Accidental Preppers

We are under way eastbound across the Great Bahamas Bank, after just a bit more than a week in Bimini. Today was our first window where we could expect a relatively comfortable night at anchor mid-bank. We lost our Internet connection a short while ago, and we won't see a signal again until tomorrow afternoon. The news we left behind was gloomy, and we're almost nervous to see what we'll find in our inbox after a full day offline.

When we arrived in Bimini eight days ago, seas were already building, winds were high, and a big blow was forecast out of the north, lasting several days. We were happy to find space at the historic Browns Marina to shelter from the storm, next to our good friend John aboard Division Belle. John snapped a photo of the two boats together.

John had rented a golf cart to run his hired crew up to the seaplane base on Thursday, and he lent it to us in the afternoon. We took a spin around the island, refreshing our memories of Alice Town, Bailey Town, and the enormous Resorts World complex at the north end of the island, where we had stayed briefly in the ritzy marina on a previous visit.

Thursday evening the three of us drove up to the Bimini Big Game Club, also historic, for some dinner. We had talked about stopping into the famed End of the World Saloon, also known as the Sand Bar, for a beer first, but we all found the place to be too loud for comfort. In fact, our aft deck was just perhaps 20 yards from their patio, and so we never missed out on any of the music, which seemed to be the same sound track daily. The place was dead the whole time we were there.


Division Bell and Vector at Browns Marina. Photo: John Samford

Browns is historic in large part because it's where Hemingway docked when he was in town. He was also known to stay at the Compleat Angler hotel, the charred remains of which can be seen on the walk to Big Game. John remembers it from before it burned down in 2006, and shared a few of his memories with us. You should check out John's blog post for more information and pictures.

Big Game was our last meal ashore while we were at Browns, but we did try to get off the boat each evening and stroll through Alice Town. Friday, John dropped by and gifted us a loaf of Bimini bread after he had hiked up to the bakery and back. That loaf was our breakfast for the next four days, and I also made rum cake out of it for desert Friday evening, when we had John over for dinner. He supplied the wine, so we got the better end of the deal.

Saturday John bid us farewell, taxied up to the seaplane base at Resorts World, and flew back to Fort Lauderdale, where he rented a car for the drive back to Savannah. He is understandably avoiding commercial flights right now. Their overall plan for this season's Bahamas cruise had been to do stints of a couple of weeks or so on the boat, flying back home between excursions, but now that plan is in question. We wish them the best of luck and smooth motoring whatever they decide to do.

As the news has gotten more and more dire each day we've been in-country, and the real scope of the pandemic becomes evident, we have found ourselves thankful for our current situation. While sitting in Bimini for a week, at a dock we would not need save for the weather, was tedious and expensive, the last-minute scramble to provision the boat for a three-month cruise could not have been better timed, yet completely accidental. Our final provisioning runs at Costco, Walmart, and Publix found the stores well-stocked with everything, and yet by our third day offshore we were hearing about critical supply shortages of everything from bottled water to toilet paper.


John also took this screen shot of our two boats on Marine Traffic, after departing our respective ports.

I myself am pushing the lower bound of the high-risk age group for this virus, and before we made the decision to continue east from Bimini, the thought did cross our minds that we are getting further and further from easy access to good medical care. But we have balanced that with the fact that there is hardly any better "social distancing" than to be on a boat at sea with an occasional stop at a sparsely populated remote island with no airport or cruise terminal.

For now we have opted to stay the course and continue our cruise to the Exumas. With nearly three months of provisions on board, and a full medical kit including two oxygen cylinders, we've decided that, for us personally, this is the best course of action. We have no schedule and no commitments, so it is subject to change at a moments notice, should an even more conservative course of action become indicated.

As long as we were pinned down in a marina with nothing much to do in the neighborhood, I set about getting some work done around the boat. And first up on the project list is the ever-problematic water maker. We had, in part, diverted all the way to Fort Lauderdale on this trip to have JT-the-watermaker-guy take a look at it, and I even spoke with him at the Miami show. He's pretty booked up, but we agreed I could maybe pull the pump out and bring it to the shop.

Prior to doing that much work, I wanted some real data to give him about performance, and so we ran it in Miami for a few hows. Of course, it worked perfectly. Knowing the impossibility of diagnosing problems that can't be reproduced, we waved off disassembling the system in Fort Lauderdale. That made it inevitable that production would fall off dramatically on our crossing to Bimini.


Angel in her new under-seat box. We bought this string of plastic LED lights at Costco to replace older glass incandescent ones. We run these from the bow, over the flybridge, to the stern, like on a cruise ship.

It seems pretty clear after a few hours of troubleshooting that I have air coming in on the suction side. Probably what I really ought to do now is to replace every hose and fitting on that side of the system; it's all plastic, and now a dozen years old. The loss of suppleness in the plastic is probably at least part of the problem. But that's not really possible here in the Bahamas, and so I will continue to tweak things and tighten them down here and there to try to make an improvement.

The other big project I started was to replace the navigation lights on the dinghy. After being flagged down by the Coast Guard in St. Petersburg when they could not see them from their vantage point, I finally decided to do something about the poorly positioned side lights. These are affixed to either side of the steering pod, which means they can be blocked by the high bow of the boat if we're both sitting in the back. The port one can be blocked by anyone seated forward. And they are off-center to starboard.

Before we left the US, I had collected most of the parts to replace these with a single combination light right at the bow, which involves a glue-down mount for the forward tube. I fabricated an adapter plate to mount the single LED fixture to this, and ran wires all the way through the bilge to the stern and back forward to the steering pod, where the light switch is located.

While I was inside the pod wiring it all up, I discovered that the retrieving tube for the cable steering had slipped off, which explained an odd clunk we'd heard on hard left rudder the last couple of times we took it out. I had to cobble together a new retrieving tube from some vinyl hose I had in my spares.


The newest anchorage on Bimini, already seeing plenty of use.

The forecast winds arrived as promised, and we had a wild and woolly afternoon and night on Saturday. Sunday morning the super-moon spring tides made for a low of -0.5', and that combined with north wind blowing water out of the bay had us brushing the bottom in our slip.

By Monday the winds had laid down some, but still not enough, at least in the morning, to persuade us to leave the dock. But by Tuesday morning things were much better, and, tired of paying for a marina we did not need, we dropped lines and headed north to the anchorage. The marina was very kind, and for cash payment charged me at the weekly rate rather than the daily one, even though it had been just six nights. If we need a marina here again, Browns will be our choice.

The anchorage is two miles north, past the Resorts World marina. This anchorage did not even exist on our first visit, having been created since then by dredging for resort expansion. There is room up here for maybe a dozen boats now, perhaps the best-kept secret in Bimini. Like many such things, it won't last, as the same development activity that created it will some day make it unusable, or at least smaller.

