Nuclear Chicken

Out fishing in the dinghy today.  There was an article in Sunday's newspaper that redfish were biting in Snake Creek, and they were biting on Nuclear Chicken Gulp Shrimp.  I have a package of Nuclear Chicken that I bought on eBay over a year ago.  I'd been saving it for a special occasion.  Today's Valentine's Day.  That's special.  Always good to do something special on Valentine's Day.  So I got out the Nuclear Chicken, and headed over to Snake Creek. 

Unfortunately, the redfish had not read Sunday's newspaper.  I caught a hundert snapper, but no redfish.  I did catch this monster from the deep.

While we were fishing, we had a dolphin and a manatee go right under the dinghy.

Some dock neighbors are organizing a dinghy trip to a restaurant for lunch tomorrow.  Hope they don't want to race.  I only have a 2 hp motor on my dinghy.  Some people here have 50 hp on their dinghy.  I've heard before that my dinghy is under powered.

We're thinking about driving up to the Miami boat show on Friday. 

No Flames

Yesterday, we rode our bikes over to the Drop Anchor Inn to find Rich and Jill sitting out by the ocean soaking up rays.

We all went out to dinner at the Pilot House last night.  Jill drove home topless in the Cordoba.  Nice night.


Then this morning we met for a great breakfast at the Green Turtle Inn.  We really enjoyed having R & J around for a few days, but they had to fly back to the land of long pants and socks today.

Later in the day, I was sitting in the cockpit eating popcorn, when I smelled the unmistakable smell of electronics burning.  I checked the batteries and most stuff on my boat and found no problems.  Then I checked which way the wind was blowing, and decided the smell was coming from Mike and Kay Anne's boat next to us.  They were not home, so I stuck my head in their cabin--no smell.  I was able to track it to the exhaust vent of their engine compartment.  I shut off their shorepower, and sniffed around some more.  Definitely the engine compartment.  I went up to the marina office, and asked them to call Mike on his cell phone.  No answer.  I usually will not board someone's boat if they are not there, but this might have been an emergency.  (and my boat was right next to theirs)  So I got Phil from Buddy to join me, and we got onboard.  We raised the engine compartment, and confirmed the smell was coming from there.  But could not find the source.  Mike has a halon fire extinguisher in the engine compartment, so if there had been a flame, it would have been extinguished immediately.  Without finding an obvious source of the problem, we closed it back up, and waited for Mike and Kay Anne to return.

When they arrived, we explained what we had done, and helped Mike try to find the problem.  Turns out that his boat has two bilge pumps, and one of them had burned up.  (Phil and I only found the good pump when we looked for the problem earlier.)  So we disconnected the bad pump and assured Kay Anne that her boat would not burn up over night.  Sink maybe, but no fire.

Later, everyone gathered on our back porch.
Mike, Phil, Kay Anne, Dalai (the dog), Cathie, and Pam.

A Three Hour Tour

Richman and Jill came over to the boat this morning and we departed for a three hour tour. 

Went over to Tavernier Creek and out into the ocean.  The first part of Tavernier Creek is like a jungle cruise--lots of mangroves.

 

We had planned on going out to the reef, but it was a little bumpier than we had thought, so we cruised on down to Snake Creek, and back to the bay side.  Snake Creek is where the aliens landed.

My plan was to go to the Islamorada Fish Company for lunch.  It's right next to the World Wide Sportsman.  (Bass Pro Shop) 

 
I'd never been there by boat before, and it was a guess as to which set of mangrove islands to cut through to find the place.  These are the times when it's great to explore with a shallow draft boat.  I used Google maps on the computer, and then made my best guess to place it on the nautical chart.

 

The food, service, and company were all top notch.  For dessert, we had passion fruit cheesecake with mango sauce.  Wow!  Rich said it made strawberry cheesecake seem "foolish."

You can just see our boat in the background of this photo.

After we ate, we walked over to World Wide Sportsman to look around and buy some more shirts.  They have a sistership to Hemingway's Pilar.  Built in 1933.  It is the actual boat Bogart used in the movie "Key Largo."

Richman is a Hemingway fan, and I'm a Bogey fan, so we enjoyed climbing all over the boat.

Later, I finally got Mary Ann and Ginger back on the boat with Gilligan, and we completed our three hour tour.

 

Oh, and along the way, I was able to once again confirm that there are no tarpon anywhere in these waters.

Richman

I guess if you write a blog about how nice it is here, and how bad it is at home (lots of sNOw and ice with single digit temps) , you should expect this sort of thing to happen.  Rich and Jill, our friends from Indiana decided six holes in their freezer wasn't really enough,  so they flew to St. Somewhere.

They found a quaint "old Florida" place to stay a couple of miles down the road from us.  We met them at the Island Grill for tuna nachos Monday night.  Then yesterday, we went with them in their rent-a-car  (I think it was a Cordorba)  to Key West.

You might recall that our ex boat neighbors, Woody and Brenda moved their boat to KW a few days ago.  We said that if we got to KW again, we'd call them and hook up.  We didn't decided to go to KW until just before departure, and I didn't have W & B's phone number.  KW is a small town, "we'll just run into them somewhere."  Not likely.  While driving along A1A, Pam says" There's W & B riding their bikes!"  Richman couldn't find a place to stop or turn the Cordorba around, so we lost them.  Then, after we parked and were waiting on our women who were buying T-shirts at every store along Duval street,  I said to Richman, "look at all these people, you'd think we'd see someone we know."  Who walks by but Woody and Brenda.

