Garthkiser.com

Note:

The most recent regular posting to this blog was dated December 29, 2009. The following posts continue from that point. At that time, our boat, Gonzo’s Flying Dog, had been anchored near the town of Marco Island, on the southwest coast of Florida. After having spent two months sailing down the East Coast, we were nearly out of money and in search of an uninhabited island to build a hut upon.

And to you loyal readers, thanks for waiting! Sarah and I have now hitchhiked back to Illinois and will be updating the website from the comfort of my family’s guest cabin over the next couple weeks.

Wednesday 12-30-09:

There’s an inland route from Marco Island down into the rural area of Florida coastline known as the 10,000 Islands. However, it’s poorly marked and we immediately ran aground twice this morning. Instead we took the much longer Gulf of Mexico route, around Cape Romano.
At the southern end of the cape is the abandoned remains of some unique architecture, white cement domes positioned atop white cement pillars, still standing despite attack from multiple hurricanes. Sarah and I would have surely taken up residence here was the area not so close to Marco Island. The abandoned domes are a favorite hangout for local boaters. Their photos of the structures can be found all over the Internet.

Shoals of a couple feet or less extend miles south of the cape, so some semi-precision navigation was required in order to short cut through them, using the combination of handheld GPS and computer charts. The computer charts are quite convenient in this way because the cursor’s GPS coordinates are always listed, which can be referenced back to the GPS.
Had the tide been low, our “precision navigation” would not have been sufficient, as I accidentally put Gonzo over an area charted at 2.9 feet. The error may have been due to imprecision in our cheap Wal-Mart compass. But with three feet of additional tide, this wasn’t a problem.

“We forgot to buy more cheese”, Sarah says with a frown.
“Then we will name the island we pick to build our hut on Forgotten Cheese Island.”, I reply.
“How about the Isle of Forgotten Cheese? That sounds more fancy.”, she counters.
“Maybe that’s too fancy.”, I respond, “How about something in between? These islands are called ‘keys’, so how about Forgotten Cheese Key.”
She digs it. We will live on Forgotten Cheese Key.

But paradise is lost! Little specs can be seen zooming everywhere as we begin to approach land again. They’re boats, lots and lots of little boats, constant traffic. The scene only grows worse. I notice some specs of color on the beaches. The binoculars reveal the source. Tents! Collapsible lawn chairs!
We’d picked the 10,000 Islands as our destination under the assumption that they’re remote location would mean few visitors. But oh how wrong we were, the mecca of Marco Island is just too close. And of course even the specific portion of beach that we had identified on Google Earth images to be our landing point, a bridge between two islands, had a group of campers on it! Running a chainsaw!!!!

We anchor in a protected body of water behind Hog Key and row ashore, landing on the side of the island opposite the chainsawers. The little land mass, less than a quarter-mile across, is barely above sea level at the perimeter and at or below it in the interior. I machete us a path through thick brush as we  follow the shoreline.

Several little white sand beaches are on the ocean side. littered with the remains of many strange creatures. Sponges, horseshoe crabs and some unknown slimy blobs are everywhere in the sand, all dead. Sarah lags behind as I hack my way on along the shore. Hundreds of dead trees cover the largest stretch of beach, their wooden debris so clogging up the shoreline that water has become trapped and taken on a rancid odor.
Then the elevation rises slightly, to about 5 feet. Some cactus, palms and other larger trees have seized the opportunity to grow here. If we were to build our hut here, this would have to be the place.

Back at the boat, we consider the location at great length, trying to decide whether to stay or find another island elsewhere. There are some negatives to consider here, primarily the excess of visitors and the fact that the water is not blue. We’d known about the water from Google Earth images, but had decided regular water would be a decent trade-off to privacy. But now came this population revelation.

In the end we decided to stay. That was until I got the Florida Keys in my mind took a look at the charts, discovering that there are plenty of uninhabited islands only a half-day’s sail from Key West. Sarah wasn’t hard to convince. If we’re not going to have the privacy then at least we’ll have the blue water. Sail will be set first thing tomorrow morning!

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 25° 51.878’ – 81° 33.121’

Thursday 12-31-09:

Same old story. Found ourselves in the mud again this morning at low tide, resting in just one foot of water. The 2-hour tidal wait was more than enough time to prepare for an overnight voyage across the Gulf of Mexico, direct from the 10,000 Islands to the islands just north of Key West, about 70 nautical miles southwest. Come 9AM, we were off.

No wind to speak of, but the water was as calm as a lake, the sun near-constant, the temperature near 80. A perfect kind of day to be on the ocean, as long as the motor is working. The water turned a wonderful greenish blue color some miles from shore, and the numbers of dolphins and birds sighted decreased as well. When hauled up in a bucket, the water looked just as if it had come from the tap.

With such calm conditions, the helm could be locked in towards the desired heading of 187 degrees, only requiring minute adjustments every so often. We moved along at the lowest possible engine throttle speed, which equaled 3 miles per hour. The goal was to arrive at dawn tomorrow, and 3 mph would accomplish that perfectly. Arriving at dark would make finding an anchorage extremely difficult.

Less than 5 boats spotted all day. The only things to avoid were long lines, the fishing nets that stretch hundreds of meters, marked by periodic bobbers along their length. Even 30 miles off shore, the long lines were still surprisingly abundant. They sit far enough under water to allow boats to pass overtop them, but care must be taken not to let the bobber lines gets wrapped around the propeller.

Anticipating the overnight hours, we took turns napping. When not staring off into space, I spent my cockpit time with various chores including sinking tin cans, cleaning the toilet and shaving. Having so much open water around is very convenient. In response to anyone has a problem with my sinking of discarded tin cans, just think of it as creating new underwater habitats for marine wildlife. I’m sure some colorful little fishes are loving their new houses tonight.

The strangest sight of the day came at sunset, when an entire school of several dozen small silver fish ran several meters across the water on their tailfins.
“You’re not going to believe me”, I yell to Sarah down in the cabin, “but an entire school of fish just ran on their fins.”
“Actually I do believe you.”, she laughs, “I saw it on TV once.”
I’d seen it too, but with full-size dolphins, not these six-inch pipsqueeks. A truly hilarious sight.

The moon rose to the port side as the sun set to starboard. The slight breeze never enough to even ripple the water. Nearly dead calm when the new year rolled in, our only companions being fat snorting dolphins that suddenly materialize in the black abyss. Tiny fireworks on the endless horizon as we sip from coffee cups filled with wine.

Those patriotic midnight explosions were the first sign of the Florida Keys, still some 30 miles afar. Not till after 1AM did the first lights come into view, in the form of distant red flashing towers. The night’s voyage went perfectly smoothly except for having to avoid the endless array of fishing bobbers and lines. There was one minor propeller entanglement, but I was able to untangle the line in less than a minute. Had the moon not been so bright and the water so smooth, then there surely would have been multiple entanglements.

The long, low darkened outlines of the uninhabited outlying Florida Keys came into the black view at 5AM. Success! Just the islands we were looking for, the accuracy of the assumed position verified by the conglomeration of distant lights some miles to the southwest. Out here in the middle of nowhere, those lights could be none other than Key West.

Thanks to the now-perfect calmness of the early morning waters, we’re able to anchor Gonzo right then and there rather than risk entering the shallow waters of the Keys under darkness. An hour of smooth sleep instantly initializes in the comfort of Gonzo’s memory foam v-berth.

Friday 1-1-10:

Awaken in the calm dawn to splashing sounds, absolutely the only disturbance in the air or water being multitudes of decent-sized silvery fish leaping for no apparent reason. A dense fog has moved in, only a single fishing boat and the milky outlines of the nearest islands visible.

We proceed into the island chain via an unmarked channel of deeper water, bumping aground once or twice before obtaining the correct heading. It’s low tide and vast shoals are exposed, massive great white herons perched atop them. Gonzo barely scrapes over the shallowest parts of the channel before entering a bay of 6-9 foot depths.

Our charted destination, the Mud Keys, requiring a 4-mile passage through the islands. The Mud Keys face the Gulf of Mexico, but with six inches of water at a direct approach, this longer route is necessary. Another very narrow passage between islands, then another deeper bay. The water turns to bright greens and blues in the rising sun! The blues are magnificent, just what we’d been looking for, and the greens are nothing to be ashamed of.  This is water, tropical style.

Yet another maze of shoals and we finally enter the deep, narrow winding channel through the Mud Keys, impenetrable bright-green mangroves rising high on either side. At the end of the channel, facing the Gulf, is a tiny white sand beach barely 25 feet wide, the only dry land yet to be seen anywhere. With the water of surprising depth, we’re able to proceed all the way to the beach and tie up to mangroves alongside it. A brief exploration of the tiny island reveals that only a few hundred square feet of land sit above sea level. The rest of the island is just like all the other land so far seen, just mangroves that sit underwater at high tide.

Leaving Gonzo tied up at the beach, we set out exploring in the kayak for hours, searching for a hidden paradise to build our hut upon. Entering the smaller channels into the mangroves is a mystical wonderland. Just enough clearance under the branches for our heads to pass, barely wide enough to swing the oars, a deep blue abyss of water underneath. The unusual depth is due to swift tidal currents which we ride for some time, only occasionally rowing to avoid collision with low branches. The currents push us to an intersecting channel, and another and another, then we find ourselves back at the main Mud Key channel that Gonzo had entered through.