On our way up the channel we could see an enormous cruise ship across the island, tied up to the cruise/ferry pier that the resort had built a few years ago. AIS told us it was the Scarlet Lady, which I later learned is the first in a planned fleet of cruise ships operated by Virgin. It has not even officially launched, with the inaugural cruise planned to depart Miami on March 26th.


The Resort World "mega" marina from our anchorage. Mostly empty.

What on earth, I wondered, was it doing here? A bit more digging revealed that Virgin contracted with Resorts World to build them a private oasis, to be called The Beach Club, and Virgin plans to have all their cruises stop here, in much the same way that Princess has a private area on Eleuthera called "Princess Cays," Holland America has a private island they call Half Moon Cay (really San Salvador), Disney has a beach in the Abacos, etc.

The Beach Club area is down by (but separate from) Resort World's "beach club" restaurant, where we tendered in from anchor a few years ago. I presume they will shuttle passengers from the pier using buses or trams. Since Virgin is not carrying any passengers yet, we can only assume the ship was here for some sort of dry run, or maybe as part of getting things set up and procedures worked out. She left some time during the night.

The newer, more recently dredged section of the anchorage seemed full when we arrived, with a half dozen sailboats in it, who had probably ridden out the blow there. We dropped the hook closer to the resort docks (map). This would prove to be a mistake later, but it looked innocent enough with the resort docks nearly empty.

We splashed the tender and I explored all of the new dredged areas for the new villa development, stretching northward perhaps another mile now. I also dropped by the dockmaster's office to get permission to tie the tender up for dinner. We came back in the evening and tied up right in front of the new Hilton hotel on the property, where three of the restaurants are located.


The Hilton as seen on our way out. Too early for the frat boys to be partying at the rooftop pool.

I'm not sure why we did not expect this here in mid-March, but the resort was running week-long Spring Break promotions, and the hotel was packed with 18-20 year-olds in board shorts and thong bikinis. The "proper attire required" dress code was right out the window, and they wandered through the lobby, the bars, the restaurants, and the casino. We ate at Hemingways in the casino, because it was the only venue where we could even hear each other. We were the oldest patrons in the room by a factor of at least two.

We enjoyed strolling the grounds a little before returning to Vector. On our way home, we noticed stage lighting outdoors at the pool area near where we were anchored, and a bit of digging online into the Spring Break event schedule revealed that Tuesday night was dance music from 10pm-3am with a lineup of DJs. By this time it was pitch dark in the anchorage and too late to move the boat, so we just endured it. It was actually not too bad, considering how close we were.

Tuesday night was the first test of the new dinghy lights, with the mounting pad just taped in place. Yesterday I made final adjustments and glued it down. With no music scheduled for the pool deck in the evening, we just stayed put. After our experience at the Hilton the previous evening, we decided to tender down to the other end of the marina, which used to be known as "Fishermen's Village," to eat at the pizza joint there that we remembered from our last visit.

Even though the pizza place was still listed on the web site and the resort maps, it's clearly been closed for a while, along with most of the rest of the Village. We stopped in the little convenience store to find they still have milk, eggs, ice cream, and other hard-to-find items, so at least the resort is still trying to cater to their marina guests. We ended up right back at the Hilton where we ate in the sushi bar. The spring breakers, now on day three, were looking a bit more shop-worn; the only reason to come to Bimini for break is because the drinking age is 18.


Fishermen's Village marina on our way out. Nearly empty save for the Nordhavn 76 "Take 5" at right.

Update: We are anchored on the bank, a mile south of the sailing line (map). With an early start this morning, we arrived at Mackie Shoal, our usual stopping point, a bit early. Seas had built into the afternoon, and we opted to continue on until cocktail hour to get the benefit of our stabilizers, and make it a shorter day tomorrow. It's quite bumpy here, and we'll have a bit of pitch overnight.

After dinner we decided to get some news by turning on our DirecTV. Even though I had fired it up in Bimini just to keep it synched, we got the dreaded "refresh receiver" error after it acquired signal. There is no way to refresh the receiver without access to either the Internet or a phone call, and so we remain in blackout tonight. It's too bumpy to do much else, so I watched Ender's Game from our DVD collection (not recommended) and Louise played solitaire on her laptop.

In the morning we will weigh anchor early and get back under way to get the stabilizers working again. We should be back in Internet coverage in the afternoon, when I can upload this post, and I expect to be anchored off Chub Cay mid-afternoon some time.

March fourth, to foreign shores

We are under way in the Straits of Florida, crossing the Gulf Stream on our way to the Bahamas. Miami is some 13 nautical miles behind us as I begin typing, and we are off-line, so I will be uploading this later. We are approaching the average location of the principal axis of the stream, and we are crabbing by 40°, steering a heading of 140° (magnetic), but making a course-over-ground of 100°. Our speed-made-good is just 4.5 knots (making turns for 6.5), which has us arriving after 5pm.

Sunday afternoon my parts arrived, and I used the Hollywood Circuit service to go down to the Amazon locker at a 7-11 near Hallandale Beach Boulevard to pick it up. This free service, utilizing what amounts to oversized enclosed golf carts, replaced the fixed-route free trolley service. You hail one with an app and they will take you anywhere in the service area. My driver was kind enough to just wait for me at the locker for the minute it took me to get the package.


Miami Beach from our anchorage last night.

That package contained a new pressure switch for the air compressor, as well as a new relief valve and a few miscellaneous couplings. I had discovered a small leak in the old pressure switch, which I was hoping would prove to be the problem. Of course, there was no way this thing was just going to thread right on. In fack, I had to bend parts of the housing of the old pressure switch to get it off, and the new one was a slighly different design where that was not an option.

I found a 45° elbow in my plumbing box, which let me thread the new switch on, and then I moved the relief valve, pressure gauge, and outlet fitting over to the other three ports on the switch housing. That's a lot of pressurized parts to be moving around, and tracking down leaks becomes a lot like playing whack-a-mole -- as soon as you stop one leak, another one pops up someplace else. I spent hours reconfiguring and tightening parts until I got no more soap bubbles in my leak testing.

Still the system was leaking down every 25 minutes or so, a number that had varied up and down by no more than five minutes no matter what I did. Now, with no leaks detected by soap solution, I had to conclude the problem was in the compressor body itself. This model has an internal check valve inside the body, so my options were to open up the cylinder head, or else just add an external check valve. The former entailed the risk of needing proprietary replacement parts to even re-assemble it, so I decided on the latter, a $7 item on Amazon Prime.


Tied up in my secret spot in Hallandale, between the last slip in a marina and an accessible bulkhead.

