Anchored behind Sanibel Island, FL

It has been over a week since we blogged. But we've been on the move so following are some highlights. This will be a long entry so, hopefully, you have your coffee or adult beverage in hand!!

We left Marathon in the Florida Keys where we had been for a little over 3 weeks. We enjoyed our stay there but were anxious to get going and when the winds finally died down we hightailed it out of there with Vicki and Norm (Tidehiker). Here is Rickshaw going under the 7 mile bridge which connects the middle keys, where we were in Marathon, to the lower keys. We are heading north toward the SW Florida Everglades.

We made our way offshore southern Florida on the Florida Bay. It was a beautiful day with low winds and calm seas. We were out of sight of land for much of the time because the Florida Bay is so large. Our destination was the Little Shark River, just west of Flamingo, where Bob and Stephanie (September Song) were anchored. This is part of the Everglades National Park. It was a beautiful but remote anchorage where we didn't see any other boats or have access to cell phone or internet service. I don't think I've ever seen so many stars except during those three nights. Above, sunset over our dingy.

We had all gathered on Tide Hiker for dinner, and returned after dark to Rickshaw.

Rick must digress here with a little story. You just can't make these things up. When we anchored we noticed the current was really strong in the river at 4+ knots. After we returned to Rickshaw and got into the boat there was a distinct new noise ... we don't like new noises. Upon investigation, Rick discovered that the shafts were turning, even though the engines were not running, in the current at about 60 - 80 rpm, and that was the source of the noise. This is not a good thing to let continue for any length of time, as the transmissions are not designed to have their gears turning without adequate hydraulic pressure provided by a running engine; it's similar to towing a vehicle behind an RV with its transmission in neutral ... lots of excessive wear and tear. Rick tried to hold one of the turning shafts with a non-skid pad, which didn't work at all. So he resigned to wait until "slack water" when the tide turns and there is no current to deal with it. Slack occurred near midnight, and he tied off the shafts to the engine mounts with line wrapped around the transmission coupling, then waited for the boat to turn in the shifting tide and the current to build again. He was finally satisfied he had fixed the issue and came to bed at 1:00AM.

It turns out September Song dragged anchor about 30 feet in the middle of the night, caught again and reset, but Bob moved the boat to a new location in the morning.

The next night we were about to go to bed and Rick checked the anchor chain before coming in. Right before his eyes, he saw the anchor chain bump and skip, which is not supposed to happen. This meant the anchor was dragging as the current increased the pressure from the boat. Major adrenalin pump started. His initial reaction was to start the engines, but of course the shafts were now tied off from the previous evening, so he would have had to undo all that before having any propulsion to offset the dragging. So he put his hands on his head for comfort, held his breath, and waited about 10 seconds, and sure enough, the anchor caught and dug in again after we'd dragged about 50+ feet or so. Now the task was to deploy more anchor chain to avoid future drag. We always deploy an anchor bridal to take the strain off the windlass in a current. Basicly it's a rope with a big hook that attaches to the anchor chain on one end, and the boat cleats on the other. With a strong current one does not want to winch it in with the windlass so he had to wait until "slack" again to be able to pull in the bridal, take it off, deploy more chain, and reset the bridal. The next slack was midnight, so it was another long somewhat stressful evening, but he finally got 175 feet of chain on the bottom, and the problem was solved. Strange noises and dragging anchors ARE somewhat stressful, and generally result in some sleep deprivation ...!

The next day Bob and Stephanie along with their 2 labs, Godiva and Cassie, in their dingy, and us in our dingy, gave us a tour around the mangrove islands. We tried using the movie function of the camera. Obviously, we need to work on that a little more, but you can see the view we had (there is sound with the video).

The islands in and around the Little Shark River consisted entirely of Mangrove trees with their knarley roots and swampy understory. There's really no place to get out and walk.

Ibis in the Mangrove trees.

Rickshaw in the Little Shark River.

We left the Little Shark River after 3 nights and moved westward along the Everglades and stopped at another anchorage in the Ten Thousand Islands outside of Everglades City, which is really not a city at all but a very small village. We dingied into the town to have lunch at the famous Rod and Gun Club which has been around since the 19th century. You can definitely tell it was a Men's club! Then we walked around looking for a newspaper and bait. All we found was bait! Norm had tried fishing from the back of Tidehiker with squid but only caught catfish which he threw back. He also tried pepperoni and meatballs, but the fish must have been vegetarians as he didn't have any bites!! Below is Everglades City.