Now a problem is faced. Return to Gonzo means going up this channel against a raging current. All the little channels converge here and the water wants out bad. A few minutes of hard rowing lead to almost no progress. We hang onto branches and wait. Sarah plays with her oar, poking the muddy bottom and watching the spectacular mud billows rising up through the crystal clear water.

We eventually make it back to Gonzo by following the shoreline closely, where the currents are much weaker. Swimming in the 80-degree sun upon return to the beach, the chilly water isn’t a problem for Sarah but takes me 20 minutes of contemplation before diving fully in. I put on goggles and swim underneath Gonzo, peering at her mysterious underside. “Go ahead, take a look.”, I say to Sarah, handing over the goggles. She turns white. “No……”, she hesitates, “I’m scared of the keel.” It’s obvious she’s not joking. She is genuinely scared at that 2-ton wedge of barnacle-covered lead sticking down under the boat, that thing that bangs around and spooks her in the middle of the night.

A 3-foot-long iguana appears on the sand, curiously side-eyeing us while slowly munching on flowers. No reaction as I approach with the camera, kneeling down little more than an arm’s length away. The creature continues with its colorful dinner, peering at me knowingly from behind its aged leathery skin.

Storm clouds quickly turn the blue sky gray. Not having found a proper island in the Mud Keys, we depart for Snipe Key, a much larger island facing the same bay a couple more miles to the east. A blinding downpour temporarily halts all progress. We quickly throw down an anchor, retreating into the cabin. The storm hourglass is a rum and coke, after which the clouds begin to break. Continuing to Snipe Key in much cooler air, we anchor Gonzo at sunset near a small spike of land sticking off the island’s west side.
“Every time we go somewhere it gets cold”, Sarah says as we retreat to the v-berth in escape of the rapidly chilling air.

Saturday: 1-2-10: Midnight

Falling into the mid-50’s, a near-gale had suddenly began its blow shortly after dark, dragging Gonzo nearly a mile onto shoals at the bay’s southern end. With the evil banging of the keel under the hull, we arose to face the situation. Winds were of such a ferocity that steering was nearly impossible at any less than half throttle. The high-frequency waves repeatedly splashed frigid water over the bow, into the cockpit, each torrent sending my teeth into a deeper chatter as clothing became drenched.

Arriving back to Snipe Key, I threw down both anchors, which began dragging immediately. The wind pushed Gonzo along at a couple knots back towards the shoals. ‘One of those anchors will grab hold of something eventually.’, I thought to myself, but that wasn’t the case. Retrieving the offending hooks, they were discovered to be entangled in pounds of sea grass.

On approach to Snipe Key for a second time when BAM!!!! All the cabin contents, including Sarah in the hatchway, flew forward violently. We had collided with some underwater object, most likely a sandbar not listed on our two-year-old chart. Some seconds after the collision came a second bang, nearly as loud as the first. The keel, wedged crooked up into its chamber by the collision, had suddenly settled back down into its resting position with a crash.

‘Oh, no’, I thought, glancing down into a watery bilge. “Was that water there before?”, I ask Sarah. “No, There wasn’t that much”, she answers grimly. “OK“, I continue, “Start pumping and see if it goes down. Maybe the force of the collision just caused water to splash up through the open top of the keel chamber. I’ll start driving towards Snipe Key again.”

“NO!“, Sarah yells up from the cabin as I resume operations in the black roaring wind of the cockpit. “It’s rising faster than I can pump! We have to abandon the boat!”, she screams over the weather.
“NO!”, I reply, “We’ll raise the keel and run the boat up onto a shoal so it can’t sink! The water won’t get higher than a couple feet! Keep pumping!”.

Shutting the engine down, leaving Gonzo to drift, I step down into the cockpit to begin the slow process of manually raising the 2-ton keel with its small hand crank. Simultaneous frantic pumping and cranking in the chilly dim light of the wildly rocking cockpit. Keel inching upward, buckets of water tossed overboard.

Fifteen minutes later I’m in control of the ship once again, using the GPS in its blue-on-black night screen setting to direct Gonzo on an intercept course with the small spike of land on the west side of Snipe Key. “DO SOMETHING FAST!”, Sarah yells, her voice increasingly serious, “THE WATER IS ABOVE THE FLOOR NOW!”

Thanks to the water being at high tide, I’m able to pilot Gonzo all the way to shore and tie the bow to mangroves, the island providing great protection from the terrible northeasterly wind. All is finally calm as the water slowly rises under the dim glow of Gonzo’s LED lighting.

“There’s nothing we can do right now except sleep”, I advise, “the water will only get up to a foot or so because it’s so shallow here”.

In our state of half-shock, we fall asleep in the comfort of our memory foam to the soft rustling sounds of the mangroves outside.

Morning:

Sinking Day #1

I awaken many times overnight to shine a light at the cabin floor, monitoring the slow but incessant rise of the water. With the level at nearly a foot by daybreak, even the bathroom floor is underwater. The situation improves slightly during the day with the lowering tide, but the water inside the boat never seems to retreat as much as the water outside the boat. We sit crashed in the Great White Heron Wildlife Preserve, the only sign of civilization being a row of evenly-spaced communication towers several miles away. Only a single other boat comes within view all day.

The day off to a terribly sad start when Sarah discovers her clothing to be soaked. Her attitude had so far just been one of mild shock, not despair. Her face suddenly suddenly showing misery, I ask what’s the matter. “Water got in my clothes hole”, she responds flatly, pulling a soaked shirt from her clothing hold under the forward bench. Watching the dripping shirt inspires dripping eyes. But being among the most resilient of  human beings, her dark mood breaks after I’ve sat with her just a few moments. She throws a soaked journal into the shallow crystal clear water outside. The notebook rests in an open position under one foot of water, through which an entire entry can be read. She later retrieves the book, deciding instead to save it.

Despite the terrible turn of events, we were not ready to abandon our dream of inhabiting an uninhabited island. I temporarily abandon a rum and coke to climb off the bow into the mangroves Gonzo is tied to, chopping my way with a machete towards tall trees at the island’s center. Being low tide, there is solid ground beneath my feet, but the fortress of roots and branches only allows for 100 feet of progress before I retreat in defeat, unable to see more than 10 feet through the junglous entanglement. While the journey to the center would not have been impossible, life there would have been extremely impractical.

We spend 2 hours rowing the kayak through chilly gusts in the sun, exploring the the island’s northwest coast for a non-mangroved entrance to the interior. Depths are at times so shallow that our small inflatable craft drags across the muddy bottom. We follow a small shark in six inches of water, getting within arm’s reach before the creature realizes our presence and darts off at full speed in a violent splash.

Defeated again, nothing but more mangroves in sight, we return to the boat and begin taking inventory of our most useful possessions that will fit into backpacks. I call my family, requesting that they put an ad on Craigslist offering the boat for free to whomever comes to save it.

Last task of the day is to hand-bail water from the cabin in the hopes that the level will not get above the bench cushions overnight. We form a two-person bucket brigade with a single 5-gallon bucket for 30 minutes. At least 100 gallons removed, bringing the level back down below the 1st cabin stair.

Sunday 1-3-10:

Sinking Day #2

Water in the cabin again rises all night with the tide, getting within one inch of the bench cushions before finally beginning to descend in the early morning hours.

We spend the first hours of the day carefully packing our backpacks, fully planning on spending the rest of the winter on the road in Southern Florida. The initial shock of the sinking finally beginning to wear off, new ideas pop into my head. Getting local marina phone numbers from the GPS, I call asking if there are any boat yards in the area. The idea was to see if any yard manager would be willing to put Gonzo in their yard in exchange for a written agreement that they would own the boat if the bill was not paid. The leak is slow enough that we could bail the water by hand and get Gonzo to a nearby yard. However, it’s Sunday and no yards are answering the phone.

Next idea; there is a small unused bilge pump and extra hoses in the boat’s center compartment under the galley sink. I remove one of the batteries and connect the pump to it, using the spare hoses to eject the water via the bathroom sink drain. The 300 gallon per-hour pump exerts the maximum effort for the next two hours. Gurgling sounds emanate from bow to stern as trapped pockets of water slowly drain. The floating portable toilet settles back down to the bathroom floor as Gonzo ever-so-slowly begins floating again in the rising tide.

With the water finally at floor level, I put the pump down into the bilge, sucking out even more. Sarah assists with removal of the keel table, a rectangular open-bottomed wooden enclosure that fits overtop the fiberglass shaft that the keel raises up into. With most of the water out and the keel shaft fully exposed, I feel with my fingertips along the shafts’s base.

AND I FIND IT!!! THE HOLE!!!!!

Not a dreaded unrepairable crack but just a single little hole! Fiberglass splinters can be felt over just a small area. The force of the collision had simply knocked the sharp rear edge of the lead keel through the fiberglass hull.

Chipping away the splinters with a screwdriver exposes the full extent of the damage. Another fingertip inspection reveals that the underlying hole is only pinky-sized! I twist part of a plastic grocery bag down into the hole and turn on the pump again, finally exposing the damage to the air for the first time. Removing the bag, a small stream of water sprays forcefully up into the air. Using the screwdriver again, I reinsert the bag, very tightly this time.

And then it hits us….GONZO IS SAVED!!!! The temporary patch is nearly perfect, very strong with barely a drip of leaking!

