Elsie Mae

Boot Key Harbor in Marathon had a great Marci Gras party with fantastic food prepared by cruisers and live-a-boards here in the harbor - delicious jambalaya, gumbo, creamy onion soup, and boiled crawfish which John enjoyed immensely. He can suck the heads off a crawfish like the best of them! And, of course, the requisite King Cake with the hidden porcelain (well, platstic in this case) baby.

We left Miami on our way to Marathon in the Florida Keys after an eight-day anchorage in Venetian Causeway, which is close to South Beach with all the shops and scantily clad sun worshippers. Our friends on Papagayo who we traveled with down the ICW to Vero Beach were anchored in Venetian Causeway, too, so it was a great reunion. From Miami, we cruised down Biscayne Bay and then went out Biscayne Channel to take Hawk Channel to the Keys. Hawk Channel is the preferred "outside" route to the Keys for boats that draw over five feet vs. the "inside" ICW channel through Florida Bay. We had great weather but no good wind. What we did have were crab and lobster pots, lots and lots of pots, so constant vigilance was necessary. "Crab pot, port 10 o'clock, crab pot, starboard 2 o'clock. Ack, crab pot straight ahead!" And we thought the Chesapeake Bay was bad for crab pots - ha!

Marathon is about 110 miles from Miami, so it was a two-day trip down Hawk Channel from Miami to Marathon, and yes, that's only two hours by car but such a different perspective on a sailboat. We anchored at Rodriquez Key, which is a great jumping off point to the Bahamas, but at this point in time we were not planning to go to the Bahamas this year. Our initial plan was to do the Keys including the Marquesas and the Dry Tortugas, but hey, plans can change and the Bahamas are now on our itinerary.

Marathon is a great place to get work done on a boat, and we are taking advantage of that. Our old Sea Frost refrigerator/freezer was engine driven which meant the engine had to be run at least ninety minutes a day to cool the unit. We had planned to change it out this coming summer when we were back in Virginia, but having to run the engine every day just to cool the refrigerator was really getting old. So, we now have a new Isotherm refrigerator/freezer that uses our newly installed 654-watt solar panels to power the fridge, and yea! we can now make ice in the freezer, something our old Sea Frost could only do when we were plugged into shore power. And we haven't been plugged into shore power since October 28 (with a few marina stopovers on the way down the ICW the only exception).

We also had some rigging repairs done, and we are installing an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver/transponder. With this, we will be able to see and identify all those big boats out there when we are crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, and perhaps even more importantly, those big boats will be able to see us. And according to our friends Penny and Jack whose daughter is a merchant marine, we need those big boats to see us! This will make us both feel a lot more secure on the high seas.

The bad part of having all this work done is that the boat was a mess for weeks. We call our aft cabin the garage since it holds all the miscellaneous stuff one needs when cruising. Well, most of this aft cabin stuff was piled on our settees and on the floor since the talented guys doing all this work on the boat needed access to compartments in the aft cabin. The only place to sit was at the nav station. It's looking better now. We have our settees and most of the floor back!

We are still planning to go to the Bahamas. The AIS should be installed this week, but we are now facing weather issues. As I write this, we are in the middle of a three to four day northeast blow (sustained 25 to 30 knot winds with gusts up to 47), and it doesn't look good for a crossing for about eight days. Damn those north winds. For those who don't know, the Gulf Stream flows north about two to three knots, so a north wind means a tough and dangerous slog. Crossers want a south wind, and any component of east and west added to south is okay. Any wind with north as a component is a no go. But we still have time to make a crossing and enjoy a couple of months in the Bahamas before heading back up north.

We've made a lot of great cruising friends in Marathon, and the amenities here are great, but after six weeks of repairs and four blows (with some beautiful weather in between), we're ready to move on. I hope our next blog has us somewhere with waters that sparkle like turquoise, green and aquamarine jewels.

We left Vero Beach (nicknamed Velcro Beach because so many cruisers stay there for months at a time) on December 26, a few days later than initially planned, but we enjoyed a bountiful Christmas potluck lunch at the marina and later a wonderful Christmas dinner hosted by new cruising friends Forest and Susan on Rejoice!, their Island Packet 44. We certainly missed our family, but the cruising community knows that many are in the same boat (sorry for the pun), and they to try to make everyone feel a bit less homesick. One night, we even had dinghies decorated with colorful lights filled with carolers driving around the mooring field singing Christmas carols. It was sweetly bizarre.

