Saturday 1st December
Moving stuff from one dwelling to the next.
Sunday 2nd December
Some dinghy repairs before launch and then motor on and – for the first time at the beginning of the season – the outboard works first time and I took it out on the canal for a spin.
A rare treat, a meal at Dee Stefano’s – can’t beat that coconut encrusted chili mango grouper.
Monday 3rd December
More moving and some boat work.
Tuesday 4th December
Filling propane tanks, buying oil etc.
Wednesday 5th December
One sail up and John climbed the mast to replace the main halyard so that the sail could be installed.
Thursday 6th December
Carol stayed at the boat while I went to Stuart with John and Rejeanne to do some (last minute?) marine shopping.
Friday 7th December
Mainsail up and we’ve (I’ve decided) the Jabsco manual toilet has to be replaced with a better quality electric one and save Carol’s yearly repetitive strain injury from pumping a manual one.
While I research toilets Carol gets Rejeanne to drive her and Buddy to the vet’s as I notice when lifting him down in the boat his heart is beating irregularly. The news is not good; his heart murmur has gone from a level one to a level six in quite a short time. We are quite upset at this news and promise each other to treat Buddy extra gently.
Movie of day: The Raven – Better if you are/were a Poe fan.
Saturday 8th December
Carol went for a (last minute?) hair colouring while I work on boat stuff.
We decided to join John and Rejeanne at the weekly BBQ and pot luck.
Sunday 9th December
Normally at this time of year Florida is starting to cool down some, but not this year.
Monday 10th December
Boat stuff.
Tuesday 11th December
Spent pretty much the entire day searching for a water pump reconditioning kit I bought since being in Indiantown.
Wednesday 12th December
A dinghy work day, oil change and cleaning with Carol’s help.
Thursday 13th December
Engine oil change day and then helping John re-assemble his outboard motor with parts Rejeanne and Carol had done a rush visit to Stuart to collect..
Friday 14th December
Our new electric head conversion arrived and I started the wiring. Meanwhile Bilbo launched so it was two bottles of bubbly with John and Rejeanne. Here we are lined up on the dock.
Saturday 15th December
Another trip to Stuart with J & R for more stuff.
Back at the marina it’s BBQ and pot luck night where we met Dominic and Francine (more of them later) and her son Pascal.
Sunday 16th December
New toilet installed but problems with bending the outlet pipe, it’s causing the fitting to leak.
Monday 17th December
An elbow is needed for the toilet piping but the one from Ace hardware doesn’t fit so we trundled the RV into Stuart to get one from West Marine.
Back at the boat, elbow on, problem solved.
Tuesday 18th December
Miscellaneous boat stuff and happy hour aboard Tranquility with Lawrence and Joan - an ex-Brit and Welsh lady.
Finally replaced the rubbish Kodak camera with a Canon. It is the most complicated camera I have ever owned. It does all sorts of special effects that are really not needed but I used this ‘fish-eye’ effect on Buddy.
Wednesday 19th December
Now our dinghy is registered in Florida, it must sport numbers and the stick on ones one from last year are pretty much disappeared. So we took someone’s advice and stenciled the numbers on with a Sharpie. Let’s hope that does better.
Thursday 20th December
Making a mount for our new solar controller.
Movie of the day: Queen Documentary – If you like Queen …
..
Friday 21st December
Moved the RV to the ‘storage field’ and got a ride to Stuart with John and Rejeanne to watch “The Hobbit” in 3D – no Lord of the Rings but even better special effects.
Saturday 22nd December
Put our brand new cover on the RV and attended the Saturday BBQ.
Sunday 23rd December
We filled with water, got ready and left the dock and headed down the canal to the St. Lucie lock to anchor for the night.
When our new electric head was subject to a more stringent test involving more, shall we say, solid waste, things did not go so well.
Monday 24th December
The head is definitely not working right anymore and after one night the batteries are down to a half so we decided to head back to Indiantown and fix things there.
Well at least when we get back we have the compensation of Christmas dinner at the marina.
Tuesday 25th December
Christmas Day and it’s clear and warm.
A battery check shows nothing wrong and looking back at the boat log from last year I found that the first night the batteries went down to a half and then behaved normally for the rest of the season – go figure!
Josie, another well-known (at least in the marina) cruiser provided oysters and champagne for a select few of us. Not sure why we were included but we gave it our best.
Then we had Joan and Lawrence (Tranquility) over for more fizzy stuff aboard Incognita to finish the holiday celebration.
