Two Cats and a Rolex

Whale bones on beach at Waderrick Wells that reportedly died from ingesting plastic

Connie surveys water colors from Bitter Guana

Bahamian sailboat on beach at Waderrick Wells

Visitors to Waderrick Wells leave name boards at top of hill overlooking mooring field

Connie and blooms at Staniel Cay

View of tanker while crossing Gulf Stream...note severe conditions!

Compass Rose leaving Fresh Creek at sunrise

John Loving supervising die vat operations at Anrosia fabirics in Fresh Creek

One of friendly people at Androsia fabric "factory"

Where else can you buy lumber and meat at the same store? Black Point Settlement.

May 7, 2011

Two Cats and a Rolex

We crossed the (mini) pond from West End, Abacos, to Fort Pierce, Fla., yesterday in about 12 hours with roly-poly seas.
Sea Quill (KK 48), Mon Amie (KK44), Clay Lady II (Fleming 55) and N-2-Wishin
(DeFever) also left West End -- Sea Quill went to Jensen Beach; Mon Amie and
Clay Lady were headed to Whiticar Boat Works in the Stuart area. N-2-Wishin went
to the Fort Pierce City Marina.

We had planned to get a 5 a.m. start from Old Bahama Bay Marina but awoke to a
back door open and the cats gone. It took us an hour and a half in the dark to
track 'em down and get them back on board; we were fortunate that it only took
that long. Right after we left, Teresa's Rolex watch dropped in the drink while
handling lines for Sea Quill's departure and Steve dove down several times (no
doubt with an assist from Winston) to eventually retrieve it. He was the hero of
the day.

We're headed to Cocoa Beach and points north.....

ET, Call Home

Swimming Pig @ Big Majors Spot

Conch on white sand in Pipe Creek

Krogens in a row

Another pig shot

More white sand and aqua water

Pig enjoying tomato @ Big Majors Spot

ET Call Home


Not too far from where four of us Krogenites (and several mini megayachts) are anchored is “Seven Seas,” Steven Spielberg’s new toy. It’s 282 feet long, reportedly cost $200 million to build, has a crew of 26 and an infinity pool with 15 feet of glass that doubles as a movie screen. He hasn’t been here to invite us for cocktails.

We’ve been in the middle Exumas for about a week (we can’t keep track of the days) and love it. Right now we’re anchored in Sampson Cay and will be headed to Black Point to escape shifting winds and fronts.

Seeing the swimming pigs on Big Major Cay was a real snort! These guys supposedly belong to a farmer but whenever they hear a power boat motor headed to shore on their island at Pig Beach,  they make a mad dash to the water for handouts. We’re told the farmer doesn’t take these little pigs to market (no BBQ tonight)because the oinkers are good for tourism. And they’re not so little. These are hogs who go hog wild when dinghys are near.

The color of the waters here is even more intense and the dinghying (another boaters’ verb!) is great because there’s so much shallow water. Yesterday, eight of us Krogenites (John and Pam on Compass Rose; Sam and Ken on Sylken Sea; Betty and Jill on Lili; and Philip and I) took our dinghys on a mad trek around Joe, Little Pipe, Little Pig and Thomas Cays. We had a weenie roast and picnic lunch on the beach and went shelling for conch and sand dollars. When the tide recedes, the conch are everywhere. We search for the “dead” ones that we can take; the live ones are too small to harvest for their meat.

The day before, Philip and I had dinghyed to Compass Cay where lots of big boats are at the marina. We’ll make a note on Active Captain. This ain’t a friendly place. They charge $8 per person (not boat) just to stop in. We left.

This part of the Exumas is wonderful because everything is close by. We spent the first couple of nights close to Staniel Cay and the Staniel Cay Marina, a funky place with good Internet access (as long as you were sitting outside, by the bar). Pam and I bought fresh grouper and lobster from a couple of Bahamian divers. We had a wonderful lobster dinner that night made even more special because that was the last day of lobster season here until August.

We were headed today to Black Point but will stay foot because of strong winds coming this way.

The magic of the Bahamas March 23-29

Beach at Bitter Guana

Connie procuring conch shells at Staniel Cay

Connie & Philip on Staniel Cay

Ray

Last day of lobster season

View at anchor

Krogenites picnicking along Pipe Creek

Steven Spielberg's new toy

Typical sunset

Water patterns in sand at Bitter Guana

March 23

This was one of those magical days when the stars align and our little corner of the world was at peace.

