We went out in the Atlantic ocean in Nonchalance today to go to a little uninhabited island, but I had misunderstood how soon we had to be back so we didn’t have enough time to do the island and get also back in time to also go to a guided tour of the keys gulf waters, so it wound up being just a ride in the ocean. However, the small boat tour was fun. We went out with a former Everglades park ranger in a small boat to Indian Key which is now a state park accessible only by boat.

Indian Key was once built up as a typical east Coast Victorian town, and was successful for many years until about 1840 when it was attacked by Indians who killed all of the inhabitants and burned all the buildings. Today, there’s nothing left but foundations, rainwater cisterns and a few streets being overtaken by the jungle-like plants. Not much to see, except the tour guide provided interesting naturalist type info on the flora and fauna.
To get onto the key we had to anchor the small boat in 3 ft. of water and walk in over sharp rocks all along the shore, so everybody was soaked from the waist down, but at least it was a warm day on the island.

Then we went to some mangrove islands, which were not islands at all. They look like islands covered with trees, but the trees are mangroves growing in about 4 ft. of salt water with channels 6 to 10 ft deep around the islands.....no land! It's somewhat like the Little Shark River on Florida's West Coast, except these are like little islands in the gulf.
The main area we visited was a rookery for water birds. There were dozens of frigate birds soaring overhead all the time and dozens of pelicans and egrets in the mangroves everywhere.
We also saw this Little Blue Heron, which is somewhat rare.

Then we spotted a pelican that had a fish hook stuck in the skin of its neck and the fishing line had wrapped around mangrove branches so the bird was caught. The guide just felt we had to help it, so we did, by tilting the motor up and pulling the boat into the trees and cutting the line holding the pelican captive. Then when it was swimming free, I scooped it up in a net from the boat and the guide held it while I got the fish hook out of its neck. We let t go and it swam off, too tired to fly, but pretty much OK.

Ann will leave for Curacao tomorrow and we’ll get ready to go on towards Key West, stopping along the way.

Our daughter, Ann, is visiting from Chicago on her way to a scuba trip elsewhere. She has a 3 day stopover in Miami an she rented a car to come down to the Keys for a visit while we're in Marathon.
We went to Bahia Honda Key beach to get seashells to put in the base of a candle vase she gave us for the aft deck table. It was high tide so not many shells on the beach where we went.
Manatee! When we got back to the boat from the beach, there was a manatee near the docks. In the picture, it’s laying on it’s back with it’s mouth up in the air trying to catch water dripping from a hose that somebody had left on the dock. The manatee came up to drink the water, but when the people on the dock saw that, they turned the water off because it’s supposed to be bad for the manatees. I’d say it was about 7 or 8 feet long and absolutely huge in girth, like the size of a big grey cow in the water.

We’re doing a kind of “eco tour” tomorrow, where a naturalist (ex Everglades park ranger) takes us in a small boat tour through the mangroves and to some little islands on the gulf side.

The beaches are really nice down here.

Yesterday we visited Bahia Honda Key State Park, which is the next key south of Marathon. It has 3 nice, large beaches, but doesn’t allow pets on the beach. I enjoyed watching the pelicans splash into the water from the air, come up with their beaks like a balloon full of water, and then strain it all out just to catch one or two 2-inch long minnows. There was a school of thousands of minnows near us at the beach and the pellicans were having a field day catching them, so it was quite a spectacle. Kathy went shelling and, of course, we kept too many of them. We always bring back too many shells from beaches we visit and have to edit the assortment later.


Today (Jan. 10), we went to the local beach at Marathon where they do allow dogs on a leash, and Daisy has a 25 ft. roll-up leash so she could run and swim in the Atlantic ocean, which she enjoyed mightily. Kathy and I threw a stick and she’d splash and swim out after it. The only problem was that I had to dip her when we were ready to go and then carry her, all wet and dripping, up to the paved area so she wouldn’t be covered with wet sand. Luckily, there was a foot rinse-off stand with the spout just at Daisy’s height, so she got a fresh water rinse too.
There was a gorgeous sunset last night. Kathy and I usually watch the sunset from the flybridge here because it’s high enough to see out over the docks. Monday night, there was a sunset without clouds and we actually saw the “green flash”! We have heard about a green flash just as the sun dips below the horizon, but we’ve looked for it a hundred times and have never seen one. We didn’t even know what to look for, whether it was a green glow in the haze near the sunset or a widespread green flash. What we actually saw was that the last fingernail rim of the setting sun, as it dipped below the horizon actually turned from bright yellow to green for the last two seconds or so that it was visible. I guess it takes a clear, cloudless night and the right atmospheric conditions to produce one, but before last night, I just thought it was a legend. The standard line has been “If you want to see a green flash, watch through a Heineken bottle”…..but no more! Unfortunately, no pictures of the green flash, just memories. Kathy saw it too.

