Finally on the West Coast

We are underway northbound in the Gulf of Mexico, just a mile or two off the coast, bound for Pass-a-Grille, just north of the Tampa Bay entrance. We are headed to Clearwater for a few days, to connect with good friends Karen and Ben before they go gallivanting off to various conferences and family visits.

Saturday morning we lingered a bit in Moore Haven, taking advantage of dock power for some welcome morning heat and topping up our water tank, before dropping lines to continue downbound on the Caloosahatchee. I had reached out to our friends Laura and Ben in Fort Myers to see if we could connect over dinner, and the earliest they were available was Monday, which gave us a leisurely transit of the river.

With some extra time on our hands, we set our sights on LaBelle for the evening, which meant we'd only have one lock, at Ortona, for the day. That proved an excellent strategy, as Louise was hit with a bout of allergies the likes of which neither of us had seen. It had started on Friday, but by the time we reached the Ortona Lock on Saturday she was barely functional, declaring she was not up to doing another lock.

Vector at anchor in LaBelle, as seen through the bridge. This is as close as we can get.

We dropped the hook upriver of the LaBelle drawbridge, off-channel just outside the cable area (map). It was not even 2pm. I used the downtime to fix a few things, and Louise crashed for a while, exhausted from all the sneezing. We were hoping it might pass by dinner time, but when that rolled around she was still miserable and did not even feel like eating.

I splashed the tender and headed ashore stag, swinging past the new LaBelle Yacht Club patio restaurant, which has a dock. The far-too-loud live music drove me away, and instead I landed at the town courtesy dock, eventually ending up at Forrey Grill, an Italian joint where I ate at the bar. I was prepared to bring something home for Louise but she still had no appetite.

Once back aboard and settling in to my evening video-watching routine, I noticed our Starlink had become glacially slow. I never figured out why, but I suspect it was related to them discontinuing our previous plan and forcing us on to a more expensive but lower-performance plan just in the last few days. Our AT&T hot spot was running ten times faster, so I just turned the Starlink off. When I turned it back on yesterday the speed was much better.

The LaBelle Yacht Club, new since our last visit. It looks nice but the music was loud.

Sunday morning Louise was just fine, almost as if the allergy thing had never happened, and we weighed anchor and continued downriver. The traffic was not bad in the morning but picked up throughout the day, and we had a 20-minute wait at the Franklin Lock. One of the downstream gates was inoperative, and the other was working at reduced speed.

As we approached Fort Myers we began to see damage from Hurricane Milton. Nothing nearly as severe as what we saw post-Ian, but still significant. We proceeded into the anchorage at dead slow, "clutch ahead," since we had no way of knowing if the storm had done anything to the unmarked channel, wherein we normally have just a foot below the keel. We made it in without incident and had the entire anchorage, normally full of long-term boats, all to ourselves (map).

No doubt Milton had a hand in that, but there are also no services here now whatsoever since Ian. No place to get water, or empty waste, or even to safely and conveniently land a dinghy. The two downtown marinas have been shuttered since Ian, and only a small section of exposed concrete-and-steel bulkhead is available to get ashore. That's where we landed the tender Sunday evening for dinner.

The bar at Forrey Grill, which was tucked in the back and not visible from the dining room, where there was a long wait. It's not as purple as it looks in this photo.

Tying up and disembarking even in the moderate chop from the south wind was a challenge, as was securing the dinghy so it would not be bashing hard parts into the bulkhead. As we were doing that, we realized it would be completely untenable Monday evening, when winds were forecast to be NW and there would likely be 2-3 footers bashing into this seawall.

We had a nice stroll around town, which is still vibrant as ever, and landed at long-time favorite Capone's for dinner. I texted Ben to let them know we'd have to wave off for Monday evening unless we could find a different place to land. Their Sunday plans had evaporated, and so they met us after dinner at Sip & Sizzle, a new steak-and-cocktails place, for drinks. We spent well over an hour nursing a couple of drinks and catching up; it's always great to see them.

My antipasto salad came with this plate of garlic knots. These two got saved for breakfast.

Monday morning we were pinned in the anchorage until the tide came up above zero from its low of -0.5'; we had arrived at +0.5' and had just over a foot under the keel. After lunch we weighed anchor, squeaked back out of the anchorage, and continued southwest in 30-35 knots of wind and a small-craft advisory. Vector has no trouble with this, and underway with the stabilizers working is more comfortable than bouncing at anchor, but this weather had what is often a nightmarish section of waterway blissfully devoid of other traffic.

That said, in the middle of the narrow and shallow section known as the Miserable Mile, we came face to face with a pair of small pusher tugs, each with a barge on the head, and hundreds of feet of dredge pipe strung between them. They were struggling in the wind, and as a result, taking the whole channel. They never answered the radio on any channel, nor did they respond to my whistle signals, and I ended up dredging the mud at the edge of the channel avoiding them. Sadly, there are never any consequences for this sort of behavior unless there is a collision -- we missed by mere feet.

Passing two tugs with dredge pipe very close aboard.

The high winds were supposed to clock around to the NW by evening, and so we tucked up in the corner of Pine Island Sound, just off the south end of Pine Island, a familiar stop, and dropped the hook (map) as close to shore as we could get. The winds stayed westerly, and stiff, the whole night, so it was not the best choice. Even so, we braved the waves by splashing the tender and heading ashore to the Waterfront Restaurant in St. James City for dinner, which was good. They have 16 dock-and-dine slips, but we were the only boat.

Tuesday I had figured to weigh anchor first thing and continue north past Cabbage Key and Boca Grande, all the way to Englewood or maybe even Venice. Louise-the-weather-router pointed out, however, that if we waited a day, we would have a perfect two-day window to go all the way to Clearwater in the gulf. That would bypass the perennially shallow stretch south of Venice, a few timed drawbridges, and whatever unknown challenges might still exist from Milton.