In the meantime, a new crossing window opened up for today, and Louise came down with some kind of crud that trapped her on the boat for two days straight. I had a medical need of my own, with a stye on my eyelid that has stubbornly persisted for months, and we both thought it best that I get it looked at and some meds prescribed before we left. So Monday afternoon I took the tender down to Hallandale Beach, tied it up at one of our old stand-by stealth landings, and walked a few blocks to the University of Miami clinic located in Walgreens, where I was able to make an appointment online.

The nurse practitioner wrote me up for some serious antibiotics, both internal and topical, and sent the script over to the Walmart near where I had left the dinghy. I had a short provisioning list of items that were out of stock at the last Walmart, so it was a productive trip. I passed two grocery stores, too, but we had not yet committed far enough to do final fresh provisioning, and it would have been a challenge to get it all to the tender.

We were still in Hollywood on Monday, but in order to catch today's window, we'd need to move down to the inlet by yesterday afternoon. After digging around a bit, I found I could order the check valve on one-day delivery if I had it sent to an Amazon locker or counter, and there was a counter in Miami Beach, where we could stage for a departure from Government Cut, rather than from Cape Florida a few miles further south.


The wonderful Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach. I love this town, but the feeling is not mutual.

I really wanted to get this horn fixed before we left the US, so I ordered the part to Miami Beach, and yesterday morning we weighed anchor for the 15 mile trip. We stopped in the middle at our old friend the Intracoastal Mall, where we tied Vector directly to the dock we normally use for the tender when we anchor nearby (map). That made easy work of our last-minute fresh food provisioning, where I could roll the grocery cart right up to the short flight of steps leading to the dock. After checking the passage weather one last time, Louise took her sick self to bed while I ran around the mall doing errands and the final shopping.

I came back with a grocery cart loaded to the gills with fresh food, and we spent another 15 minutes at the dock getting it all stowed. It was a two hour stop, and we arrived in Miami Beach at 4:15 after a pleasant cruise down the fidgety eastern channel. We had to anchor 20 minutes to wait for a bridge that our chart indicated was on demand, but turned out to be on a half-hourly schedule. We dropped the hook south of the Venetian Causeway, carefully avoiding the two charted cable areas and a half dozen ratty-looking boats (map).

With Louise still zonked out, I splashed the tender and headed up the Collins Canal to the dinghy dock adjacent to the vintage Publix store. A half dozen boats were tied up, notwithstanding the ominous tow-away signs they city has posted on literally every possible place to land. They really want the anchored boats out, and since they can't regulate anchoring, they're blocking shore access instead. It's a shame, because Miami Beach is otherwise a great town, with trendy outdoor eateries in pedestrian malls, and even a free trolley system that takes you all over town. Apparently, the only boaters who are welcome are those who will pay $7 per foot for a dock.


The dinghy landing near Publix, and unwelcoming signage.

I locked up the dink and hoofed it fifteen minutes to the GNC store in one of the aforementioned trendy outdoor malls, which is the local "Amazon Hub Counter." Spoiled by a couple of excellent experiences with the lockers, which are fully automated, I was disappointed when the staff at GNC could not find my package. I was in the store a good fifteen minutes while they hunted around, scanning Amazon packages with an app on a smartphone. Never again -- I'm sticking to the lockers from now on.

I stopped at the Publix on my way back to the tender and picked up an Italian deli sub for dinner, along with a couple of items that the Winn-Dixie at the Intracoastal was out of. We would have braved the tow-away signs to go out to dinner if Louise had felt better, but I was happy to have a Publix sub, the likes of which we will not see until we return to the States.


The Publix across from the dock, old school. There is a much newer, larger, and nicer Publix just five blocks away, but this one manages to hang on.

That left me working on the air compressor after dark, but I am happy to report that the check valve did the trick, and we once again have a working horn that does not leak. It's quite possible that the check valve alone would have cured the problem, and I replaced the pressure switch needlessly, but it was badly corroded when I took it apart, so that's probably 20 bucks well spent.

We rose early this morning for passage, but the first check of the weather showed the forecast had deteriorated. Oddly, tomorrow's forecast had improved, and it looked like we'd have a better ride by waiting a day. Given that the forecasted windows have, of late, often been disappearing altogether, we decided to poke our noses out and see for ourselves, with an option to retreat and wait for tomorrow.


A shot of the anchorage before departure this morning. Many of the boats look half-derelict.

Things started out auspiciously, once we were clear of Government Cut, and we had an acceptable if not perfect ride for the first two hours. But as we got into the more forceful part of the Stream, things got bumpy, and Vector pitched, sometimes violently, for the next few hours. The cat expressed her displeasure with various bodily fluids, and Louise, who is still recovering from her cold, spent part of the day in bed. It's possible we'd have been better off waiting, but it's also possible that wait would have been a week or more rather than a day.

Not long after we lost Internet coverage, we crossed paths with RocketShip, formerly known as the Delta Mariner. We came within a mile, crossing just astern of her as she carried rockets to Cape Canaveral. We've crossed paths with her before, on the inland rivers -- many of the rockets come from Decatur, Alabama. She's very squat, to clear under the inland bridges. At least, when she uses the correct span.


RocketShip from our CPA about a mile away.

No sooner had I finished snapping a photo of Rockethip than the US Coast Guard Cutter Bernard C. Webber overtook us off our starboard side. Those two vessels were our closest contacts, with several cargo ships crossing ahead or astern at much greater distance.

One of our contacts late in the day was good friend John aboard Division Belle, who also left this morning, but from Port Everglades. Starting that much further north meant he had to push against even more current, on a longer rhumb line. His boat is a fair bit longer than ours, with a correspondingly higher cruise speed, so he still arrived in Bimini a little ahead of us.

Update: we are docked at Browns Marina, at the southernmost end of North Bimini (map). Normally we prefer to anchor, but wind and sea state over the next few days will make our usual spots untenable, and there's not really room for us inside the harbor. As luck would have it, we ended up in the slip right next to Division Belle, and we'll have dinner with John tomorrow. This evening he took his hired crewman to dinner; his wife had a work obligation back home and could not accompany him on the crossing.


USCGC Bernard Webber overtaking us fairly close aboard.

Of course, we ran into them at the one restaurant in stumbling distance from the dock, Big John's. None of us felt like going much further, especially after John and I hiked all over town to clear in -- Customs is a half mile from the dock and Immigration is another block further.

We're both pretty beat, as it has been a long day and a physically exhausting passage. Tomorrow we will sleep in and have a leisurely coffee before tidying up the boat, and seeing exactly what fell over in all the cabinets on passage. We'll probably do a quick rinse with water from our tank, as well, as the boat is encrusted with salt from the rough seas. There are spigots on the dock, too, but dock water is 30 cents a gallon here, more than it costs us to make our own. At 50 cents per kWh, electricity is also more than it costs us to make, but not by much.