From Vero Beach, we continued down the ICW to Fort Lauderdale, a trip of about 115 miles. And not a bad trip except there are 26 BRIDGES!! That's 26 bridges that have to be opened since our 59 foot mast does not fit under these very low bridges. Doing the bridge dance is a common refrain since most of the bridges do not open on demand but rather on set times such as on the hour and half hour. The game is to try to reach the next bridge right before the next opening time so that this bridge dance is short and uneventful, e.g., your boat does not hit another boat as you are doing the doesy doe in the narrow channel.

At Fort Lauderdale, we left the ICW and went offshore to continue on to Miami. There are more bridges between these two points on the ICW and one, the Julia Tuttle coming into Miami Beach, is a fixed bridge at 56 feet, and we don't fit. We had a great offshore run down to Miami but a bit of a hiccup when we entered the Port of Miami. It's a busy port but wide and usually easy to navigate. We were about halfway down and passing two large but stationary cruise ships when we saw a police boat headed our way, blue lights flashing. I turned to John and said, "I wonder who they're after." It turned out to be us. They were friendly but no nonsense when they told us we could not come into the Port of Miami when cruise ships were docked there. Who knew? We do now. So we turned around and headed into an alternate channel to get to our current anchorage in the Venetian Causeway between Miami Beach and Miami proper. It's a pretty anchorage with city lights surrounding us but busy with jet skis and power boats. However, we did have spectacular fireworks on New Year's Eve. They were directly over the causeway where we are anchored.

We hope to leave for the Florida Keys on Thursday, which looks like our next weather window to go offshore. So in preparation: off in the dinghy tomorrow morning, dinghy to the dinghy dock, walk to Enterprise Car Rental (it's close thank goodness since we'll be carrying bags full of laundry), drive to the closest laundromat, do laundry. (What did you do in Miami? Ahh, washed clothes.) We then hope to have a nice lunch in South Beach and watch all the beautiful people who populate this part of the country.

Sorry we are so tardy starting this blog. Short timeline: sold house, bought boat, retired, moved onto boat July 1 (a horrible, hot month to move onto a sailboat even with AC). We spent July at Regent Point Marina going through all the lockers on our boat. The previous owner was a sailing packrat and our lockers were crammed, jammed with some good blue water sailing gear, e.g., a drogue, a sea anchor, a storm jib, a trysail, a spinnaker, and many, many spare parts. Like any good sailor, he never threw anything away that might be useful on the seas.

As an aside, we christened our boat Elsie Mae in memory of my (Valerie's) mom. She loved an adventure, so she is with us on ours.

In August, we had the boat hauled out to get the bottom painted, septic system hoses replaced (ugh), a new holding tank and an Electro Scan waste treatment system installed so we won't need to use that new holding a tank very often (yea), along with other sundry repairs. Regent Point Boatyard did an excellent job on all work performed. And the B.O.A.T acronym was alive and well. Luckily, we spent August with our daughter and her family in England and Ireland, so we were able to enjoy this time off the boat during those dog days of August.

We sold our last car on October 27 (gulping a bit as we were now a no car family) and left Regent Point Marina on October 28 to begin this adventure that we had been planning for five years. Our destination was the Florida Keys, and we began the trip down the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) traveling in tandem with our experienced cruiser friends Franki and George on their Island Packet 380. The first time down the ICW is pretty amazing. The sights along the banks are ever changing, but the most spectacular are not the beautiful sights but rather the big and fast barges that take up most of the channel or the ginormous container ships heading out of or into a shipping channel. It is quite an experience to meet these vessels on the ICW.

We made it to our current location on the ICW (Vero Beach, FL) on November 22, a trip that took three and a half weeks. The same trip down I95 from Richmond, VA would take about 13 hours. And the reason we are sill here and not in beautiful Marathon Key is that I (Valerie) broke my foot going down the companionway. Cast be damned, my three-week X-ray is on December 22, and we hope to leave Vero Beach on Christmas Eve to continue down to the Keys.

Sorry now that this blog is so long. We hope to keep future blogs much shorter but updated more often. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of our friends!