We're the only nut jobs arriving by boat.

We made it a short day and stopped at long-time favorite Cabbage Key (map), where we tendered ashore for dinner at the inn. This place is packed to the gills at lunch, the inspiration for Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger in Paradise, but it's downright quiet at dinner time, and we've been coming here for a decade. They weathered both Ian and Milton, and sometimes it feels like they could last forever, with many of the structures now 75 years old.

Yesterday we weighed anchor and headed toward Boca Grande, where we expected to anchor for an easy exit at dawn this morning for an all-day run to Eggmont Key in Tampa Bay. But by the time we were passing the tip of Cayo Costa, gulf conditions let us just continue out the inlet and make a day run to Venice. I called the yacht club there to be sure they had room for us, as there is no place for us to anchor in Venice.

This sign on the rest room made me chuckle.

After passing the tip of Gasparilla Island we made the hard right into the unmarked "swash channel" leading north from the inlet. We've used this channel before, but we were nervous enough about what Milton might have done (hurricanes often move, close, or open these sorts of channels) that I called TowBoatUS for a report, and also solicited reports online from folks who had been through since the storm. We found no less than 11' in the swash channel.

It was not flat calm yesterday, so we had a bit of a bouncy, but tolerable, ride. We arrived to the Venice Yacht Club right around 4, and had to wait a short while to get to the fuel dock, where we took on a bit of fuel and pumped out our tanks. We normally do that at sea, but here on the west coast it is required to go out beyond nine miles, adding 3-4 miles to our trip. I was expecting the fuel to be cheaper than it was, so we only added 100 gallons, instead of the 700 I had planned. We used a bunch more fuel coming the long way around, and this will tide us over until we are back on the east coast.

Vector at anchor in Pine Island Sound, as seen from St. James City.

We could have stayed right there on the fuel dock, but that would have us backing out through the mud at low tide this morning, so after pumping out we moved around to the T-head and tied up for the night (map). We had a nice dinner at the outdoor tiki bar adjacent to the pool, but we were glad to learn that Wednesday is Pasta Night in the dining room, which smelled great. After dinner we had a nice walk, but we had to turn around at The Crow's Nest because the jetty and its park are closed and fenced off, the aftermath of Milton. We saw many buildings still being remediated from being inundated by storm surge. We returned to the bar for dessert after our walk, but had missed the last slice of bananas Foster cheesecake by mere minutes.

This morning we dropped lines just before 9am and slipped back out the inlet. Seas have been getting progressively calmer throughout the day, and the plotter has us arriving to the anchorage by 4pm. Had we left from Boca Grande we would have had to anchor in Tampa Bay, but our departure from Venice is letting us get all the way to a more protected anchorage inside the Pass-a-Grille inlet.

Tomorrow we will have a short day in the gulf to Clearwater. We've usually anchored there, where the city has a free day dock, borrowing a car from our friends. This time, however, we've booked a dock, to make things a bit easier and also so we can land the scooters, as Louise is looking forward to some more time on her new steed. We'll be in Clearwater until the 20th, and you won't hear from me again until we are on our way back south.

West Coast: Second attempt.

We are under way westbound across Lake Okeechobee, headed for the west coast for as long as the lake level allows -- we've come an extra 280 nautical miles by this route, and we don't want to repeat that in the other direction. The lake is quite calm, and we are having a good crossing, waving at all the Great Loopers going the other way.

Vector anchored off the Key Biscayne Yacht Club. The sunsets from the club patio are legendary.

After we made the eastbound turn into Hawk Channel just off Marathon last Friday, we found ourselves in sea conditions that would let us anchor just south of any of the larger keys. We pushed all the way to Long Key and tucked in as close as we could to the beach (map), a new spot for us. The water here is so clear we could easily see the bottom, and watch the anchor set in the clear sand.

We favored the west end of the beach, which let us splash the tender and run the mile around the west end of the key to Lick It BBQ & Wood Fired Pizza, basically a Cuban food truck next to a tiki pavilion at the Edgewater Lodge. The food was quite good and they even had bottled beer, which was a nice end to an otherwise difficult day. After dinner we had a nice walk around the property and out to the historic Long Key Viaduct, the former Overseas Railroad bridge that is now a pedestrian and bike trail.

Cubano dinner under the tiki at the Edgewater Lodge.

Saturday was another fairly calm day on the Hawk Channel, and while there was weekend traffic, it's nothing like the hustle and bustle of the ICW through Miami. We had an easy day all the way to the Cape Florida Channel, bypassing a stop at Rodriguez Key for our first time ever. We had planned to anchor off No Name Harbor and maybe tender in to the Boater's Grill there, but arriving so close to sunset we reasoned they'd be packed on a Saturday night, and we opted to just stay aboard.

That let us continue around the corner to a familiar anchorage off the old Nixon helipad (map), which we knew would have less ocean swell and fewer sportfish wakes than No Name. That turned out to be a mistake; on a nice Saturday night, the anchorage was full of party boats, both private and charter, blasting loud music well into the wee hours of the morning.

Vector looking diminutive from the Long Key Viaduct.

We knew we did not want to slog through Miami on the ICW in weekend traffic, and we did not have the weather to run outside, which was why we pushed all the way to Cape Florida on Saturday in the first place. So Sunday morning I called the Key Biscayne Yacht Club, a stone's throw away, to see if they could fit us in for one night. They could not, so instead we arranged to come in by tender to dine.