W & B have spent a lot of time in Key West.  They know all the cool, out of the way places to see unusual stuff.  (Even more importantly, they know where the rest rooms are.)  Woody showed us a different view of Duval Street from the La Concha Hotel roof.

There's some roof top art work that most people crawling along Duval Street don't see.

 

Then Woody says he knows a spot where there's usually an artist painting a picture of five women who are posing while dancing naked.  Key West.  Off we go.  Along the way, we see these three ladies with their painted hats looking at a small boat in the harbor.  Nice, but not the same as five women dancing naked.

Finally, we walk around a corner, and shut the front door.............just as Woody said, there they are. 

 

The guy doing the painting said his name was Henry something--maybe Matisse.  (He had some foreign accent.)  Upon closer inspection, the five dancing women weren't all that great.

 

No, that's not Richman laying on the ground below the women, and he doesn't show up in the original Matisse painting.  It's part of the sculpture.  Must be a KW thing.

Later in the day, Pam was accosted by Sponge Bob.  (It looks like he's dragging her to the ground, but actually, I can't get this photo to rotate in the blog format.  So turn your head.)

By the end of the day, we had enriched the economy in Key West.  Our group purchased a total of 18 T-shirts.  Sorry, Jimmy, not one of them was yours.

Driving back in the Cordoba, and looking at all the boats for sale along US 1, I realized that it's almost five years ago that we sold our sailboat business.  My five year non-compete agreement expires this year.  I think I'll call Charlie and Eileen (who bought our business) and see if I can get that extended for another five years.

Sharks

I took the dinghy back to my secret spot up in Everglades National Park today.  Pam went to Winn-Dixie and took two of our boat neighbors with her who don't have cars.

I opened my fishing excursion with Jacks.  Pound for pound, not many fish fight harder than Crevalle Jacks.  So catching a bunch of them was great fun.  Then, I raised a shark.  Also a very strong fighter.   It's hard to hold the fishing pole in one hand while digging out the camera to take a photo.

Several years ago, when I first caught a shark, I was in our 16' center console fishing boat with my brother-in-law, Tracy.  When we got the shark close to the boat, Tracy wanted to cut the line.  I thought we could at least get it in the landing net for a photo.  Reluctantly, Tracy got the shark in the net, and held it over the boat.  In a flash, the shark bit through the line, and slashed the net and was free inside the boat.  Now we had a mad shark thrashing around at our feet.  Tracy and I both jumped up on the seats to avoid the shark.  (No truth to the rumor that we were screaming like little girls.)  I think Tracy finally sneaked up behind the shark and grabbed his tail and got it out of the boat.

A similar situation got me a shark bite on my ankle.  I had caught a shark and it was thrashing around in the boat.  Pam said that the shark was making a bloody mess of the boat.  Turns out it was me not the shark--he had bitten my ankle.  So, I don't bring sharks into my little rubber boat.  I'm able to grab them with my Boca Grip, remove the hook, and set them free.

I've heard that when you go fishing in Canada, you sometimes stop at noon, build a campfire, and cook up some of the morning's catch for a "shore lunch."   Here's a photo of my "shore lunch" today.  Not exactly my morning's catch--but it is fish. 

As I was raising the anchor to head back, I didn't pay any attention to the line, or the man-of-war entangled in it.  The wind made those blue tentacles go everywhere--sort of like a spider web.  I got most of them off before doing any real damage, but I could feel a tingling in my left hand for a while.

I saw several more pink birds again.  Couldn't get close enough for a good photo.  Too shallow for the motor and too windy to row.

 

The Reef

In the mid 80's today.  As I sat on the back porch drinking my morning coffee, the sun was already very hot beating down.  I could just feel the boat's fiberglass heating up.  I could hear cracks and pops as the fiberglass expands from the heat of the sun.  These last few days have been so hot, that by mid afternoon, our 25 foot boat is almost 30 feet long.

It wasn't too windy today, so we headed out to the reef with the thought of snorkeling.  However, as a backup plan, I took some shrimp along too.  The man-of-wars were thick again, so we opted to fish instead of get in the water.  This m-o-w had an interesting fish following along.

  Actually, we hardly needed to get in the water to see the bottom.  Here's a shot in about 20 feet.  You can see the shadow of the boat.

 

As we cruised along, looking for a spot to fish, we went out into 50' of water, and could see the bottom there also.  Pam saw a 5' long shark swimming on the bottom, I saw a sea turtle about half way down, and then I saw a sailfish just below the surface.  I stopped and made a few casts, but evidently, he didn't want shrimp for lunch today.

I caught several small yellow tail snappers at first.  Beautiful fish, but small.

 

I brought three fishing poles with me to Florida for salt water fishing.  A medium, a light, and an ultra light.  I had been using the light pole, but thought since I was catching a lot of small fish, I'd switch to the ultra light rod.  That would be fine, unless I hooked a grouper.

 

I also caught some grunts, hogfish, and this yellow jack.

At the end of the day, I got into a school of spanish mackeral.

Since our boat has a roof over the back porch, it's not a convenient spot from which to fish.  However, I have determined that I prefer inconvenient fishing over shoveling snow.

More Fish

Another perfect weather day today.  I took the dinghy up into the Everglades National Park again for some fishing.  I found a cut through a series of islands and flats that's just a little deeper than the surrounding water.  There's some 5' deep holes in the cut, and I figured the fish might hang out in the holes when they're not on the flats.  I caught a hundert fish in that cut today.  Lizardfish, ladyfish, puffers, pinfish, jacks, pompano, spanish mackeral, gar, and sharks. Nothing of any size, but tons of fun.