Eastern Florida

3/8/08

Today we moved from No Name Harbor to Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove. Coconut Grove is a neighborhood in Miami. The trip was a little stormy but not a big deal as the trip is only 5 miles through the bay and channel. We walked around a little and got to know the place. It is sort of a generic looking marina but people we talked to said that it is a safe place to leave the boat in Miami. The marina is large and has 24 hour security. That is nice to know because we are heading home for a week on Wednesday. On Sunday, we went to the movie Juno (loved it!) and to a ceviche spoon bar for lunch. I guess that is some South American thing. I don’t know exactly but it was very good.

3/10/08

We have visitors!! Our daughter Kris and husband Todd are here for a Lightning Regatta. We had lunch and dinner with them and some of their sailing friends. It is good to see some familiar faces and catch up with all the kids activities.

3/11/08

Today we spent mostly packing and getting ready to close the boat up to go home. We had dinner at the neighboring yacht club with the lightning group. We are so proud to say our own daughter won the hula hoop contest. Very exciting. I could not participate because it seems after a certain age your hips do not move in the same direction or as fast as they used to. The major determinant of hula hoop time above ground is your height.

3/19/08

We have had a whirlwind trip home. Our primary purpose was to see friends and family. We, especially, wanted to spend some time getting to know our newest granddaughter Lydia. We spent 4 days with them. We had a little birthday celebration for Jenny and Matt. Happy birthday to both of them. Also, we were going back and forth from Milwaukee to Kohler to see other family and friends. On Tuesday we looked at a couple of condos in Kohler to see if there was any agreement between us as to what we wanted. We checked out 3 of them and both of us really liked the same one the best. On arrival back in Miami we made an offer on the condo we selected.

3/23/08

Happy Easter to all. We moved today from Miami to Fort Lauderdale. It was rainy and cool but not bad, light winds and cloudy. This is our Easter morning view of Miami under the bridge as we were heading out to open sea. We had to go outside of the ICW into the open water. Because of that there was a lot of rolling. It mostly rained off and on all day. We walked over to a beach restaurant for supper. We went into the first one we came to, to get out of the rain. The food was pretty crummy. Oh well, they all can’t be great.

3/24/08

Today we took a water taxi to Las Olas Boulevard. They compare it to the Miracle Mile in Chicago but I think the one in Chicago is nicer. But we did find a great sushi bar.   We got a little water taxi tour of the harbor and the big houses on the waterfront. There are a few for sale. It seems that most of the houses are owned by famous people that we know of. A lot of them are inventors. To bad I didn’t know that when I was younger. The land here costs one million for a quarter acre. That doesn’t include the house. The boats here are the biggest ones we have seen so far. Our marina doesn’t have any slips for less than 40 feet. So it is one chichi place. Rolf and I decided that we like the west coast of Florida better. There are more trees and less development.  We will see how we feel about it when we get further north.  

Our offer on the condo was accepted and the paperwork is coming along nicely so barring any problems with the inspection we should expect to close on June 2. Sweet.

