March 27, 2011

On one of our last days in Miami Beach we went to South Point Park and walked along the paved paths gazing in awe at how much money could be poured into one spot.

This is dawn over the Gulf Stream. Most of the time we had several ships in sight, but there are none in this photograph. The closest we came to any ship was two or three miles.

Thirty miles from land, this little fellow, a bananaquit, landed on our lifelines for a rest on his way to wherever he was going. The breeze has ruffled his feathers a little. While he gave us plenty of time to take his picture, he did not spend any time primping for the camera so he looks a little unkept.

At Normans Cay we were greeted by roaring RIBS as we found ourselves at the finish line of a 30 mile race.

Bill doing what he does best - relaxing in the cockpit shade drinking a beer.

The interior of Shroud Cay is filled with mangrove lined shallow creeks. They wind around and around. Two pass completely through the island to beaches on the Atlantic side of the island.

There are areas inside Shroud Cay that the mangroves have not colonized. At low tide they are desert-like expanses of dry sand.

This is Irish Eyes anchored at Shroud Cay. The boat leaving had been anchored nearby the night before.

We crossed Hawksbill Cay to walk on the beaches there. But, when we arrived we discovered that our flip flops were not really suitable for climbing down the cliffs to the beach. We just walked along the cliff tops and took in the views.

Hello from the beautiful, warm, and sunny Bahamas.

It has been a while since I updated this blog. When I last wrote we were preparing to leave Miami for the Bahamas. While we waited for a cold front to pass over Florida and the sailing weather to improve, I shopped for food and did the laundry. I got a haircut which ended up being very short proving that I was not good at giving instructions to Latinos. At least it will last a long time. We took a day trip to the Aventura Mall, supposedly the 4th largest in the world. It was a two dollar, hour long bus ride from South Beach. The bus drove along Collins Avenue, A1A, right along the beach. We saw all the ritzy hotels and condo towers. The mall was big and expensive. If you wanted a pair of fancy tennis shoes or a piece of trendy jewelry or clothing, Aventura Mall was the place to go. We had lunch there. Bill bought three t-shirts at JC Penny’s, certainly not one of the fancier stores, and I bought a small wooden spoon at Sur La Table. We had an enjoyable and economical day. On the bus ride back, we went by the Fontainebleau Hotel where President Obama was staying the night. There were lots of barricades and police cars, but they just waved the bus through.

Planning on a Monday (March 7) Gulf Stream departure, Saturday became the marathon grocery shopping day. Since we couldn’t carry all the groceries at once, I bought the non-perishables on our first trip to Publix. We got all that put away and decided to run the engine to cool the refrigerator down before I went back for the perishables and frozen food. Bill noticed that the red run light on the fridge was not lit. I flipped the switch on and off, but nothing happened. Bill looked into the engine compartment and discovered the suction line had broken in two at the compressor and all the Freon had escaped. The engine drive refrigeration system was dead. Without refrigeration our trip would be a bad camping experience with all canned food and warm beer. Not good. While we do have backup 125v refrigeration, we would have to stop in a marina every night to get the electricity to use it. We definitely couldn’t spend every night in a marina! We go to places where there aren’t any. Bill was very upset. He could have fixed the system himself, but his vacuum pump and gauges were in the trunk of my car in New Bern. Fortunately, we had talked to a fellow from Awesome Marine Services at the Miami Boat Show and had kept his business card. Monday Bill called Orlando Barreto, and made arrangements to meet him in the Publix parking lot to give him the broken hose to duplicate. Then things got worse. When Bill unscrewed the broken end of the hose from the compressor, he broke the nozzle off the compressor. Bill took Orlando both the hose and the compressor. On Thursday the parts were ready, and we went to Cramden Park Marina on Key Biscayne so Orlando could work on the system. By nightfall the repairs were complete and the refrigeration was working again.

On Friday morning we decided to go back to our South Beach anchorage to buy the last of the groceries and once again catch up on the laundry. It would be more convenient than doing the chores at Key Biscayne although we would have to return to Key Biscayne to leave for Bimini. The weather forecast was good for either a Monday or Tuesday crossing. We shopped and laundered on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday afternoon we motored and sailed to the anchorage outside Key Biscayne’s No Name Harbor to be ready to leave before dawn on Monday.

