I had a "coal fired" pizza for dinner last night from Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza.

Boy, you can really taste the coal!

John S. would really like these....they taste like one of his steam trains.

Friends came visiting on Nonchalance yesterday.

Bill & Jane Stone (their boat is named "Loose Stones") were coming near here to see another friend near here so they stopped by for Sunday Brunch on their way. I got pasteries and rolls from Paul, my favorite local french bakery. I also made coffee. Who says I can't cook? We met Bill and Jane on the Ohio river while they were on the last leg of their Great Loop Route, which they have since completed.

Daisy forgot whom they were until Jane started feeding her bites from the table. Oh, Yeah...now I remember that one!

Bad Idea....just some of my maintenance things....the prior owners installed "Italian restaurant lights", like rope lighting, on the underside of the handrails on our aft deck, one on each side. The problem was that it's frequently a wet environment and they simply left plugs permanantly in recepticles and also used regular indoor lamp cord switches, which rusted. I had always meant to do something about that, but a few weeks ago when the switches got wet with salt water, they would shock us when we touched them. That got my attention!
Good idea....so I just finished installing two outdoor rated waterproof switchs built into the recepticle and watertight hard epoxy grommets for the wires. This eliminates the open air plug and the switch on the wire. It even rained right after I finished this and got it wet for the picture.

Kathy comes back to Florida tomorrow and then we'll have a couple days here to get the boat ready and we'll head north. I'm itching to get back moving again anyway

Nice day today....temps in the high 70s and sunny. I checked off a few things on my boat to-do list, got 2 divers to clean the bottom of the boat which had fuzzy green algae all over it after 4 months in warm salt water, ate another olive loaf from Paul bakery, and got a dinghy motor mount wedge order free from Nautica (our dinghy brand).

This last item, the dinghy motor mount wedge, was very interesting. Our dinghy came with the boat and has a large outboard motor. It has always "porpoised" bouncing up and down some when driven at higher speeds. When Kathy and I were at the Miami boat show, I stopped by the Nautica salesfloor and demo area. I spoke to a nice lady there and explained that our 1997 RIB 12 Nautica dinghy always porpoised. She took me over to that boat and pointed out a large metal wedge on the new boats, which changes the angle of the motor, and asked if mine had that. When I said "no", she gave me her card, said to call her this week, and she'd get me one. It turned out she was Debra Young, the president of Nautica International, Inc. I called her today and she had it set up so the parts people have one at their factory near here so I can go and pick it up. Pretty good service for a 10 year old boat! It's nice to have an American made product with that kind of customer service. It's nice to have an American company where the president makes that kind of effort to stay in touch with their customers and knows the product that well. If I buy another dinghy, I'll want a Nautica!

Then, Jim Grove (a Hatteras Owners Forum friend) called. He had heard that Nigel Calder, whom writes cruising books, was giving a lecture tonight at Bluewater Navigation on the subject of Cruising to the Bahamas. Bluewater Navigation is where I buy all my charts and GPS navigation chart chips, and also where I bought 2 books by Calder (Marine Diesel Engines and How to Read a Nautical Chart). So Jim and I went to the lecture, which was quite entertaining, and then we went to dinner at a very good, homey, BBQ restaurant nearby. Good pork BBQ sandwich, and much better than watching TV on Nonchalance and eating hot dogs. Thanks, Jim!

Not much to blog about here in Aventura, FL. Kathy's visiting her family in Texas. Temps are great for working on the boat (mid 70s). I Walk Daisy a lot. There will probably be a lull in anything interesting for the blogging here for a while unless I think of something worth discussing.

Last night, I watched Flags of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood's award winning movie along with Letters From Iwo Jima) - somewhat gory at times but it goes way past the action scenes and portrays the feelings of the men and the times. It brings home his point well about what heroes really are by the ending soliloquey, IMHO.

I had olive bread for lunch from Paul's, a nearby and excellent french bakery. Olive bread and a bottle of Coke makes a great lunch. Their olive loaf is shaped like this because it increases the ratio of great crust to bread and you can rip off a dinner roll sized hunk and it doesn't expose very much of the inside bread to the air to dry out. Of course, that doesn't matter much when you eat almost the whole thing for lunch.