It's not clear when we will get a window to continue east, probably to Andros. Whenever it comes, we'll jump on it. My next post will likely be typed under way and uploaded when we arrive.

From the Keys to the Cape

We are anchored in a familiar spot, South Lake, in Hollywood, Florida (map). I last posted here on Valentine's day, and today is Leap Day, making it  little over two weeks. Notwithstanding my ambition at the end of that post that I might update the blog before we left for Orlando, we simply got too busy, and, in fact, we've been going non-stop the entire two weeks.

Back then it was also my hope that we'd be leaving for the Bahamas right about now, and until yesterday, it looked like we might have a crossing window on Monday. In which case, I'd have held off to type this up under way. That window collapsed by yesterday evening, and there is not another one in sight, and so we just settled in with some time on our hands here in southeast Florida. It would have been a mad scramble to be ready by Monday morning, so perhaps it's just as well.

Shortly after my last post, we crossed outside the three mile limit to test the macerator replacement. Sadly, it did not work, and I resigned myself to ordering yet another unit and spending another miserable hour in the bilge within the next week, installing the "spare" that I already had on order.


Miami skyline from our anchorage off Virginia Key.

We turned shoreward at the Biscayne Channel, locally known as the Stiltsville Channel because it threads through what's left of Stiltsville. Regular readers may remember we've used this channel before, snapping photos of the decaying stilt homes. Inbound from sea, the channel splits in two before reaching the stilts, with a branch turning northeast toward the Cape Florida light. With more detailed soundings available than on our last transit, we took this Cape Florida Channel and proceeded along the shore of the cape.

That took us past the lighthouse and also a small harbor called No Name Harbor, where many boats wait for weather to cross the gulf stream. We stayed in this harbor on our first trawler training cruise, way back in 2009, and we hoped to stay here the night before our crossing as well. As we passed, though, we could see that it was completely full, and, in fact some two dozen boats were also anchored outside the harbor and across the channel. In all, probably 30+ boats were stacked up waiting on decent crossing weather.

We made it through the skinny sections of the channel without issue, and are happy to now have bread crumbs that we can follow back out when we make our crossing. We rounded the SW corner of Key Biscayne and proceeded directly to the south shore of Virginia Key, where the Miami Boat show was in progress. There is normally a lovely anchorage at Virginia Key within the remains of the Miami Marine Stadium. But that's where they put the temporary docks for the show, and the anchorage is closed for several weeks each year.


Cape Florida and its lighthouse, on Key Biscayne.

With winds out of the north, we had no trouble anchoring south of the key. We settled in among a half dozen or so other boats, immediately across from the main entrance to the show (map). After getting settled in, I pulled the inflatable kayak out of storage and set about inflating it; the south shore of the Key is a swim beach, so no motorized vessels are permitted to land. Sadly, after a couple of years stored rolled up in a damp locker, the kayak was in bad shape.

It's a cheap consumer item from Intex that we bought on Amazon for less than a C-note nearly five years ago. Like many such things, the PVC skin has started to break down and exude plasticizer, making a sticky mess. The sticky plasticizer in turn attracts all manner of dirt, and the kayak was all but unusable, covered in black sticky filth and mildew. It inflated OK and was holding air, and I found that Purple Power removed a good deal of the mess on a test area. I figured I could clean it out thoroughly once it was in the water, and put a plastic sheet in it before I left for the show in the morning.

As I lowered the kayak over the side from the boat deck, the painter slipped through my fingers, and then I had a runaway boat on my hands. I raced downstairs as fast as I could, but by the time I got to the aft deck, 15 knots of wind had carried it too far to reach with the boat pole. I stripped down to my skivvys and jumped in after it; fortunately, the water here is 79°.

Vector at anchor in Biscayne Bay, as seen from Virginia Key. Rickenbacher Causeway and Miami at right.

With some effort I managed to catch up to it and clamber in, but, of course, I had no paddle. So I laid face-down with my arms over the bow and dog-paddled back to Vector, where Louise had thankfully deployed our swim line and buoy, so I only needed to get within 50'. The aforementioned black filth was, by this time, all over me, and I marched right down to the shower. Of course, once I cleaned myself up, I still had to clean out the kayak and get it ready for the morning.

The wind laid down by evening and we had a lovely dinner aboard, with the Miami skyline as a backdrop. I had no issues paddling ashore in the morning, but I made a strategic error in where we had anchored. The police were not letting anyone cross the street where the show entrance was located, since there is no traffic signal there, and I had to walk a half mile out of my way to cross at a signal.

The Miami show is an enormous affair, with indoor exhibits arranged throughout a half dozen cavernous tents, and hundreds of boats in-water at temporary docks. I had no need to see the in-water boats, although sometimes there are some interesting examples, but I did walk down the dock first thing in order to meet up with Jason and Nikki Wynn. We've been on something of a parallel journey with them and share a common circle of friends from the RV and cruising communities, but we've somehow just missed meeting in person for nearly a decade, from back in our RVing days.


After a lengthy and heated discussion about replacing our worn kayak after my little swim, I spotted these "kayaks" at the show -- jet drive!

After a very brief hello, I beat a hasty retreat into the tents, as it started to rain. It would turn out that pouring rain was the order of the day for my entire visit to the show, and that was the last I saw of the docks. No matter, because I had a good size checklist of vendors I wanted to talk to in the tents, including ACR (makers of our EPIRB and spotlight), Highfield dinghys, Spectra Watermakers, two radio manufacturers, and Northern Lights generators. I knocked out the whole list, and still had time to take in some new products before closing time. In a stroke of good luck, the rain let up just as I started walking back to the kayak.

I had hoped to maybe tender over to the Rickenbacker Marina for dinner at Whiskey Joes after the show, but the calm in which I had paddled back was short-lived, and the evening proved to be windy and rainy. We had another nice dinner aboard before spending our final night at Virginia Key. In the morning we motored two and a half hours to Maule Lake, where we dropped the hook in our usual spot (map).


We passed Haulover Beach en route to Maule Lake. There always seems to be a festival here, and on this very windy day the kites were also out in force.

I've written here before about the Maule Lake anchorage and all the services available at the nearby Intracoastal Mall, which has a day dock. On this stop we revisited many of our old standbys, and took advantage of the nearby grocery store to start some of our provisioning.

I also took the dink around through Dumbfoundling Bay and down one of the canals to get close to the Amazon locker where I had shipped a number of items, including the aforementioned macerator. I had one non-Amazon order arriving by UPS, and we arranged receipt with the UPS store across the ICW in Sunny Isles Beach. We took the free shuttle bus over, and while there we had dinner at the Mexican place we like, although it has changed hands (again).