The alarm woke us up at 3am on March 14th. Bill and I ate a quick breakfast and were underway in the moonless dark by 4:15. The channel to the ocean was not very long, but it has two shallow spots, five or six navigation marks, and lots of worrisome things that crept out of the dark and into my imagination. The waves were a little larger than I would have liked, but they settled down as we went along. This wasn’t our smoothest crossing, but it was our slowest. It was 4pm before we were tied up at Weech’s Bimini Dock. Bill went to customs and immigration and cleared us in. I rested.

I needed to call Julia and Ann to tell them that we had arrived safe and sound. In spite of having been assured by T-Mobile in Florida that I had international roaming, my phone did not receive any service. I borrowed an AT&T phone from another boater and called Julia. Truly frustrated, I went to the liquor and bought eleven bottles of rum. The stuff is very cheap in the Bahamas. After supper we were able to get a WiFi signal. I logged onto T-Mobile’s site and waited 45 minutes for a “live chat” with a customer service representative. I explained the problem. The service person said to switch the phone off, then, after he made a change in their system, he said to switch the phone back on. Presto, change-o the phone worked! I will never understand things like that! While I was waiting to chat, the lobster salesman came by and greeted us warmly. He remembered us from last year. We bought 12 lobster tails for $40. I think we bought the last of his day’s catch. No matter, tastes good. Into the freezer they went.

After a lovely hot shower (my first ashore with unlimited water in five weeks), we set out for the Berry Islands. In years past we have sailed 25 or 30 hours without stopping to reach Nassau. This year the wind was light and the waves were small, so rather than sail overnight we anchored at sundown. We had seen others do it. We just went a mile or so south of the usual route from North Rock to the NW Channel Light to get out of the way. We anchored in a shallow spot called Mackie Shoal with nothing in sight but sea and sky. Although the waves were small, they were large enough to make the boat uncomfortable. I first went to sleep, but later I woke up to lots of boat motion. I decided a Dramamine tablet would help with boat motion anytime, so I got up and took one. It was also a good sleeping pill. I slept like a baby the rest of the night.

Wednesday March 16 dawned bright and calm. We had a Bananaquit, a little yellow and black bird, perching on our life lines. This was truly amazing as the nearest land was Bimini, behind us and 30 miles away! The bird flew away and came back several times. When it finally left for good, I did not see where it was headed. I hope it knew where it was going. This little bird was about the size of a wren. I will never understand how little birds can fly as far as they do.

The fridge broke again. The mount that held the compressor on the engine cracked in two, the compressor fell down a little, and the vee belt went flying off. Bill tried fastening it back with three hose clamps. That lasted about half an hour before they broke. He tried wiring it back with bailing wire. He could not get it tight enough. Finally, he clamped the broken pieces back together with a pair of Vice Grip pliers. That did the trick. It was not perfect, but it worked.

We were headed for Frazer’s Hog Cay, but we were late getting away and our progress was so slow. By mid-afternoon, we knew we would not arrive by dark. We again anchored out of sight of land, this time north of Northwest Shoal. The wind was so calm it was like anchoring in a pond – a pond that reached to the horizon in every direction. Early in the morning we had several boats pass close enough to rock us with their wakes. Once we were underway we saw lots of sport fishing boats taking advantage of the calm seas at a spot where the water depth goes from 6,000 ft to 6 ft in a couple of miles. I hope they caught lots of fish.

We went to the Berry Islands Club and picked up a mooring. Bill took the dinghy to their dock to pay for our night’s stay and get diesel in our fuel jugs to replace what we had burned since Florida. We left early the next morning as the wind and current had us fighting with the mooring ball. Our plan was to head for Rose Island which is just east of New Providence Island (Nassau). The course was an uncomfortable point of sail, hard on the wind with too much heeling for me. The boat went so far over at times that Bill’s new stern mounted bronze bell would ring. It made a pretty good “we are heeling too far” alarm. We changed course and headed for New Providence Island’s Southwest Bay. That ended up being a lovely sail the entire way. We anchored off Tiger Wood’s newly built Albany Resort. From what we could see it looked expensive. A 100+ foot sailboat left the marina at sunset and came out to anchor with us. We have since listened to two mega power yacht captains talk on the radio about Albany Resort. They said it was too expensive and in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think we will make a slip reservation anytime soon. The resort uses about 20% of the island’s fresh water supply just to keep its golf courses green.