We’re in the Keys!!

We made it to Marathon Key, which is about half way down the Keys towards Key West from Miami. We actually made it before noon today because we left early this morning from Little Shark River on Florida’s west coast and traveled 50 miles across open Gulf waters directly to Marathon Key. This is pretty much the standard way to get to the Keys from Florida’s west coast because it’s much easier and faster than going around the bottom of Florida to the top of the Keys (near Miami) and then down the Keys. It also lets us start our Keys cruising in the “middle keys”.

It was VERY enlightening to cross under the bridge near Marathin and go from the gulf side and almost no waves, to the Atlantic side and 4 footers. The Keys enclose the gulf waters between the keys and the bottom of Florida so there is only 10 to 50 miles of open water for waves to build, but on the other side of the keys, there’s 2,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean, so the same wind conditions carry much bigger waves. For the hundredth time, I was glad I bought the stabilizers system for our boat. They are large hydraulically operated fins under the boat that keep it from rolling when it gets hit by waves, and it REALLY WORKS GREAT! It keeps the waves from rearranging the furniture in the boat and keeps the crew MUCH happier….but Hey!....We made it to the Atlantic Ocean!!

We’re now at the Marathon Marina and Boat Yards, right on the end of the docks where we look out into the harbor entrance straight west over the Atlantic Ocean and sunsets. Our first Keys sunset was a ho-hum sunset, but we’ll have a month in the keys and we plan to watch them all.

The red line of our progress on the Great Loop Route map is really growing! We’ll be in Marathon (actually Vaca Key, town of Marathon) for about a week. Our daughter, Ann is joining us on 1/11 and we’ll probably go out in Nonchalance to some of the cool snorkeling and dive sites in the nearby keys and return here.

We anchored overnight at the Little Shark River on the West coast of the Everglades. It’s an amazing jungle of towering 60 ft. red mangrove trees taking up every square foot of water less than 4 ft. deep. This created thousands of “islands” of mangroves where there is no land, since the tree roots grow in shallow water. The deeper tide channels and river estuaries create a huge maze, almost an Alice in Wonderland kind of maze, that goes and goes seemingly forever. It feels like being in the Amazon jungle. The Shark river is water that flows out of the Everglades, going west into the Gulf of Mexico instead of south into the Atlantic Ocean. The river is about 50 miles wide and 3 ft. deep, except for the channels between the islands, which are 4 to 10 ft. deep. The picture below shows the mangrove "shores with no land" along the river channels. Daisy's life jacket is very handy because it has a handle on it to pick her up to get her in the dighy or just hold her from jumping out.

We planned on anchoring there knowing that we probably couldn’t take Daisy for a walk on any land, so we ran the dinghy 2 miles to a campground indicated on the charts, figuring that there must be ground there and a place to land a small boat. After 2 miles through many twists and turns, we got to the campsite only to find that it was two large wood platforms on stilts in the mangrove jungle, connected by another platform that had a port-a-pottie on it. The platforms were already covered with tents from local campers so we couldn’t even get out to see if Daisy would go on the wood platform. She just had to wait until the next day when we got into Marathon Key. She did fine, but Kathy was feeling really sorry for Daisy having to wait so long. I think it bothered Kathy more than it did Daisy. Kathy is always projecting her own feelings into the dog, like “she just loves this soft cheese, you know” when Daisy can’t tell us if she does or not. Kathy was imagining having to wait a whole day.

We got up early and left Little Shark River because we wanted to get to Marathon and the waves forecast was for waves of 2 ft. or less, and waves are frequently lower in the early morning hours. That turned out to be the case and we had an uneventful crossing.

We’re at Naples, Fl, the last civilization before the Keys!