Despite some morning swells (Hobie was seasick)the seas were all but calm as we crossed 85 miles in the ocean from Rodriguez Key, south of Key Largo, Fla., through Cat and Guns Cays to enter the Bahamas. Other than the infrequent container ship, collier or mega-yacht, this part of the ocean belonged to Epilogue and Compass Rose.

Coming from the snowy north, one might first notice the warm temperatures. Since we had been in Florida for more than two months, the surreal palette of colors stood out. Marathon’s waters were a cloudy, pale seaglass-green. The Gulf Stream was a vivid indigo blue -- almost purple -- at depths of more than 600 feet. Once inside the shallow waters of the Bahama Bank, the water was ice-clear turquoise and we could see everything on the bottom.

After raising a sunny yellow quarantine flag (we’ll check in with Bahamian Customs in Fresh Creek on Friday), we motored along with flying fish zipping across the bow and Man of Wars bobbing on either side of us, their translucent, bottle-shaped bodies shimmering in the royal blue waters.

Compass Rose and Epilogue anchored for the night in 11 feet of aqua waters in the Bank. I donned a wet suit and jumped in the 72 degree water -- no fish and only an occasional shell. There were two starfish, though, near the boat and one Giant Starfish, a luncheon plate-sized knobby brown starfish with a small circle in its epicenter. Philip had jumped in the day before to make sure we hadn’t picked up crab pot parts. John found mega feet of line wrapped around his prop.

We celebrated our arrival to the Bahamas with margaritas and watched a magnificent sunset, capped off with seeing the infamous green flash! It’s really more like a smallish green orb that lasts several seconds than a flash like you might expect from a camera.

As the sun set, all we could see from where we stood were 360 degrees of horizon and heard...nothing... but the soft lapping of a near-quiet sea. After dinner we climbed back up to the flybridge to stargaze. The constellations were so bright against their inky background that it seemed that we could almost reach up and pluck one from the heavens.

At about 3 a.m., all hell broke loose. The wind picked up in one direction and the current held us in another. We rocked and rolled. There were unidentifiable thuds and squeaks and groans and the anchor chain rattled like it was being dragged by a ghost.

March 24

The sleepy-eyed captains and mates on Epilogue and Compass Rose headed east with the wind in the morning, and while still choppy, the swells weren’t bad. By afternoon, it was a nice ride as we passed by sugar-colored beaches and over the black and blue ocean floor more than 3,000 feet under our bow. You don’t want to drop your watch overboard here.

We anchored at Morgan’s Bluff, a shallow cove with three sailboats already at anchor. We had a great dinner on Compass Rose and watched as a giant water tanker deftly (and noisily) lined up to the seawall to fill up with precious cargo to distribute throughout the islands.

March 25

Now this is the way crossing an ocean should be! It was as smooth as proverbial glass, so calm that I went below and baked a cake. It was a perfect trip from Morgan’s Bluff to Fresh Creek  in the middle Andros.

We’re at the sparsely populated Lighthouse marina at Fresh Creek, with Calabash Bay up the road. We lowered the yellow quarantine flag and raised the Bahamian flag after two ship-shape Customs officers came to the boat, asked a million questions and cleared us. When Philip told one of them that he hadn’t been here since the ‘80s, one gendarme said with a smile, “You do know it’s against the law not to have come back more often?”

In typical tourist fashion, as soon as they left I rummaged through a pile of discarded large conch shells and picked out two pink beauties to take home as souvenirs.

Pam and John and Philip and I walked down the dirt road outside the marina to the batik factory that they had visited two years  earlier. A handful of workers graciously allowed us to come into the long, open sheds where the fabric is dyed. Scores of mostly dinner plate-sized stamps made out of natural sponge in the shape of everything from starfish to skull and crossbones and seahorses to Christmas stockings hung on the wall. The stamps are waxed and the part that isn’t waxed is dyed, leaving the imprint, or maybe it’s the other way around. Pam is the expert and in her earlier visit bought material which her mother-in-law (now 90)made into an beautiful quilt.

In an adjoining shed, two women were at sewing machines, one making tablecloths from bright green batik and the other putting tags on aprons. We went to the small store (the only building that was air conditioned) and bought a shirt and blouse.