With the anchorage now mostly empty, we weighed anchor and moved north, as close to the yacht club as we could get (map), in hopes it would be just a bit quieter further from the main party area. In the afternoon Esmeralde flew by us, waving from about a mile off, on their way to an outside run to Fort Lauderdale via Government Cut. I worked on Louise's new scooter for the afternoon, and at dinner time we splashed the tender and headed ashore to the Chart Room at the club for a nice dinner. Afterward we walked to the nearby 7-11 for milk, which we needed before the morning. We had a much quieter and calmer night.

A distant shot of Esmeralde whizzing by on plane.

I spent a considerable amount of time Sunday with the bridge schedules, working out a plan to minimize station-keeping. We weighed anchor Monday morning to arrive at the Venetian Causeway, about an hour away, right at the dot of 9:30, and we had a good run with no serious waiting all the way to Fort Lauderdale. We arrived at high tide in the early afternoon, and decided to see if we could find a spot in Lake Sylvia to anchor.

Sunset from the tender heading home from Long Key. People line the beach and the viaduct to see this

We need tidal help to get in here, and we seldom arrive at the right tide and early enough in the day to monkey around. We're glad we did this time, because now we have a good track, but there was no room for us inside, so we turned right around and headed up to our old standby, Sunrise Bay (map). We would have instead stopped at the yacht club right next door, except they are closed on Monday and they had no way for us to get out and back in the front gate to leave the property.

At dinner time we splashed the tender and ran the couple of miles south to Bahia Mar, to meet up with Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde, notwithstanding having already said our tearful goodbyes for the season down in Key West. We were greeted by terriers Maisie and Ollie, fresh from the groomer and looking and smelling great. Bruce and Dorsey had a rental car and we all piled in and went to Serafina for dinner, a first for them. Ironically, we passed right by Vector coming and going.

Poorly aimed and focused shot of Dorsey, Bruce, me, and Louise at Serafina. Bruce is showing off his profiteroles.

They were kind enough to swing us by the grocery store on the way back, and after taking our leave we tendered over to Coconuts to pick up our requisite slice of coconut cheesecake to go, for the following night. We had a fast ride home in flat calm but a light drizzle.

I had once again hammered out the bridge schedules, and Tuesday morning we weighed anchor for perfect timing, with minimal waiting, for an exactly seven-hour cruise to our usual spot in West Palm Beach. Things were going swimmingly and we were right on track, but halfway through the morning we learned that set-up had already started for the Palm Beach Boat Show. Rats; that would mean most of the anchorage would be closed, with all the usual denizens scrambling for other spots nearby, and the dinghy docks were closed.

Sunrise over Hawk Channel as we got underway from Long Key.

Normally this would not be an issue for us, and we'd just continue another hour to an anchorage closer to the inlet. However, not really thinking about the boat show that always happens around now, we had both placed Amazon orders to the locker just south of town. We needed an alternate plan, and we spent over an hour underway working on it, no small feat while also driving the gantlet of bridges.

We finally settled on stopping short, at an anchorage I've been meaning to try anyway, in Lantana, just south of the bridge of that name. There is a free dinghy dock nearby, a number of restaurants, a Walgreens, and it's even just a two-mile walk or bike ride to Costco. Google said it was a 40-minute trip to the locker on the county bus, or we could drop a lunch hook in the morning across from the El Cid dock and tender over to get our packages.

Sunset from Key Biscayne Yacht Club with Vector and her first mate.

That took the pressure off to make a tight bridge opening at the Lantana bridge, and I dialed it back at Boynton Inlet, where the channel has shoaled. We had the hook down in light rain just south of the cable area in Lantana (map) just after 1 pm, calling it an early day. The anchorage was crowded, with some boats likely relocated from West Palm for the easy dinghy dock and a bus ride to work. We waited out the rain aboard.

By dinner time it was mostly dry and we tendered ashore for dinner. Not wanting to venture far, in case the rain started back up, we went to the nearby Old Key Lime House, which is a typical waterfront tiki joint, where all the seating is open-air but mostly covered, and they have live music on the deck. The food was OK but I suspect there are better options in the neighborhood.

Dinner at Old Key Lime House. Note the pair of upright masts just over Louise's shoulder, at right.

At one point early in the meal I looked up from the table and saw a large sailboat aground in the anchorage, leaned over by nearly 45° with its gunwale in the water. I could have sworn it was afloat and upright on our way to the restaurant, and sure enough they had literally just grounded, swung into a shoal by a sudden gust of wind. The crew was scrambling about, and a couple of dinghies came by to offer help. The entire restaurant staff filed out over time to have a look.

I snapped this picture less than ten minutes later. That same pair of masts, no longer upright.

Before dinner we had received two out of four delivery notices and were hoping the last two would come in while we ate, but no such luck. We were already home when the last came in, or so I thought, and I tendered back ashore stag to go get them. I missed a bus by mere seconds, watching it go by as I came up to the stop; it turned out to be the previous bus, considerably delayed. The next bus was already a half hour late, according to the tracker, and I would have a 40-minute wait in the rain for a half hour bus ride. I called an Uber.

Arriving at the locker I found only three of the four deliveries; evidently I only imagined the final notice. I walked across the street to the Publix and dollar store for a few items and the last notice came in while I was shopping. I was able to grab the bus back to Lantana, not an unpleasant ride at all. It was a long evening, but we got everything and would not need to horse around in the morning trying to land ashore in West Palm.

Miami skyline at night, from the Nixon anchorage, Key Biscayne.

In the morning we weighed anchor for the 8 am opening at Lantana, setting us up for good timing through the morning lockdowns in the Palm Beaches. The show buildout was in full swing, but it turned out that "our spot" in the anchorage would still have been available, just without shore access. We had a very slow roll north of Flagler bridge in order to time the Parker bridge, the first time we ever got that timing correct.