We went outside in the Gulf today. Waves were only about 2 ft. and I went fishing by trolling at idle speed for an hour or so with no luck. I lost a lure and planer by trolling it on too light tackle, and then trolled an artificial purple squid rig about half the way to Naples. That little black tab on the upright post has the line from the trolling rod and reel clamped into it. If a fish strikes, it'll pull the line out of the clamp and it drops down the pole, which is a handy way to know if you get a strike. The little clamp stayed right there the whole time. At the Naples inlet, the river channel system, marinas and downtown are really much more fancy than I expected.
The homes along the channels are spectacular large estates with big boats at their private boat docks and it goes and goes for miles until you reach downtown Naples. Our marina is about an 8 block walk from the old downtown Naples. It’s a walk through fancy condos and very large old palm tree lined streets. It seems like everything that grows, grows big and leafy here. It has the real feel of the tropics, including the 80 degree weather. It’s still 72 out tonight at 9:30 PM as I write this. Like most of the “beach” areas we’ve been in, there are no bugs to speak of. We leave the boat open and the lights on at night with no problem. This Old Naples Seaport marina is really a dockominium (condos with boat slips) that rents dock space to transient boaters like us. You can buy a 3,300 sq. ft. condo here for $1.7 million and add and have title to a 70 foot boat slip for a mere $1 million more. A bit pricey for me.

The “historic district” is historic in architecture only, and only about half of that is actually old. The entire downtown seems to be all high end fashion boutiques (like Armani, Gucci, Evelyn Piccone, Tomy Bahama, plus high end restaurants and art stores (anybody want a $3,400 dolphin sculpture?) plus the ever present fudge shops and hand made ice cream shops. It just goes and goes for blocks and blocks! Kay would love the shopping here, not that she’d want a $3,400 dolphin, but would just like the looking. The residential area surrounding the historic district is mostly expensive multi-family units with extremely well kept grounds and landscaping with huge old palm lined streets. I really believe that it’s the “Lincoln Park” of Naples. At 5:00 PM you see people with briefcases walking home from the downtown to their homes. I just didn’t realize there was so much money here.

We’ll be here 2 days and then cruise to stay overnight “on the hook” at the Little Shark River, which is a river on the southwest edge of the Everglades. We’ll have to keep Daisy from being lunch for alligators! The river is a huge maze of channels and estuaries protected by 60 ft. tall mangroves everywhere, extending out into the water. It should be interesting trying to find a spot to even land the dinghy. The mosquitoes and no-see-ums are supposed to be there in force too, so bug repellent will be the order of the day.

Rocks for dinner?

Nope – just “Bulldozer Lobster” tails. We went to the shrimp boats right down the docks from us to buy some fresh shrimp and they were just unloading the boats. They occasionally catch a few “bulldozer lobsters” in the shrimping nets and they bring these in too. They’re all sold at the boats and not shipped commercially. They’re actually a very large manta shrimp, I believe, not a real lobster, but they taste great. These two tails are enough for dinner for one person. They’re folded under with the tail fins on the underside and the red spot is right where the tail connects to the lobster’s shell. After boiling them for 6 minutes, you cut the shells open with kitchen shears and the meat pops out in one big piece, like a lobster tail. Yummy with melted butter.

We’re in Ft. Myers Beach today and going to Naples tomorrow. Our friends, the Strayers, returned to Illinois after being with us for a few days in the Pine Island Sound. It was nice to have friends over New Year’s Eve on the boat. We have planned on staying in Naples for 2 days or so, but the waves forecast for the gulf for Friday and Saturday is very good, so if it holds, we may go to anchor in Little Shark River on Friday and then to Marathon Key on Saturday. If the wind changes, we’ll stay in Naples for a few days. That way we can make the open water crossing to Marathon in excellent conditions and we’ve made it to Marathon in the Keys regardless of weather and waves. We can then twiddle around in the keys near Marathon for a week or so and get a car to drive around. Our daughter, Ann, is coming to join us on January 11th to 14th so we’ll probably leave Marathon on our original schedule of 1/14/07 after Ann leaves.

I’m looking forward to fun stuff cruising the keys.

Happy New Year!

We spent New Year’s Eve anchored in Pelican Bay at Cayo Costa, which is a really beautiful anchorage.