Staying tied to the mangroves overnight wasn’t an option because Gonzo would again be setting in six inches of water tomorrow morning. At this moment of the late afternoon we had both a rising tide and daylight, so no time was wasted in getting out of that dreaded spot. Such a wonderful sound and feeling when the engine roared to life and began to propel Gonzo away.

We move Gonzo back east across the bay, to spend the night anchored in the narrow channel between the Mud Keys, the same place we’d spent time exploring two days ago before the crash. Butter sandwiches and rum having been our only sustenance all day, we dine on a hot meal before falling off into a deep sleep, relishing unconsciously in the aura of great accomplishment.

Monday 1-4-10: Key West

How can this be? All the way to the Florida Keys and still cold!

Travel west several miles against a stiff wind, in waters as shallow as two feet, keel in the “up” position. The charts indicate a sunken aircraft in our path, but the wreck remains elusive.

Rarely over 4-feet deep, the crystal clear water reveals its bottom entirely. The diverse plant life is mysterious, and at times, rather creepy. Bowl-shaped sponge monsters grow up to two feet wide among dense sea grass. The underlying sand is only visible in areas where tidal currents are strong.

Arrival to Key West in the afternoon, an entire mile-square city of anchored boats on the town’s northern side, hundreds of them. No anchorage we’ve seen before was even close to this size, or as strange. This is the end of the line, this is where good boats come to die. Half the vessels here appear derelict, and half of that half appears on the verge of sinking. A sailboat with an erect mast is the exception.

But a popular anchorage doesn’t necessarily mean a good one, especially in this case. This is the wide open Gulf of Mexico to the north and the nearly-wide-open Atlantic to the south. No place for an anchorage but one of the only places available around Key West. The only part of this anchorage even halfway decent is to the south of a little uninhabited piece of land called Wisteria Island. Even here, there is still 600 yards of open water between the island and Key West, and to the southwest it’s still open to the Atlantic. But, the day will soon be getting late and we want to get into town, so this is where Gonzo must go.

“There’s a sailboat right underneath us.”, Sarah says, pointing down to the white outline of a  hull in the bright blue water. “”How big do you think it is?”, I ask. Her ominous reply, “About the size of Gonzo.”

Our inflatable kayak has an ever-expanding tear down the side of its nylon exterior. This meant that we were to attempt the usage of our backup dinghy for the first time, the little inflatable purchased used in Annapolis for $20.

Once in the water, though, we instantly discover that this piece of crap is going nowhere fast. The picture on the box shows a smiling mother with child on a sunny day, powered by an engine! Our oars result in a half-knot, maybe, and it’s impossible to travel in a straight line. Waves bend the boat sharply. There is nowhere to sit.

Lucky for us that we didn’t find such a deal on that day last April in chich I spent $300 for our Pacific Extreme inflatable kayak. The extra $280 spent, may be the most useful $280 ever spent, a fact which became so clear at this moment.

Unable to get into Key West in the current dinghy under the under current weather conditions, we spend the day’s remainder aboard Gonzo. Sarah cleans one of our two waterlogged food holds. Two gargantuan cruise ships sit tied up on the docks near Mallory Square, Key West’s main tourist hangout. To the north side of us, little boats can be seen going to and from Wisteria Island, piloted by dreadlocked men in rags and other generally-derelict-looking human beings. The smell of burning wood and the sound of chainsaws fills the air. Our curiosity is invoked.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 24° 33.996’ – 81° 48.599’

Tuesday 1-5-10 Key West Day #2:

The national anthem blares from loudspeakers at 8:30AM sharp, daily routine of the Key West Coast Guard station, located just a few stone’s throws from Gonzo’s anchorage. The patriotic awakening is closely followed by several earth-trembling blows from the foghorn of a departing Carnival cruise ship.

‘Cold. Highs in the upper 50’s’, reads the forecast downloaded on Sarah’s phone. Not exactly the Key West we’d been expecting but still tropical compared to what the rest of Florida is experiencing right now.

I lay in bed very late, doing absolutely nothing till getting absolutely bored enough to do something. Stuck again in bad weather with no decent dinghy, the only logical thing to do is recover from the Great Flood.

First, I clear out all the soaked items from the holds and set them atop the sunny deck to dry. Next comes a thorough investigation of the damaged electrical system. The main bus panel, located in the compartment under the galley sink, was discovered to be half-disintegrated. The main positive battery cable leading to the bus, as big around as an index finger, was entirely eaten through.

“If I’d only known to disconnect the batteries before the water water got this high”, I thought to myself, “this wouldn’t have happened.” If you’ve ever done one of those simple electroplating experiments as a child then you know strange things can happen to electrified metals underwater. The real suprise here was the extent of the damage that took place in just a matter of hours. The electrical system had failed by dawn on the morning of the sinking, which was logically the time that the main battery cable had been eaten through.

The rear electrical bus panel, located underneath a cabin bench, is in nearly as bad of shape. Fuses are eaten down to just their glass cores, the fuse holders fall off the panel with just a tap because the copper attachment rivets have turned to a green goo. The green goo covers any exposed copper surfaces. Sarah’s clothing that had been stored under the rear bench, in that same hold as the rear panel, is also covered in the goo.

The electrical recovery begins with the removal of every wire attached to the main bus, a massive entanglement that had annoyed me since purchasing Gonzo last April. Half this ball of wires led absolutely nowhere, they just terminated elsewhere in the cabin, connected to nothing. Some of these nothing wires were capped with wire nuts, some with electrical tape, some left bare. It was a matter of luck to have never experienced a fire, as some of these nothing wires were not even fused.

In another stroke of luck, two sets of fuse holders on the main bus panel and two on the rear panel remained intact, as did at least 4 of the fuses. This, along with all the extra wires and nuts pulled out, allowed for a safe rebuilding of the electrical system. The biggest stroke of luck, though, was that the transmission wires connecting the main bus to the rear bus, and the rear bus to the switch panel, remained undamaged. Once the buses were scraped clean of green good and reattached, then this original foundation of  wires could simply be reattached.

A flip of the main power switch, and success! The red light inside the plastic switch glows! All the switches are alive once again. Gonzo has a heartbeat, no longer is she she a beaten fiberglass body floating upon the water!

Now on a roll, I go on to permanently attach the bilge pump and float switch, something that should have been done the the day after purchasing Gonzo. If we were to again take on water, then the bailing would be automatic. Had that been the case on the night of the crash, then all this mess may have been avoided. The water never would have risen above the floorboards and we could have easily seen the source of the leak and plugged it immediately.

All is setup by sunset, a full electrical recovery topped off with the permanent connection of the electric keel winch switch, yet another task that should have been undertaken long ago. No longer must we slowly crank the 2000lb keel up and down by hand.

Having accomplished so much improvement to the electrical system in such a short time, 5 hours, it’s kind of ridiculous that a major clamity had to first take place. Everything needed had been right at my fingertips for the past 9 months. Even all the hose needed to connect the bilge pump, it had been laying right there on the floor under the sink, unused.

Our day ends with rum and cokes in-hand, observing the strange sights and sounds in the anchorage aorund us. Beasts of boats, rusted and dilapidated, motor by. An intensely ugly 35-foot sailing catamaran with no mast or rigging of any kind, deck completely bare, slides by under the power of a sputtering 10-horsepower outboard engine. Three young men are aboard, who anchor the beast 100 feet from Gonzo.

Wednesday 1-6-10:

Lower 40’s overnight! For anyone not familiar with the Florida Keys, that’s nearly a record low. Unlike mainland Florida, Key West never freezes. Warming only into the low 50’s today, absolutely frigid by all local standards.

I cleaned Gonzo’s rear compartments to perfection, crawling in portions of the boat I’d never set eyes on before. This exploration revealed some seriously loose bolts on the steering cable pulley assembly and the rudder mounts. Following a mysterious data cable led to some kind of sensor mounted into the underside of the hull, probably the eye of a depth sounder.

The air conditioner, stored in the compartment under the sink, needed to be dried. All the new wiring work done yesterday needed to be put into a neat bundle. That under-sink compartment for months had been a smelly, moldy, scary place littered with rotting boards, slimy pipes and live wires. It’s now a model of cleanliness and organization.

Sarah filled the deck with salt water-soaked clothing, put out to dry in the cold, but sunny, air. Most of her time was spent tediously sewing denim patches onto the torn nylon hull of our inflatable kayak. Too chilly to work out on deck, she brought the entire floppy mass of kayak into the cabin, dutifully weaving back and fourth for hours with a needle far too small for the job. Many times did she yelp as the blunt end punctured her fingertip.

Thursday 1-7-10:

Gonzo’s recovery nearing completion. Much more free space than before, due to improved organization and trashing damaged items. Finishing the patches on the kayak took Sarah 2 more hours then we rowed into Key West with blisters on her fingers. A fine job she did indeed. Finally, an escape from Gonzo’s confines.

Tied up at the 2-hour free dock. Paid $4 for 2 showers at the Key West Bight Marina. A thoughtful employee gave us a break from the regular price of $4 for 1 shower. “Make sure you don’t let anybody else in.”, he says four times while escorting us to the showerhouse, standing by to watch until the doors are locked firmly behind us.