The timing put us at the tricky Jupiter Inlet crossing at a high tide of 2.5', and we needed it, as our sounder dipped below 8' at one point. Until they dredge this again we will continue to need tidal help here. The new Jupiter Federal Bridge is now in operation, but this new one is high enough we no longer need it to open for us.

The new Jupiter Federal Bridge, still under construction. We go right under it.

The early start got us all the way to Stuart, where we dropped the hook just east of Arbeau Point (map) for protection from westerlies. It's an easy tender ride to shore from here, but heavy rain kept us aboard for dinner. At least the boat got a good rinse. Instead we went ashore in the morning, as we were completely out of beer, and could use a few more items from Publix as well. We stopped in to Three Little Birds Cafe for breakfast, complete with a mimosa.

We decked the tender as soon as we returned and weighed anchor on a rising tide for the run to the lake. We were delighted to have a different and much more pleasant lockmaster at the St. Lucie Lock than on previous transits. Late start notwithstanding we made it all the way to the lake, albeit after the locks closed for the day, and we spent the night tied to the Port Mayaca dolphins (map). We arrived in 15-20 knots of wind, which made lassoing the pilings without hitting them with the boat a challenge, but the boatswain was up to the challenge and we landed the boat without incident.

Sunset from the Nixon anchorage, Key Biscayne.

Once tied to the dolphins, the lines were creaking horribly in the strong wind. It did not help that they were stiff from the last dock. Realizing it was going to be a challenge sleeping with all that racket, I went in search of a solution, and we've learned a new trick: dish soap in warm water, poured directly over the cleat knot and the touch points with the hawsepipes, quieted the lines right down. The YouTube clip wherein I learned this claims the solution works for a good 6-8 hours. By the time I turned in, the wind had dropped to just 2 knots, rendering it moot.

We had a relaxing evening on board, at least right up until shower time. Louise marched upstairs after her shower and started the generator, even though we had full batteries, announcing that she had a mostly cold shower. Apparently we once again have an air bubble trapped in our water heater coolant loop, likely the result of my having changed the pump and coolant in Marathon. Odd that it all worked for a good week after leaving Key West, but sometimes entrained air takes a while to find the high spot in the system.

Transiting Port Mayaca Lock this morning. At this lake level they open both sides and we drive right through.

Update: we are tied to the city dock in Moore Haven, Florida (map), a familiar stop. I had to stop typing a few miles east of Clewiston to drive through some skinny stuff, and then we were in narrow canals the rest of the day requiring steady focus. Once tied up we had to deal with various dockside errands, and then we walked down to Joey's Pizza & Subs for dinner, alas sans beer. Moore Haven, which auto-complete keeps wanting to finish, appropriately, as Moore Haven't, is a culinary wasteland, with nothing but a pizza joint and a taco stand.

I now have a very nice oatmeal stout in hand, courtesy of our Publix stop yesterday, as I wrap up the blog. In the morning we will drop lines and continue toward Fort Myers, stopping somewhere along the Caloosahatchee for the night.

Defeated

We've had a change of plans, and as I begin typing we are underway southbound toward the Moser Channel under the Seven Mile Bridge, near Marathon. We had a miserable night and are both dog-tired, but we've been trading places to nap underway.

While we had a comfortable cruise yesterday, and we were fairly comfortable at anchor through dinner, with just a light chop, the forecast for light winds, less than five knots, overnight proved to be entirely wrong. Winds steadily picked up, and by the time I turned it it was blowing 15-20, and we were pounding over 2-3' seas at anchor; I had to run around the boat at midnight dogging things down as if for sea. We were still probably having a better night than the sailboat that arrived after dark and anchored just west of us, with likely less than a third our displacement.

In the dark, in heavy seas, and less than high tide, it was too late to change our decision and seek the shelter of the Little Shark River, and we had no choice but to tough it out. That kind of motion does not bother me or keep me from sleeping, but what did was anxiety -- the morning tide would be below zero, and with just 18" under the keel in that spot, I was worried we'd be slamming against the bottom. Fortunately, the winds dropped off, but not completely, before dawn.

With the tide at just three inches and falling, we weighed anchor just before civil twilight this morning to get back out to deeper water before it dropped another full foot. Once back in 8' soundings we made the turn northward to Marco Island, thankful to have the stabilizers working and making us at least a little comfortable.

Within the span of an hour we found ourselves bashing into 2'-3' head seas, with 15-20 knots of wind on the nose. There were whitecaps, and we were taking spray over the bow all the way to the pilothouse windows. This was definitely not the forecast, which was for light winds to five knots and seas of just one foot. Louise spent half of that hour combing through forecasts for any inkling of what was happening, but none was accurate.

While a little uncomfortable, we could have soldiered through those conditions all day. But we still had nine full hours to Marco Island, with no heavy-weather bail-out options in between. With the forecast completely wrong, we had no way to know whether the conditions would stay the same throughout those nine hours, or deteriorate further into something truly uncomfortable or which would make the shallow entrance at Marco Island, near sunset, a problem. If we continued much further, we'd be committed, too late to turn around and make safe harbor in the daylight.

The great U-turn.

We conceded defeat to the vagaries of mother nature and the inaccuracies of a forecast in a remote part of the state, and made a U-turn. As soon as I finished the turn, life got vastly better, because wind and seas that had been on the nose were now on the stern. The boat stopped pitching and bashing, and there was no more spray. It was just 7:30am.