We shared it with 34 other boats, but there still was lots of room. We took the dinghy in to the uninhabited Cayo Costa park, which was all mangroves and beaches, both on the gulf side and the bay side. There were millions of shells, but mostly all small ones and 90% scallop shells.

Daisy loved the water and splashed happily through the tide pools and chased a stick thrown into the 6 inch surf.

We took a 2 mile dinghy ride to Cabbage Key, the island and restaurant about which Jimmy Buffet wrote “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. Even though you can only get there by boat, Cabbage Key was absolutely jammed with people. We were lucky to get a small place at the dock because all we had was a 12 ft. inflatable dinghy.


The bar was jammed with people and every wall was covered with thousands of dollar bills, signed by previous patrons, including one signed by Jimmy Buffet, of course. We put one up for Nonchalance. I guess it’s worth a buck to put yours up and take a picture. I would say the bills were at least 3 deep on every wall. At 3 PM, after we had our pina coladas in hand, the dockmaster came in at told the bartenders, no more drinks could be served. It was getting a little rowdy out there.

For dinner, all 4 of us had a cheeseburger.

It was a beautiful sunset…that’s Jay and Kay on the bow.

That night, I lit up my “fish light”, which is a 3 foot long fluorescent light tube that emits a bright green light. It attracted about a thousand minnow size fish which circled around the light constantly and these attracted larger (12” to 18”) fish that darted in and out to eat the bait fish. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. I tried fishing with dead mullet bait to no avail, but when I cast a Rattletrap into the water I caught this Ladyfish, which is a slim, foot long, night feeding fish.

At midnight, our boat horn was the loudest in the anchorage.

Back on the water again! Our friends from Glen Ellyn, IL, Jay and Kay Strayer have joined us for a few days over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. We left Sarasota today and cruised down to Boca Grande, a veryu nice cruise on the ICW. In the open bays, the dolphins cooperated nicely by surfing in our wake and jumping for the Strayers.

We’re anchored in the little Boca Grande harbor. This is a playground for the rich and famous and the economy is in no way tied to the cruising boats and marinas. There is almost no place to get in, but boats can anchor along the side of the harbor channel and tie their sterns to the mangroves lining the harbor to keep the boats all lined up and out of the channel. We’re in there just to the right of the center of the picture with a number of smaller cruisers and sailboats, all lined up against the mangroves. The boats on the left are the expensive private boats of local residents.

Here’s the way you tie to the mangroves. We're really in close to shore! There’s 6 ft of water this close in at high tide and 4.5 ft. at low tide, which is the minimum we need. It works fine and we dinghy over to Boca Grande downtown at a dock for the Pink Elephant restaurant, which is very nice and, of course, expensive.

Boca Grande is one of the barrier islands that protect the mainland from Gulf waves and create the intercoastal waterway channel. The little downtown and beautiful golf course at the waterfront is cute and quaint and everybody seems to drive golf carts here instead of cars. Even the kids drive golf carts down the streets. We sat and had fancy drinks and appetizers at the Pink Elephant’s patio bar and then walked across the island to see the beach on the gulf side, the girls walked to the little downtown shops, but they were closed by 5 PM when they got there.

We’re just going out to run in the Gulf today and stop at some little uninhabited islands, if we can. We’ll probably have to anchor and run the dinghy in to an island.

Like the song says:

I'llllll be hoooooooome for Christmas!

A very nice dog kennel called because they had a cancellation so I got a reservation for Daisy. I also got mileage flights from United for 12/24 to 12/27.

Cool!

FISH! At many docks in saltwater we have been hearing little “crunch, crunch, crunch” sounds as we go to sleep, almost like fish with teeth were cleaning the algae off our boat bottom. I have been telling Kathy that it’s marine life of some sort and also dock creaking sounds that travel extremely well underwater and our boat hull picks them up. Then today I saw these Sheepshead fish munching on the plentiful oysters growing on the floating docks and piers. A guy that was here to recharge one of our air conditioners with Freon said he catches them on oysters and they’re bony but absolutely delicious. So today, I reached down in the water at the floating dock and pulled off an eating sized oyster (yes, you can just reach in and grab one!). I cracked it open, put it on a hook and caught this beauty! We didn’t eat him though, I released him without ever touching him. He’ll probably keep me up tonight by crunching loudly.