The weather forecast for Sunday and Monday said the wind was going to be very strong from the Northeast. We decided on Saturday morning to head for Highbourne Cay which would offer some protection from the wind. The wind was nice, and the sail across the banks was pleasant. There is something about sailing that really makes me tired. Maybe it is just keeping upright on a moving boat. After our 5 days of travel we were pooped. It was nice to drop the anchor and know we didn’t have to move the next day. Sunday we read, knitted, and lazed around. The wind did pick up blowing steadily at 20-25 knots. Monday the wind was still howling. Bill had a new toy – an anchor riding sail. He spent lots of time adjusting his sail. It did help keep the boat from weaving back and forth around its anchor. I baked bread. Since we were confined to the boat, we watched a movie.

The wind died down during the night. We pulled up our anchor and headed for Norman’s Cay on Tuesday. That ‘long’ trip took us about 2 hours. As we entered the anchorage, we noticed a center cockpit motor boat anchored just off the beach. The people on board had lots of fancy cameras and the boat had several flags flying. There was a group of people on the beach who seemed to be talking to the people in the boat. The folks on the beach had fancy cameras too. Bill spotted a little remote control helicopter with a camera flying above the beach. It looked like something from outer space. Our VHF radio picked up the conversation between the beach and the anchored boat. That didn’t help us figure out what was going on because the conversation was in Dutch. All of a sudden a 25 foot RIB boat came roaring into the anchorage followed closely by five more. Someone on the motor boat waved a flag as if this was the end of a race. Well it was. The RIBS had raced the thirty miles from Nassau to Norman’s Cay. The whole group was called Rib Rally. The boats had been shipped over from Holland and the crews were folks paying to play. I managed to get online briefly (ribrally.com) with my Kindle, but I never did find out how much a vacation like that costs. Cruisers from two other anchored boats came over to see the action, and we later ate dinner with them in the Normans Cay Beach Club.

The next day we had another ‘long’ sail, about an hour this time, to Shroud Cay. We anchored near the south creek so we could dinghy up the creek and through the island to the sound-side beach. Our dinghy ride ended up being a dinghy tow. The water was very shallow; to shallow for the outboard. Bill walked along in the water pulling me for a while, and then I got out and walked too. We did make it to the beautiful beach. Bill found an old piece of plastic pipe washed up on the beach which helped him pole the dinghy back to Irish Eyes. He wouldn’t make it in Venice, he can’t sing… and he is not too good at poling a boat either.

We spent another day anchored at Shroud Cay and took the dinghy into a second creek to explore the two beaches that were on the creek’s banks. Among the plastic trash on the beaches Bill found two deflated Happy Birthday balloons that probably blew over from Florida and a restaurant-sized sweet and sour sauce bottle from Lancashire in England. It is sad to see the huge amounts of plastic garbage and fishing gear that washes up on the beaches here.

The wind although light was from the southwest. With no land but Cuba in that direction, our boat pitched up and down with each wave making life aboard a little uncomfortable. We made our third ‘long’ trip, this time to Hawksbill Cay, hoping for a little smoother water. Rather than anchoring we grabbed a mooring ball provided by the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. We did not find smoother water, but we did spend two days walking the beach on our side of the island and hiking across the beach to the Exuma Sound side and taking in the gorgeous views from the tops of the cliffs there.

Yesterday, we first motored then sailed to Warderick Wells Cay where we are now. We bought 24 hours of internet access from the park, but I exceeded the 100 Mbytes limit in an hour of looking at pictures of the grandchildren. We went to a party on the nearby beach and met some of the other people here. It was interesting. They ranged from the crew and guests on the 97 foot long “Hooter Patrol” to a couple touring the islands in a folding kayak and from the two Bahamas Defense Forces soldiers stationed here to a newly married couple on a yearlong honeymoon – six months of backpacking in South America and six months sailing.

Today I paid for another day of internet access. Maybe I’ll use it up shopping…

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Anchored in Lake Boca Raton we were treated to a rainbow which brightened our spirits after a frustrating day of motoring down from West Palm Beach and dealing with the drawbridges and other boats.

