Pink

A few days ago, I mentioned that I used my old cowboy skills to lasso a piling.  My cousin from Miami emailed us this photo of me from my early cowboy days.

Took the dinghy several miles up into the Everglades National Park today to do some fishing.  Had some shrimp left over from yesterday's reef excursion and figured maybe I could find a redfish or snook--but no luck.  I did see several sharks cruising around beside my rubber boat, but couldn't get them to bite.  Probably just as well, Pam thought there might be a problem bringing a shark aboard a rubber boat.  Besides, I still have a scar on my ankle from the shark bite couple of years ago.

We did find some pink birds today.  Two Roseate Spoonbills were on a mangrove island.

There's some good sized boats here in this marina.  Today, I was talking to the dock master, and he told me they were waiting on a rather large boat to arrive.  The depth here inside the marina is five feet.  This boat (a power cruiser) draws six feet.  So they're hiring a diver to meet them in the ocean near the entrance to Snake Creek.  The diver will remove their props, and then SeaTow will tow them to their slip here.  They must REALLY want to be here.  It hasn't arrived by 6:00 pm.

Evicted

Today started out with a little excitement for Pam.  I had gone down the road to the bait shop to buy some shrimp and chum.  When she started to go up to the bath house, she saw a naked man passed out on the dock next to his boat.  To make it even worse, he had "soiled" himself.  She thought maybe he was drunk or might have had a heart attack, so she decided she would give him a half an hour just to be sure, then call 911.  Instead, she found Tim the dock master, and told him about it.  Tim took his partner with him, and they rousted the drunk, got him back on his boat, called the sheriff, and threw him and his boat out of the marina. 


When I got back with the bait we took the "camper" (Tonic) out fishing.  Not too much wind, so we went out to the reef.  One minute it was twenty-two feet deep, then the next minute, it was over a hundert feet deep.

 

The change in water color is the drop off

 Here's looking back to shore

The water out there is exceptionally clear.  We anchored in about 20', and I could see the anchor hit the bottom.  The idea is that you find a patch reef, go upwind or up current and anchor then drift back over the reef.  I put out the chum bag, and we were quickly surrounded by ballyhoo and other fishes.  I caught about a hundert fish like this.

And a couple of nice snappers that joined us for dinner.

Crab Festival

You can't be in a hurry in the Keys.  Everything moves slower here.  US1 is the only road.  It goes all the way to Key West, and the speed limit most of the way is 45 mph.  There is usually a long stream of bumper to bumper cars, and it takes several minutes just to find an opening to pull out into traffic.  If you're on foot, and want to cross both lanes, bring your lunch.   The laid back lifestyle seems normal to a retired old coot.  For example, I have a self-winding watch.  No batteries--the movement of your wrist keeps the watch wound.  Several days lately, it has stopped mid-day. 

Beautiful day today.  Should have gone fishing, but..........................Pam wanted to go to the Key Largo Stone Crab and Seafood Festival.  Which turned out to be more carnival than anything else.  When we drove up there, cars were parked up and down US 1 for miles in both directions.  We had a combo platter that included stone crab claws, lobster, shrimp, beans and slaw.  (You don't go to a stone crab and seafood festival and order fried chicken.)

The carnival included these giant plastic balls with kids inside floating around in pool.  They put the kids in through a zippered opening, then inflate the ball with a leaf blower.  It surprised me how many moms let their kids climb inside a deflated plastic bag under water.  What could possibly go wrong?

Here's a video.  If you get my posts by email, and couldn't see the video of the pelicans yesterday, go to the website to view the videos..  http://tonic-cruises.blogspot.com/

There's an amphitheater here in Founders Park. This evening, we walked up and enjoyed a nice concert. (My favorite kind, a four letter "F" word--FREE.)

Pelicans

Not sure what these dock girls were looking for.  Perhaps they'd drank to much wine and were feeding the fishes (like my old pal Danny Joe used to do all those years ago at Kentucky Lake.) 

It was windy all night last night, and the squeaking dock lines kept me awake again.  My longest dock line (25') wouldn't reach the forward piling in these "small" slips, and I could only use the midships cleat to keep the boat straight in the slip. There's only less than a foot tide here, but I had to tie the lines tight and they made a noise when they stretched at low tide. I keep a spare anchor and line below the floor, so I got it out used my old cowboy skills to lasso the piling.  Then I was able to tie the bow line to it.  Seems like a small problem, but it took most of the morning to work out.

 

 The entire day was windy and cool again.  (68 degrees)  We drove up to Key Largo, stopping at K-Mart, Publix, CVS, Papa Johns, and the Wild Bird Sanctuary.  People had told us to be at the bird place at 3:30 for feeding time.  When we walked back to the feeding area, we thought there were a lot of pelicans there.  Little did we know..................