Wednesday 26th December
On removing the head exit pipe the problem is revealed. As all salt water cruisers know, a calcified deposit builds up on the inside of all pipes that mix salt water with human, shall we say, byproducts. When struggling to fit the pipe onto the new head connectors the pipe was flexed (a lot) breaking up the deposits and causing them to block the pipe. The cure is to smack the pipe against a hard surface, break up the stuff and tip it out – lesson learned – pipes must be replaced or cleaned when installing new stuff.
John & Rejeanne came over to watch Moonrise Kingdom: Thumbs up from all.
Thursday 27th December
Second attempt to leave Indiantown and another night at St. Lucie lock, this time with no surprises.
Friday 28th December
Down to Peck Lake and a brisk swim in the ocean.
Saturday 29th December
It’s warm and windy and the VHF radio seems to be not working properly. Cleaning the connections didn’t make any difference.
Sunday 30th December
When taking Buddy a walk in the morning I noticed some pretty blue flowers but in late afternoon when he went for his evening stroll – no flowers. Morning glory does that I Iearned. One morning I took some pics.
As I was clicking away a butterfly suddenly appeared in the flower. You can see the pollen he/she’s already picked up.
Lots of wind and a little cooler as it clocks north. New solar controller installed and working.
Monday 31st December
The anchorage seems to be filling up for New Year and more than one ran aground like the one who tried to go behind us. While trying to help him off I saw Blue Puffin head into the anchorage.
We met Tom and Bev aboard Blue Puffin way back in Waupoos before we left and although we saw them in passing somewhere in-between we really hadn’t talked so it was happy hour aboard their Morgan.
Tuesday 1st January
New Year’s Day and Bilbo is catching up with us. However, he had engine trouble – alternator not charging. After a couple of hours we determined that the problem is his starter relay and after bypassing it all is well.
We all got an invite to Sea King with Michael & Lise. She’s French Canadian but he was born in Lancashire and then brought up in France.
Movie of the day: Rock of Ages – better than expected but maybe someone other than Tom Cruise would have been better in that role.
Wednesday 2nd January
The weather is gorgeous and Peck Lake has access to a beautiful beach so we all decided to stay and make the most of it with a swim in the ocean, a belated New Year’s celebration aboard Bilbo and a spectacular sunset.
R. Drolet
Thursday 3rd January
It’s so nice we’re staying another day.
Dug our old radio out of the spares locker and fired it up – works fine. This means the fancy new one is busted.
Some more beach and ocean time.
Happy hour aboard Bilbo with Michael and Lise too.
Friday 4th January
Engine on, anchor up and down the intracoastal to North Lake Worth and the first trip to Publix in a while..
Saturday 5th January
West Marine for hammocks and another Publix trip.
Movie of the day: Game Change – Very good movie but never realized that Ms. Palin was quite so clued out.
Sunday 6th January
Carol’s birthday and we’re all heading out for a lunch.
Last year we had Carol’s Birthday celebration aboard kit with catering by Kathy Duffy. Not wishing to break with tradition.
We had really good meal
and then the ladies went clothes shopping and the guys went to West Marine.
Monday 7th January
We were going to leave but Bilbo found a severe water leak problem when he started his engine.
John and I worked on the problem all day with limited success.
Movie of the day: The Banger Sisters – Truly awful movie.
Tuesday 8th January
Another day working on Bilbo. New seals and it still leaks.
We had a last happy hour on Bilbo ‘cos they’ve decided to turn around and go back to a mooring ball in Stuart to work on the engine.
Wednesday 9th January
We decided to go down to mid-Lake Worth and use the laundry facilities at Riviera Marina. So we did the relatively short journey and anchored south of Peanut Island where people hang about to wait for a weather window to the Bahamas.
However, somehow we never got to the marina and the laundry remained undone.
1st movie of the day: Skyline – We quit after a half hour. Another example of a movie that can afford actors and special effects but not a scriptwriter.
2nd movie of the day: Son of Rambow – I liked it better than Carol.
Thursday 10th January
We had an unusually quiet motor down the ICW to Lake Boca Raton with lots of warm east wind.
Friday 11th January
After a gusty night we carried on our way down “The Canyon”.
We had intended to anchor in Hollywood to meet Ira and Ann who are staying there again this winter. We checked out a couple of possibilities but one was too shallow and the other was too noisy so we carried on down to North Miami.
We’ve never anchored at the Oleta River Park near Miami University but we’d heard good things.
A lovely spot
but with certain disadvantages on weekends as we were to find out.