Fidelity retirement advertisements always have gaily painted Adirondack chairs in their pictures. This house along the ICW south of Boca Raton has the necessary chairs. Also, notice the concrete walls. Like the palatial houses, they are continuous on both sides for miles and miles. Boat wakes reverberate back and forth in the enclosed concrete canyon making it a very rough place to be.

Too big for one photo, Navigator of the Seas is one of the four largest cruise ships in the world. It was docked at Port Everglades.

This drawbridge stayed stuck in this position for two hours or more. We just anchored and waited.

The walls in Mango’s Tropical Café in Miami Beach were colorful and matched the atmosphere of the place.

From our boat we have nice view of the Miami skyline to our west. One day the Goodyear blimp entertained us as it flew over the city.

Espanola Way in South Beach came alive at night. We ate at a sidewalk café there.

The house and gardens at Vizcaya were impressive to say the least. The house was built in the early 1900s and now belongs to Miami-Dade County.



Hello from warm and sunny South Beach, Miami Beach, Florida. We have been anchored here for ten days or so soaking up the warmth, enjoying the area, and attending to a medical issue of mine. More on that as we go along.

The trip on the ICW between Palm Beach and Miami included 31 bridges, 27 of which were drawbridges that had to open for us. There was a small craft advisory for wind and waves in the Atlantic so rather than sail outside and avoid the bridges we opted to motor down the waterway. It was a long two day trip spent waiting for bridges to open, jockeying with other boats at the bridges, and dealing with faster boats. More than once a faster boat would first get in front of us and then slow down preventing us from going the necessary speed to make it to the next bridge’s opening. And then, when the faster boat knew how fast he needed to go to make the opening, he would speed up and pull ahead leaving us running full speed but unable to get to the bridge in time. We would arrive late and have to wait a half hour for the next scheduled bridge opening. It got old fast. The trip took us two days. We spent the night anchored in Lake Boca Raton and left early the next morning mistakenly hoping to beat some of the boat traffic and shorten the trip. It did not work out that way. The faster boats were back in force. Their wakes bounced back and forth between the concrete sides of the canal. At times it was worse than the ocean. To add insult to injury, one drawbridge broke! It was stuck part way open with no electricity. There was nothing for us to do but toss out an anchor and wait. The bridge tender called in reinforcements from the maintenance department. Those guys looked at this and that, tried to start an emergency generator, then called for more help. A fellow wearing a white shirt arrived. All the other workers gathered around him and whatever he did or said got the generator going again and the bridge open. At another bridge, the gates holding the cars back were down, the lights were flashing, and the bells were dinging when some idiot driver went around the gates and slowly drove across the bridge just before the bridge tender raised the leaves! We were amazed. The bridge tender was amazed. Again, we had to wait. We finally made it to Miami Beach and anchored. Whew! What a trip. A beautiful full moon was rising as we grilled our dinner. That made up for hassles of the previous two days. Maybe, just maybe, it was the moon that brought out the crazies.

In Miami Beach we became total slugs. We lazed about on the boat all day. We did launch the dinghy, but we didn’t go anywhere. Saturday, we packed all our winter clothes and bedding into two large duffle bags. We carried the bags to the UPS store and sent them to the Julia. It was good to see the down jackets, socks, and comforter go somewhere else. It gave us room on the boat to move around until Bill buys beer and fills up all the space again. We filed for a six month extension for our income tax then went over to the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall for a beer and pizza lunch. We walked around in the Art Deco District, took a little stroll on the beach, and bought a few groceries before heading back to Irish Eyes.

The Miami International Boat Show was going on that first weekend. No excuses Bill says. We are on a boat. We have to go. We spent all day Sunday looking at sailboats, boat stuff, motors, dinghies, big metal things, little metal things, big plastic things, and little plastic things. A day of that and I was ready to drop. We managed to buy nothing but lunch. Can you believe Bill didn’t buy a thing? It’s a miracle! We went aboard a 48’ catamaran that had four sleeping compartments; each with its own head and separate shower. Four separate enclosed showers; I was awestruck.