We walked along the road toward town -- like Merry Hill there really is no “town,” per se. Pam and John had remembered meeting an elderly woman who made baskets and asked a couple selling homemade bread at a roadside table about her. She had since died, but the young woman at the table -- Merkel Neely -- everyone calls her Kelly -- also makes baskets as well as bread and sweets. She jumped into her van and dashed back to her home and returned with several baskets. Her husband said they use silverleaf, a kind of bush found in the marshes, whack it down and strip its reeds to thread with an icepick to make the baskets (Pam and I each bought one). Kelly, 35, is the artisan; her husband the salesman, marketer and banker. The couple has five boys ranging in age from 4 to 17 and they said business had been very slow.

We continued our walk -- it was 89 degrees so we it wasn’t a long hike. Observations: there are no trash cans to be seen and the bushes along the two-lane road are home to enough trash to fill multiple trucks. We saw numerous really pretty young women with high cheekbones and smooth skin the color of milk chocolate. Many of the men seemed unusually tall and, of course, the distinct clipped accent of the residents here is unmistakenly Bahamian. Welcome to the Bahamas, mon!

While Pam and John worked on holding tank issues, Philip and I walked up to Christine’s for dinner of fried conch and fried lobster (sic) with rice and peas and plantains. We visited with dining Seabee reservists working at the Navy facility here.

Today we’re off to the Exumas.

March 27-March 29



Most of us live on or not far from the water and marvel at its changes. What makes the Bahamas so special, or at least here in the Exumas, are the vivid contrasts. This is the stuff dreams are made of. And postcards and travel brochures.

Deeper waters are cornflower, royal, indigo or inky blues. Shallower depths are clean, clear and countless shades of aqua and turquoise that turn to milky white the skinnier the water gets. Thin spots that are a smudgy gray are over rocks or grass. It’s the same shade of charcoal I usually associate with cloud cover, but here without the clouds.

But mostly the waters are a brilliantly bright greenish-blue. Picture jewelry: sparkling sapphires, turquoise, diamonds and opalescent pearls. The sea ranges from the iridescent blue of tropical fish to the pale green of the first spring leaves on a willow tree; from the color of freshly poured cream to icy vodka. And that’s just the water. The Wedgwood-to-baby blue blanket sky melds into the ocean, creating a tropical sky-to-sea tapestry.

It had been another good crossing from Fresh Creek some forty five miles across the Tongue of the Ocean to Warderick Wells Cay. Epilogue and Compass Rose are on mooring balls in Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park in Warderick Wells. The 176-square mile bit of paradise was created by the Bahamian Parliament in 1958. The park is 22 miles long and extends four nautical miles among 15-plus cays.

We’re with eight or so other boats in the North Mooring Field. Two foot-long yellowtails greet us off the stern. This is a “no take” area -- one can’t fish, take shells “nothing living or dead may be removed from the park,” according to its edicts, so these fish know they won’t be on our grill tonight.

We had arrived just in time for the weekly Saturday night happy hour under the tiki hut adjacent to the park office. There were some two dozen of us with hailing ports from Montreal to Montana and accents from French to Polish. Pam’s chicken curry dip was the hit of the party, as was a seviche made with freshly caught mahi caught that morning off of the yacht Hooters. A chef (one of a crew of four) on Hooters had made the dish for a couple from Manhattan with their two teenagers. He, a non-boater and investment banker, said he had “rented” the boat that’s  chartered by the infamous restaurant chain for a family vacation. His wife was keen on the Bahamas; he had envisioned a touristy Atlantis and was pleasantly surprised by the natural beauty of these scattered islands that cruise ships and cars can’t reach.

On Sunday, Pam and John and Philip and I hiked through moonscape-like rocks to Hutia Hill. We had a picnic lunch on the breezy side of the park office porch where petite yellow bananquit birds landed with no coaxing on our open hands for a snack. We chatted on the porch with Mary and Lee Pillsbury from Fort Lauderdale. They were here on their 120-plus foot yacht, Double Eagle. They own or manage hundreds of Marriotts, Hyatts and other hotels in the 20,000-employe Interstate Hotel company the couple started in 1989. One of their properties is the Marriott in Annapolis, where they had lived. The couple, who learned to fly at the age of 50 (and now are in their 70s or so) are both qualified to fly jets.

 That evening we had drinks and Krogen pasta on Compass Rose, along with Walter and Lynn on their sailboat, Iolar, from Mystic, Conn.

