Visitors and more

Hello again to our friends near and far,


We have had a very busy week this week.  Our friends Dorothy and Larry (from Punta Gorda) brought their 5th wheel down to the Keys and are in a park just across the 7 mile bridge from us.  Their friends, Barry and Donna (originally from Wisconsin) brought down their fishing boat.  They were kind enough to include us in a couple of dinners at the RV park but the most fun was the fishing.  The third party or group to join was Steve and Christy (also from Punta Gorda).  They had rented a place a few miles from our boat and they brought down Steve's mom's fast fishing boat.  I wanted to be sure to correct this since we just met Steve's mom and dad who are great folks.


Well we all made a plan to take the boats out fishing.  We all new that Steve and Cristy were the expert fishermen so we all just followed their lead.  Here is a picture of their great boat.

It was a great day out in the Atlantic.   I thought we were flying as the boat is equipped with two 150 horse engines and it can move!  The ocean was lumpy for a while but it got calmer throughout the day.  It was a great afternoon, the other boat with the foursome caught 7 fish and we caught 5 mahi mahi dolphin fish.  Now do not be confused, these were not like the dolphins that look like Flipper, these are a beautiful tropical fish that is delicious to eat.  We were thrilled to have them take us fishing and loved every minute of it.  This is our catch on that afternoon.

These fish in the water are yellow with aqua and green.

Then we took a day off from fishing and took the bus to Key West to hook up with my sister Lonnie.  She was visiting a friend in Naples, and they took the fast boat from Naples to Key West to spend a night and check out Key West.  It was great fun to have lunch with all of them.  Here is a picture of me and my sister Lonnie (boy you sure can tell we are sisters).

This is the whole group (minus Erwin) after we had devoured our yummy lunch.  Erwin was such a good sport to go with me and he was a charmer at lunch.  We explained a lot about cruising the rivers and what it is like to live on a boat.

Erwin and I also capture many of the images of Key West, here are a few to show you what it looks like:

The schooner ship down by the waterfront





This is a banyan tree (the roots grow down from the top)

This is the art museum

This is me standing by the statue

The plaque with the name of the statue

The Famous Conch Train

This is one of many tours throughout town


The last day with all of these great folks was Erwin's day for fun.  Larry drove the boat and he is now officially my hero (I was supposed to drive the boat)  Steve and Erwin went diving, actually they did three separate dives.  The first dive was interesting as Erwin had clipped his camera to his dive suit, but the clip was not secure.  He motioned to Steve that he had lost the camera.  Steve was wonderful and thought quick enough send up a buoy to mark the spot they were in.  It was amazing as they actually went back and located the camera in the Atlantic ocean.  I think that is pretty remarkable.  Since it is an expensive camera and housing, we will always be grateful for Steve's quick thinking.  Here is a picture of Erwin getting all of his gear on.

Here is a couple of the pictures of those two diving.



Here is Steve with his spear gun (the picture below).  Yes, he was spearing fish and trying to teach Erwin how to spear. 



This is one of the fish that Erwin captured with the camera. 

This is one of the hog fish that are very good eating.  Steve and Erwin got hog fish for dinner, yum.



The last dive was on a wreck and those are great havens for the fish.

Here is a picture of Barry, Donna, Dorothy, and Larry back at the 5th wheel. (left to right)  The flash did not work very well, but I promised this group a picture after they had fixed a marvelous meal for us.



Family Fun in the Keys

Well we had a wonderful week with Erwin's sister, Bonnie, and her hubby Bill.  It was a fun filled week and here are some of the memories we created.


Here are some of the everyday things that Erwin and Marilyn take for granted.




This is the mural painted on the wall at the City Marina at Boot Key Harbor.






This is one of several dinghy docks at the City Marina.

These dinghy docks are important to all of the boaters including the 226 boats on a mooring and the other boats at anchor.