Jim Grove (a Hatteras Owner's Forum friend) called because he's in town to ready his boat Fanfare for their trip to the Bahamas, and we're going out to a sushi dinner tonight. He's here working on his boat and his wife, Dudley, is coming soon. It does it seem like the guy always does the "fix the boat" work, except in Angela's case (another nice Hatt Forum member).

When you're in saltwater, you find out that stainless steel isn't......there's some kind of rust looking stuff that develops on the surface like this. It isn't rust, but it looks like it and develops where there are microscopic pits of the surface, I believe.

You get it off with "NeverDull" and a lot of elbow grease. You also find out that NeverDull does..... it has a waxy substance which is suppposed to be cleaned off after using it, which I did. 3 hours later, it's dull again but shines up great with a dry cloth. I'll let it dry overnight on the many other places I need to use it.

And Kathy..... yes I do wash Daisy's food and water bowls before I feed her every morning. I think that maybe Kathy thinks I won't even feed Daisy unless I'm reminded. In reality, the empty bowls are there on the aft deck when I eat breakfast, so they remind me. Oops! Oh, yeah..... I guess Daisy actually always does get fed second every morning.

We saw more of the Miami Boat Show today. This was the huge inside show at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Boy do my feet know that I've been walking all day for two days straight! This boating life is tough, I tell you.

We did see lots of things I'd like but can't afford:

Big 5 bladed props (ours are only four, you know). Yes, these are big, that's Kathy down the aisle. Probably about $5,000 each (gotta have, 2 you know).


o Detroit Diesel engines THIS BIG! WOW! (gotta have 2, you know)
o Satellite phones that always work
o Two way wireless intercom headsets so we can talk to each other when setting the anchor or docking.
o Jet drive dinghy (only $16,000)
o Night vision camera and monitors...Oh, wait: we don't cruise at night.
o Hydraulic self-storing boarding ramp to reach every dock height from our stern. Way cool.
o Watermaker that makes pure water out of sea water.
o Blow-up sea kayaks....easy to store.
o Video cameras for engines rooms....why go down to look every few hours? Just watch on TV monitor.
o On and on, etc. etc.

What we actually bought:
o Spray on mold stain remover for deck chairs ($8.00)
o little folding cart box with wheels ($16.99)
We stayed within our boating budget.

Miami International Boat Show Day!
We went down to the boat show today and I can tell you safely that we need between $2 mil and $5 mil to get the boat I'd really like......but that's more than ten times what our boat cost, and more than 10 times what I have. Now, the 120 to 130 footers like the ones Kathy is walking between here are way more than $10 mil. I guess they're all totally out of our league and even out of our desires. Oh, well...at least our 53 Hatteras doesn't look so big anymore, and I really don't think I'd want a bigger one. Some of them are just too much boat.

But they do have a salon like this, which handles 15 or 20 of your closest friends.
And master staterooms like this that take two pictures to show both sides of the room with the separate "his" bathroom on starboard.....


and "hers" bathroom on the port side. The bathrooms both have doors leading into the same large shower stall in the middle. The sales lady even explained "that that's for meeting in the middle for fun". Hmmmmm....



And engine rooms like this...see you even get your own built in Craftsman tool chest!

We also came to appreciate very much that we have more storage space and living space than any near comparable size boat. The Hatteras 53MY is a great design for a boat.



Then there were dozens upon dozens of 40 to 70ft. used boats. These were all priced at a multiple of what our boat cost too. However, I saw lots of interesting layouts and lots of things I'd like to have but can't afford. Things like:

o Built in dinghy garage in the stern that opens up like a garage door.

o Built in hydraulic boarding ramp that unfolds to go out to any height dock.

o Satellite phones that work anywhere, including internet.

o Radar that overlays radar images on your GPS charts.

o Auxillary operator station where you can run and steer the boat from miniature controls at the stern for backing in easily.

Tomorrow we'll see the inside show at the Miami Convention Center. It'll have a few thousand other things that I've never thought of but now I'll wish I had.......electronics and toys for the boat. Wowee!