There were a lot of air boats taking tourists into the Everglades. The pelicans are so familiar with the boats that they sit on them looking for handouts.

Norm, Vicki and Lynnie in the dingy.

Various shots of the inside of the club. The Club had lots of wild animal heads and bodies on the wall. Just what you would expect.

Rick talking on the ancient phone - actually had dial tone.

Rick enjoying the dingy ride.

Rick and I left Tidehiker at the anchorage and headed up to Naples, FL. We are officially on the

west coast now. We stayed at the Naples City marina and September Song was docked right next to us. We had planned to stay for a few days in Naples but the weather was turning dicey so we left on Wednesday which was a better day to travel than Thursday. We are currently anchored just north of Sanibel Island. We'll stay here until Friday when we'll head up to Sarasota for a few days to visit with an IBM friend from DC who now lives in Sarasota.

STILL in Marathon (Part 3)

The weather is finally starting to lie down, which means that we will be able to leave. Right now the ETD is tomorrow, Wednesday. We are all getting antsy to get back on the water. It does mean, however, that we won't be going to the Dry Tortugas as we are running out of time and we are afraid that we might get stuck there with other fronts coming in.

In the meantime, on Sunday we had the DeFever gang (12 people plus one guest) over to Rickshaw for appetizers, drinks and a book and DVD swap. Vicki had the idea for the swap and everyone was really pleased with trading for new (used) books and movies that they had not seen yet. Thanks to Bob for some of these pictures.

It was fun to host everyone on our boat. The next morning some of our boating neighbors laughingly said that they were worried that with so many people on board the boat might sink!!! After the party here, most folks went down to the Dockside Bar and Grill for dinner and dancing with a really great band.

Yesterday Rick and I took our bikes down to West Marine, the boat stuff store, and Home Depot. Then we made our way to the Fish Tank for a lobster reuben. We had heard it was a great sandwich and it was! It was a funky place where you placed your order at a window and they asked for the name of a wild animal. I said Tiger and that is what our order was called by. Strange but Keysie, I guess. We forgot our camera so we 'borrowed' Doug's picture when the Gypsies went there.

From here we will start up the west coast. We are doing our chart planning now but we think the first stop will be an anchorage on the Little Shark river which is actually part of the Everglades National Park, although we will see more mangrove and hard woods than the grasses that you normally think of in the Everglades. Then on to Marco Island and Naples. Mo' later!

STILL Hanging out in Marathon (Part II)

We are still in Marathon and having a blast. The cold fronts keep coming in every few days and it gets very cold and very windy. OK, OK, I'm NOT complaining...I know the kind of weather most of you are having now....I'm just saying...

In fact, a guy was supposed to come to the boat to polish our fuel on Thursday morning. Over time, diesel fuel tanks build up yucky sludge, consisting of dirt, dead algae, condensed water and other contaminents. We had begun to have some problems with the fuel filters clogging prematurely so Rick wanted to have the fuel cleaned, "polished", which we haven't done since acquiring the boat. The guy called Rick early Thursday to say that it was too cold and he was afraid he would get sick so he wanted to reschedule! Rick persevered and he came to do the work, in shorts and a thin sweat shirt. Maybe they don't have warm clothes down here. So the existing fuel got polished, and on Friday morning we, and several other boats, got fuel delivered by truck to top off our tanks for the coming trip north.

So, we have continued with the never ending list of boat chores. Rick changed the oil and filters on the two main engines and two generators, including the main engine final fuel filters, which is always a chore, because then he has to bleed all the air out of the diesel engine injectors to get the engines to start again. After that Rick discovered that the battery used to start the generators had lost some of its uumph, so Roger, our good friend and mechanic extradordinare in Morehead City, (he is our lifeline if any of you have watched the millionare show) helped us over the phone to figure out how to troubleshoot that issue. As always, thank you, Roger!! Then we had to find a place that would take the used oil. Bob helped again by taking Rick and Norm, who had also changed his oil, to a local oil recycling facility at another marina.












But, hey, you gotta have fun and we've been working on that, also. There are now 5 DeFever boats here, three of them in the marina that we are in and two a couple of miles away. Stephanie and Bob (on September Song) have a rental car and have been extraordinarily generous in carting us around in order to run errands, including that fun trip to Key West, contained in an earlier blog. We can't thank them enough for their generosity! Robin and Jim (on Adventures) also have a car down here. The cars came in very handy yesterday ... more on that in a moment.