On Monday the six of us anchored out near one of the channels in our dinghys and went snorkeling. On the way, Philip saw a BIG fish jump in the air, no doubt Bubba, the resident four-foot barracuda. The water was lumpy on top and silky below with a living patchwork of sea, tube, brain and staghorn coral; sergeant majors, blue chromis, spadefish, angelfish, yellowtails, hogfish and other fish that make up the encyclopedia of the deep. Topping off our undersea entertainment were cat-sized protected spiny lobsters that ambled along the bottom, ambivalent to the approaching end of lobstering season. And then there was the spotted eagle ray. With its 5-7 foot wing span, it wound its way through the water in gentle ballet-like moves, with two foot-long fish getting a free ride beneath its belly.

That afternoon we hiked to Boo Boo Hill. A shipwreck “a long time ago” claimed all lives aboard and according to legend their ghosts are heard (boo) at night atop the hill. We added our piece of wood to a cairn-like pile that boaters leave to ward off evil spirits atop the hill. John brought the wood and drew in our names and the date; Philip found his Dremel tool and etched them in. There were no doubt a couple of hundreds pieces of driftwood, painted wood, branches - anything natural that one could leave with a boat and boaters name. These dated only to 2007 and we wondered where the earlier ones are.

From Boo Boo Hill, it was a short walk to the blow holes. In a storm the sea shoot geysers through the various sized holes in the rocks. On sunny days like this one, there was plenty of wind that shot through the openings like the strong puff of air from a dentist’s tool.

In the evening, Compass Rose, Epilogue, and Iolar gathered for a potluck supper under the tiki hut, along with Athea and Rich on Peace, (from Maine and the Bahamas); Alex and Fawn on Twilite (from Halifax, Nova Scotia) (and their cute little dog, Bob, newly rescued by Florida officials from purported drug dealers;)and Bahamian park ranger Lesley, who was celebrating his 30th anniversary in the Bahamian Marines, the equivalent to our Coast Guard. As with Saturday night’s Happy Hour, the hutia scurried about in the bushes as close as they could get to the picnic tables. Hutia (pronounced who-tee’-a)look just like big rats, but apparently they’re a lot friendlier.

Tuesday we headed toward Staniel Cay, knowing that we’ll find yet another slice of Bahamas heaven.

Photos, below, are the color of the water and one of Exuma park.

Next blog entry:
The swimming pigs at Staniel Cay!

This little piggie....

Racers pig-out at the finish line

 Feb. 9-March 6
    
    Governments are tumbling in the Middle East. There is carnage in Libya. But elsewhere, life goes on -- sometimes in peculiar ways.
    That would include the annual pig races here in Marathon, Fla.
     Sponsored by the Stuffed Pig Restaurant, the event benefits a local charity.
    With names like “Harry Hambone,” “Pork Chop Pam” and “Brittany Spareribs, the little porkers may never be as famous as, say, Secretariat. But they can zip around a track to snarf up treats as fast as their little legs and squiggly tails will get them to the finish line.
    There are 14 pigs in three races held twice a day for three days. After getting the crowd whooping and hollering, a bugle is sounded and the announcer calls out the frontrunner pig with the verbal alacrity of Churchill Downs.
    “And coming around the stretch issssss the winner --“Shakin Bacon!”
    Not all the snorters broke records on the 175-foot oval track. The Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs in the third race (“The Orient Express”) took their sweet time and hammed it up despite hog-wild cheering from the grandstand. Eventually, “Sneaky Pete” made it to the finish line first.
    I hate to think what happens to the losers, like “Snoop Hoggie Hog.” The restaurant sure was serving a lot of pork barbecue under the tent. Then again, the announcer did encourage people to “Promote pork: Run over a chicken today.”

Pot-bellied pigs roaring around the track - not!