3/25/08

Today we left Bahia Mar at Fort Lauderdale to anchor at the top of Lake Worth. The weather is blustery and a cool 70. We decided to stay with the ICW for now as the Atlantic looks very lumpy. For the non-sailors the ICW stands for intra-costal waterway. There is a long island up the coast and between that and the inland coast is a waterway. This will pretty much run all the way up to New York for people who do not want to go out to sea. The advantage of being in here is calm waters and safety in bad weather. The disadvantage is the bridges and for us not being able to sail. Sometimes it looks like a canal, sometimes a river and sometimes a small narrow lake. Today we traveled 51 miles on the ICW.  This is a pretty long day for us. We had to go through 23 bridges. We had to wait for all of them to open except the last one of the day was high enough. Luckily they are timed pretty well so we never had to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes. That means we had a bridge about every 3 miles. We had just passed through the George Bush Bridge and the boat stopped dead. Oops, we ran out of fuel! I used what little momentum we had and aimed for a little side channel. Luckily a power boat went screaming by and their wake pushed us a little farther in. Rolf put down the anchor and we sorted things out. Also, luckily for us we had a full jerry can of diesel on the deck which we poured in. After Rolf bled the engine, we were on our way. It took about 40 minutes out of our day but we were thankful for the extra fuel on board or it would have taken a lot longer. So now we know our fuel gauge doesn’t work as it said a half tank when we stopped. That’s the first time we ever ran out of fuel so another adventure to talk about. This part of the trip is the most densely populated with boats and people. It feels like one long line of big houses and bigger boats. At the north end of Lake Worth there is a nice protected anchorage. It was very pretty but the guide books both talked about theft and to either not leave your boat or make sure everything is locked up. We haven’t seen that much in the books so we were sure to stay on the boat. It was a nice quiet anchorage and we did not see any pirates at all. We did however, lock everything up. I suppose you are wondering why we included a picture of a can of Miller Lite. Well, if you remember, early in the trip the boat was broken into and all the thief took was a six pack of Miller Lite . So when we read that this was a marginally safe anchorage we decided to plan ahead so that if a thief came aboard during the night they would be so dazzled and thankful that we left Miller Lite for them, they would take the beer and leave with gratitude. It seemed to have worked because nothing was missing in the morning.

3/26/08

We continue on our way up the ICW. The bridges are getting farther apart and it is getting less developed. Regular size boats and houses, sandy beaches and mangroves, and birds. We anchored in a place called Peck Lake. It is not much of a lake, more like a bump out of the channel. We were able to take the dinghy over to the shore and cross through the park to the ocean for a walk on the beach. It was very blustery and we are glad to be in the ICW. We had to be careful walking on the beach because there were Portuguese Man-0-War’s strewn around all over. They looked dead but we didn’t know if they can still sting. We decided not to test it.

3/29/08

Here we are in Vero Beach. We arrived yesterday. We are again on a mooring in the harbor. It is sort of like Marathon but a totally different culture. It is much smaller as there are only 58 balls. The marina is new and nicely done. I have decided that this is one of my favorite spots so far. What a find. They seem to have done it right. We walked around in the neighborhoods and there are a lot of nice regular houses with people doing regular things and actually using their houses. Those other huge houses always look so empty. They have an ordinance against high rise condos so there is no big wall on the beach.  They also have some beautiful old growth trees with great shade and actually covering across the whole street. It is about 6 blocks to the Atlantic beach. We ate at two restaurants and both were very good. For their Friday night fish fry they have lobster specials. It was the best lobster I have had in years. They have a free bus service to the grocery and other stores, plus a nice park with an art museum and theater, bike trails, kayak rentals, nice stores; I could go on and on. They have a lot of rules which keeps everything tidy so I would say they are at the opposite end of the do-your-own-thing spectrum as the keys.

3/30/08

We headed out from Vero Beach to Melbourne. This town is very different than Vero Beach. The dock attendant had us on the wrong heading coming in. We were heading straight for the beach and he just kept repeating the same wrong instructions over again. Then he put us in a slip that he said had 6 feet of water in the slip but he didn’t mention till we got there that it included 2 feet of silt we had to power through. There was only one restaurant and some homeless milling about asking for money. The downtown sort of reminded me of Ludington about 15 years ago before the new marina and some open stores. We are only going to stay one day and then head out. And by the way on the way out Rolf checked the compass point on the GPS and called back to the marina to let them know what the real heading was and was told that our compass was wrong. I guess every town has its own culture and attitudes.