We had a party on September Song last weekend, and were supposed to gather on Rickshaw's back deck but the cold and wind were going to drive us indoors.

We can't comfortably fit 12 people inside our boat so Stephanie and Bob graciously offered to move the festivities to their new 55' DeFever, September Song, which has a huge pilot house, pictured above. There are a number of great cooks on these DeFevers so there is always lots of wonderful food, plenty of adult beverages and laughs when we all get together, so a good time was had by all.

Wednesday was Lynnie's birthday and she had a great day starting with brunch at the Stuffed Pig! We rode our bikes there so we are assuming we burned off a few calories on the way there and back. Of course, surely not as many as were in the crab and mushroom omlette. Lynnie had a birthday pedicure in the afternoon and then Vicki and Norm (on Tide Hiker) and Tammy, Doug, Colleen and John (on Gypsies in the Palace) walked down to the Dockside Bar and Grill for some more great food (shrimp reubens - yum) and listened and danced to a live blues band.


They were told it was Lynnie's birthday so they played a "Lynnie-yrd Skynyrd" song in her honor. What a hoot. We all got happy feet and danced to a few tunes. Overall, it was a piggy and relaxing day. Lynnie says thanks to all for the birthday wishes that came her way.
Yesterday, Bob and Stephanie and Robin and Jim (with their cars) came to pickup the 8 of us at our marina to take us to lunch at a pub on Big Pine Key that Robin and Jim knew about. Robin and Jim have been coming here for 20 years and are building a house on Big Pine, which is an amazing feat considering the building code requirements imposed by the nature of what you are building on (rocks) and the hurricanes. If you didn't know where the No Name Pub was you would never find it! There are several bars in the Keys that have every inch of available space plastered with signed or decorated $1 bills. This one was amazing. The food was really good and we had a fun time.

Below, the whole gang. To the right are Doug and Tammy from Gypsies in the Palace.

After lunch we went to see the new house which is nearing completion. It is certainly built to withstand whatever mother nature throws its way ... solid concrete and rebar, on concrete pilings driven 6' into the coral rock. The Andersen windows are designed to happily bounce off flying debris during storms.

These Keys Deer are all over the place. They were wandering around the neighborhood where Robin and Jim's house is located. They are smaller than what we are used to and pretty cute.








The Gypsies took the following two pictures. This manatee was swimming around the marina and came up to their boat. They spent 15 minutes giving this manatee some fresh water from their house. They seem to really like fresh water!

STILL Hanging out in Marathon

It has been a few days more than 2 weeks since we came to the marina in Marathon. Since then we have been getting lots of boat chores done. We've also been riding our bikes and doing a lot of walking.

The weather has been wonderful but we have had several fronts come through. We had a huge storm on Monday evening with driving rain and winds of 40 knots. We lost our NC flag and several of the boaters lost things from their boats. There is another front coming in today which will kick up the seas again. That means that we can't leave here for a while. We had hoped to go to the Dry Tortugas before making our way to the DeFever rendezvous on the west coast of Florida but I guess we'll just have to see if we have enough time. Boating is all about waiting out the weather.

When we went to Key West last week we noticed that there are chickens and roosters walking all around the town. Apparently, they are a staple part of Key West. There was some talk about doing away with them but the locals didn't want that. Anyway, our friend Bob stopped the car on the way home to get the following picture. Funny!

Hanging Out in Marathon


We have been here a week and a couple of days. We've been doing boat chores and also having some fun! There are always boat chores to be done so you have to plan for some fun so that you don't go crazy. Many of our friends think that this life is just a great life of leasure. Well, let me demistify that thought!! Vicki and I rented a Rug Dr. machine from Publix, the local grocery store last week. We helped each other clean the carpets on our respective boats. That is always fun, right? NOT!

There are now 4 DeFever boats here with another one arriving tomorrow. One of them is owned by Stephanie and Bob and Bob took the guys fishing in the dingy, while Vicki and I slaved away. The guys were real excited about catching dinner but, alas, they only were able catch 2 fish big enough to eat. In the meantime, they fed the fish a lot of shrimp, which I'm sure the fish enjoyed. Below are Bob, Norm and Rick.