A man pushing a cartload of marine batteries directs us to a nearby laundromat on Flemming Street. It’s located in the same building as an organic take-out restaurant called Help Yourself selling wraps for $13 each. A cart of coconuts sits out front. The laundromat, with an open-air front, is surprisingly cluttered and dirty considering its close proximity to the $13 wraps.

A front loader promptly steals $2 from us. An ultra-polite cashier from the restaurant walks through, noticing the “out of order” sign I’d attached to the machine. She returns a few moments later with a refund, never having been asked to do so. “We don’t run the laundromat”, she explains with a smile, “but we try to help them out.”

I find a great unsecured wifi signal on the laptop, but it conks out entirely the moment Sarah takes her turn. “I should just start going first”, she complains, “because this always happens.” Rowing back to Gonzo after dark, the only way to alert passing ships of our presence is a tiny blue LED keychain light. Most of the traffic is magnificent tourist schooners returning from sunset sails. The shadowy figures aboard gawk at the little blue light like a herd of deer. But in this case, the deer are actually the ones shining the light, hoping not to be run down by the floating wooden beast headed their way.

Friday 1-8-10:

Finally, a calm night and a warm day. Multiple shipwrecks glimmer underneath the bright blue water, one of which has sat directly below Gonzo since our arrival here some days ago.

Wanting to spend the whole day in town, we’re forced to pay the $6 dinghy dockage fee, adding the little yellow kayak to a mass of at least fifty other small day dockers tied up along a section of floating docks. Lunch is ninety-nine-cent Wendy’s chicken sandwiches on Duval Street, the main Key West tourist thoroughfare.

The Key West Public Library is a joke, unchanged in the slightest from its pathetic days when I lived here in 2002. Thousands of drunken tax-contributing tourists flinging money around town daily, whole cruise ships of them, yet a library barely even fit for a tiny rural village.

Every resident of Key West should be ashamed of themselves for allowing their city government to remain so selfish and shortsighted. I’m sure they can come up with a million excuses, but it has been too long, they are just excuses.

And it’s a sure bet that the current library situation is not just a matter of oversight. Key West is a city plagued by homelessness throughout its modern history. As Sarah remarked on this phenomenon, “Just look at the map. All the dirt settles to the bottom”. No, the pot was not calling the kettle black, it’s just a matter of fact that Key West is simply the end of the road. Thousands of drifters find themselves here every year, mile 0 of US Highway 1. or in our case, the end of the Intercoastal Waterway.

Now back to the topic of the library, it’s a ridiculous crush of the Parrotheads and the penniless, with a few brave locals thrown in for good measure. The same Parrothead tourist will never be seen in the building twice, scarred off by drueling psychotics, not even finding a a functioning wifi signal to compensate them for their troubles.

If it’s you lucky wifi day, then you might get ten minutes of good use till the system slows back to its norm, 1 page of text per five minutes. Even to get that, one must pass through the homeless gauntlet outside. Those in-the-know sneak in through the back door, as the front is a bum-man’s land of shabby bicycles tied to palm trees, of cigarette/pill trading and abandoned half-eaten sandwiches. The faces are either insane or depressed. Locals use the back door.

Even if you would found yourself in some parallel universe where the library was vacant of other humans, you would still be able to deduct the truth by reading the signs. By the powers strips reads, “2-hour charging limit”. On the walls reads, “Patrons with offensive personal hygiene will be asked to leave.” On the bathroom door reads, “This facility is for TEMPORARY use.”

ALL BEWARE OF THE KEY WEST PUBLIC LIBRARY!!!!!

Only go there if want to by crack or if you are broke and homeless in search for a dry place to sit down. And even then, first TRY YOUR HARDEST to find somewhere else to go! If you must read but can’t buy a book, then find one in a dumpster. Just read it inside the dumpster. You’ll be a happier bum than if you had been to the library.

Unable to even check email in text mode, we walk some blocks to Sippin, a coffee shop I’d frequented back in 2002. Back then they just had Macs, but as expected, wifi is now also available. Desktop computers are still also present, but most of the Mac’s have smartly been replaced by PC’s. In order to be proper guests, Sarah orders a coffee before we break out the laptop at a small wooden table. But, the Sippin wifi signal is secured. Inquiring back at the register, Sarah is handed a small slip of paper with a unique password. “It’s 10 cents per minute.”, explains the cashier.

PER MINUTE??!! To use my own computer? Sippin can go to hell. Another patron informs us of “the only place left in Key West to get free wifi”, but we’re unable to find this elusive mystical hotspot. Instead, we decide to go shopping at one of the big supermarkets near the center of Key West, but just miss the bus by 1-minute. “The next one won’t be here for 2 hours”, offers a man waiting at the stop.

Defeated again, we shop at a small grocery called Fausto’s near Duval Street, the same place I often used to buy lunch from in 2002 when on breaks working as a painter for a construction company. That was when our painting project had been “Pelican Poop”, an old 3-story hotel nearby that had been converted into a private residence and tourist attraction. Hemingway had supposedly stayed there while working on the book “The Sun Also Rises”. During the many weeks spent painting that building, the owners had become very friendly with me, a sweet little-old-southern-bell-of-a-woman and her boisterous flaming-gay son. The old woman and her late husband had made their fortune as big players in the Florida real estate boom. The son was a city commissioner very active in local politics, with the ambition to someday become mayor. The old woman had hired me to do work on the side over many weekends. The son had invited me to several prestigious events as his photographer, but I think the truth was that he just wanted to be seen in the company of young males. Both mother and son had told me repeatedly, “If you ever need anything, just stop by.”

Leaving the grocery store, Sarah and I passed right by Pelican Poop. The door to the gift shop was wide open. Our funds were nearly depleted. We walked on two more blocks to sit on the docks and contemplate the situation. Every time I’ve found work before, Sarah has ended up even more miserable than me. Considering that our plan up until now had been to live free on an uninhabited island, possibly getting real work was a big decision. I was 90 percent sure that we could just walk in the front door of Pelican Poop and end with work, but the problem was potentially getting stuck here, just as we did in New Orleans and Reedville.

It just took 5 minutes of dockside deliberations to decide; not yet were we ready to sell our souls to the man, probably never would that happen again!

Back to Gonzo we rowed in the warm sun, free.

———-

Note:

Pictures related to the post you just read should be posted by March 4th.

The next entry will be a compilation of the six weeks following this one, during which time we lived on Wisteria Island. It will be written in the form of stand-alone article, so facts obvious to regular readers will be briefly reexplained. Look for the entry to be posted within the next week or two.

Dear Loyal Reader,

Sorry, still no computer usage time in sight. No way to charge the laptop at camp and the 600-yard kayak trip into Key West is treacherous on all but very calm days, which are rare on the water here.

But someday I promise you all LIVE VIDEO BLOGCASTING!!!!!!! Next time we find ourselves with a chunk of change it’s going into a PDA with a tiny external camera and a monthly usage plan with adequate bandwidth. No joke. We might only be able to fund it for a month or two, but during that time we promise you non-stop updates 24-7-365!!!!

Since updates will probably not come for a while, just send me an email with the subject line “Update Mailing List”, then I’ll send out a mass email when a real update finally does come.

garth_kiser@hotmail.com

We love you all!!!

Sorry, still no way to update the site, but we are taking plenty of photos, videos and notes about the experience. Our camp is looking spectacular, by far the best on the island. Sarah has posted some photos on her site. Sarahhandyside.com

Just wanted to put out this quick update that we are alive and well living on a tiny undeveloped island by Key West, called “Christmas Tree Island” by the locals. Much has happened and a more extensive update will be posted this week.

We love you!!!!

Monday 12-28-09:

Got that pesky charting software(OpenCPN) figured out this morning, the problem solved with a single click of the mouse. Some thoughtless programmer was at fault for turning the “show soundings” option off by default, but I can’t complain too much since the program is free.
Entered the light green waters of the Gulf of Mexico late this morning, passed and surrounded by a massive exodus of small local motor boaters. The entourage was heading out from Fort Myers to enjoy the 75-degree cloudless day. At least 100 vessels overtook Gonzo, quite a difference scenario from the peaceful norm of the past several days. Actually, this is more traffic action that we’ve ever seen. This mid-holiday period may be the most popular boating weekend of the year in Southern Florida.

We spent the afternoon following the straight shoreline south from a distance of a couple miles, watching dozens of highrise apartment buildings pass by for hours. We knew the wind was going to pick up to 20mph by late afternoon, but what we didn’t know was that Gonzo would have to pass through an inlet less than 50 feet wide in 6-foot waves, surrounded by steep rocky banks on either side. This was Gonzo’s most extreme near-death experience since Sarah and I took ownership.

The extreme close call took place near the city of Naples, in a tiny channel called Doctor’s Pass. Flanked by large structures on both sides, the little gap in the shoreline is all but invisible until within a mile of approach.

It looked bad from that mile. White foam everywhere.

It looked miserable from a half mile. Waves breaking across the entire channel.

A quarter mile and I gave Gonzo a 50/50 chance of survival. Forty-five-degree rock embankments several feet high on either side And then the gust came.

Sarah desperately wrestled the helm as I fought frantically to get the engine down and on. The sudden gust leaned Gonzo at even sharper of a degree than the rock embankments. A glance up from my efforts at the engine and I reduced Gonzo’s chances of survival to no better than 25 percent. Sarah had lost helm control in the gust and the bow was headed straight for the embankment, now less than 15 feet away.