4/2/08

It was a short hop to Cocoa and this looks like a nice town again. We will stay here about 3 days. Since it is Monday we went to the only restaurant that was open but it was fun and got to see the end of the Brewers opening day game.  On Tuesday 4/1 we rented a car and headed out to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. What an excellent day. The whole tour took about 4 hours. They take you in buses over the whole compound with occasional stops to see different parts of it. You can stay as long as you want at each stop because the buses just keep making a big loop. Seeing the full size space shuttle and a real Saturn rocket was spectacular. They also had movie presentations on Apollo 8 and 11. I could have spent a couple of days there. On the way back we swung by Cocoa Beach and ate at The Mango Tree on Carolyn’s recommendation. It was every bit as good as she said it would be. 

 On 4/2/08 we headed back to Merritt Island but instead of going back to the space center we went to National Wildlife Refuge that shares the island with it. So instead of looking at the stars we were looking down into the water for alligators and other wildlife. I wish I could include all the cool pictures we took. The place was just beautiful with a lot of animals to see. I was just saying the other day that in all our time here we have not seen any alligators. Well today we saw a bunch, plus birds and crabs, and fish. I was thinking that the hardest thing to convey on this web site is the enjoyment we get out of seeing all the animals around here. It is hard to explain how beautiful the colors are. The first time we got out of the car we were looking for an eagle nest. However I realized after a while that I should look down first to see if any alligators were in the path before looking up to the trees. It was a good karma day. The guy at the post office gave us a free box and was friendly and fast, the grocery clerks were cheerful and when we got back to the boat the dock attendant took our supplies to the boat in his golf cart.

4/4/08

We are in St. Augustine. We did anchor out one night on the trip up. Then the second day we were going to anchor out again but decided not to. We actually got to the anchorage after about 30 miles. It originally looked like an OK spot so we set the anchor. However, the wind seemed to funnel in there from the ocean so it was really blowing. As we set the anchor, we realized that there was also a big current coming from the opposite direction so we had the same trouble as before with the boat wrapping the anchor line around the keel. But this time since we had the wheel over it also unwrapped itself. Good thing because I would not have been able to fight it against that wind. After the second go-round of the boat tying and untying itself we decided to beat it out of there. Even though we had a long day we decided to just head for St. Augustine and get a slip. So here we are all tied up and secure in the marina just waiting for Erik and Deanna to arrive tomorrow.

4/7/08

Well, the kids arrived ok. We were a little bummed because the weather got crummy on the day they arrived. But as soon as the rain stopped we headed out to The Alligator Farm. It sounds like it would be a little hokey but it is actually a full fledged zoo that has mostly alligators, all 23 species. They were interesting to see even though they do not move very fast. The other day I said that I was sad that I had not seen any alligators. Well I think now I have had enough. It was very interesting when they fed them the dead rats. Quite interesting to watch. The zoo also had lots of birds and some monkeys, turtles, and tortoises. We had a great time watching all the goings on. The next day they went to the space center. On the 9^th we toured downtown St. Augustine and of course bought some souvenirs.

4/10/08

It’s a traveling day for the Simonson family. We went about 30 miles from St. Augustine to  Palm Cove Marina at Jacksonville Beach. It was a cool but sunny day on the water. Very comfortable for the people from Wisconsin. I suppose you are wondering what we do with a 2 and 4 year old on a 4 hour boat trip. For them it is high adventure. They really like it when the boat is moving. There are few waves to contend with on the ICW so it is comfortable. They wear a harness with a tether under their life jackets. On the boat we run a jack line, which is heavy webbing that we tie on fore and aft. We then clip the kids on to that and they can walk around on the boat as they like. That way if they fall off, we can just pull them back on. They are pretty agreeable to it because they like to be on the bow when we are underway. Jonah, the 2 year old generally gets hypnotized by the sound of the engine and sleeps most of the way.