When the guy with the buckets of fish showed up, it was a regular feeding frenzy--beaks to the left, beaks to the right.

The clacking noise you hear in the video is the pelicans beaks slamming shut.

Still Alive at 65

Who would have thought I'd live this long.  Certainly not me. 

I usually go fishing on this date.  It's become an annual ritual.  This morning was still windy and cool, but the wind finally calmed down a little, so I went out this afternoon.  Also, part of the ritual is that I usually catch a redfish or snook.  Us old folks don't like change in our rituals, but I guess I'll just have to accept a few snappers instead of the redfish and snook. 

I see my young dude friend, Bret finally left a comment about the run-away caboose I put on my blog a little over a week ago.  I can see his train will run right on schedule.  He's in training to become a railroad locomotive engineer.  "Training"--get it?    I notice he signed his name on the comment as "bReT".  He must be trying to emulate our pal from Kentucky,  "Brown-O" bOb.  Brown-O bOb was also a locomotive engineer.  bOb always considered himself the most worthless individual on the planet--until he met me.  I met bOb while racing sailboats at Kentucky Lake.  He was crew on a J-Boat for "Bad Penny" John.  I'm not sure exactly how bReT compares to bOb, but here's how Brown-O bOb got his name.  In his younger days, bOb decided he wanted to get a tattoo of his name.  Unfortunately, by the time he drank up enough courage to get the tattoo, he'd spent almost all of his money,  so he asked the tattoo artist how many letters his remaining cash would buy.  The answer was "two--lower case."  So Brown-O bOb gave it some thought and had the guy apply a "b" to each butt cheek.

Still Windy

It's been windy here the last few days.  It even rained last night.  Still a warm 78 degrees.  The marina has a yardarm and posts small craft warnings when required.  The red pennant in this photo indicates small craft warning.

 

There's a young couple (and their dog) from Minnesota here on an old Catalina 27.  They're staying in our marina tonight.  They bought the boat in Key West a few weeks ago (really cheap) and they plan to cruise around the keys, living on the boat over the winter months, and then sell the boat in March and return NOrth.  Here they are with Woody looking at two manatees.

  The manatees found a leaky water hose, and were holding on to a dock piling catching the drops of fresh water. 

You can see the drops of water falling into it's mouth

Not sure which is more amusing.................the manatees or the manatee watchers.

Low Rider

I finished up the window tint job today.  Good enough for who it's for. It's a perfect "10"  (Looks good from 10' away.)  I may re-do some windows when we get home.

 
Now all I need is to lower the boat and install a loud sub woofer.  A Rosborough Low Rider.


I take the dinghy out of the water when I see that the weather will not be conducive to using it for a while.  We're having a few days now with winds around 20 mph. By putting the dinghy on the roof, it gives me a chance to clean any barnacles that may have started.  Last year we left the dinghy in the water while we were in Marathon for three weeks, and the barnacles took over.  One of our boat neighbors here said he couldn't understand why they say the reefs around here are dying.  His boat has a reef growing on the bottom of it.

Our Pennsylvania friends Frank and Pat from Grey Goose suggested in a recent comment on my blog that since the Colts are done, we should take a hard look at Pittsburgh.  I always look at Pittsburgh in a "hard" way.  If I have to speak the name of their team out loud, it always starts with "Evil" Pittsburgh Steelers.

 We flew a Colts flag last year in Marathon just before the Super Bowl. Here's Phil and Cathie's boat "BUDDY" with a Green Bay flag. Hope P & C have better luck than we did.

 

Phil and Cathie will need to find a different place to watch the Super Bowl.  The OV where we watched the play-off game is owned by Gary Dunn.  He played for the "evil" Steelers a few years ago.  Gary Dunn has 2 Super Bowl rings.  Probably won't let any Packer fans in.
http://www.theocean-view.com/

Football

The manatee was back again Saturday.

I was of the opinion that football season was over for this year.  Colts got beat.  However, some of these Wisconsin people seem to think there's still a reason to go to OV's (Ocean View Bar) and watch a football game.  Here's the boat dock neighbors.
Phil & Cathie, Brenda & Woodie, Mike & Kay Anne, & us.

News from Home

Very hot and humid here today.  A little rain this morning, then I took off in the dinghy up into the Everglades National Park to do some fishing.  So far, fishing has been great.  Catching not so great.  The boundary for the park is only about a mile NOrth of us.  Even though I'm only catching small fish, it still beats shoveling sNOw.

That was a screened-in porch before the ice and snow.