Aventura, Fl is almost solid highrise condos. These are on the ICW at our marina. That's a 100 ft. boat at the entrance to our marina docks.
The highrise condos are everywhere, and the golf courses, boulevards and shopping centers are extremely well kept, which is unusual because we're used to seeing nice marinas but low end houses nearby as soon as you get away from the shoreline.
I believe these are strangler fig trees. We see them a lot down here, some of them huge. They look like banyan trees but without the huge arial support roots turned into additional trunks. Strangler figs in the wild start like a vine around a regular tree and then grow up like this to "strangle" the host tree until it is completely gone and nothing remains but a huge strangler fig.

Tomorrow is the first day we'll go to the Miami Boat Show.

Nice InterCoastal Waterway (ICW) trip today! Waves were 2 to 4 ft. outside, but flat and smooth in the protected ICW behind the barrier islands.

We cruised slowly up from Miami to Aventura, which is really just North Miami. Temps were about 80 all day and the flybridge view was fun. We went slow because of manatee zones and a number of bridges that had to open for us. This one has only 13 ft. clearance and with our antennas down we still need 24 ft. to go under.

Going north in the ICW, Miami was on our port side for the whole trip.
On the starboard side all the way was Miami Beach, the barrier islands now built up like a beautiful high rise city, with the beaches on the ocean side. There were lots of tiny islands that dotted the bay between Miami Beach and Miami and they were all little parks, accessable only by boat.
We're at Turnberry Isle Marina here in Aventura. We're a little boat again here, the second one in on the far side of the pictured dock.
This place is absolutely full of really big boats. That big one at the far end of the dock is 140 ft. long. We'll stay here 2 weeks so we can visit interesting places, see the Miami International Boat Show............
.....and Kathy will fly to Dallas for a week to visit her family there. I like this picture of Kathy, it just looks like she looks. She's been really good the whole trip at keeping me in the channels and off of the rocks.

Miami!

We're on the northern leg up the East Coast and arrived at Miami. We'll spend 2 nights here and then move to Aventura (really still Miami suburbs) for 2 weeks so we can take in the Miami Boat Show and Kathy can go visit her family in Dallas for a week.
We met Angela here at Rickenbacker Marina. She's an active Hatteras Owner's Forum member working on refitting her boat and she got us this nice slip for a great price while the slip renter is working on his boat out of the water. Angela has a 58 ft. Hatteras named "Sanctuary" down the dock from us and she had us over for dinner Sunday evening when we got in. She's an excellent cook too. She cooked crispy parmesan chicken, potato and mixed peppers julienne and banannas foster on her boat for us. She owns the big Hatteras and is getting it ready to charter, first in Florida and then in the Virgin Islands. What an adventure!

I'm happy to be able to meet some of the nice folks I have talked to on the forum and it's great to run into such nice hospitality. Is the Hatteras Owner's forum great, or what?
This is the view from our flybridge at the dock. We're right across the bay from downtown Miami. It's even prettier at night.

This morning, we walked the park's elevated walkway trail through the mangroves. Mangroves are one of the few land woody plants that can withstand saltwater and they grow in up to 3 ft. of water all along the coasts, often completely obscuring the land from view from the sea and creating thickets and jungles hundreds of yards deep.

Where the water is deeper, the mangroves can't grow and it leaves a maze of waterways. We piloted Nonchalance through large mangrove waterways like this to get here. In the big channels used by all the boats, if you stay in the middle there is 6 to 10 ft of water.
Within the thickets when you look down you don't see ground, you just see water (or sometimes wet mud depending on the tides) and an impenetrable system of roots. Needless to say, this is impossible for humans to get through, but an excellent habitat for many creatures that call it home, including millions of tiny fish that hide out amoung the mangrove roots, using it as a nursery until they grow big enough to venture out into open water.

Then, this afternoon, we went snorkeling at John Pennekamp coral reef, which is about 4 miles out in the ocean.

We went out in this snorkle trip boat with 45 other snorkelers. That's Kathy on the stern corner of the boat putting on her mask and snorkle. Waves were only about 1 ft. in the ocean at the reef. The Atlantic doesn't get much more calm than that!

The reef is beautiful. Lots of colorful fish, corals, sea fans and sponges in about 6 to 15 ft. of water. Visibility was about 50 ft., which s very good.

We wore wetsuits and were comfortable even though the water is cool when you first get in.

It was incredible how many barracuda there were. All of these in this group are about 3 ft. long or more.
There were the usual French Grunts hanging around the ledges and sea fans. These are each about 8 inches long.