I stopped at Mo's Bagels & Deli for bagels on my way to the Amazon locker. Nothing says real NY kosher bagels like the Hatzalah parked out front. And built on a scooter, no less.

One evening that we spent in Maule Lake found us glued to the VHF, as a search-and-rescue drama unfolded just a dozen miles away. You may have seen it on the news: a car launched off the end of the Fisher Island Ferry and into the Miami Ship Channel, where it sank in 50' of water. We heard the initial mayday call and followed the whole event; the ship channel was closed to all traffic until 1:30am when they finally recovered the car.

We had a number of car-intensive errands and provisioning to do, and I had booked a rental car at Budget, just a block down from the Intracoastal Mall. Budget called me at 8:30 to tell me the car I booked for 9:30 was unavailable, and would remain so for "hours." At noon we gave up waiting, but the last-minute re-shuffling of plans added to the workload.

The day before our marina reservation in Fort Lauderdale we weighed anchor and motored north up the ICW to better position ourselves to transit up the New River. Even though conditions on the outside were too uncomfortable for a passage or even a coastal run, we ran out the Port Everglades inlet and out past the three-mile line to test the macerator I had replaced, again, in Maule Lake.


Sunset behind a high-zoot condo from our anchorage in Maule Lake.

We would not normally bash three miles out to sea and back just to test a macerator; that's more the kind of thing we would reserve until the next time we went to sea, using shore-side pumpouts if needed. But a working macerator is a requisite in the Bahamas -- there are no pumpouts at all throughout most of the islands. It's important enough that we always carry a spare. In this case, I really needed to know if replacing the pump was all that was needed, or if we had some more insidious problem elsewhere in the system. I am happy to report that it is, indeed, working.

After coming back in the inlet we proceeded north past Las Olas Boulevard to a familiar anchorage known as the New River Sound and dropped the hook (map). As is our custom here, we splashed the tender and ran back under the bridge to Coconuts, one of our favorite restaurants in all of Fort Lauderdale, which has a courtesy dock.

Shortly after we returned to Vector, while enjoying a glass of wine on the aft deck, FLPD came by and made us move. They claimed we were in the channel, which we were not, but these sorts of arguments can not be won whilst afloat. Neither was it worthwhile to me to take a summons and argue it in court. A space further from the channel had opened up just before we went to dinner, and so we weighed anchor and moved 100'.


When the PD asked us to move I took this screen shot (in night colors). The channel is clearly shown at left in gray, with the sailing line in white. We are the green boat and our anchor circle is shown. The red lines are mostly old tracks. We were 100' from the edge of the charted channel.

In the morning we weighed anchor to make the 0845 opening of Las Olas, which put us at the series of New River bridges in downtown Fort Lauderdale just after the 0900 end of the morning lock-down. We had an uneventful cruise upriver, ending at Bradford Marine, where they first directed us to a slip under a shed just a tad too low for us at high tide. After I squawked they re-directed us to a different slip, under a slightly taller shed (map).

We were all secure in plenty of time to go to Enterprise to pick up our car at noon, but they had no drivers to pick us up. We ended up taking a Lyft, for which we have yet to be reimbursed. And then began the mad scramble to run some of the errands that we had planned for the non-existent Budget car down by Maule Lake. In quick succession we hit Total Wine & More for eight cases of beer, Costco for a variety of dry goods as well as bottled wine, and Walmart for 15 gallons of motor oil and as many non-perishable provisions as we could carry. We ended with dinner at an old favorite, Vignetto's.


We kept seeing this guitar-shaped building on our errands from the marina. It's the new hotel at the Seminole Hard Rock casino... we remember them from when they were tiny.

That did not leave us a lot of time to prepare for our road trip to Orlando. We ended up rolling out of the marina close to noon the following day, after thoroughly briefing security about the local miscreant who's already stolen two of our scooters (and all their contents), and thinks he has a key to the boat. He's a boatyard contractor, so no telling what yard(s) he might show up at.

The cat stopped complaining after the first mile, and we had a pleasant drive to Lake Buena Vista, where we checked in to the pet-friendly Hilton Garden Inn. They have a bar on-site with a happy hour from 5-6, and my cousins met us there for a beer before dinner at an unremarkable restaurant nearby.


That's Angel in the window of our 8th-floor room, looking at us and wondering why we left her.

We had a great time with them over the next two days, catching up over meals and generally relaxing. We spent one day driving out to Cape Canaveral to tour the Kennedy Space Center; it was a blast to do it with them, and so many things have changed there since our last visit that we got a good bit out of it, too.

Knowing we were going to be in Orlando for a couple of days, I had made tentative arrangements to connect with long-time good friends and fellow Red Cross volunteers Kathleen and Tom. When I texted him upon our arrival in town, however, Tom informed me that Kathleen had been admitted to the hospital for a heart valve replacement and coronary stents, a double operation, expected within a day or two.

In lieu of meeting up as planned somewhere between Orlando and their home in Wildwood, we instead ran up to Leesburg to catch up with them in her hospital room. We had a great visit, the sort where we had to close the door to avoid disturbing the other patients with our laughter and general carrying-on. We also enjoyed meeting their daughter, Erin, who had come in for the surgery.


As good a time as can be had in a hospital room. Photo: Erin Roberts.

We took our leave of family Monday evening after dinner, and Tuesday morning we loaded everything back in the car for the trip back. We made a quick stop at the VF Outlet before leaving town; these are few and far between and I needed a few items that I routinely purchase there. We arrived back at Vector in the afternoon, got the cat squared away, and immediately headed back out for more provisioning and errands.

We had been scheduled to return the car Wednesday and depart the marina shortly thereafter. But we simply ran out of time to get everything done, and since the car was on a weekly rate but only day five of the rental, we extended our stay another day.


A whole new look for historic Pad 39-A, with the SpaceX assembly building and launch gantry. This will likely be the site of the first humans launched from the US since the end of the Shuttle program.

Serendipitously, our friends John and Laura Lee arrived in town aboard their lovely Selene, Division Belle, Tuesday evening, and we made arrangements to collect them from their marina Wednesday evening and go to dinner at 15th Street Fisheries. Of course, one of the last errands I ran Wednesday was to fill 14 gallons worth of gas cans for the Bahamas, and the car reeked of gasoline on the trip to the restaurant and back, but we had a great time catching back up with them. They, too, are hoping to cross to the Bahamas at the next window, and we hope to lift a glass with them in Bimini.

We returned the car Thursday, once again having to Lyft back to the marina, and shortly afterward we dropped lines and came straight here. On our way downriver we had to do-si-do with two towboats and the Jungle Queen, but it was otherwise uneventful. We splashed the tender and headed ashore to one of our old stand-bys for dinner.