Friday 11th January
Although we didn’t anchor in Hollywood we’re not that far from Ira and Ann’s place so they came down to the park to pick us up for a day in Hollywood.
Hollywood Beach is a zoo. There was hardly a space on the beach to sit down while one of us went for a swim and others just paddled.
One of the attractions is cheap pizza and beer which we enjoyed a couple of years ago.
Of course you can never go back and it didn’t match the previous vittles though it was lots of fun anyway. The sights alone are worth it.
There’s something almost surrealistic about the scenery.
After walking the boardwalk we made a visit to their rental apartment which is very nice and even has a pool.
The architecture of the place next door amused me.
Can you say incongruous?
The Oleta Park closes at six so they had to get us back well before then.
As it went dark, a power boat came in and anchored upwind from us. Almost right away he started his generator which was still running when we went to bed.
Sunday 13th January
At around two in the morning we could still hear the guy’s generator but somehow it seemed even louder. So I went on deck to take a look only to find his boat about twenty feet off our bow.
Several blasts on our air horn got him on deck and moving away. He made an abortive attempt at anchoring close by but then went off up the inlet and anchored far enough away not to worry us (or hear him) further. In some ways it’s better he did have his generator running otherwise the first thing we would have known would be his boat hitting ours. With such little wind that night you gotta wonder about how or why some people are allowed to go out in boats.
We still had loud music playing from way across the other side of the intracoastal until who knows what time, but we did get some sleep.
The intention had been to stay another day and night there but when the big boats with blaring music started arriving and anchoring all around we decided to get out of there.
We headed off down to the Venetian Causeway and our favourite Miami Beach anchorage in Sunset Lake.
When we arrived there we found the boat L’Athenor already anchored with Dominic and Francine (minus son Pascal) who we’d met some weeks ago at an Indiantown Saturday pot luck.
We got an invite for happy hour and found out that son Pascal had got fed up of being with his mother and had headed back to Montreal.
Monday 14th January
While in the Oleta Park anchorage we’d met Paul aboard Lionheart, a beautiful trawler capable of ocean travel. We’d told him about the anchorage and he came and joined us.
In the afternoon Buddy had a grooming appointment and we needed to do some shopping but instead of Publix we found they’d opened a Fresh Market since we were last there.
There were other changes too. Cruisers who anchor in this area generally go up the Collins Canal and tie their dinghies up to a wire embedded in the bank and cross the road to Publix. However, as we’re heading up the canal we noticed that the rough dirt bank was now replaced with a concrete wall. This worried us that there might be no place to park the dinghy. But to our surprise someone had built a proper dock and the concrete wall with a pass-through to the road.
After shopping and Buddy grooming we hosted happy hour aboard Incognita with Paul, Dominic and Francine aboard.
Tuesday 15th January
Another change was that in Sunset Lake the crazy guy who would harass boaters with all-day rap music and floodlights at night has solved his problem of no-on being able to anchor in front of his property by arranging a flotilla of small boats equipped with solar lights all around his waterfront and his neighbours.
This must have cost thousands of dollars because there are about thirty identical small dinghy sailboats, each with their own anchor/mooring. Well at least there’s no rap anymore and at night it’s quite pretty.
Wednesday 16th January
We decided to move on further south to Coconut Grove/Dinner Key to get that laundry done having given up on ever getting into Crandon Park ever again.
As we headed on down past Miami we were suddenly faced with a closed bridge that is never normally closed. This entailed a big detour round the port of Miami only to find that the bridge had opened up in the meantime. This thwarted our plans of getting to Jewfish Creek that day.
Finally we took a mooring at Dinner Key, dealt with the laundry and had much needed showers.
Thursday 17th January
Again in the middle of the night some idiot was running his generator. Makes you want to go over and chuck it overboard.
Spent the day chilling out on the boat.
A popular hangout for birds on the way into the dinghy dock.
Friday 18th January
How’s this for whimsy?
Moving on we headed down Biscayne Bay at a good clip with sails up and motor on.
We anchored in our usual spot in Barnes Sound just south of Jewfish Creek.
Movie of the day: Magic Mike – Maybe one for the ladies though Carol wasn’t that impressed.
Saturday 19th January
Down to Islamorada and what usually is a great fish market place but the mahi mahi was disappointing to say the least. But the smoked wahoo was great.
Sunday 20th January
Onwards on the inside route to Marathon and straight onto a mooring (C10).
Steve and Kathy on Kit were waiting for us to arrive and we went over for supper once everything was settled.
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