Another mode of transportation once you take the dinghy to shore is a bicycle.  Here is one of several of the bike racks at the marina.  On any given day there will be a least a couple of hundred bicycles.  Another very typical mode of transportation is just good old fashioned walking.  It is about a mile or so to the local grocery store (Publix), to the West Marine store (very important for the boaters), local restaurants (which we typically do not use), pharmacy, and many other businesses.  Although we were very spoiled all week having the van these two drove down.

One of our first adventures of the week was to show Bonnie and Bill the History of Dive Museum which is located at Islamorada (this is the next key over from Marathon).  Since we had Bonnie and Bill's van it was a short drive to the museum.  There is a very good bus service on the keys as we used it last year to go to the museum.  Here is a picture of Bonnie and Bill in front of the Dive Museum.

After we had toured the entire museum we were hungry so we stopped at the restaurant with no walls.  It was a beautiful afternoon and the scenery was great.  We were also enjoying the one man steel drum performance at lunch.

We took a dinghy ride through Sister Creek just off of Boot Key Harbor and showed the two of them all of the beautiful homes along all of the channels.  It was a lovely afternoon of cruising in the dinghy which is one of our favorite pastimes.  In the evening Uncle Bill drove us over to Sombrero Beach which is located right in Marathon and just a few miles from the City Marina.  Here is a picture of all of us on the beautiful white sand beach.

We drove to Key West to see the farthest southern tip of the United States.  It was Aunt Bonnie's first trip to Key West.  It was great fun to walk all through Mallory Square and of course we all did the Duvall Crawl.  This is what the locals (called Conchs) call the visitors stroll down Duvall avenue which of course is packed with stores selling t-shirts, jewelry, art, and items that folks usually collect on vacation. Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Bill were able to connect with old friends Jeanette and Ben (they lived in Orange Park Florida at the same time)  Jeanette made us an original Key Lime Pie which was out of this world good.  We all enjoyed that later in the evening.

 Key West is a very popular stop for the cruise ships and so we would not be disappointed, there were three in town that day.  Here is one of the local houses which has a unique feature; notice the roof of the porch on the second floor.  This is called eyebrow design which shades the second floor from the hot sun and provides for ventilation to the second floor.  This is very typical as there was no air conditioning when these houses were built.

Here is another Key West home that has been restored.

We had gone to Key West a couple of times last year and Frank and Bonnie Post had taken us to the observation roof of the LaConch Hotel.  It is the highest point of Key West at a total of 7 stories!  We thought it was a great place to show the two of them Key West.  Our view did not disappoint.  Here is the view from the top of the hotel.  Notice one of the three cruise ships in the very back of the picture.

We also walked along the harbor (as Erwin and I typically do.  Right next to a restaurant, this guy was cleaning his catch of the day which included a mahi, mahi, and this wheelbarrow full of mackerel.  Yum.

The highlight of the week was the last day of Bonnie and Bill's visit.  We watched the weather and knew it was a perfect weather day to go hook on a mooring at Sombrero Reef so that the three of them could go snorkeling.  Our planning paid off as it started out cloudy, but the sun came out later and we all had a blast.  Here is the three of them in the water.  I could not snorkel as my ears have been infected, but I had a great time watching them play and listening to them chatter about the life below the surface.  Uncle Bill and Erwin actually dove in the 1960's and Uncle Bill was one of Erwin's first diving buddies so snorkeling was really special as Erwin and Bonnie did this as kids also.





Aunt Bonnie is on the left, Uncle Bill is at the bottom of the picture and my dive guy, Erwin was the one in the black suit at the top with the red snorkel.  You can also see another boat at the top of the picture on a mooring just like us.

The real treat was Erwin taking pictures underwater with his dive camera.  Look at the great pictures he got of this same school of fish.







Here are some more of the beautiful underwater pictures.

Here is Uncle Bill diving down to check out the great coral on the reef.

After a very fun filled week, we sadly had to say good bye to our guest.  They were great sports about adapting to life on a boat and the entire week was so special to all of us.

Fun in the Keys of Florida

Hey, these are some of the photos of the undersea world at the reef off of Marathon.

Here is Erwin's dive partner, Morgan.

Here is Erwin, having a great time.

Here is a shark sitting under the ledge of the reef.