Look at these teeth! That’s what you gotta have if you want fresh oysters and there’s no raw bar around.

There has been a porpoise swimming around our harbor frequently. When he comes up to breathe, he blows, like a teeny whale. Daisy hears it and jumps up from her usual sleeping positions to see what’s going on. She saw him this time. Usually she looks out the back hatch and misses seeing him.

Here’s Marina Jack’s Marina in downtown Sarasota, where it was 80 degrees and sunny today. This picture is taken from a little peninsula park opposite the marina. You can see Nonchalance, stern out, is the 3rd boat from the right side of the picture. There are over 100 boats here and we’re not that big. That’s a 70 ft. sportfish next to the blue glass and white marina building. It’s a really easy walk downtown from here.

Sunsets are right out our aft deck. The picture was this evening’s sunset, and the sun is setting right about where I was standing when I took the picture of the marina above. We can sit out on the aft deck at night with the lights on and no bugs! No sand burrs, no skeeters, nice spot!

We visited the John & Mabel Ringling (of circus fame) estate and museum today. Sarasota was their summer home and they had a spectacular home on 80 acres overlooking the bay, all decorated in early gauche. They traveled extensively and collected art and built a museum on their grounds to display it to the public. This is their deck overlooking the bay. The grounds had a very large rose garden in full bloom and about a dozen huge banyon trees, like those found in Africa, with hundreds of tree size air-roots supporting tree sized branches such that one banyon tree looks like a 1/4 acre jungle all by itself.

This is the art museum sculpture garden, with 8 large display halls all around 3 sides and the bay on the 4th side. The art was mostly 15th through 19th century oil paintings of religious subjects. I only appreciated about 1/10th of it because you get religious subject overload quickly. He also had a small pocket watch collection, which I liked.

The foundation the Ringlings funded to run the art museum also recently built a large museum to house the most incredible circus model ever built. It was just completed in 2004. One man with a lifelong interest in circus models spent 55 years (yes 55 years) building an extremely detailed Ringling Bros. Circus model. The building has it laid out just as a circus would have been in 1927 pulling into a town on their circus train, unloading all the animals, 1500 performers and the equipment, hauling it through the town and setting up many huge tents with a menagerie tent and a 3 ring circus bigtop. It doesn’t sound that interesting until you see the actual models, which are beautifully done and the displays are masterfully laid out. The picture above is a small part of the total town, which is laid out in about ½ an acre of space about 2 ½ ft. off the ground (so kids can see it well). The people in the model are about 4 inches tall, all to scale. The man who built it is now about 80 and still working on it.

Sarasota is BEAUTIFUL! Sorry I don't have any pictures yet.

We got here yesterday after running all afternoon in the ICW. We had waited until noon to start because of fog in the morning (the first fog day we've had). We only had to go 60 miles to Sarasota. When we left Clearwater, I had planned to go outside in the Gulf, but Kathy didn't like the 3 ft. waves so we went back into the ICW where the only problem is slow speed "no wake" zones and waiting for bridges to open. Mostly it wasn't a problem because we could go fast in the open water protected bays to make up for the slow ICW speed. We got here about 5:15 PM which is good because sunset is about then and I really don't want to cruise at night.

Marina JAck's Marina, where we're staying is right in the center of downtown Sarasota. You can walk to the neat historic downtown district which is now all art stores, restaurants, antique stores and bars. It's right in the middle of Sarasota's downtown rejuvenation district where they've spent millions making it beautiful and attractive to use. Parks, gardens, walkways, fountains, etc. Kind os a small version of Chicago's lakefront improvements. It's also just a short drive to the Sarasota beach area which is loaded with the same kinds of stores times ten. The marina itself has excellent floating docks, excellent security, very good restaurants, and the view from our aft deck is perfect for sunsets over the water and the park.

We found out today that American Airlines completely hosed us for flying home with Daisy. What they didn't tell us (even when I asked if there are any regulations about flying with dogs when I made the dog reservation) is that they will refuse to take pets if the outside temperatures are forecast to be below 45 degrees at any airport on the itinerary. What do you think the chances are that it'll be above 45 degrees at O'Hare at 6 AM on December 28th?