It's now nearly 3pm and we've passed under the Seven Mile Bridge and made the eastward turn into the Hawk Channel. (Typing in these conditions is a slow process, interrupted by dodging pot floats and looking at charts to figure out just what we are doing). Conditions improved throughout the day, and it was downright pleasant for the last couple of hours before the bridge. We've both had naps.

We are now under the gun to make it into Biscayne Bay before the next system moves in. If we had stopped in Marathon we'd be pinned there for a week, so we're going to press on up the Keys until we run out of day, and tuck in someplace to anchor. Tomorrow we'll get an early start, and we should be in Key Biscayne early on Sunday.

We'd already started making plans to connect with friends on the west coast, and those will have to be rearranged. I still want to get there, and we'll have to decide whether to cross the lake to do it, or drop the boat someplace, rent a car, and make a week's road trip out of it. Even with the ~450-mile round trip in the boat, taking the boat is cheaper, but convenience and logistics will likely drive the decision. Stay tuned. It's at least five days before we even reach the fork in the road, at St. Lucie Inlet.

Conch Republic

We are underway across the southeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico, just west of Florida Bay, headed for an anchorage in Shark River from Key West. Shark River is in Everglades National Park, and I have my spiffy new lifetime National Parks Pass to cover the entrance fee, and my boating certificate from the park to allow us to operate there.

Vector at the dock, Key West Bight Marina.

It's a long day, some 10-11 hours under way, and then we'll be in the middle of nowhere, with three or four more hops up to the Tampa Bay region, but the only alternative was a 30-hour overnight. That's normally not a problem for us, but we made the decision to head up the west coast at the very last minute, and we need more advance warning to sync our sleep schedules to the overnight watch schedule. Also, dodging pot floats in the dark is both a pain and stressful.

We arrived to Key West shortly after my last post, proceeded directly to our assigned slip (map), and lined up to back in. I had 15 knots of wind on the port beam for a port-side tie, so backing in was a bit of a challenge. That involved using the starboard rub rails up against a pair of pilings separating us from the next slip. All well and good, but we miscalculated slightly and I ended up knocking the BBQ grill off the starboard rail as I backed in. It landed on the deck, upside-down, with a mighty crash. Fortunately, a small ding in the deck paint was the only damage to the boat.

Tango Uniform.

We had booked two weeks at the marina, where the weekly rate is roughly five times the daily rate. In the middle of our stay we decided we were enjoying it enough this time around to try to extend to a third week, but the best they could do was another four nights, at the daily rate, which took us all the way to yesterday morning.

It's chick season in Key West. We saw them all over town.

We've been to Key West numerous times, staying at this very marina several times, out in the anchorage a number of times, and even at the high-zoot Galleon marina across the way once. I can honestly say that this visit was the least crowded we have ever seen Key West. Free scooter parking, often tight in town, was widely available, there was room every day at the normally always-overfull dinghy dock, and we sauntered right in to pretty much every restaurant. I'm not sure why.

Key West is a scooter-friendly town, with free designated scooter parking all over the place, and specially marked spots for them in all the shopping centers. We put my scooter down the day after we arrived, and with scooters everywhere, we also started looking for a replacement for Louise's scooter, which we sold a couple of months ago. Most of the scooters here are 50s, of course, and we wanted at least a 125.

Helpful instructions in the rest room at Harpoon Harry's.

We ended up taking a used one off the lot at the big scooter dealer in town, which carries the SYM/Lance brand of Taiwanese models. Louise is now the proud owner of a Lance Cabo 200i, which is a 170cc fuel-injected model similar to mine. The dealer gave us a 30-day warranty of sorts, so we tried to ride it all over the island for a week as a shakedown. We found a missing bolt, and the built-in USB charging port was inoperative, and they fixed both of those things.

Louise's new scoot, before sale. I'll need to clean up the poultice corrosion on all this aluminum; every Cabo in town looked just like this.

Among the many scooter excursions were a couple of trips to the auto parts store, where I needed fresh coolant for the main engine, a wiper blade, and a spark plug for my scooter, the lone decent bagel joint in town, Goldman's, Home Depot, and the grocery stores for provisions and distilled water to go along with the coolant.

I tackled projects pretty much every day. That included replacing the tap water in the main engine, from the pump replacement in Marathon, with fresh coolant. Key West has an excellent and convenient recycling program and I was able to offload all the used coolant from the project right there near the marina. Of course, I had to fix the BBQ as well, which involved ordering a new HDPE cutting board on Amazon to replace the one that shattered into pieces, and also reattaching one side of the lid handle with JB Weld. I also took the opportunity to remove the element and clean the whole thing out.

It fits! I think Louise is enjoying the peppier bike; I will enjoy not having to work on a carburetor.

The main engine was long overdue for a valve adjustment, something I am only willing to tackle while secured to a dock; the engine is considerably quieter now without all the valve clatter. I also replaced the main engine oil, again with convenient access to recycling for the used oil, filters, and sorbents.

The other big project that has been waiting for dock time was a persistent fuel leak on the generator. I had previously tracked it down to a banjo bolt in the return line, but the head stripped rather than the bolt coming quietly, so we needed dock power in case I broke something during extraction. I had to take all the injector lines off the engine to get a tool onto the bolt head but eventually I got it out. I found a generic replacement which seems to have cured the problem, but I need a few hours of run time to be sure. Lots of fuel-soaked sorbents went to recycling once I was done.

The recalcitrant banjo bolt. The composite rubber-over-metal washer has extruded well down into the banjo; I think that was the source of the leak.

With a good Amazon address and some extra time I converted our Starlink terminal to DC power, which saves maybe 15% of the power consumption. It consumes over a kWh per day, so the power saving is measurable. I converted more of the house lighting to LED, and I replaced some corroded lifting tackle for the dinghy. I also replaced the grab line on our life ring, which had disintegrated in the weather for the third time.