4/11/08

On the road again. It is about 30 miles from Jacksonville to Amelia Island. The weather is warming up nicely and it is a comfortable trip. Of course along the way, we had some more adventures in the channel. We were just a few miles from our destination when the person who was steering (I won’t say who) ran out of the channel. We were aground again. Of course it also had to be on a falling tide so the longer we stayed there the further we would dig in. So we did the kedging thing again like we did in the river. It was very nice to have younger people on board to do some of the cranking and heavy work. The sheriffs boat came by right away and tried to give us a wake to bounce us off but that didn’t work. The Towboat US came and worked for a while to get us free. Boy that insurance has more than paid for itself on this trip. As they were pulling, we were also winching against the stern anchor we set so there was a lot of pressure on those lines. It feels good to have a good quality boat in that the cleats don’t pull out with that much pressure on them. After they finally got us off we were having trouble with the anchor line so the tow boat and the sheriff worked on getting it up out of the water because we needed to quickly get out of that part of the channel. The kids thought this was the best adventure with all the attention and excitement that was going on. After we got to the marina the tow boat brought our anchor back and you can see how much pressure there was on it by the amount it was bent. He offered to take it to a workshop for us and repair it. What a nice guy. It was returned in perfect shape. That anchor is a Fortress FX23! Since we weren’t there when he brought it back he just left it on the boat and used the tip we gave him for the fee. Couldn’t believe someone would do that for you.

One other mini adventure for the kids I forgot to mention from St. Augustine was that there were 2 older boys fishing on the dock next to us for several days. Will befriended them and was chatting away while they were fishing. One of the boys got a good bite and was happily reeling it in. Of course when it came out of the water it was a big surprise. It was an eel of some sort. It looked like a big silver snake and was not happy to be caught. The dad came out and spent quite a bit of time trying to get it off the hook because it was wriggling around so much. Finally they got the hook out and threw it back. Rolf looked it up in our fish book and it was an American Eel. It said they were edible and tasted good smoked. It really didn’t look that appetizing to me but the kids had a great time.

4/13/08

We took a little road trip around Amelia Island. It is industrial with paper mills on the north and beautiful homes and neighborhoods on the south. Amelia Island Plantation resort is here. It is a very beautiful place and is hosting a big national tennis tournament this weekend so is very busy. We took a short ferry ride across the St. John’s River which the kids enjoyed. Then, stopped for lunch at Singleton’s Seafood Shack. It was a real find. The kind of old local establishment that is not pretty but one that knows how to cook the local fare. Once again great shrimp was served. So good you want to just keep eating. It seems amazing to me that there are not more places doing shrimp as well. Most places it is good but not great. Maybe it is stored to long or overcooked, I don’t know. Certainly it also doesn’t resemble what is served at home. I guess you can’t beat the freshness when the shrimp boats are parked out back.  This is the kids last day here. Tomorrow morning they head for the airport early and back home. We are due to have a significant cold front so it will probably be warmer in Wisconsin for a few days. Good timing. This cold front will last till the next set of kids shows up. Of course we get no sympathy when the cold front brings temps in the 60’s.

Here is Will and Jonah and Grandpa Rolf and Will.

4/16/08

So today is the day to say good-bye to Florida. We left Fernandino Beach at Amelia Island close to noon. We had to leave later to account for tides. Early on we had deeper water because we went past the Trident Submarine Base which is  is dredged to 40 feet or so. The most interesting thing to see is the degaussing range which is a big metal structure on the side of the channel. It is used to take accumulated electrical charge off the subs before they dock. In parts of the channel we had to watch for shallow spots but all went well. The weather however is not ideal. It is about 60 degrees with 25 mph winds. So generally it was a little crummy but we have been in worse. We stopped for overnight at Jekyl Island and will be on our way tomorrow. The marina had a “low country boil” for supper. It is sort of like a fish boil from Door county. Instead, they have shrimp, potatoes, sausage, and corn on the cob with banana pudding for desert. It was great as the sausage seemed to add some flavor. I do think I prefer the cherry pie to the pudding. The next couple of days our big worry will be running aground again because supposedly this is the shallowest part of the trip. Apparently Georgia has not received any funds to  dredge. We will let you know how things go in the low country. So, bye to Florida. We had a lot of fun here and will miss it.