So now Kathy's going to Chicago but I'm staying here with Daisy (my offer) and working on the boat (I always have a list of things to do) plus lazing around in Sarasota. The boat's already paid for at this marina. We'll call more kennels on Monday, but they all seemed to be full when we tried in mid-November. If we can get a reservation for Daisy at a kennel, I'll come too. What a hassle! No thanks to American Airlines.

We went from Tarpon Springs to Clearwater today, an easy 3 hours in the Gulf with waves less than 1 ft. ….just plain flat water. SO we stayed out of the ICW and ran outside in the Gulf because it’s prettier and easier.

FISH TRAPS! There are actually about 4 or 5 little floats in the water in this picture (also, that's Clearwater off in the distance). We passed hundreds of them today. You have to watch out not to run over them and get the lines tangled in your props and shafts. I installed “Prop Spurs” on my props last winter ,during winter storage, so they’ll just cut the lines before they get wrapped up on a spinning prop if we do hit some. These little floats are literally all over the Gulf within 10 miles of any inlet where boats can have a home port and go out to fish. They are everywhere that there is 8 to 15 ft. of water. Once you’re in 20 ft or more, you don’t see many at all. I had never thought of how much of this type of fishing is done by small local fishermen who own one 20 to 40 ft boat and set traps with the little floats.

There was a light rain on and off all day, but the approach to Clearwater and the town of Clearwater Beach where we’re staying were really nice. It’s a quaint little boat and tourist town with a long palm lined boulevard along the beach, filled with restaurants, clothing stores, antique stores and tourist traps but it’s most enjoyable just to walk off the boat and go see the town. We met our friends Bill & Jane Stones (boat name “Loose Stones”) who just completed their Great Loop Route trip. We first met them on the Ohio River. Their dog (also named Daisy) and ours had become friends too. We ate lunch with the Stones at a beachfront restaurant that had really great grilled Florida grouper sandwiches and French fried onion straws

People have asked how Daisy enjoys the cruising. Here’s how she spends almost all day when the boat’s running, but she does enjoy lots of new places to walk and sniff whenever we arrive at a new place. She’s also losing her fear of new people and new dogs. Bill Stone and I walked our two Daisys over to the beach today. Daisy ran in the water, but didn’t appreciate the taste of salt water, and of course, I had to hose her off when we got back to the boat. She also made friends with a cocker spaniel on the boat next door here at the marina today.

So here’s how far we’ve gotten on the Great Loop Route. The red line is growing! On to Sarasota tomorrow.

Another beautiful day cruising. We went from Yankeetown, FL to Tarpon Springs, FL. This was the last leg requiring open water cruising and the Gulf was as calm as anybody would want….waves about 1 ft. where we were. Temps were in the mid 60s offshore and mid 70s in Tarpon Springs. We cruised about 3 to 10 miles out from land to keep in water that was continuously 12 to 20 ft. deep.

It has been amazing how shallow the Gulf really is. When you stand onshore and look at it, you presume it starts out shallow near shore and then gets deeper and deeper, but it doesn’t. On Florida’s West Coast where we have been, the vast majority of waters within about 2 or 3 miles of land, and lots of large areas within 5 to 8 miles lo land are frequently 1 to 8 ft deep with shallows and shoals everywhere. Not until you get about 10 miles out is it consistently 20 ft deep or more.

With the normal winter weather pattern winds come from the northeast so when you’re within about 10 miles of land the waves are small. The farther out you go from land, the more reach there is for the wind to make larger, more organized waves. Therefore, today and yesterday within 5 to 10 miles of land it was very comfortable, but with similar 15 to 25 knot winds as yesterday, the crossing of 70 miles of the Gulf the day before started out 70 miles DOWNWIND from where we wanted to go. That meant big waves.

Tarpon Springs is a very interesting fishing, sponge diving, and touristy Greek heritage town. It’s full of Greek restaurants, Greek bakeries, sponge sellers and small tourist items in little shops along the waterfront. We’re going to stay here 2 days just for fun. We ate at a seafood restaurant tonight and I had REALLY good stone crab claws. Kathy had the stuffed locally caught Florida grouper. I think we’ll have to eat Greek for one dinner just to partake of the atmosphere here, but I really like the seafood.

