the north.) The Spanish wiped out the Huguenot French saying: "not because they were French but because they were Protestants" and held the island several times, including, for a period after the Treaty Of Paris, which ended our war of independence. That treaty gave Florida to Spain for their help to the new republic against the British. Various pirate regimes were established. David Levy Yulee campaigned to have the Florida Territory become a state and was the first US senator from Florida (and the first Jewish senator in the US senate) when Florida was granted statehood in 1845. But Florida was the third state to secede, in 1861, so its first period as a US State was short lived. Yulee (a nearby town is named for him) also built Floridas first big railroad, which ran from Floridas Gulf Coast northeastward to Fernandina, a deep water port, to permit the transport of goods from the gulf states to the Atlantic without having to go all the way around the peninsula and the keys by boat. But it was finished just in time for the Civil War and sections of rail were removed by the Confederacy to be used in more strategic locations. You get the idea that no one really cared that much about Florida until tourism put it on the map. All of these "regime changes" were accomplished without a shot being fired.
Flagler offered to build a spur of his east coast railroad to Fernandina but the existing tourism on Amelia Island was so good in the 1890s that the town fathers declined his offer, much to their chagrin, because the tourism industry relocated to southern Florida until the 1990s when it returned here. What made the museum so enjoyable was our docent, Bobbie Fost, a history professor who knew and loved her subject, shown here under a depiction of the eight flags, in chronological order.

The museum has much more to offer so if you want more, ask me  -- or visit yourself.

After returning to the boat to pick up Lene, we dined on interesting dishes at "29 South" with Dean and Susan, and plan to head over to St. Marys tomorrow morning, less than seven miles.

Read More..