Replacement bolt, left, has a bigger head so I am less likely to round it off.

Of course, the new scooter also required attention. I had to remove brush guards (for real -- on a scooter) from the handlebars in order that the lifting and tie-down tackle would work, and I mounted Louise's tail trunk. The dealer kindly swapped the factory grab bar on the back for the accessory package rack from one of the bikes in their enormous rental fleet so I could mount the trunk. We also updated the first aid kits in both scooters while we had them out.

A couple of weeks at a dock makes it possible to schedule other work, and we had a day worker come by to wash the boat, and a diver to clean the bottom and inspect everything. All is good down there, but our outermost layer of black paint is mostly gone and the bottom is now ship-bottom red.

The Margaritaville cruise ship, as seen on my way from the anchorage yesterday. One of many to call here, but this one seems like a homecoming.

Our very good friends Dorsey and Bruce were in town aboard their lovely vessel Esmeralde, docked over at the Galleon, and we had several nice evenings with them. That included one where we met them at Roostica out on Stock Island, giving Louise's new scoot some additional workout, which was followed by a nice walk around Boyd's campground, where we've all stayed in RVs at one time or another. One evening they introduced us to their long-time friend Chris, who is one of those larger-than-life characters from the boating world, and we look forward to seeing him again somewhere along the line. And, of course, we got a bit of dog love from terriers Maisie and Ollie.

We tried to walk a bit every morning, and I've been continuing with my physical therapy. We had near-perfect weather for almost the entire stay, and I was in shorts up until the last day or two. On Tuesday, though, a storm moved through that dumped an all-time record amount of rain on Key West in just a few hours. Parts of town flooded; the water was two feet deep in Harpoon Harry's just a block from our dock. Our scooters were on higher ground and only saw a couple of inches, though others were less fortunate. It was wild, and afterwards I waded through town in my watermen's boots taking photos.

Harpoon Harry's as the water recedes. An hour earlier it was another foot deep; an hour later the street was dry.

One of the great things about Key West is that you can stay here for a month and never eat at the same joint twice. We hit most of our old favorites, and added a couple to the list, including Mangia Mangia!, a decent Italian place a bit away from the crowds, Misohappy, a Thai and sushi place where Bruce and Dorsey brought us with Chris, which was quite good, the Celtic Conch, where you have to squeeze in between the live music acts if you want to talk over one of their many drafts, and Jack Flats, which is a "why bother" place that's been here forever, drawn in by a free beer (barely worth it). Dishonorable mention to the Southernmost Pint, whose only redeeming quality is the name, and the Wicked Lick, whose ice cream was both expensive and terrible.

White watermen boots I bought for TS Colin a decade ago.

Old favorites we revisited this time included La Trattoria, Harpoon Harry's (breakfast and dinner), The Boat House, Waterfront Brewery, Onlywood (Caroline location), Amigos, Bruschetta Francesca, Roostica, Carolines (giant burgers), Old Town Mexican (who puts too much squash in the fajitas), Pepe's, and Fogarty's.

No Conch Tour Train today.

We somehow missed the Cuban Coffee Queen on this visit, usually a standby for us for breakfast, but we did get excellent breakfast sandwiches a couple of times at the Fisherman's Cafe, which is a walk-up stand in spite of the name, and had a traditional diner breakfast, complete with mimosa, at Harpoon Harry's just a day after they flooded. We also got pastries at Old Town Bakery, which is always packed. It would not be a visit to Key West without a stop at Fausto's Market, which is overpriced but convenient.

Mind your wake! I had to jump back up on higher ground several times to keep the wakes from overtopping my boots.

We rolled the new scooter out to the dock Tuesday to see what it was going to take to squeeze it on deck, since it's 5" longer than the old one. Just lifting it was a challenge; the handlebars are so wide that our usual lifting harness did not fit, and I had to root around for some combination of straps to do the trick. Once up on deck, it was not as tight a fit ahead of the dinghy as I had feared, but we do have to lift the back end to swing it into place. We loaded the other scooter yesterday and it's a tight fit at the handlebars, but it all worked out. I'll need new tackle, and maybe to remove the bar-end weights.

Yesterday we settled up and left the dock at checkout time and headed out to the anchorage. With east wind we decided to try anchoring west of Wisteria Island (map), a popular anchorage, so that I would not have to thread my way between Wisteria and Tank Islands in the dark this morning. That turned out to be a bad choice, as we rolled all night. We tendered back ashore for a final dinner with Dorsey and Bruce, followed by final dog petting and tearful goodbyes.

Kelly the sloth, Louise's pillion, with the loot, gifted by Esmeralde.

This morning we weighed anchor at civil twilight and got underway. We had a nice push behind us out the Northwest Channel, and favorable current for the first half of the trip. As I wrap up tying in our final hours we have a knot against us. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, we will continue up the coast to Marco Island.

Update: We are anchored in Ponce de Leon Bay, just off the Shark River entrance (map). I had to stop working on the post well offshore due to shallows and pot floats. I was hoping to make it all the way in to Little Shark River, which is well-protected, for the night, but tomorrow morning's tide is three quarters of a foot below zero, and we started running over 8' soundings at a tide of +2'. We'd be stuck in there until well after 10am tomorrow, and we have a nine hour day ahead of us.

Key West bound

We are underway "southbound," which here is really closer to westbound, in the Hawk Channel, on the final leg of our journey to Key West. We have a slip booked at the city marina for two weeks, and the plotter says we should be docked by 3pm. It has been a somewhat eventful trip.

Six of the eight dolphins playing off our bow today. A good omen.