Sand Burrs! Yeeouch!
This little guy is about 3 inches tall and looks like grass. All the soil is either sandy soil or pure sand around here and these little buggers look like grass and grow in the grass (where Daisy likes to walk and sniff, of course). They have those small burr heads with very sharp spines. We have to check Daisy’s feet for them every time we get back to the boat from a walk and sometimes she starts limping because she gets one on a foot and we have to de-burr her during the walks. They don’t bother people with shoes much because they’re so small and low to the ground.

We’re at Yankeetown, FL on the Withlacootchie River after a beautiful day cruising on calm waters, then up a really beautiful river where you have to idle because of manatees (didn’t see any).



First there is about 5 miles of salt marsh with palm trees and never-ending turns.




This is followed by a river more narrow than the Fox river at our house, but 10 to 18 ft. deep.


10 miles up river, we found a very small marina where there were no docks with deep enough water for our boat (we just need 4 ½ ft.) so for $20 they let us raft up to a 60 ft. shrimp boat tied up on a dock at the channel of the river. It works fine because we can just walk across the shrimp boat decks to that dock to walk in town.




Temps in the 70s, appetizers on the foredeck watching the river for manatees but just seeing fish and turtles. VERY nice.


All this nice stuff was after a bad day yesterday crossing 70 miles of the gulf in open waters with 6 ft waves that knocked everything off shelves that wasn’t stored correctly (mostly just books and kitchen items on countertops, knocked over the aft deck table (didn’t hurt it), scared Kathy, and made me seasick. The boat performed truly great. When we left the last buoy of the channel at Carrabelle, I got the bearing for the Steinhatchee channel entrance from our GPS, set it as the heading in the autopilot, turned on the stabilizers and let ‘er go. I reall didn’t have to touch the controls for the next 6 hours. The waves didn’t roll us because of the stabilizers, but the boat rocked forward into every big wave, hitting some hard and riding others up and down. White water over the bow all the time and windshield wipers could barely keep up. The NOAA waves forecasts were to be like that for the next 4 days, so we either had to wait a total of 6 days in Carrabelle, or go.

Today was one of the days you dream about on a Florida cruise, yesterday wasn’t. Tomorrow is supposed to be calm and beautiful again and we’re going to Tarpon Springs, so the rest of our Florida West coast trip can be in the calm intercoastal waterway.

Ahh…Florida It has been too cold…..38 at night and 62 high today, but it’s fun. The shrimp boats in the sunset are from last night at Panama City and the dolphins are from today on our trip to Carribelle, FL.

The dolphins found us in every bay where there was deeper water. Surprisingly, some of the very large bays, like Apalachicola are only 2 to 8 ft. deep. They look like huge, deep bays but we in over half of the areas we can only go where there is a channel dredged to 12 ft. for the ICW.

However, in the deeper (35 ft.) bays, dolphins abound and there were frequently 2 or 3 of them playing in our wake. I only got the good pictures of them jumping by taking about 30 pictures (aren’t digital cameras great? …..just delete the bad pix). At first I would wait for them to start a jump and press the shutter button. I was able to get at least a dozen perfect shots of a dolphin tail and the splash. Then I tried pressing the shutter button whenever they looked like they might be getting ready to jump. Doing this, I got 20 pictures of just our wake and 2 pictures of a dolphin in the air. They also just come up slightly above the surface or stick their head out just to eye you and see what you are and what you are doing.
We’ll be here in Carribelle for 2 days waiting for good weather to cross the open waters of the Gulf to Steinhatchee. It’s only 90 miles total, but the forecast for tomorrow is OK in the AM and then 4 to 7 ft. waves late in the afternoon, and that’s when we’d be finishing the crossing. NO Thanks! Then Friday is more 4 to 7 ft. waves and some 6 to 8 ft. so we’ll wait for Saturday to cross, when it’s supposed to 3 to 4 ft. AM and 2 ft. PM waves. We have 2 more days after that of open water cruising, but always near the coast where we can just quit and go to a safe spot to anchor if we don’t like the waves. "The boat can take more than the crew can".....ya’ know. After we get to Florida’s West Coast, it’s all cruising in protected waters until we make another open water crossing from the Everglades to Marathon Key to start our Keys cruising.

We bought an airline approved dog transporter to bring Daisy home with us for the holidays. Daisy’s gonna’ have some learning experiences too.