After fishing and rug cleaning Bob and Stephanie picked us up and took us to Bodines which is a local Marathon restaurant known for their french fries. How could you not love a restaurant like that!! We ate dinner on the water and as the sun set the waitress took a picture of the 6 of us.

On Monday, the three couples went to Key West. Bob and Stephanie had rented a small SUV which seated 5 comfortably, but since there were 6 of us one of us had to sit in the back. I sat in the back on the way down and Vicki sat in the back on the way back. Key West is about 50 miles south of the marina. We had a great day in Key West. It was finally feeling like Florida weather. Here are some scenes from Key West.

Rick had to stop and buy a T-shirt at Rick's Bar.

A Keysie Jeep.

T-shirt shopping for the rest of us.


We stopped for a great lunch at a Thai restaurant.

There were two cruise ships docked along Mallory Square, THE place to watch sunsets. The cruise ships have to be out of the harbor before sunset so that folks can watch it. They have their priorities down here!

Pepito looks amazingly like Rick!

We won't be able to get the new upper enclosure done. Rick had planned this with the canvas guy a month ago. The first day he had lost his wedding ring, the second day he had a bad toe, the next day the wind was too much....I guess that we just didn't plan for people on 'Key's time'. So, we'll get that done when we get back to NC. That means that we will probably leave next week sometime for the Dry Tortugas. This is a collection of 7 islands preserved as a National Park about 70 miles west of Key West. Fort Jefferson, which was built in the 1840's but was never completed is the main attraction. It was a prison for Union Army deserters and Confederate war prisoners, including Dr. Samuel Mud, the doctor who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. We've heard that it is the best snorkling and some great fishing in the Keys so we'll go check that out.

Marathon in the Florida Keys!

Since our last blog, we have had some interesting days. After leaving Coconut Grove we stayed in a small, "Keysie" (the word they use down here to describe quaint but rather tacky places!) marina at Key Largo for 3 days waiting out the wind. Here is Rickshaw at the rickety dock. They had a great German restaurant, though, so we enjoyed that.

We left early on Sunday heading to Islamorada. We had taken this trip the last time we were here and knew that it would be dicey because the water is so shallow. We had about 6 miles where we went very slowly hoping to not bump the bottom. As soon as Lynnie said 'Yippee...we haven't bumped yet'...we did! Three times, in fact. We don't like to bump because it could damage the props. But in this case it was just the keel stirring up sand. While it was very stressful, it was also very pretty. The water is a beautiful turquoise and there are mangrove islands all around.

We were very happy to arrive in the anchorage at Islamorada which had 8 feet of water. Phew!We took the dingy down and went to a favorite restaurant, Lorilei, for a late lunch and watched the NFL playoffs. The dingy has been having troubles starting since we left NC. We bought a new battery for it, which we thought was the problem. Turns out it was only one of the problems but Rick figured out that the battery switch was also bad. Once he bypassed the switch it has worked just fine. We got back to Rickshaw, pulled the dingy on top and sat on the back deck and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

The next day we again left early because we were going 'outside' which meant that we were headed for Marathon, on Vaca Key, in the Atlantic ocean. We wanted an early start because the winds were supposed to kick up again after noon. We passed a shoal that had what appeared be hundreds of birds hanging out on it. We also passed some fish haven sticks in the water that the cormorants took advantage of to hang out and dry their wings.

The winds came sooner than anticipated at 15-20 knots and we were in 2 - 3 foot seas, with an occasional 4 footer, for most of the trip. We were rocking and rolling with water occasionally breaking over the bow of the boat. As we were making our way into the channel, dodging crab pots, a huge black cloud blew in and with it a soaking rain. We were exhausted but happy to make it to our marina.

On Tuesday Vicki, Norm and their neice came over to watch the inauguration on our satellite TV. What a thrill to see it. We had been having some troubles with the satellite TV but those gremlins seem to have gone...probably to some other part of the boat. I'm sure we will see them soon enough!

We will be here for a few weeks getting the new window panels made and installed on the bridge. It will be wonderful to be able to see out of them. With our old ones, it is sort of like looking out the bottom of a coke bottle!

The winds are still blowing, but we are comfortably tucked into our slip at Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, with our boating buddies just up the dock. Boat chores, haircuts, some fishing and dining with friends are in the offing, so life is good.