I intensified my efforts at the engine, but the effort of keeping myself from getting thrown off the boat was too much in itself. Turning back around, fully expecting to see the bow crushed against the rocks, I was fully surprised to see that Sarah was close to regaining control!

“I’ve got it! Get your hands off the wheel!”, she yelled as I briefly grabbed hold. I did so and she completed the task. The water then calmed from insanity to near-smoothness within a few more feet. We had done it! Probably many years it has been since a sailboat sailed into Doctors Pass under such conditions. I just wonder how many boats have perished there, having gone out on a calm morning and tried to return on a rough afternoon. Many, I suppose.

Inside Doctor’s pass is a quarter-mile square of water bordered on the ocean side by residential towers and on the other three sides by individual upscale private dwellings. Even surrounded closely on all sides by walls, the wind still howled across this little body of water. All of our earlier efforts were only rewarded by the anchor  line getting stuck around the keel. A problem that required another 20 minutes of struggle.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 26° 10.692’ – 81° 48.629’

Tuesday 12-29-09:

Getting out of our little hole, Doctor’s Pass, was effortless in comparison to last night. The wind was just enough to allow for sailing but not too much as to affect the waves much. Three-foot crests spread out over 50-foot periods, a light and peaceful rocking motion. Another benefit to wide waves is that the engine can still be used if needed, the propeller will not spend half its time uselessly out of the water.

Sailing 20 miles south through the Gulf, we slowly floated towards Marco Island all morning, which is the next clump of highrise apartment buildings on the horizon after Naples. Come noontime we passed through Capri Pass on the island’s northern side, taking up an anchorage in Factory Bay.

Sarah was feeling ill and did not accompany me into town. I docked the dinghy under a nearby bridge because the stingy Marco River Marina was unquestionably out of the question. “Dinghy dockage is $5. No use of the showers OR facilities.”, an unfriendly male voice declared over the phone. Had they just let me sit in the lounge and check email I probably would have paid it. Down with Marco Island Marina.

This northern periphery of Marco Island appears to consist of manufactured land masses. The Google Earth view shows intricate mazes of canals, some in near swastika shapes. This is where the boating public builds their comfortable homes and private docks. Marine traffic is near constant.

A half mile walk through the clean, modern city and I discover a McDonalds. A middle-aged female employee strikes up a 10-minute conversation as I eat $1 double cheeseburgers. Her opening line, “Somebody could fold you up and put you in that suitcase”, referring to the black rolling piece of luggage that I’d bought along to put groceries in.

The groceries conveniently come from a big name-brand supermarket just another block away. Every cashier has a bagger except mine, a tall slightly unkempt young man. “I guess it’s just the luck of the draw”, he replies to my observation, “Or actually, it’s because all the other cashiers are female right now”, he says on second thought.
“Yes”, I add, “there are some benefits to being female.”
“Yeah”, the cashier continues, “I wish I had titties.”

With too much to fit into the suitcase, the return trip to Gonzo is quite uncomfortable, alternating a 2-gallon jug of water and the suitcase handle between hands every few feet. A rolling suitcase is normally a rather comfortable transportation method, but not when 20 additional pounds of stuff is in sacks tied to the handle.

The tide has lowered in my absence from the water. What had been a 3-foot difference between the water level and the platform under the bridge has now become nearly 5 feet. Razor sharp shells along the platform wall cut a six inch gash in the yellow fabric of the kayak. It was only by sheer luck that the cut did not extend any deeper than that. The inflated rubber hull is still fully intact.

Tomorrow, we go searching for our island! We are here, at the area known as 10,000 Islands!

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 25° 57.794’ – 81° 43.435’

Sunday 12-27-09:

Departed Labelle early this morning. Someone had uncleated one of our lines from the dock overnight. We’d both heard suspicious footsteps at some late hour, but hadn’t thought much of it because the person(s) had walked away after spending just a moment by the boat. There had been late night partying at this park both Christmas night and last night, and the woman who owns the nearby bait shop claims that crack dealers live in the neighborhood. The crack dealing was likely an exaggeration, but there is definitely a general rowdiness. The culprits behind this uncleating probably just stood back hoping to see Gonzo drift into the docks so Sarah or I would have to come out and fix it. However, there were at least three other lines holding us into place, so the pranksters were disappointed.

Continuing down the Caloosahatchee River required the cooperation of 3 moveable bridge tenders and one lock tender. “Approach cautiously”, the Franklin Lock tender warns over the radio, “There are about 6 manatees hanging out by the gate and they might be locked in with you.”
“Back it down. They’re right underneath your boat”, the man warns as we approach the gate, so I put the engine into idle and coasted into the lock. The water’s surface showed some sizable disturbances, but the manatees underneath were hidden behind the sun’s glare.
“Do the manatees have to pass through the lock or can they pass by it another way?”, I ask the lock tender.
“No”, he replies, “the lock is the only way. They’ve been passing through here for the entire 30 years I worked this lock.”
“So”, I enquire, “Do you open the lock just for them sometimes?”
“Yeah sometimes we do”, he says, “They know what to do. They’ll hang out at the gate till we let them through.”
At least one manatee remained locked in with us as the lock lowered the water level 3 feet, but again, all that was visible was the disturbance on the surface.

2:30PM, we arrive at the city of Fort Myers public marina, called the Fort Myers Yacht Basin. We buy 5 gallons of the $3.50/gallon gas for the opportunity to fill the water tank and keep the boat on the dock the rest of the afternoon. Showers, however, cost an additional $5,  making the total cost of the stop nearly $24. The washing machines and dryers are at least cheap, and the free wifi is fast. The showers are hot and relatively spacious.

A fellow cruiser that we’d met in Titusville, Colin, appears in the laundry room. He spent about 9 months making his boat from scratch in Beaufort, SC and has spent the past few weeks bringing it down to Fort Myers. His son lives here, who will ship off to Kuwait on Saturday. He has another son in Fallujah, Iraq.
While the 17-foot  homemade boat is obviously homemade, it is also quite sturdy, built in the style of a small fishing vessel. The cabin is quite tiny but there is plenty of deck space. Quite impressive to have completed the boat in such a short time and having taken it such a distance. Colin reminds me a lot of our old friend Lane in New Orleans, and they are even both skilled carpenters.

Sarah and I departed the marina at sunset, anchoring behind a small island a few hundred feet away. I spent the evening unsuccessfully battling an open-source marine charting program. The software will soon become necessary because the coverage of our paper charts ended upon our crossing of Lake Okeechobee. Getting by without charts will no longer be an option once we’ve left the sanctuary of this river for the wide open Gulf of Mexico.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 26° 39.190’ – 81° 52.454

Thursday 12-24-09:

At the St. Lucie Canal’s western end, the Port Mayaca Lock is left open when the water level of Lake Okeechobee is equal to that of the canal, which was the case today. Several construction workers were in the lock chamber on a barge doing some kind of maintenance, leaving only a narrow gap of space to pass through, but more than enough for Gonzo’s 8-foot beam.

The semi-triangular-shaped lake is roughly 25 miles from north to south and 20 miles from east to west, an expanse of water that put up quite a good fight today in 15mph easterly winds. Having not checked the marine forecast, just the land-based one, the lake’s ferocity came as quite a surprise. Considering the winds had been nearly calm this morning, the skies almost perfectly sunny and temperatures in the mid-70’s, I’d expected that Gonzo could hope for motor sailing at best. But no, instead she got some rather extreme moments over the 4 hours spent crossing Lake Okeechobee.

The winds began to let themselves be known a few minutes after our passage through the lock, out into the open waters. Within 2 miles from shore we experienced 10 knots and two foot waves, building up to a full 15 knots with 4-foot waves 4 miles out. The dinghy, thrashing about on the port side, had to be hauled up on deck, a very awkward task when the boat is leaning and bobbing sharply. The occasional rouge wave covered the deck in spray from bow to stern. A white cap occasionally jumped into the cockpit, dousing our backs with surprisingly chilly water.

But what great weather for this extreme sailing! Quite a good time!

There are two marked channels for navigating the lake, one that crosses the lake and another that follows the rim. Most of the channel crossing the lake only has marker posts every few miles, so it is not possible to navigate on sight alone, a compass or GPS is required. Following our cheap little Wal-Mart compass at 228 degrees proved sufficient for the crossing, then the marker posts became more frequent as we neared the lake’s western shores. And it is entirely necessary to follow the marker posts at the western edge, because shoals can be as shallow as 2 feet even several miles out. (Even at the lake’s center, the maximum depth is only 14 feet.)

The continuity of the open water was only occasionally broken, with the sighting of the occasional rouge weird duck or floating green mass of vegetation.
“Those plants have no roots!”
“Yes, they are very liberal plants!”

The engine stayed off during 90 percent of the crossing, until the winds began to become unstable again as we approached the western shore. The channel that crosses the lake does not actually cross it entirely, but rather meets back up with the rim route after 20-something miles, a saving of about 10 miles over sticking entirely with the rim route.

This intersection of channels is at the little town of Clewiston, after which comes 12 miles along the rim route. To the south of this 12 miles is an endless levy, mowed to perfection at the top and rocks or concrete bricks placed neatly along the base. The north side offers more variety, swampland dotted with spoil islands, all full of various large birds that I hate. And two wretched new species have suddenly appeared, a large ugly black crow-looking thing and a large ugly cockatiel-looking thing with a black body, brown head and a tall tuft of feathers protruding from the top of the head.