    So what’s the draw to Marathon (besides pig races?) I asked a few Krogen owners at our weekly breakfast here at Banana Bay.
    “It’s mindless...totally mindless,” said Betty Robinson on Lili. “You get up in the morning without a thought of what you’re going to do and you’ll have a fabulous day.”
    It’s laid back with an easy-going lifestyle, said Sue Mancini on Papillon. She and her husband, Rob, have been coming here for 11 years. Rob doesn’t miss having concrete high-rises sprouting above the mangroves. “Where else can you go where you’re surrounded by water and temperatures (in the 80s) this time of year?” he asks.
    Sherri Smith from Sweet Time likes the area because “it’s not touristy.” Barbara Holum on Solveig IV appreciates the palm trees, the sunshine and that this part of the Keys “is still funky.”
    The area’s colors are “mesmerizing,” said Pegge McLaughlin, pointing to swaying palm trees, luscious bougenvelia and blue-green waters out the back door of Avalon, the Krogen that she and her husband, Mike, own.
    Marathon is made up of seven Keys and got its name when the Florida East Coast Railroad was being built in the early 1900s. Many of its workers, so the story goes, complained that the project was “getting to be a real Marathon.” Although the city wasn’t incorporated until 1999, Marathon had been the name of one of the railroad’s stations and the name stuck.

The tiki hut at the Boot Key Harbor City Marina.

Some of the more than 200 boats in the harbor; many more are in marinas on either side of the harbor.

    If you leave the country by boat, U.S. Customs requires that your boat have a decal to get back in. In typical governmental bureaucratic fashion, it took a magician to get the website to work to download the form to obtain one. Then it was a convoluted process to get the little sucker sent to Philip.
    We later learned that while we didn’t need what’s called a Local Boater Option card to get back into the country, it was a good thing to do. Without the card, which (at the moment) has no expiration date, every person on the boat is required to report within 24 hours, in person, to the nearest Customs-Immigration office when they return to the country.
    We have some friends who say, “Pfft,” and don’t bother with reporting at all. After hearing stories of boaters who had to take costly taxi rides to get to an immigration office, or of being told by customs that they were too busy and the boaters had to wait a day, we decided to each get a card.
    With one, we can telephone immigration when we return to the U.S. and we’ll be done with it.
    To get the card, one must apply online and get an appointment for an interview. In our case, that meant going to the airport at Key West where the Customs/Immigration office temporarily is housed. We gave them our passports and the online application and within five minutes we had the cards, sans interview.
    It was a pleasant experience and there was nothing to it. However, when we got back to the boat that night, there were seven emails between us from Customs/Immigration with seven different passwords to get to their online site. Something’s wrong with their computer systems, we were told by phone the next day. Someone else had telephone to report that he had gotten eight emails and eight different passwords. Ah, our taxpayers’ dollars at work.

    We left the airport in Key West and had lunch at a delightful place in Key West called Blue Heaven. My friend Beth Larmour had been there and said it was great. She was right. Not only was the food good, but there were the ubiquitous chickens, roosters and baby chicks that are found roaming around Key West.
    There was an hour’s wait for lunch, so we went to the outdoor bar and met three neat folks from the Eastport Yacht Club outside of Annapolis. Bob Jones has a Catalina 47 sailboat and he and Philip talked shop. With him was his girlfriend, Pam Thompson. Kurt Wells, who had taught sailing at the Naval Academy, was in Key West helping his girlfriend move to Key West. She’s a contractor for the Navy. A steel band played in the background. Their names were called first for a table and we joined them and talked about - what else - boating!

    I made a whirlwind weekend trip home in mid-March to see my mother in Norfolk at the Ballentine. She knew me but then started talking about “her husband” and “the little ones” (my brother and me). Sad, but she doesn’t seem to be any worse the wear for her memory loss. I spent the night with Janice and Jack Hornbeck and we went to our favorite Norfolk restaurant - Luna Maya. Janice, Joan Hecht and I had a great lunch the next day. I picked the perfect time to be back in Edenton -- Betsy and Warren Bixler had their annual “oyster weekend” with friends Sarita and Donald from Virginia. Talk about fantastic dishes! Wow! It was an unusually warm weekend (mid 70s) in southern Virginia and northeast North Carolina -- still, I was struck by how brown everything is. It’s easy to get used to the vivid winter colors in the Keys.

    The wind has been howling here in Marathon with more on the way; the harbor looks more like the ocean. Boats on moorings are swinging around as far as their tethers allow. The winds have delayed our trip north to Miami for what looks like another week. We’ll then wait for a good weather window to cross over to the Bahamas -- heading to Bimini first to check in with Bahamian immigration, then near Cat or Chubb Cays and onward through the Exumas.
    We’ll then push north to the Abacos before returning to Florida or points north some time in early May.
  



Marathon on a Monday mooring

Who's this in my harbor?

I was wondering the same thing.