Kathy spotted this Queen Angelfish, about 1 ft. long. It's one of the best, most colorful reef fish to see, and not very common. You can see the bright blue "crown" around a black spot on its forehead.

And we saw the common "river of purple fish" which is a school of surgeonfish, so called because they have an extremely sharp spine (like a scalpel blade) on each side near their tail, with which they can slice other fish, or even unsuspecting divers hands, if you were to grab one.

We cruised up to Key Largo today in beautiful conditions. Waves were only about 1 to 2 ft in the Atlantic Ocean.
The water was a beautiful turquoise color, which I have only seen in the Carribean before, but I'm sure it must exist in many places. It's hard to get a picture of the colors. Like many things, it's best seen in person and a picture just doesn't do it justice. The darker areas are eel grass and the light areas are a white sand bottom.

We're staying at John Pennekamp state park, an underwater park with a land based marina. It's very interesting to get to the marina because after transiting the marked channel inlet you enter a mangrove maze and the channel is only partially marked with red and green daymarks every now and then. The rest of the time you are going through 8 ft. deep channels between 30 ft. tall mangroves, which is all you can see. There are a couple of shallow spots, so we came in at high tide.
The slip at the marina is right in the middle of the small park area. There are only 3 large slips, one for a park manager boat, one for the dive boat to take scuba divers out to the underwater park at Pennekamp reef and one for transients. We got the one for transients. The picture above shows the park office with the walkthrough to the dock behind it. You can just see the stern of Nonchalance through the walkway. The slip has power and water hookups and is $50 per night, which is less than a lot of places we have stayed. There are a number of smaller slips available for smaller transient boats.
This is the view from our bow at John Pennekamp park. We were having drinks and appetizers on the foredeck after we got in, which we usually like to do. It's fun to have "Miller Time" whenever you arrive, even if it's 2 PM.

We decided to stay here 3 nights so I could go snorkeling with Kathy at the reef tomorrow afternoon and then go diving the next afternoon. Then we plan to go up to Biscayne Bay near Miami, where we'll stay for a night or two.

We cruised out to the Molasses Keys today just for fun.




These are two small, uninhabited keys in the Atlantic Ocean side about 4 miles from Marathon Key. This is where we started to go before (when our daughter Ann was here) but didn't have enough time to actually get there and the waves were running 4 ft. or so. Today, the waves were about 1 to 2 ft. and we had all day to goof off, so we went out. The problem with trying to get to any of these small, pretty islands is that the water is so shallow around them that it's hard to get in.
We anchored Nonchalance in calm water in the lee of the islands in about 8 ft. of water and then took the dinghy in to the island. That's Nonchalance in the distance out about 500 yards and the dinghy about 100 yards out.
We could only get within about 100 yards of the beach before the water was only 12 inches deep, too shallow to run the dinghy, so we anchored the dinghy and walked the last 100 yards. Daisy's life jacket (she swims great) is really used mostly for its handle to pick her up for loading in the dinghy from Nonchalance.
We all enjyed shelling on the beach and in the shallows around the island. Obviously, we were the only ones on the little island.
Daisy loved romping in the shallow water and retrieving a stick thrown into the water. The other island behind Daisy is the second of the two islands in the Molassas Keys.

We found lots of simple shells like scallop and oyster shells, plus a few fancy shells and a very large sand dollar shell. This snail shell had a hermit crab in it. It's one big claw is purple and that's one of it's legs that is red. The one leg and the big claw "close the door" to it's shell when you pick it up.
I also found a very nice conch shell when I was walking in about 1 ft. of water, but I couldn't keep it because it was still occupied by the conch! The conch is like a big snail inside the shell and it has a large single claw and a powerful muscle for the claw. You can see the claw sticking out of the shell. It uses the claw to scratch and scratch away at clam shells until it wears a hole in them through which it can eat the clam.
The conch also has little blue eyes on stalks. You can just see the two eyes starting to peer out right below the point of the claw.

Tomorrow we're cruising up to Key Largo, just below Biscayne bay and Miami. We'll be staying at a slip at John Pennecamp State PArk, which is an underwater reef park. They have a dock on the key and dive and snorkle boats that go to the reef.