Oddly, the charred remains of decades-deceased forests line both sides of the canal here, both behind the levy and out in the swamps. Not a single limb remains on the trunks, which are all blackened along their bases. I assume this dead forest is a remnant from before we humans took control of the lake, building levies and locks to control the water levels, flooding out the forests. As for the old trees being charred, I can only assume that grass fires have taken place during times when the marshes were exceptionally dry.

Arriving at the western end of the rim route late in the afternoon, we anchored just outside the town of Moore Haven in a part of the canal that is rarely used, nestled in a swamp just past a complex of RV parks and campgrounds. This at first seemed a very peaceful spot until massive swarms of mosquitoes emerged from swamp immediately upon sunset. The atrocious little insects covered the cabin windows by the dozens, especially attracted to the white parts of the whitewall tires on my bicycle. With such a barrage, there was no keeping all of them out. Many were able to squeeze in through tiny cracks in both hatches. I went on murderous rampages at various points throughout the night, leaving a trail of guts spread throughout the cabin.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 26° 50.840’ – 81° 05.429’

Friday 12-25-09:

Sunny Christmas in the 80’s. Showers by afternoon but I’m not complaining. Passed through the Moore Haven lock this morning and then the Ortono lock later in the day. Wish we could’ve given those two lockmasters Christmas presents but I don’t think we had anything they’d have wanted. Just as the roads don’t close on Christmas, neither do the waterways, so lock and bridge masters must still report for duty.

Considering the holiday, we didn’t travel all day, stopping at 2:30 in the town of La Belle. The town’s free dock was full but the new aluminum docks at a country park on the other side of the river were empty. The docks are in fact so new that no rules have yet been posted. The absence of law was for us the go ahead to tie up there for the night. Barely was there room for Gonzo, as the docks were designed for smaller boats, but she just squeezed in with a foot to spare on either side.

We then walked across the drawbridge into La Belle, where a sign at city limits advertises the annual “Swamp Cabbage Festival”. Whatever a swamp cabbage is, it must taste better than it sounds if these people are willing to throw a party every year for it.

Considering the small town appearance from the water, downtown La Belle is surprisingly developed with two supermarkets, a half-dozen fast food restaurants and two liquor stores, among many other things. Of course, though, mostly everything was closed today. From a movie rental store we purchased two “pre-played” DVD’s for $2.99 each, then a large plastic bottle of rum and a large plastic bottle of whiskey from one of the liquor stores.

Christmas dinner was at the only restaurant open. And can you guess what kind of food it was? Chinese, of course. At least with my family, eating Chinese on Christmas seems to be becoming a tradition. It stands to reason really. They make everything else for us, so why not also our Christmas meal?

Back aboard Gonzo later, we watched the Oliver Stone movie “W”, which in my opinion was historically accurate and fair to the embattled former president. I’d like to watch the movie with someone from 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future and hear their response.

Dockage GPS coordinates: 26° 46.182’ – 81° 26.611’

Saturday 12-26-09:

Carl, in his mid-60’s, is a medium-built man well dressed in cowboy attire from head to toe, a full but crackling voice that sounds even older than his age. He’s speaking to Sarah, in the best southern accent one can imagine, on the McDonald’s patio as I emerge from the building with breakfast. A conversation ensues for the proceeding 30 minutes.

Upon hearing out story, Carl shares his;
He left Florida for Oregon in the 60’s with $17 cash and a tank of gas. Soon he found himself with nothing but a blanket, a machete and a shotgun, traveling with bums.
“I always felt safe because I slept with the machete and the shotgun under my blanket.”
He met the one and only true love of his life there, Maurice, just before he was drafted.  Soon after he entered the military, Maurice sent him a package containing a letter and a gift. The gift was a billfold he’d always liked, the letter stated that she had married another man.

Of the billfold, he says, “It was like the one Maurice had but it didn’t have that snap that women’s billfolds always have. I didn’t want one with that snap because I didn’t want people thinking I was……one of THOSE guys, that I was……FUNNY.”

“Maurice?”, I ask, “Was she a white woman?”

“Hell yes, of course!” Carl states emphatically, “She sure wasn’t no coon! I can’t even bear to think of kissing one of them. They got lips like inner tubes.”
“But someday I’d like to go back west and find that Maurice. Thinking about her still hurts me now.”

If I hadn’t been sitting at a modern McDonalds watching modern cars go by, I might’ve thought I’d slipped through some time portal. But no, Carl was really here, and despite his lingering prejudices, he has a big heart, handing over a $20 bill and refusing to take it back, offering to buy breakfast if we’re ever in town again.

Sarah and I then walk on to the town’s little library for wifi access before getting started with the day’s many shopping errands. The task was to prepare for the habitation of an uninhabited island somewhere on Florida’s southwest coast in a few days. Four stores met those needs; Family Dollar, Ace Hardware,  Goodwill and a little bait shop.

Ace Hardware was the main supplier, of many things including a 22-inch machete, handsaw, plastic sheeting, twine and a 30-foot x 6-foot section of screening. Sarah looked really funny carrying a hatchet around the store but we decided against the hatchet because small sandy islands generally don’t contain large pieces of wood.

“It looked on the security camera as if somebody was carrying a bazooka in here”, a Goodwill clerk says upon my entering with the role of screen over my shoulder.
“No”, I respond, “and I don’t think that the Goodwill would be much of a terrorist target anyway”. Some nearby customers chuckle to themselves. Clothing is buy-1-get-one. My purchases include a brimmed white hat with a snap pocket on the top. Across the front it reads, “Florida”. Sarah buys the most hippyish sundresses imaginable. Wearing those, nobody will ever believe she likes cheeseburgers.

Finally, at the bait shop, we obtain a casting net and a filleting knife set, returning to the boat with $130 left. This blog should get much more interesting over the coming days.

Monday 12-21-09

Our time on the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway has finally come to an end. After a third day spent traversing the wide waters of the Indian River, we made our final turn of the great ICW at mile number nine-hundred-and-eighty-seven. For nearly seven weeks, from Norfolk, Virginia to Jensen Beach, Florida, the ICW has been our home. For the next few days, the Lake Okeechobee Waterway will become home, cutting across the central portion of the state to its western shores on the Gulf of Mexico.

The entrance to the Okeechobee Waterway lies at the St. Lucie River, which dumps into the Atlantic Ocean just south of Jensen Beach. We found overnight refuge in a busy little body of water called Manatee Pocket near the town of Port Salerno.  Not a manatee yet to be seen here, but plenty of sport fishermen in their million-dollar toys. The shorelines of Manatee Pocket are an endless mass of marinas, private docks and comfortable waterside residences. A system of narrow canals connects many more private residences to the Pocket, with the result being near-constant traffic.

Not knowing where to land a dinghy, we tied ours up underneath a small bridge. Approaching around the town of Port Salerno are expansive mobile home retirement communities with their signature asphalt drives and perfectly maintained plastic Wal-Mart landscaping accessories.
Downtown, we find a very reasonably priced meal at the Whistle Stop, a tiny diner-style building where one can eat while sitting on a bar stool. We chat across the bar with the cook as she prepares our delicious chicken wraps. Her daughter ran off to France to join a sustainable-living farm, marrying a Dutchman in the process.

Not quite ready to get back on the boat yet, we each drank up two $1.50 Pabst Blue Ribbon happy hour drafts from Coconut Bar, a building not much bigger than the Whistle Stop. The bartender, a short and stout female, has worked here 8 years. Just a few locals, half wearing camo gear, sat around the bar. A few more locals, also wearing camo gear arrived during our short stay. Although the patrons numbered less than a dozen, their screeches and hollers were immense.
“Wow, I’ve never been in such a rednecky place”, West Coast-raised Sarah says profoundly over the twang of juke box country music. “I mean I knew they must exist but this new for me.” I’d repeatedly prepared her over the proceeding weeks as to the very southern country nature of Southern Florida, but nothing could have really prepared her other than seeing it for herself. Those who have never been here think ‘Miami, Key West’, and are caught entirely off-guard by reality, especially when traveling to the rural sections of the southwest coast.

During the return row to Gonzo we inadvertently spy on many households along the waterway, people chatting at tables, watching TV‘s in gazebos, people being generally normal as is considered normal here. Without exception, the living room of each home contains a Christmas tree. On the water, the only lights come from underneath the clear plastic bottom of our kayak as we mercilessly run down large numbers of tiny phosphorescent creatures.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 27° 09.235’ – 80° 11.745’

Tuesday 12-22-09

Day off from cruising, instead spent milling about the town of Port Salerno. The Sailfish Marina allowed us to use their facilities in exchange for docking our dinghy at the regular rate, $1 per foot, made possible by a friendly office clerk over the phone. The clerk was there upon our arrival, a woman in a black business blouse with matching skirt and an rather deep voice with an odd drawl to it. She had the receipt already printed, $8 and change, stamped “PAID”.  I’d misguessed the actual length of the little kayak, telling her it was 8 feet over the phone when it was actually more like 11.