The VAB, with the mobile launcher for the SLS visible inside the open High Bay 3 Doors. Launch Control (the Firing Rooms) is visible at lower left. This photo defies scale; the union of the US flag is the size of an NBA basketball court, and the stripes are 9' wide.

Even after the whirlwind trip and the scramble to provision while we had the car, there was no rest for the weary, as I immediately launched into project mode in the hopes that the Bahamas crossing window would hold. That included repairing one of the SSB antennas, whose lead-in wire had corroded through and broken off the last time we lowered it for a bridge, and spending hours trying to repair a slow leak in the air horn system.

With this morning's decision to wave off a crossing Monday or Tuesday, I now have some breathing room. I have more parts coming tomorrow for the air horn, which I will pick up an an Amazon locker here in Hollywood, and we'll have a chance to stow lots of items that would have had to ride to Bimini loose for stowage after arrival. Sadly, there is no window predicted in at least the next week to ten days, so it's really a bit more breathing room than we'd like.


Sunset over our anchorage at South Lake.

We'll be right here in Hollywood until at least Monday. We like it here; the anchorage is comfortable and the Broadwalk is an interesting diversion in the evenings. At some point we will continue backtracking down to Miami, and whenever the window arrives, we will squirt out the Cape Florida or Stiltsville Channel and cross to Bimini. My next post will likely be under way on that crossing.

Starring in our own late late show

We are underway northbound in the Hawk Channel, off the Florida Keys, after spending two nights off Key Largo, tucked in behind Rodriguez Key (map). Ahead I can just make out the skyline of Miami, where we should be anchored tonight.

The remainder of our cruise Tuesday was a little lumpy, but not too uncomfortable, and we had the hook down off Vaca Key, in Marathon (map) just in time for cocktail hour. After cocktails we splashed the tender to head ashore for our customary Marathon dinner at the Sunset Grille, where we arrived just in time for sunset, somewhat to the annoyance of people who had crowded onto the boat dock to watch it.

In the dinghy with us was a folding wood door that we had removed from the master shower shortly after we bought the boat. We found the door to be an annoyance, and we replaced it with a simple shower curtain, but we had stowed it in the event we ever wanted to put it back, for example prior to eventually selling the boat.


Our view from the bar at the Sunset Grille.

Long-time readers may remember that we had the shower completely re-done a couple of years ago, including adding a spiffy new tempered glass door, completely obsoleting the wood one. It was well-stowed and we've been carrying it around ever since, but in Key West we dug it out and listed it for free online. A guy in the upper keys wanted it and I agreed to haul it to Marathon to give it to him.

We had a lovely sunset and a nice dinner at the bar, since even as early as 6:15 there was a wait for tables. The guitar and lap-steel duo on the patio was decent, and the weather was perfect. The guy who wanted the door, however, never showed, even though we sat on the patio an extra half hour over another beer. We ended up hauling the door home with us, and it will go in the dumpster in Fort Lauderdale.

The anchorage was calm and pleasant when we arrived, but the wind clocked around and things got a bit rolly toward the end of the evening. Overnight it got even bumpier, and things were jerky enough when we awoke in the morning that we decked the tender and weighed anchor even before our first coffee. Steaming out of the anchorage with the stabilizers working was a great improvement.

The relief was short-lived. After we made the turn eastbound into the Hawk Channel we found ourselves bashing into steep three-footers. That's not unsafe, and Vector herself hardly notices, but the crew soon tires of all the bashing. It's an uncomfortable ride, and you can't do anything except stay glued to your seat. An hour into it, Louise asked me to turn around head back to Marathon.


Gratuitous Key Largo poster, to go with my post title.

The ride was a little better in the other direction, but we did not backtrack far. After calling around to a few $200-a-night marinas, we contemplated the prospect of staying in Marathon for days on end before we got a better window, and we decided to just soldier through for eight hours and get it behind us. Louise took some meds and informed me I'd be on my own for the passage. Well, me and a very unhappy cat.

We made it to Rodriguez Key at a dead low tide of minus one half foot, and I picked my way through the shoals into the protection of the anchorage. Things calmed right down as soon as we were in the lee of the key, where we dropped the hook just after 4pm. All of us were exhausted, and we broke out some leftovers for dinner.

We woke yesterday morning to winds of over 20 knots. We were very comfortable in the anchorage, but we knew the channel would be a washing machine all morning, with the winds laying down in the afternoon. We decided to give ourselves a break and just stay put another day. With a 50-mile leg to Miami ahead of us and no intermediate stopping points, leaving anytime other than early morning is not an option.

With an unscheduled free day, I got a number of projects done on board, including repairing the lightning damage to the autopilot with a board I bought on eBay recently. I made some progress on planning for our upcoming Orlando and Bahamas trips, and I spent too much time trying to find an app to store the myriad boat cards we've collected in some kind of database, without success.


Miami skyline in the distance, through the haze.

As forecast, the winds laid down in the afternoon, and with the water calm between the anchorage and the town, we took a 3-mile dinghy ride into Key Largo for dinner. After dinner we walked to the store to pick up milk and the gas station for dinghy fuel. We at at Skipper's Dockside, which has courtesy docks, but is at the very end of the Port Largo Canal, with its infamous "crash corner." This was our first time ashore in Key Largo, despite anchoring at Rodriguez Key numerous times.

Today's conditions are perfect, so spending the day at Rodriguez paid off. The downside is that I will have to see the Miami Boat Show on a holiday weekend rather than a weekday; I am girding myself for the crowds. If all goes to plan, we should be able to anchor just south of the show, but I will have to paddle in by kayak to land on the beach.

Things will be busy for the next few days. With just two weeks before we stage for the Bahamas, we have a lot to take care of on board and a lot of provisioning to do. I will try to update the blog at least one more time before our road trip to Orlando.

Conched out

We are underway eastbound (or northbound, depending on your frame of reference) in the Hawk Channel, bound for Marathon out of Key West. We had a lovely and mostly relaxing week as Conchs, with more or less everything right where we left it after our last visit.


Sunset from our upper deck in Key West, beyond one of the numerous charter cats and the cruise piers.

Shortly after my last post, offshore of Longboat Key, we made a slight diversion to port to keep within cell range of the coast for another couple of hours, owing to the fact that Louise's chart computer decided to do a Windows update right then. The slight diversion cost us less than a mile, or about ten minutes on arrival time, and we decided that was better than having the plotter end up half-baked for the rest of the trip.

We had a lovely sunset and a nice dinner at sea. We passed the night in wide open water, an uneventful passage. Tuesday morning, after we were both awake, we discharged our waste while outside the nine nautical mile "resource boundary" (waste discharge is normally legal three miles offshore, but the west coast of FL is an exception). When we had done this on the crossing to St. Pete, we noted a small leak from the macerator pump; this time I was able to determine it was coming from a broken case bolt on the pump head. We used a pet pad to catch the drip.