SHRIMP BOATS! The marina at Panama City is part of the large docks for the gulf shrimp boats. They go out at night, trawl for shrimp and come back in the mornings. We got here about 2 PM and they were selling shrimp from the shrimp boats. Depending on size, they were $3.50/lb. $5.50/lb. or $7.50/lb. I got 2 lbs. of the $7.50/lb shrimp (see pix) and grilled them on the barbeque. YUMMMM.

We arrived at Panama City, FL this afternoon after an easy day coming from Destin. We were greeted by the local “dock pelican”, a very large brown pelican that walks the docks and begs for food (maybe shrimp from the shrimp boats?). I wasn’t about to give him any of my shrimp.

The “bad day” forecast for yesterday wasn’t that bad, but we did have 42 MPH wind gusts overnight on 12/3 with forecast rough waves, so we stayed at Destin an extra day yesterday. The trip today was about half in large saltwater bays and half in the ICW, frequently called “The Ditch” by locals because it is a canal dug between the bays and the protected waters behind the barrier islands. One part of the Ditch today was called the Grand Canyon because the hard sands of the walls of the canal have eroded to look like the walls of the Grand Canyon in miniature (like 20 ft. high walls).

We’re going to Carrabelle tomorrow, where the ICW ends until Tarpon Springs down the West coast of Florida. We’ll have to watch the marine forecasts carefully for a few days. I have about 7 days in the plan to do the 4 days we’ll be on open Gulf waters between anchorages or marinas at night, so 3 weather days are OK, but they’d take away from our ability to stop and stay at interesting ports of call like Tarpon Springs. We did get Florida fishing licenses at WalMart in Destin (only $35 for a year) so I might try fishing if we’re stuck in port one of the next days.

DOLPHINS! They come with the salt water and are soooo…COOL! Three of them surfed along in our boat wake for about half and hour today as we passed through one of the bays on the ICW (InterCoastal Waterway). With our boat’s wake they surf alongside the side of the boat where the bow wake spreads out in a V, instead of up at the bow like I have seen them do with other boats. That’s much better because you can just step outside on the side walkway and watch them in comfort instead of having to lean out over the bow. They were absolutely just playing with the wave. They can surf the bow wave from the underside of the wave like surfers would surf it from the top, so they’re going at exactly our boat speed (about 10 knots today) without even swimming. It’s just effortless. Then they jump out of the water every 10 or 15 seconds…..I just couldn’t get a picture of one in the air.

We’re in Destin, FL tonight. We’ll probably be here for 2 or 3 days because of the predicted high winds and waves, but then again, they predicted that for today before, but then moved it back to Sunday evening, so we cruised on to Destin today.

The marina has a loaner car and we went to the grocery store to get food and discovered a good bakery. That means I’ll definitely get up early tomorrow to get donuts and a Sunday paper so we can have our usual Sunday breakfast.

Pensacola, FL is a real city but we don’t have a rental car to go far, but we were here about a year ago and we saw the Blue Angles home base and the Naval Air Museum here. However, within easy walking distance is the quaint old historic district of Pensacola. It has the old ca. 1900 town square and original buildings. The square has HUGE live oak trees in it (see pix), the original, still functioning county courthouse and lots of shops. We found a good bakery there where we could get French bread to go with the last bit of a great brie we found back in Columbus, MS. Ahh….one of the hassles of traveling the waterways of America…..it’s so hard to find a great brie and a good baguette!

All along the waterfront in Pensacola everything is new, owing to hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. Much of the waterfront here was destroyed, so the port of Pensacola, the offices, condos and the marina we are staying in are all new. The marina just finished getting into full operations last week. Some of the waterfront now has “Dockominiums”, which is something relatively new and something that has recently been bad for marinas. A Dockominium is a condo that comes with it’s own privately owned slip at a private dock connected to a waterfront condominium. What has been bad for marinas is that the hard part of making a dockominium is getting waterfront land, getting the permits and building the docks and slips. Therefore, developers buy land next to existing marinas, buy the marina and then build condos and turn it into a dockominium. In that case, it’s “goodbye marina!” so available marina slips are being reduced. There seem to be enough transient slips for us traveling boaters though.

We’re planning to take the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to Ft. Walton Beach tomorrow. We’ll probably be there 2 days or so due to predicted gale force winds on Sunday, but we’ll wait and see what happens and decide later.