Jan.21-Feb.8


 We’re on a mooring ball with 226 other boaters in Boot Key Harbor City Marina in Marathon. (The marina’s slogan: “Where mooring is a ball.”) Another nearly dozen boaters are on a waiting list. About 75 percent of the mariners here are sail boaters.
 Marathon is in the heart of the Keys, between Key Largo and Key West, with waters the color of turquoise.
 We had jumped off the ICW - and into the ocean -- at Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale) and motored to No Name Harbor at the tip of Cape Florida and spent the night. The next day we went to Rodriguez Key, a small island near the main string of keys that offers almost no protection; fortunately very little was needed. The next day, we continued to Boot Key (Marathon).
 We decided to stay here for a month to wait for seasonal winds to settle down in the Bahamas. One week was spent at the nearby Keys boat yard as Epilogue underwent what Philip called psychiatric evaluation -- the boat’s two heads (or rather, the holding tank) needed work. Philip and Tom, at the boat yard, came up with an ingenious solution to fix it and it seems to be working.
 Some cities have their own snow removal equipment. Marathon has its own pump-out boats. Hoses on the boats suck out visiting boaters’ equivalent of an outhouse (for free) once a week. How’d you like that job?


    * * *
 Marathon is low-key, so to speak. We dinghy (did you know it’s a verb?)to visit friends at other marinas here and have found a great sandy beach. The water is warm and its finally bathing suit weather - as long as we stay clear of the beautiful floating “blue bottle” or Portuguese Man o’ War. Their sting can be deadly.
  We attempted to go out three miles in the ocean to Sombrero Key today to snorkel. It was so rough that both cats got sicker than dogs. Poor little guys are more ICW felines than ocean cats!
     * * *
 Like Stuart, Marathon is the home of some two dozen Krogenites. It’s a close-knit group (a “cult,” sez Philip). We meet for breakfast every Tuesday. Last week there was a surprise 50th wedding anniversary party for Betsy and Martin Basch, owners of Krogen 42 “Molly Blossom.” Earlier in the day, eight of us women took a shopping and lunch road trip to Islamorada where our conversations tended to focus on boating topics -- like the newest vacuum flush toilets and snub lines.

     * * *
 Joshua Nelson calls himself the KKK’s “worst nightmare.” He’s black and Jewish. A full-time Hebrew school teacher, he’s also a Jewish Gospel singer in the tradition of Mahalia Jackson. He’s performed for Oprah Winfrey and Ariel Sharon.
  Nelson sang at the 2nd annual Florida Keys Traditional Music Festival here Jan 28-30. Also performing were the BeauSoleil Cajun Trio from Lafayette, La., Linda Lay & Springfield Exit from Winchester, Va., Brian O’hAirt from Connecticut, Los Texmaniacs from San Antonio, and Elizabeth LaPrelle and Eddie Bond from Fries, Va., (It’s pronounced “Freeze” except in the summer, when it’s “Fries,” Bond joked).
 None of the performers was paid; proceeds went to a local day care center and to National Council for Traditional Arts -- the country’s oldest folk arts organization, founded in 1933.


* *
 Boaters are a fascinating lot.
 John Holum is a perfect example. He’s chairman of the board for the National Council for the Traditional Arts and started  the music festival here. He and his wife, Barbara, own a 58-foot Krogen, “Solveig IV.” John, a retired attorney, also plays a mean banjo.
 And, oh by the way, John was director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under Bill Clinton. Barbara was a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Clinton.
 Others are equally interesting.
 Dick and Pat Rowley grew up together in the Ashtabula, Ohio, area. The owners of “Galaxy,” a Krogen 58, for the past decade they’ve headed home each summer to run a campground.


But in their previous lives, they owned WZOO-FM and other radio stations that they sold to Clear Channel in 2007. “You’re the first person in 10 years to ask us what we did in our ‘real’ jobs,” Pat said with a laugh.
 Nick Morgan and Sherri Smith are full-time cruisers on their Krogen 39, “Sweet Time.” They were career CIA workers.
 Ohioans Paula Sue and Todd Russell are cruising the Great Loop on their 47-foot Bayliner “Ocean Breeze” with their dog, Charlie. Off the boat, the couple are runners. Charlie sits down after walking a mile and refuses to budge. Paula Sue and Todd, on the other hand, have completed more than 30 marathons each.