Sunset at sea, on our passage from St. Pete.

After winding our way through the Northwest Channel, we arrived at the Key West Ship Channel around 4:30 in the afternoon. We called the marina and were tied up in the Margaritaville South Basin (map) by 4:45. After a well-earned beer on board, we wandered over to the closest of our old standbys, Amigos, for dinner, and we both crashed early.


View of the Margaritaville Resort from our deck.

In the morning I walked to the office and picked up our "resort cards," basically the same as hotel room keys, which got us access not only to the marina rest rooms and laundry, but also the resort pool, hot tub, gym, and lounge areas. While we have stayed in "resort" marinas before, this was, hands-down, the most we have ever paid to dock the boat. The run-of-the-mill pool and hot tub did not make up for it.


Key West is full of feral chickens, and we saw more than our fair share of chicks with their parents.

This is the nature of Key West in high season, where hotel rooms at this same resort start at $500 a night and go up from there. Our preferred digs here are at the municipal dock a few blocks away, which has no amenities at all and is only 25% less. The other marinas in the Bight are even more, with no better amenities to speak of. Margaritaville is open to swell, and we had a bumpy stay, so next time we'll see if we can get into the Bight instead, where things are a bit calmer.


One of our neighbors, a 112' yacht, bouncing in their slip. It was a rough night.

From here, though, we did get to watch the sunsets right from our deck if we so chose, and we also got to watch the cruise ships come and go, as well as the shenanigans of their passengers. The resort also has a rooftop bar, aptly named the Sunset Deck, which is one of the best places in all of Key West to watch the sunset. It's open to the public but little-known and so uncrowded.


View from the Sunset Deck. The quayside below gets crowded every night at sunset.

We put the scooters on the ground the first day, parking them in the free dedicated scooter area of the hotel's garage. Scooters are ubiquitous here, and every block has free scooter parking, whereas parking for cars is scarce and pricey. I rate it as the most scooter-friendly city in the US, at least of those we've visited thus far.

Even though we had the scoots available, being so close to Duval street, we mostly walked everywhere. We visited many of our old haunts for dinner, and enjoyed strolling around the Mallory Square area of Old Town and into the Truman Annex, open to pedestrians during the day. It was a bit of a different view of the city from our previous visits.


This was typical of our view, one of the larger ships to call here. Boats coming and going from the north basin of our marina actually have to go under her bow lines.

Our friends Dorsey and Bruce, on their beautiful American Tug, Esmeralde, were also in town, staying at the Galleon over in the Bight, and we connected with them for dinner twice. It was nice catching up, and Bruce lent me his SWR meter for my investigation into some VHF radio issues we've been having. We're hoping to run into them later in the year in their home waters of the northeast.

We also connected on our final evening with fellow Great Loopers Sam and Revina, whom we had met in Schenectady and again in Joliet. We were mostly within a few dozen miles of each other for much of the way around, but somehow kept missing one another. It was great to finally meet up over a meal. We hope we'll see them again in the Fort Lauderdale area as they continue north.


Cocktails with Rev and Sam on the Sunset Deck.

In addition to relaxing and enjoying Key West, I got a few projects done around the boat. Those included replacing a busted connector on the davit for the wired remote, adding a dedicated switch on the davit so it can still be operated if the remote fails, testing the VSWR of the VHF radios, and replacing the macerator pump.

This latter item did not go well. I will spare you the ugly details, but the word "expulsive" comes to mind. I've rebuilt this pump twice, so with the bolts finally corroded through I just trashed it in favor of the on-board spare (also rebuilt), but it did not come out quietly. Sadly, we just tested the replacement outside the three mile limit, and it's not working. I have another adventure ahead of me in the bilge, but first I need to have another spare pump in hand. We can not go to the Bahamas without a working macerator.


Vector in her berth, with the Disney Dream behind, in hers. That pier is actually on the navy base, and passengers need to be shuttled around to town.

Speaking of the Bahamas, we got the cat's vaccines updated at the beginning of the month, which establishes March 2nd as our earliest departure date. We've started the process of getting the boat ready and provisioned for a three-month stay. While it would have been great to leave for the Bahamas direct from Key West, or maybe even Marathon as we did last time, it will be easier to get a lot of this done in the Fort Lauderdale area.

This dovetails nicely with a get-together on the calendar with my cousins in Orlando toward the end of the month. We're going to rent a car and drive up, cat in tow, for a few days, and that, too, is much easier from Fort Lauderdale than from anywhere in the Keys. Docking the boat for the time we are gone is likewise also much more reasonable. When we get back from Orlando, we'll turn around and head right back south, at least as far as Biscayne Bay, to stage for our crossing.


Departing this morning I had to thread my way between the cruise ships. We passed Carnival close aboard; the nominal 100 yard security zone simply can not be enforced here.

Tonight we will be anchored off Boot Key, where we will likely tender in to one of our old stand-bys, the Sunset Grille, for dinner. It will be a short visit; tomorrow we will continue on to Rodriguez Key and thence to Miami. The timing is right to catch the Boat Show for a day, and then we'll settle in for a few days in Maule Lake, one of our favorite anchorages.

Wastin' away again ...

As I begin typing, we are underway in Tampa Bay, approaching the Sunshine Skyway Bridge with the St. Pete skyline receding behind us. It's been a wonderful stop, and we could easily stay a few more days, but today and into tomorrow is the only decent window we will have for crossing the Gulf of Mexico for the foreseeable future, so we decided to make a run for it.

Our destination is Key West, where we will spend a few days before cruising up the keys to Miami. Our usual haunt in Key West is the municipal marina at Key West Bight, but they were sold out when I called, so we are instead heading to the Margaritaville Resort, tucked in behind the cruise ship pier. This being high season, every place in town is ridiculously expensive, but at least we can use all the resort facilities. I do not to expect to run into Jimmy around the pool, but I'm sure there will be a surfeit of parrotheads.

When last I posted here, I was actually typing aboard an American Airlines jet, en route to San Francisco. The confluence of being in a place with a decent airport, a place with reasonable dockage for Vector, and a place where we have good friends who were willing to pet-sit for us allowed us to make a trip back to our old stomping grounds to take care of various things and get some visits in.


Yosemite National Park from our flight. That's Half Dome just right of center frame, with Yosemite Valley down the middle.

To that end we weighed anchor at the St. Petersburg yacht basin in the early afternoon of the 20th and backtracked to Boca Ciega Bay, at the southwest corner of St. Petersburg. We had made reservations for the 21st at Maximo Marina on a decent weekly rate, and our plan was to check out the channel to the marina on a favorable tide, then drop the hook in the bay and perhaps tender over to the Gulfport municipal dock for dinner.