Saturday evening we walked down to one of our long-time favorites, Serafina, for dinner on their patio overlooking the Middle River. We discovered this place just by chance, back when we used to be able to anchor in the Middle River (now illegal), but it turns out to be one of the best Italian places in all of Fort Lauderdale, and we're happy it is just within walking distance of the yacht club.

Dinner at Serafina.

We get one night free at the club, and after that we have to pay. We took the second night to finish errands, but Sunday we wanted to be off the dock. That said, a pleasant Sunday is about the worst time to navigate the ICW through Fort Lauderdale, and we decided to just move to the adjacent Sunrise Bay anchorage. The club dockmaster was happy to let us stay on the dock all day, but the anchorage fills up with day boats on the weekends, and so we dropped lines first thing to get a good spot (map). We splashed the tender and came right back to the club for the brunch buffet.

Obligatory beach shot from the Broadwalk, for our friends and family in the wintry north.

One of the things we usually do at this anchorage is tender down to Coconuts, another of our perennial favorites, for dinner, and at dinner time we tried to do just that. Weekend traffic in the concrete-lined ICW made for a choppy mess, which might have been tolerable had we been able to plane, but that's only allowed on weekdays (I often joke that the manatees in Fort Lauderdale have calendars). After bashing our way over two footers down to the Middle River we gave up and turned around, having a light snack at home. We were still pretty full from the giant brunch anyway.

The historic Hollywood Beach Resort, 100 this year, is still shuttered. I hear it might be razed.

Things are so much more peaceful on Monday, and we weighed anchor for the relatively short cruise through Port Everglades down to Hollywood, where we dropped the hook in our usual spot in the South Lake "key slot" (map). We noted the county has finally installed signage designating North Lake and South Lake as anchoring limitation areas, limited to 45 days in a six-month period.

New anchoring limit signs. This is North Lake, which formerly was packed with near-derelict boats.

I splashed the tender, gassed it up at the Hollywood Marina, and had my usual stroll on the Broadwalk. Our stealth tender landing is less accessible now, with the lone mooring ring buried under tree canopy, so I just tied up at GG's Waterfront. Later in the afternoon we took the tender down to stock up at the new waterfront Publix, near the Diplomat Hotel, which has its very own dock for boat-in provisioning. It was a nice store, if a bit on the small side, and much easier than the mountaineering I had to do to access the Walmart a little further along.

Taking the groceries out to the dock. So civilized.

In the evening we tendered back to GG's, where we met up with long-time friends and fellow Neoplan owners Steve and Harriet, who were in town on a visit and parked over at Yacht Haven in their "other bus," a Prevost. Regular readers may remember we sometimes parked our bus in their driveway when they lived here in Fort Lauderdale. It was great catching up with them, the first time in a long while, and we're glad our paths intersected here briefly.

The dock from the water.

We had a quiet night in Hollywood, weighing anchor in the morning for slog down the inside to Key Biscayne, running yet another gantlet of timed bridges. With a very low tide we were able to just squeak underneath the Hallandale Beach bridge without an opening, for the first time ever. We were disappointed to see that the docks at the Intracostal Mall are now entirely closed off, even in front of Duffy's.

The entire mall dock is now closed, likely because it is unsafe. I hope they reopen it.

The Miami Boat Show is coming right up, and we had to maneuver through some of the show prep. That includied some exhibitor boat that thought it was a good idea to cut right across the ICW just as a whole line of boats was making its way through a bridge opening.

Setting up the Miami boat show.

We had our sights set on the Key Biscayne Yacht club, and I had checked several times to see if they had room for us, but they did not. We figured to anchor off Nixon Beach and tender in to the club for dinner, as we've done in the past. When we arrived in the neighborhood, however, we realized it was calm enough to have a pleasant night anchored off No Name Harbor, a bit further along, which would save us a half hour in the morning. We dropped the hook there (map) and tendered in to the Boaters Grill for dinner and a walk.

Vector at anchor as seen from Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne.

Wednesday morning we go an early start for the outside run, leaving at low slack, which had us just skating over a couple of the shoals in the Biscayne Channel with barely a foot under keel. Once over the bar it was a bumpy ride until we passed Fowey Rock, the northern end of the reef.

We were having a fine cruise, if a bit more rolly than we had anticipated, but in the middle of the day things started to go pear-shaped. Louise came up from a routine engine room check, which she does every 90 minutes, and reported a burning smell in the engine room. We both spent time in there over the course of the next half hour trying to pin it down, and eventually I concluded it was coming from the engine belts. The belts have several thousand hours on them, so it was not out of the question that one was slipping.

Looking back at Cape Florida Light, in the park, as we depart the eponymous channel.

Then I notice an almost imperceptible wobble at the end of the coolant pump pulley, the only one of the three pulleys visible with the belt guard in place. There was no evidence of coolant coming out the pump weep hole, though, and the overflow bottle had a normal level. We opted to continue to the anchorage at reduced RPM, forego the daily engine run-up, and double the frequency of engine room checks. By the time we reached Rodriguez Key the wobble had become more noticeable.

We worked our way into the shallows behind Rodriguez for whatever meager protection it might offer and dropped the hook (map). We turned on the engine room fan so it might be tolerable to work in there after dinner, splashed the tender, and headed toward Key Largo for dinner. We did not get far; it's a two mile tender ride, and we got so beat up in the first half mile that we turned around and I grilled sausages for dinner instead.

Sunset over Rodriguez Key in Key Largo.

After dinner I pulled the belt guard off, loosened the belts, and inspected everything. As I feared, there was lots of end play in the pump pulley, suggesting the bearings were going. Long-time readers may remember that we've been here before, replacing the pump in Florence. Alabama. We later had the old pump rebuilt by a friend of ours in the commercial pump business while were in New Orleans, and I set it aside as a spare for "some day." I spent hours poring over engine manuals and the photos from the last time before turning in for the night. The original pump lasted just 3,300 hours, and this one made it twice as long, so it's hard to complain.