   * * *
 We’re constantly running into people we know or who know people we know.
 Chris Parker is a weather forecaster for cruisers in Florida and the Bahamas. Boaters swear by his insights, especially when he says there’s a good weather window coming up for the crossing from Florida to the islands. Philip thought he knew Chris. Sure enough, Chris had worked for a summer some years ago as a carpenter in Philip’s Oxford, Md., boatyard. He’s since called Chris to reconnect.
 On Sunday, Philip and I attended St. Columba’s Episcopal Church here in Marathon. We met Peter and Sabine (pronounced “sa-bean”) Sehlinger, who live here part of the year and in Indianapolis after the snow melts. Did they happen to know my friend Victor Childers?(It was one of those silly questions -- like asking a New Yorker, “Do you know happen to know John Smith in Manhattan?”) Turns out the Sehlingers, both professors, are good friends of Victor’s, a retired business school professor.
 A small world, indeed.


  

Keeping up with the Joneses'-- statues by the pool

January 17-20

Cruising along the ICW from say, Stuart to Miami, the houses are bigger, the boats are bigger and the outdoor statues by the pools are bigger than the next guy’s.

This is a congested, over-populated area along a stretch of fairly narrow water that’s awash with all manner of trash and bobbing coconuts. Even though the houses are within a few feet of one another, they’re in the $15 million range. It’s conspicuous consumption at its best. Some of the architecture is stunning; others tasteless. Some of the outdoor art is worthy of any museum. Others, ah, not so much. And, yes, there are a lot of “for sale” signs in front of many of the McMansions and McYachts.

We made the quick trip from Lake Boca Raton to Pompano Beach and anchored out in Lake Santa Barbara for several days. Philip and I celebrated my birthday on Monday with lunch at the Cove in Delray Beach and had a lovely dinner that evening at the home of Philip’s friends in Pompano. Jim Ellis is the former president of BoatUS and succeeded Philip as chairman of the American Boat & Yacht Council. Jim’s wife, Lori, is a consultant and a fantastic cook. When they’re not in Pompano, they’re at their home outside of Annapolis or on their Fleming 55, Seaworthy. Like the Lovings in Stuart, they kindly loaned us their car for a grocery store run (this time for fresh food), a hair appointment and, of course, the required stops at West Marine.

Our plans also have changed.

Instead of heading immediately to the Bahamas, we’ve decided to first spend a month in Marathon in the Keys. Philip thought that waiting until later for more settled weather made more sense. So we’ll likely cross over to the islands at the end of February when the winds and weather normally have improved. 

Before leaving Pompano on our way to the Keys, Philip pored over the wires he had nicked KO’ing the radar while installing the XM weather satellite service. His goal was to teach himself to solder and repair the wires. Success! He was one happy guy and Epilogue is now radar ready.

We’ve had the first luscious taste of warm weather this week. Today, we went on the “outside” in the ocean, which was amazingly dead calm and the color of turquoise. We(and a dozen other boats) are anchored out tonight in a protected state park south of Miami called ”No Name Harbor.” We saw our first manatee and relaxed on the flybridge after a not-so-hard day with a margarita and homemade guacamole. Life is good. 

There's no recession here

January 10-16

Two  cottages along the ICW between Delray Beach and Boca Raton, Florida.

There are few “houses” along the ICW from Palm Beach, south. They are mansions, villas, castles and estates that are such orchidaceous behemoths they put some hotels and museums to shame. The yachts at their docks often are equal in size to the homes. 

Even though it was a beautiful, warm Sunday afternoon, few people were outside. We figured they were either working 24-7 to pay for the bungalows or were out west skiing.  

Leaving Vero (aka “Velcro”) Beach after eight days was like leaving home. We had met a lot of great folks, some of whom we hope to see in the Bahamas, depending on who leaves when and which Bahamian islands they’re heading to.

We had our first en route get-together on our boat in Vero (or “Zero Beach,” as Linda Lane said the county folks call the area, deriding their big city cousins.) Bob and Nancy Anderson from Puffin, Gail and Gene Knight from Nightingale, and Gayle and John Crowley from Sirens Call joined us for a couple of hours of cocktails and -- what else -- boat talk. It’s fascinating to learn where everyone is from, where they’re headed and where they’ve been. The Andersons hail from Vermont and keep their boat in Maine. The Knights are from Ohio. 