Our daughter called this afternoon to tell us that one of her friends saw on TV that there was a house fire on our street at home.  I looked on the internet, and saw a news video and determined it was not ours.  The house is the sixth house down from us.  Belongs to a very nice 85 year old retired doctor.  I called Jake who lives next door to me, and asked him if he knew anything. (He was at his office.) He found it unusual that I would be sitting on my boat in the Florida Keys and know more about what's going on in our neighborhood at home than he did.  This is the third house fire on our street of about 15 homes.  Apparently, the fire hydrants near the house were frozen. 

http://www.wthr.com/story/13885716/crews-fight-house-fire-in-noblesville

No Tarpon

We explored a little more on land today.  First stop was Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological State Park.  It's an old coral quarry where they cut coral into chunks to use when they built the railroad on the keys.  We walked through the hammock down winding paths to the quarrys.  As usual, I told Pam she might see more wildlife if she walked in front.  (By "wildlife", I meant spiders and snakes)

Next stop was Lorelei's for lunch.  The Boss left his boat here.

 

On down to Anne's Beach, then the Islamorada Fish Company, and World Wide Sportsman.  Last stop was Robbie's Marina.  Walked out on Robbie's docks ($1.00 admission) to confirm that there are no tarpon in the waters here.

 

Ray

If you're going to go fishing, you shouldn't go to "Little Fish Creek."  So today, we went to "Whale Harbor."  I wasn't actually expecting to catch whales, but I had been visualizing catching a tarpon.  I tied on a new leader in case the old one had weakened.  Made sure the camera was ready, and took off in the dinghy for Whale Harbor.  (The guy at the launching ramp yesterday, told me he was a "Master Angler"--whatever that means, and that I should follow his sage advice and I would certainly catch a tarpon.)  I couldn't sleep last night visualizing catching a tarpon.

When we got to Whale Harbor, I saw something large jumping out by the bridge.  Tried fishing by the bridge.  Nothing.  Up by the mangroves.  Nothing.  We went around an island through a little cut, and fished on the other side of the island.

Nothing.  Then back to the main channel of Whale Harbor.  Finally a bite.  Because of all my visualizing, I couldn't imagine it would be anything but a tarpon.  Sure enough, it was indeed a tarpon.  It might not have been quite full grown, but here it is.

I released it.  I thought about having it mounted, but being the sportsman that I am, I thought I'd let another "Master Angler" have his fun with it.

We kept fishing for a while, and saw another large splash from something jumping.  Finally we caught a glimpse of it.  Sting Rays were jumping out of the water and then doing belly flops when they landed.  Most of them had a 4 to 5 foot wing span.  Here's a photo of one just in front of the dinghy.

 

Some were jumping within 20' of our dinghy.  Don't know what we would have done if one had landed in the dinghy.  Pam kept track of how many we saw.............12.

Whale Harbor is about 5 miles down the Keys from our marina.  Took almost an hour one way.  On the way back, we were nearly run down by this "cute" boat.

The thermometer on our boat reads 82 degrees.
More sNOw and cold temps up NOrth.  Sure hate to miss that.

Neighbors

We have a great group of boaters on our dock.  Woody and Brenda are across from us on a MacGregor 26 they trailered from Virginia.  Woody buys a newspaper every morning, and we get to read it when they're finished.  He's trying to remember how he folded the papers when he delivered them back when.  Then he can just throw it across the dock to our cockpit.  I let him log on to my wifi for a while.  He liked it so much, that he ordered one online and had it delivered here.

Phil and Cathie are here from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin on a Rosborough like ours.  We were all sitting on the dock next to their boat this morning when Pam says look, they have carpet in their cockpit.  Before the sun set today, we had carpet in our cockpit.  Next, she says look, they have tinted windows.  We've ordered tinting online to be delivered here.  Thanks, Phil and Cathie.

Next to us are Mike and Kay Anne on a 27' Sea Ray that they trailered here from the U.P.  Pam was complaining about the hair cut and perm she got just before we left home.  Kay Anne was trained at Vidal Sasoon's in California, and volunteered to help.
 

I hung out by the launching ramp this afternoon, and when any flats boat came in, I asked where they'd been and what they caught.  Then I asked where they'd go if they only had a dinghy with a 2 hp motor.  One guy told me there were tarpon in Whale Harbor Pass.  It's about 5 miles from here.  Our dinghy goes about 5 mph, so looks like I'm off for an hour dinghy ride tomorrow.

Tornados

Sunday, we took the dinghy over to Snake Creek, and fished a little .  Ended up going out Snake Creek into the ocean a little ways.  Not many fish.  Lots of boat traffic.  Probably try that area again during the week.  I'm getting sage fishing advice from the pirate Yoda.  On the way back in, we passed an anchored trimaran, "Grey Hound."  We met them last year in Marathon.  They're friends of Phil and Cathie on "Buddy" (ex trimaran but now Rosborough owners.)

"Buddy" arrived here yesterday.  They're two slips down from us.  They're having an issue with the trim and tilt on one engine--it won't lower from full up position.  They have twin Yamaha 50's like ours, so I loaned Phil my shop manual.