The rest of the photos are the sea life and all of the great coral plants at the reef.

Isn't this all just fascinating!

Back to cruising in the Florida waters

Well we made it back to Florida and have spent a couple of weeks here, one working on all the various things that needed to be done and one on moving the boat from Charlotte Harbor to Marathon in the middle keys.

We flew into Ft. Meyers and were picked up neighbors of our Dorothy and Larry.  Fred and Dot are some of our new friends that we have made at Harbor Heights which is outside of Punta Gorda.  Dorothy and Larry have been away from home and returned just the same morning as we were flying in.  They had their new tug boat they had purchased on a trailer and were hauling it from the Chicago area to Florida.  Here is a picture of the proud owners and their new boat.  Isn't it just adorable?

We had to go to the boat yard the day after we arrived as we had scheduled for the boat to be plunked in the water.  I was nervous as always.  This is not a light weight boat and those big lifts are huge and noisy.  It is like you want to turn your head, but you have to watch to be sure it is OK.  All American boatyard did a super job.  Here is a couple of the pictures of them moving it from storage to the water.

We cleaned the boat, windows, gally, dishes, beds, walls, dinghy, solar panels, etc. so the boat no longer looked liked it had been stored for a long time in the hot summer heat of Florida.  All in all it really did not have a lot of issues that needed to be addressed, we had the usual to do as in free up some of the metal stuff that had frozen in the heat and salt.  We were very happy that the inside of the boat stayed so dry and even though there were a few bugs in the spices that were not sealed, not a lot of problems.  I tossed the spices and started new with the ones I had brought with me in November in the truck. 

We will be forever thankful for our good friends Dorothy and Larry as they carted us all over the place even though they had been gone a month themselves.  We knew that Larry was anxious to start on the new boat, and we sure could not blame him for that.  We supported the economy well as we provisioned the boat from the local Winn-Dixie, Publix, and the health store which had a wonderful supply of fresh spices.  We also visited the Ace Hardware, West Marine, and dive shop.  It was fascinating to get a call from the credit card company (after Marilyn was denied credit at the grocery), they wanted to verify we were making all the purchases and that it was all OK.  Nice touch on the fraud department.  I love it that they watch out for us so well.  It was Discover by the way.  Good Job.

As we were cleaning and putting all of the supplies away the boat looked pretty much at home on the dock at Dorothy and Larry's.  Here it is:

  Oh yes, we are not in Kansas anymore as this Blue Heron was standing on the dock looking in the windows of the boat as I was putting away all of the groceries.  I think they expect some food, but I was not sharing.  He was so close that I could hear him making a slow gurgling sound in his throat!

We were all set to leave but awoke to some clouds, some wet stuff falling from above, and quite a bit of wind.  It seemed like a good day to take advantage of some more organizing and hug the dock.  We left the following morning early to catch enough water in the channel.  Here is the sunrise as we went under the bridge at highway 41.

We made our way to Ft. Meyers and were hoping to catch up with some of our cruising friends there.  But Don and Linda, and Casey and Edith were not in water so we were unable to see them as we did not have a car.  We were able to see our old friend Frank (from Maine) as he was in Ft. Meyers and picked us up to go lunch and catch up.  Even more important, he took us to West Marine to purchase a new battery for the main engine.  It seems as our old battery did not survive the heat and humidity.  Since we live on the battery and generator with our own power supply, it was a good investment.

After a couple of days waiting for winds and seas to be favorable we said good bye to Ft. Meyers and started our 3 day trip to Marathon.  2 of the 3 passages were nice and easy.  The middle one had a little of the rolly seas that just make it less than pleasant.  Erwin was playing with the new camera and took this picture of me driving the boat.  Note that the water on the Gulf of Mexico is almost flat.  Nice way to cruise.

When we took the pass into Marco Island and on to Goodland, we could not help but remember the water here in Florida is quite shallow.  Just look at the dry land where water used to be on the shore.

We anchored all of the nights on the way to Marathon.  Some of these spots are very secluded.  You can see by the photo, not much other boat traffic.