John Crowley built his 50-foot boat over five years in their Port Townsend, Washington, driveway, sold their home and they've been cruising for the past two and a half years. And cruising.

They’ve been to Alaska, the coast of California, Mexico, Central America, the Panama Canal and Florida, with Bahamas as their destination for the winter. Gayle, when asked which countries they had visited: “Well, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, and Honduras (I think that's all of them...) Also, all over Pacific Mexico and Cancun.” In the summer they’ll point Sirens Call north to Maine. Next year? They plan to cross the Atlantic to Gibraltar.

Gayle, whose parents live in Rocky Mount, N.C., talks a mile a minute and everything she says is fascinating. She figures (conservatively) that she has 160 pairs of shoes on board and multiple sets of dishes (my kind of gal). She said something about returning an item to Macy’s because she knew it was going to be discounted the following week. She’s such a skillful shopper that her husband (who is as quiet as she is loquacious) calls it Gayle’s “catch and release.” 

He also allowed that Gayle is a home wrecker because she puts other boat cooks to shame. An example: she makes homemade ravioli onboard. To get the crab to stuff the ravioli, Gayle got a crabbing license and caught her own crabs. She bakes her own bread and makes her own desserts. We were the recipients of her largesse -- yummy homemade peanut butter balls (“They melt in your mouth,” Gayle said) and homemade caramel and chocolate turtles. 

After leaving Vero Beach, we motored 35 miles to Loggerhead Marina in Stuart. Pam Loving, whom we met at the Krogen Rendezvous last fall and saw again when they were in Edenton by boat, was waiting at the dock when we pulled in. Pam and John, who also have a 42 Krogen, graciously let us use their car for two days -- we ran errands (oil to change the motor and generator, a new XM radio for the Garmin that covers the Bahamas, extra belts for the engine and nearly $400 worth of canned and dried goods for the trip, or enough to have in the event of war, whichever comes first.) Pam also treated us to a great dinner on their boat, Compass Rose, on a chilly night. 

John took us to the weekly Krogenite breakfast on Thursday where we met or renewed acquaintances with more than a dozen other Krogen owners and talked about boats. Get togethers with any boaters, of course, are wonderful because we pick up so many tips. Thanks John and Pam!

We headed out first thing Saturday morning. Destination: Boca Raton. The windlass, however, had a mind of its own so as we were motoring, Philip noticed a West Marine on the GPS and within minutes, he had called the store to see if they had a new switch for the windlass and had pulled alongside a pier at the E&H Boatworks in Palm Beach Gardens on a narrow stretch of the ICW. It’s amazing how deftly (and quickly) he can maneuver into a slip, at a mooring or an anchorage. He makes it look easy.

Philip telephoned the boat yard. Would it be OK to leave Epilogue there while he got a taxi to West Marine?

“Oh no, I’ll take you over there,” said Chris Hodge, a weathered 58-year-old whose mother owns the boatworks and two other boat facilities. 

We talked briefly at the dock with Jim Harlan. He was unloading his trawler, “Slip Away,” from Jupiter, Fla., to go to his mother’s house. She had died a couple of weeks earlier at the age of 90.

“It was time,” she told him. Jim said he’s a true Floridian -- his grandmother moved from Alabama to Florida in the 1800s. He doesn’t know why. “Now I’ll never know,” he said.

That afternoon we anchored out just past the bridge, south of Lantana. It was a dinghy’s ride to the Old Key Lime House, billed as Florida’s oldest waterfront restaurant. The original dates to 1889. A lot has changed since then. Today’s open-air restaurant (and its multiple bars) has no fewer than a dozen TVs, including one worthy of a drive-in movie. All were tuned to the Steelers-Ravens game. “No one’s from Florida,” said one fan, explaining why the patrons were nosily cheering on either Pittsburgh or Baltimore.

Tonight we’re docked at Lake Boca Raton -- really a cove --off the ICW surrounded by high-rises and the Boca Raton Resort and Club. (Literal translation of Boca Raton: Mouse Mouth.)

The fun part about being here is that there’s a city cam and we could see our boat and the scores of others that flocked here on a warm (80s) sunny Sunday afternoon to party, sunbathe and mostly to be seen. Ego Alley is a better name for it as high-speed boats with big engines and loud radios strutted their stuff. Thankfully, most left at sunset. A nearly full moon and lights from the high rises illuminate our fish bowl and it’s quiet.