Showers were hot and a strong wifi signal was available under a gazebo furnished with picnic tables. An oversized forklift was constantly at work nearby. As marina members arrived to use their boats, the lift would enter a hangar-sized warehouse and emerge with the appropriate boat, retrieved from massive shelving inside. As soon as one boat was lowered into the water, another would arrive and the lift would pull it out of the water, return it to its spot on the shelves.

A very healthy swarm of various large birds loitered around the fish cleaning tables, used by the returning fisherman to clean their catches. An adult egret stood right on the cleaning table. A blue heron, at least 3 feet high, stood just next to it. A dozen fat pelicans watched closely from a nearby dock.
Then came the dinner bell, in the form of a young man with an orange shirt and a tub of large grey fish. Feathers and wings flew wildly as each bird simultaneously converged in the water below the cleaning table. The scene climaxed each time the young man threw in some unwanted portion of the fish, creating a disturbance not unlike that of a UN food truck arriving to some starving African village.

Lunch from a rather expensive little Mexican restaurant downtown that is disguised as a very cheap Mexican restaurant downtown called Taqueria El Mariachi, located in a little run-down strip mall containing 3 or 4 businesses, all Hispanic-run. A single employee was ever present in the restaurant lobby, a pretty teenage girl who spoke no English other than “Thank You”. Sarah ordered in Spanish for both of us and the waitress understood immediately. Delicious, but $16.

A trip to a “Discount Beverage Shop” a half-mile from the restaurant was foiled by the fact that the only beverages the store sold were wine and beer. Florida is one of THOSE states, hard liquors only sold at state-approved stores.
But we have a backup plan; nearly a half-bottle of rum still remains on the boat. “The sky sure is 3-dimensional today”, Sarah observes as we sit out in Gonzo’s cockpit at sunset with drinks in hand.

Wednesday 12-23-09:

Underway soon after sunrise in 70-degree sun, up the St. Lucie River several miles to the St. Lucie Canal, eastern gateway to Lake Okeechobee. Locks are positioned at both ends of the canal, about 20 miles apart, to control water levels. The canal’s eastern entrance is the St. Lucie Lock.

Access to this lock required a 20-minute wait while a boat coming from the other direction was lowered back down to sea level, about a 12-foot difference. Another 20 minutes for Gonzo to enter the lock and be raised, then came an afternoon of peaceful motor sailing down the mostly straight and narrow waterway. Only rarely did another boat pass and the shoreline was primarily rural.

Unlike the swamps we’re now so familiar with, the terrain surrounding the St. Lucie canal is quite higher than the water level.  Boat wakes have eroded the entire shoreline to a sheer drop, bringing entire trees down with it. The shoreline vegetation is of an impenetrable thickness, hiding place of many shy animals, big and small.

Every few hundred feet among the wilderness is a pumping station, presumably how the canal water level is kept up during dry times. Some stations are comprised of multiple tractor-sized diesel pumps and fuel tanks the size of vans, while other stations are relatively tiny and nearly overgrown. I only witnessed one station in action, a large one whose roar could be heard from quite a distance.

Not making it completely through the canal by sunset, we anchored in a small intersecting canal underneath high-tension power lines. The power company’s maintenance road was our opportunity to take an evening walk, which conveniently included a cement ramp leading right down into the water. At least 2 large snorting animals made their presence known in the bushes, so we didn’t venture far from a wide mowed swath of grass by the water. Someday I’m going to have to fight a pig. It’s just a matter of time so I better learn how to do it.

Having dinner in Gonzo’s cockpit, flying fish leaped all around, making flights some feet long and some feet high. The general practice of these fish is to make several consecutive leaps at a time, encompassing a total distance of roughly 15 feet. Why a fish would wish to do such a thing is a mystery to me.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 26° 59.853’ – 80° 34.983’

Wednesday 12-16-09:

Sailed on big north wind along with the current all day. Maybe a nickel of gas consumed when firing up the engine for two brief moments while awaiting the opening of draw bridges. Using the engine under movable bridges is a matter of both safety and courtesy. It’s only polite to go through at a decent speed, not making everyone wait longer than need be. As for safety, I just don’t feel entirely comfortable passing under a bridge without knowing the backup power of the engine is at hand. Even if it’s not needed, it’s still always reassuring to have it in the down position and turned on. Sudden changes in wind or currents could potentially push Gonzo into the sides of a bridge or another vessel passing underneath at the same time.

Most of our day was spent in the North Indian River and the Indian River, an inland body so wide that there is relatively little daily change in currents or tidal levels. The currents are usually against Gonzo half the time, and tidal differences only cause problems, so the absence of these things was welcomed. However, any big body of water is susceptible to rough times during high wind, and the wind was nearly blowing a gale by late afternoon.

Arriving at the city of Titusville, near the home of the space shuttle, we passed the sailboat Tranquility. As you may remember from August, Tranquility is home of Leighia, Cameron and family, whom we sailed with to New York City. In a great coincidence, only yesterday evening had I called them, thinking that we would maybe seeing them in West Palm Beach in a week or so.

“Tranquility!” I yelled as loudly as possible over the roar of the waves and heavy bridge construction. Cameron poked his head out the hatch as we passed by. A text message followed a moment later, “Dudes, you’re not stopping?”. Our conversation last night had been entirely by text message and I’d failed to realize how close Titusville was till this afternoon, so no meeting plans has as yet been arranged.

Considering the awful condition of the Indian River, our plan was to anchor on the south side of the town’s swing bridge. Most of the bridge span sits on a skinny artificial island, which would offer great protection in this wind direction. However, the bridge operator couldn’t open again for another hour due to the construction.

We were forced to throw down an anchor and thrash around for an hour, during which time Cameron made quite the wild arrival in his dinghy. The little inflatable boat was nearly airborne on a couple occasions, even as it sat unoccupied alongside Gonzo. We agreed to try and meet up later on Tranquility, but the wind remained blowing just as hard after dark and I called to cancel till tomorrow. The kayak just couldn’t handle it.

The story was quite different on the south side of the bridge, though. The waters were relatively calm. Barges anchored to work on the new fixed bridge offered even more protection. Only one problem; our anchor wouldn’t stick where we wanted it to. There was a narrow strip of deep water near the town shore but the mud there was like Jello. The anchor did eventually catch but only after sliding out of the deep water. Probing down with a pole, I discovered there only to be about five feet of water. If the tide had changed just a foot, or if big waves had developed here, then we would be sitting in the mud again.

Good mud  under deep water was found a few hundred more feet from shore. We were then forced to land our dinghy upon big rocks at the base of the new bridge. More convenient landings sat further to the north, but the waves there pounded the shore fiercely.

At least a Burger King dinner was available on shore. Working class communities are the best ones for boaters, as all the cheap amenities are often right near downtown. Titusville is just that and a bit more, as it actually has a bit of a seedy feel to it. On a couple occasions, men standing in shadows on corners tried to get our attention. After dinner it was a walk in the rain 1 mile to the “Coin Laundry Supercenter”.

The dirty clothes got clean as we used the wifi, which is when it was learned that the computer’s power adapter has adapted to not working correctly. An error message pops up each time it’s plugged in, something like, “The AC power adapter type cannot be determined. The battery will not charge. Please connect a Dell adapter.”
I’m assuming that the adapter is supposed to somehow identify itself to the computer and that identifying device has broken. So very convenient for Dell; design a system to only charge on one kind of adapter, an adapter that is of course also made by Dell. Hopefully they’ll go down with Bank of America.
However, the computer does still run on the adapter even though the battery isn’t charging, so I’m thinking somebody has surely made a hack available online to get the battery charging again.

A man with a South African accent walks in to the Laundromat and asks that I help him move a heavy oak office table into a business next door. I oblige and the task takes just a few short moments. The man had been previously attempting the task with a small female.

We arrived back at the dinghy to discover that the wind had switched to the east, meaning it would be against us again. This also meant that the bridge no longer offered protection from the waves. At least it wasn’t raining anymore, and the wind had died down to about half its earlier speed.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 28° 37.060’ – 80° 47.950’

Thursday: 12-17-09

Conditions north of the swing bridge had improved immensely due to the change in wind direction, so we moved Gonzo there this morning in order to be closer to the Titusville Municipal Marina. The facilities there turned out to be entirely reasonable. Showers are listed as being $5 but the actual charge is only $2. The daily dinghy dockage fee is also listed at $5 but the actual charge is nothing(unless you stay for more than a few days).

It is impossible to buy a can opener in downtown Titusville. Save-a-Lot; no can opener. CVS; no can opener. It seems that can openers are an endless source of misery.

The remainder of our day was spent using the screened-in marina lounge for its intended purpose, lounging. With the corner television turned to the Weather Channel, we sat together in the center of the room at a wooden table, lighted Holiday tree(city property) to our side. I continued reading “The Path Between the Seas” while Sarah giggled to herself at the laptop. Upon my computer usage time, she went to work writing in her journal.

5PM. A brief return to Gonzo for the deposit of a few groceries and toilet paper. A large bottle of wine and a lemon meringue pie remained with us on the return trip to the marina, where a party was just getting underway under a covered dock at a boat yard next door. Leighia and Cameron had invited us to the event, a gathering of a-dozen-or-so live-aboard sailors.
The mastermind of the event was Rhanna, a documentary filmmaker who had touted the night as a “musical bbq”, instructing all attendees to bring not only food and drink, but also instruments. Two tables pushed together at the center of the dock were covered end to end with a variety of snacks, wines, bongo drums, recorders, a mini-guitar, and a thumb guitar, among other unknowns.