As luck would have it, we arrived in 15kt of crosswind out of the north, and even at a +1' tide, the marked channel from the ICW to the marina was incredibly shallow, we think due to water being blown out of the bay. There was at least one stretch where the sounder registered less than six feet and we plowed our way through the silt. We had been advised to follow the markers for the best water, advice which proved to be plain incorrect, but we made it all the way to the marina's entrance canal without getting stuck.

Given the difficulty we had getting up to the channel, and the fact that we'd need to come into the marina much closer to dead low tide in the morning, we opted to skip the anchorage and go directly to the marina a day early. We arrived before closing time and tied up at our slip (map), got all squared away, and walked a couple of blocks to Portofino restaurant in a nearby strip mall. It was next door to the Publix, which we also needed because we were out of milk for our morning coffee. Fortunately, I was able to buy just a pint.


An earlier window shot from the plane. I think this is Ivanpah Solar.

Tuesday we Lyfted over to Steph's place to borrow her car, which we subsequently used to schlep Angel and all her accoutrements over to Karen and Ben's place in Clearwater. Ben was traveling on business and Karen had very generously offered to watch her for us while we were away. We wanted to arrive early in the afternoon and spend a couple of hours, to let her acclimate to her new surroundings while we were still around. She settled right in, so after an hour or so the three of us went for a quick dinner at nearby Rumba's. After dinner we said our goodbyes to both Karen and the cat, and brought the car back to Steph.

We spent the whole day Wednesday flying, and the following six days were a whirlwind of appointments and visits. Among the former, we met with our financial planners in San Jose, and we also made an inspection visit of our condo in town, which we rent out. This is only the second time we've been back inside the unit since we moved out of it over 15 years ago. The tenants wanted to be present, and met us at the door.

Things were in surprisingly good shape, considering our major kitchen and bath remodel turns 19 this year. The tenants, who are very nice, pointed out a few things while we were there that clearly need to be addressed: the glass surface cooktop was cracked in several places, the microwave turntable was no longer rotating, and there was a four-lamp light fixture in the master bath with an intermittent connection in one of the lamps.


New microwave range hood installed. Maple cabinets are in great shape.

We took photos and made notes of all these things, and I sent a long missive to our management company about buying replacements and getting an electrician out to the unit to install them. But overnight it worked on me that we'd be paying thousands for work that I might get done before we left, and so I arranged with the tenants to get back in for a few hours. We dropped by Home Depot together and got a new light fixture, and after dropping Louise off for a family visit, I ran to Fry's to see about appliances.

Fry's is a chain of giant electronics stores (that also carries some appliances), which is imploding after nearly forty years in business. Ironically, they are famous for supplying Silicon Valley with all the bits and pieces to design the technology that ultimately made them obsolete. It's sad to watch; I imagine they'll be bankrupt in a few months. In any case, they have little inventory left, but I was able to snag the last over-the-counter microwave in stock at a clearance price of $130. The only glass cooktop they had was the floor sample of a high-zoot model retailing for $1,500. They were willing to knock it down 30%, but I needed it to be less than half that.

I bought a few cheap tools at Dollar Tree and spent the afternoon changing out the light fixture and the microwave. No way could I have been lucky enough for the mounting holes in the top cabinet to line up with the mounts on the new unit, but I was able to borrow a cordless drill and 3/8" bit from a contractor working on the exterior of the building, and thus did not have to drop $100 at Home Depot on them (still a bargain compared to having to send someone out).


The view on our way out of the anchorage this morning. The trawler came that close to us, too, at the other end of his circle.

No one had a cooktop in stock, so we'll still be paying an electrician to go out there and install one. But I figure we saved several hundred on the other two projects, and the tenants are happy. I drove away with the old light fixture and microwave in the back of the rental car. The light probably needed an internal wire replaced, and the microwave needed a $10 turntable motor. But without the wherewithal to repair and re-purpose them, we reluctantly dropped them off at the San Mateo recycling center just a block from our hotel, where they ended up in a scrap dumpster.

In the course of our travels around the area we made a few detours through some of our old neighborhoods just to see what's changed. The thing I found the most remarkable was the sheer number of RVs now parked on the streets, almost everywhere you looked. Long-time readers may remember us "stealth parking" the bus on city streets during our annual visits to the area; the need for stealth, it seems, has passed. Even tony Palo Alto has its "RV row" -- the bay area housing crisis has risen to epic proportions.


This is now typical of industrial back streets in the bay area. Each vehicle has to move every 72 hours.

It was a full calendar, especially with the unplanned appliance replacement project, and by the time Wednesday morning rolled around we were very ready to return home. I celebrated the completion of another orbit of the sun Wednesday by spending the whole day flying. Our connection in Charlotte was so tight we could not even stop at the bar for a celebratory beer.

Rather than Lyft back home and spend Thursday doing the whole two-Lyft dance to borrow a car to get the cat, we grabbed a cheap rental car at the Tampa airport when we landed. We were home by 11pm, happy to be spending the night in our own bed. Thursday we drove up to Clearwater to get Angel and spend a couple of hours with Ben and Karen. Thrifty let me return the car to St. Pete instead of Tampa, saving me an hour and a few bucks on my return Lyft.

Given our low-water experience on the way in, we waited until mid-afternoon Friday to have at least half tide on our way out. I plotted an exit route that avoided the marked channel altogether in favor of an unmarked route that showed as deep water on my crowd-sourced chart software, but that often proves to be imaginary. In this case it was spot-on, and we had 18' most of the way back to the ICW. We again bypassed the nearby Gulfport anchorage in favor of just returning to the St. Pete yacht basin for a few days.


Green track is the marked channel, less than 6' in spots. Red track was 18-20'.

We dropped the hook in the basin just a bit SE of our last spot (map), where a somewhat shop-worn trawler has taken up residence. The sailing cat that was there when we first arrived to St. Pete was still there; I learned later they've been anchored for a month dealing with boat and medical issues. It was pouring when we arrived and we spent the evening on board.

We enjoyed our final two nights in St. Pete, having one final dinner with Martin and Steph, and strolling downtown in some pleasant weather. The city has fixed the "parking meter" for the courtesy docks, so it cost us a few bucks to go ashore, but still less than what we had paid for a mooring ball when they were available.

As I wrap up typing we are in the Gulf, offshore of Longboat Key. We'll probably lose our Internet connection just south of Venice, not to return until we are an hour or two out from Key West tomorrow evening. So far it has been a calm ride, with gentle two foot rollers on the beam. My next post will be underway northbound (well, really eastbound) from Key West, in perhaps a week's time.