At Christmas time I developed a red spot on my chest. Whatever my reasoning, I chose to ignore it. As time went on, the spot grew into an ugly growth. Bill urged me to have it looked at by a doctor. Monday morning I called and got an appointment for that afternoon with a dermatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Rather than sit around on the boat waiting, we took the dinghy into town. We wandered down the Espanola Way. It was a quaint old Spanish area with small hotels, restaurants and shops. A mile or so later we were in the Art Deco District and it was lunch time. We stopped to eat at Mango’s Tropical Café with its overly made up and suggestively dressed waitresses. We ate at an outside table where we could watch both the sidewalk outside the dance stages inside. It was a perfect spot for people watching. Our sandwiches and beers weren’t bad either. We took a cab to the doctor’s office where he removed the growth and sent samples off to be analyzed. The doctor left the wound open and said it could be closed in a few days when the pathology report came back. We took a bus back to the boat, and other than a red blood stain on my yellow shirt that looked like I had been shot in the chest, everything went well.

I spent the next three days recovering, knitting, and waiting to hear from the pathology. Bill worked on a shower system for our head. He made a trip to the hardware store and came back with a shower curtain, a spring loaded rod, and little thing to hold the telephone shower head on the wall. It works just great and keeps the water mess in the head to a minimum. Only half of the compartment now gets wet. (I keep thinking about that boat with four separate showers.) Bill sanded and varnished the starboard side of the boat interior. He got three coats of varnish on the teak woodwork and it looks much better.

The pathology report came back on Friday saying all was well. The dermatologist suggested I see a plastic surgeon to have the wound closed. After spending most of Friday on the phone, we finally found a surgeon who had Saturday hours and was in our insurance network. At that point I was getting a little stir crazy and was ready for some excitement; anything to get off the boat and off the telephone. We took the dinghy into town and walked around sticking our noses into the shops but buying nothing. It isn’t that the stores didn’t have anything I liked; if I bought something, there would be no place to put it. The boat is already full. We had a delicious Mexican dinner at a sidewalk café on Espanola Way. We put navigation lights on the dinghy and zipped back in the dark to our cozy floating home.

We trooped to the plastic surgeon’s office at Mercy Hospital early Saturday, but he decided that rather than doing the procedure that day in his office he would do it Monday in the hospital – more waiting. We left and started walking north toward downtown Miami. Along the way we found Vizcaya, an Italian style villa built by James Deering, vice president of International Harvester. The house and gardens are now owned by the City of Miami and are open to the public. The house is huge with great views of both Biscayne Bay and the gardens to its south. Bill and I spent several hours wandering through the house and gardens. We continued our walk, passing through a section the signs called “Historic South Miami Avenue”. The houses were pretty and the yards colorful. It was hard to believe it was February with all the flowers. We stopped at a restaurant for a sandwich then caught a ride on the free elevated bus-on-rails thing to the Omni Center. There we caught a bus back to South Miami Beach and our boat.

Sunday was a chore day. I did laundry while Bill transported 50 gallons of water in plastic jugs from the nearby park to the boat. We were back on board Irish Eyes in the afternoon and were “entertained” by the jet skis and motor boats that zoomed through the anchored boats while the 2000 hp 100 mph speed boats flew by at a distance. Fortunately, they all go home at dark to watch TV and then go back to work on Monday leaving us in peace.

For us Monday was surgery day. We took a taxi to the outpatient surgery center at the University of Miami Hospital (our third hospital in one week), and I had the week old wound closed. The medical care was first rate and everyone we met was more than kind. Leaving the hospital, my wheelchair pusher turned to Bill and told him to bring the car around. Bill said it would be a long walk to get the car. We convinced him I could walk across the street to the train station, and although he objected, he let us go. A trip on the train, the bus-on-rails thing, a bus, and the dinghy brought us back to the boat. My brain was a still little befuddled from the anesthesia, so Bill brought back a pizza from town for supper while I just sat around. What a saga!

Tuesday, we began shopping for food in preparation for the Bahamas. It rained during the night, but it is sunny and warm again. It is too windy and the ocean waves are too big for us to cross the Gulf Stream right now, but that should fix itself in a few days. For now we will do the shopping and listen to the weather forecast. Hopefully, we will be able to leave soon.