On our dock, we have boat neighbors who trailered their boats from Virginia, Michigan's upper peninsula, and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  I guess I should stop whining about the 1300 miles we drove.  The U.P. people drove over 2000 miles.  He drove a friends truck towing the boat, and she drove their car along behind.

There was quite a storm last night.  Heavy thunderstorms with tornado warnings.  It reminded me of a long night I spent in Guntersville, AL a couple of years ago, while cruising down the Tennessee river with my young dude friend Bret.  We were on his leaky old Catalina 25' sailboat, tied to a dock in an old run down marina.  About 2 am, the tornado sirens started blaring, and a recorded voice was broadcast over loudspeakers that a tornado was headed for Guntersville.  Take shelter immediately.  We woke up, jumped out of the boat, and ran to shore.  Our first impulse was to hide out in the bathrooms.  When we got there, I looked around and realized that the bathrooms were built into a corner of a high dry stack storage building.  Boats stacked three high and only sheet metal walls.  The vision of similar buildings on Pine Island after hurricane Charlie--all twisted and collapsed with boats falling everywhere did not instill confidence in this location.  So in the pitch black of night, with only lightning flashes to guide us, and of course in pouring rain, we set out to find a more secure spot.  The blaring sirens helped enforce the feeling of impending doom.  We stopped beside a large dumpster, and considered hopping inside it, but it was right beside the dry stack boat storage, and there was a good chance that a boat or two could crush the dumpster.  We walked out to a shelter house on one of the floating boat docks just to get out of the rain.  Obviously, not a tornado proof spot.  We sat there for a while, on the rickety old docks in the shabby shelter house trying to think of a safe place to go.   Finally, we decided the leaky old sailboat was as good a place as any.  If the tornado was going to get us, it could get us any where we had been.  Back to the boat we went.  Needless to say, we didn't perish in a tornado that night.  So, in the storm last night, with tornado warnings, when Pam said "maybe we should go somewhere ashore and seek shelter,"  I told her I was staying right here on the boat. 

My young dude friend Bret, has now decided that he wants to become a railroad locomotive engineer.  He's moved to southern Indiana to study trains.  While cruising through some canals down here, it seems he may have been driving a train in this neighborhood.

I

It's a long way to the nearest rails, but somehow this caboose ended up in this guy's back yard.  Bret?

sNOw Gators

A few days ago, my pal Bruce sent me a photo of an alligator he had uncovered while shoveling sNOw in Indiana.  He indicated that gators now are being found further NOrth.  Bruce sometimes has a tendency to exaggerate, but today, I received confirmation of his story.  My daughter sent me this photo of a sNOw gator she found in her backyard.  She says they're somewhat lethargic when the temps are below 20 degrees.

 

We went out in the dinghy today, and I pretended to be fishing while watching the catamaran regatta.  I've done a little sailing, but never on a Hobie Wave.  I'm not sure that this is the preferred method.

 The boat that is towing the Wave, is an old Hobie 16 with a 25 hp outboard motor and center console mounted on it. 


We had 11 new boats join us in the marina yesterday.  It's mostly full.  There is one slip open close to us for Phil and Cathie on "Buddy".  Another Rosborough like ours.  We met them last year in Marathon.  They're also sailors gone bad.  I think they will arrive Monday.  The new people in the slip next to us trailered their 27' Sea Ray down here from the U.P. in Michigan.  Two thousand miles.

I've re-done the home theater with a shelf.  Now we can stretch out our feet under the shelf.  Deluxe.

The Jetty

There's a "jetty" between our marina and the open water of Florida Bay.  It's a breakwater for the waves, but when the winds is from the NE, we rock on.  Some days (today) the access gate is unlocked, and riff raff like us can walk out there.

 

Here's the marina from the jetty (Don't bother looking for our boat.  We're not in the "front row.")

 

The rocks along the jetty are full of interesting fossels.

Pam spotted a starfish in the water.

 

The real reason we went out on the jetty was to look at the hundert boat regatta.

And a chance to test the zoom on my camera

Update on a Hundert Boats

After further review, the original ruling on the field stands--there are a hundert catamarans here.
They have filled the beach and are overflowing into the park.

 We have a neighbor, Skip, who sails Hobie Waves on our little lake at home.  With all the Hobie Waves on the beach, I thought there might be a chance he'd be here.  I walked around through the parking lot, but didn't see any Indiana license plates.  Then I saw some guy got out of a van with Florida plates who I thought looked like Skip.  When I yelled "Hey Skip" he turned around, and it was him.  Small world.

Sorry TW, that was not us you saw on the web cam in Key West.  Pam was wearing an aqua colored jacket, and I was wearing only a thong and a smile.