Spare pump. The guys who rebuilt it gave it a fresh coat of white paint.

I had the pump and enough gaskets to do the job, and now we were were faced with a decision: spend the day at Rodriguez and do it right there, turn around and head back to Miami, or continue on to either a calmer anchorage or Marathon. The bounciness of the Rodriguez anchorage and the difficulty of getting ashore for any needed parts or supplies, as driven home by our dinner about-face, eliminated that option. It would also be a very bad place to be stuck should something go wrong and we needed to wait on parts or help.

These guys surfing the Flowrider at Margaritaville Resort Hollywood were pretty good.

The lack of any bail-out anchorages on the full day back to Miami persuaded us the best course was to proceed to Marathon, where there was plenty of help, and at least two good bail-out anchorages en route if it came to that. We weighed anchor first thing and continued southbound in Hawk Channel at reduced RPM and with frequent engine room checks. I left the belt guard off and so we wore safety glasses in the ER. We also charged the batteries up with the generator before departure to take the load of the alternator and thus the belts.

The wobble visibly worsened throughout the day, ending any thoughts we might have entertained about limping all the way to Key West, where we already had a dock booked. I spent most of the day calling every marina in Marathon to see if we could get a dock; the anchorage just outside the harbor can be miserably bouncy, making for a couple of uncomfortable nights on top of difficult working conditions.

With the belt guard off the wobble was pretty evident.

One marina on the north side had room for us, at a staggering $375 per night, and we would have paid that, but the charts said there was less than 6' of depth on the way there, and the dozen extra miles around to that side would have put us in at dusk, leaving no fall-back. We decided to suck it up and tough it out in the anchorage, with a nice dinner at the Sunset Grill as our consolation.

One of our go-to joints on the Broadwalk has, sadly, closed.

We got an 11th-hour reprieve when one of the dockmasters I had been trying to reach all day got back to me just as we were making the turn toward the anchorage. In light of our circumstances she said she could put us on a partly busted-up face dock with no working power and she would charge us just $100 per night. When she agreed we could run our generator as needed and we would not need to leave the dock should the engine repair fall short, we jumped on it.

The marina in question is at the Skipjack Resort, which is on a canal about as far from the Boot Key Harbor entrance as you can get. Part of the channel that leads there is less than five feet deep, and we had to detour through the mooring field to get there, leading to quite a few stares en route. We made it without incident and were tied up at the Skipjack Marina (map) just before the dockmaster left at 5.

Docked at Skipjack. You can see where the dock has collapsed aft of our fashion plate and has been fenced off. It was a challenge to get tied up.

I had posted of our travails on one of my Facebook boating groups. That led to several offers of assistance in Marathon, including from some folks we've met before. As we were coming alongside the dock, the couple on the Defever 49 immediately in front of us recognized me from the post. They immediately offered us the use of their car while they would be away in Key West (via bus) and left their key where we could get it (we did not need it). Thanks, Josh!

With the belts off I was able to wiggle the pulley. A lot.

The resort has its own restaurant, a beach-bar joint with a Greek flair called The Blu Bistro, and we ate poolside at the bar. We had the pizza, which was a mistake; I'd suggest one of the Greek options instead. The pool was inviting but I never got the chance to try it. After dinner I had a long walk around Sombrero Island, passing the Dockside bar and restaurant, which was packed and had live music I could hear from every point on the island.

On my walk around Sombrero I passed the entrance to the government's powerful transmitter sending propaganda to Cuba.

Yesterday morning after coffee I started right in on the pump. Having already done this once before, things moved along pretty well and I had the engine drained and the pump off in a little over two hours. Unlike last time, where the fiber gasket came off in one piece and we were able to trace it to make a new one, this time it was unusable, and we ended up setting the new pump on the gasket material to trace it out.

Draining the coolant. One gallon at a time.

Getting the 32-pound pump back up against the engine block with that gasket still aligned is the hardest part of the job, and it took me most of 20 minutes with a pry bar and a lot of swearing to get the first couple of bolts started. In the end the whole job took less than six hours start to finish, a couple of hours faster than the first time I did it. I'm not really finished, because the system is full of tap water right now, which I will replace with proper coolant in Key West. The belt guard is also still off while we continue to watch for leaks.

Old pump removed. This is the forward end of the engine block.

The project kicked my sorry butt, and I skipped my PT exercises yesterday for the first time since I started them. I was showered and cleaned up just in time for dinner, and we walked across the highway to the Marathon Grill and Ale House, which we remembered from a few years ago. Not only did they have one of my favorite porters on tap, but we also stumbled into prime rib night and we shared a piece. Far from the best, but it was decent and a nice end to a difficult day. We stopped into the nearby Publix on the way home.

On our way back from dinner, a reminder of the original Overseas Railway linking the Keys.

This morning we left the harbor at a foot lower tide level than when we arrived. We glided over a couple of shoals with just 3" under the keel, and I again had to cut through the mooring field. We've had a nice push out in the channel and are making good time, but it has been pot floats akimbo and I've had to do a lot of dodging and weaving. A pod of eight dolphins played in our bow wave for a good ten minutes, which I take to be a sign of good luck.

Replacement pump installed. My grubby handprints are all over the fresh paint.

We are looking forward to a couple of weeks of downtime here in Key West, and lifting a glass or two with old friends. Of course I will have my fair share of projects to tackle at the dock, including replacing the coolant. My next post will most likely be when we are again under way on our way out.