Over the first couple hours of socializing, the only hands to touch the instruments were of Maya and Fynn, the two young children of Cameron and Leighia. Maya sang an obscure Christmas carol repeatedly while Fynn hit the Bongos in no particular order. Sarah and I spent much time conversing with Rhanna, whose obscure documentary filming experiences span the globe. She was doing a piece on fly fishing in rural Russia when Gorbachev was kidnapped.
“How would you feel about having cameras on you all the time?”, she asks upon hearing of our plans to build a hut on some middle-of-nowhere uninhabited tropical island.
“Sure, no problem.”, we answer.

Mist occasionally blows underneath the roof. The music steps up as the wine bottles drain. My bugle solo gets much fanfare but Sarah’s singing with the guitar puts those brass screeches to shame. Patiently, she spends at least an hour helping Maya put some order to her Christmas carol, writing down chords to accompany it.

Friday 12-18-09

Much overnight rain. Burger King lunch. Heavy south winds with the possibility of tornadoes meant that we spent another day at the marina’s screened-in lounge. The room was nearly always empty till a loud group of boaters invaded our table with a bottle of wine late in the afternoon. Rains resumed immediately upon our return to Gonzo.
I finished the 600-something-page book “The Path Between the Seas” tonight. Highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in history. So much learned in the building of that canal, and not just about engineering. My copy of the book has fallen into three pieces but I’ll gladly send it Media Mail to anyone who’d like it. First to ask, first served..

Saturday 12-19-09

South down the Indian River all day, under full sail thanks to a 15-20 westerly.
Gas used = $0. Distance traveled = approx 40 miles.

Quite chilly, though, till midday. Our friends on the sailboat Tranquility were still anchored in Titusville as we departed the city at 10AM this morning. Soon down the river we passed what I believed to be a space shuttle hangar. The huge rectangular building appeared to have the NASA logo on the side and looked like the space shuttle hangar I’ve seen in pictures. It was my one chance to stow away and I missed it.

Anchored near the town of Melbourne, having our nightly fight with that stupid aluminum hook. It just won’t stick in anything except the hardest of bottoms. And then we awoke just before dawn to the loud banging of the keel. A sudden sustained 25mph wind had blown us hundreds of feet towards shore. Considering the big waves kicked up by that wind, leaving the boat there till morning could have torn the keel through the hull. Getting back into deeper water was a 30-minute struggle in 40-degree air. The solution was to raise the keel a few inches and then aim the boat so that the wind hit it from the side. The tilting of the boat plus the slightly raised keel was enough to keep us off the bottom long enough to travel into deeper waters.
We re-dropped the anchor nearer to the bridge span, where the holding was discovered to be good. We’re really sick of our anchor, needless to say.

In other news, I caught Sarah having a fight with the rudder today. This is noteworthy after all the fun she has recently been making of me for fighting the jib and the galley cupboard. I witnessed her violently shaking and yelling at the rudder today when it became stuck.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 28° 05.098’ – 80° 34.899’

Sunday 12-20-09

Slept in till 9, allowing the chilly overnight air to warm a bit. Sailed until noon under a 15mph northerly, then motorsailed for the day’s remainder as the winds steadily lessened.
We were at ICW mile 932 when turning on the engine today. Other than for anchoring or passing under bridges, the last time that the engine had been used was Dec 15th at ICW mile845. That means nearly 90 miles of progress on sails alone. It’s not all too often that a sailboat can do such a thing in narrow channels such as the ICW. At least a tank of gas saved thanks to Mother Nature‘s cooperation..

I mentioned the other day that our laptop computer’s power adapter will no longer charge the battery(it will only run the computer). Today we realized that the problem is more complicated than that. The adapter will work fine when plugged into Gonzo’s power inverter, but will not charge the battery when plugged into real AC. It is entirely unforgivable for Dell to have intentionally designed a system that only works with their adapter, but downright evil to have designed the identification system in that adapter so cheaply that it malfunctions. The identification system must have been damaged by the power inverter(inverters create square waves while real AC is a rounded wave). On real AC power the adapter tells the computer that it is not a Dell adapter.
And of course Dell will not fix the situation since they first sold our computer to a third party distributor. Down with Dell. Down with Bank of America.

South on the Indian River again all day, anchoring just south of Vero Beach. Sitting out in the cockpit at sunset with rum and Cokes in hand, we watched hundreds of blackbirds line up on a power line stretching across the channel.

Note: The animals act increasingly suspicious. The weird ducks(aka cormorants) continue to suddenly pop their heads out of the water, side-eyeing us while glancing back and fourth at rapid speeds, instantly reemerging or flying away. The dolphins, often well in excess of 200 pounds, pop up and snort next to the cockpit, disappearing within a second. Things are seriously shady around here.

(oops, forgot GPS coordinates)

Thursday 12-10-09

Anchored next to a 300-year-old fort this afternoon in the country’s oldest port city, St. Augustine, Florida. Rowed under Bridge of Lions to the city marina. Paid $10 dinghy dockage fee, which includes usage of the facilities. The showers were fabulous and the boater’s lounge wifi was fast. No complaints today because we needed to use the facilities, however, the city should offer a lower fee for those boaters not needing access to the showers or lounge. This is especially annoying after hearing a marina manager complain about boaters tying up dinghies in unapproved places along the city’s waterfront.

The Google search, “St. Augustine drink specials”, revealed a 3-year-old comment on an entertainment site. The comment celebrated a wonderful promotion entitled “Drinkin’ with Lincoln”, offered at a local bar called the Giggling Gator.
Considering the age of the comment, we only half-expected the Giggling Gator to still exist in this day and age, but luck was on our side tonight.
“Hello Giggling Gator”, the bartender says on the phone.
“Yes”, I reply, “Do you have any drink specials tonight?”
“Drinkin’ With Lincoln”
“What does it mean?”
“$5 all-you-can-drink drafts from 9-11”

It just kept getting better. Glancing at a map revealed the bar to be just a few blocks away.

We set off on foot through the beautiful holiday-lighted city, the brightly lit spires of massive ancient buildings rising all around us down King Street. A passing trolley of carolers sang “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”.
“This is weird”, Sarah observed, “This can’t be for real.”
But it was, and so was the Giggling Gator.

Only three or four others were seated in the little old building, all locals. One dollar Tecantes held us over till the special started. On stools next to us were Marty and Rayna, an architect-turned-waiter and a middle school art teacher. Soon arrived was Louis, a janitor with a troublesome lesbian roommate that he was about to kick out later tonight after having gained some liquid courage.

My dad and Clara arrived sometime after ten o’clock, having been en route from Illinois since early this morning. A drink or two more then came a very late dinner at the Village Inn, a Denny’s-style establishment a short distance away. Travel to the restaurant was in the fam’s new white minivan. Had somebody told me years ago that there would someday be a new vehicle in the Kiser family then I would have told them they were insane. But insanity has now become reality, almost, as the van was actually a “program” vehicle with 14,000 miles. But still, for the man who spent years driving around in a 5000lb 1972 Pontiac station wagon, this little white van is quite a revelation.

Limited visiting time on this first night of our reunion, as everyone was exhausted from the long day’s travels. And for Sarah and I, the exhaustion had been enhanced by at least six Drinkin’ with Lincolns. My dad and Clara opted to sleep in their van by the marina, which had a mattress in the back. Sarah and I rowed back under the bridge to Gonzo.

Friday 12-11-09

Who knows what people have been throwing or sinking into the water by the fort for the last three hundred years, but our anchor was stuck on one of these mystery object this morning, probably a chest of pirate goody. Much tugging on the anchor line got nowhere. Using the engine also appeared to be going nowhere until Gonzo had gone in a complete circle, then the chest of gold finally released its grip.
We’ve read that a trip line should be used when anchoring in potentially snaggy waters, such as near 300-year-old forts. I don’t yet know exactly what a trip line is, but think it involves placing dynamite or C4 under the keel.

The lift bridge was opening as we freed ourselves, but the operator said that there wasn’t time for Gonzo to pass, making us wait a half-hour for the next opening. Serving him right, his bridge got stuck for five minutes on the way down. Another movable bridge is under heavy construction just parallel to this one, which I think is the city’s original bridge, the Bridge of Lions. Boats passing through these days are greeted to plenty of action, including welders’ fireworks displays

My dad and Clara meet us at the city marina dock, two new bright yellow life jackets in hand. We take the docking opportunity to fill a gas tank and unclog the galley sink using the pressure from a garden hose. Then we set sail! The original plan had been to take Gonzo into the ocean for the first time today, but a fifty-something degree wind blowing at 15 to 20mph changed those plans. The fam would have to get their sailing experience in the ICW instead.

And even the inland route was far from pleasant, with our two hours on the water spent tensed and hunched from the cold. At least the wind did allow for pure sailing, no motor required in the southerly direction. I lowered the boom to allow for more room in the cockpit and it was by far not an entirely unpleasant experience. And considering it was 16 degrees when my dad and Clara left Illinois, this was tropical.

There were a couple snags, though. Dolphins distracted me from a red channel marker and I hit bottom, hard. Then back at the dock the engine wouldn’t restart. I’d paid for an hour of dockage to give the family a tour of Gonzo’s nooks, crannies and routines, then come time to leave, no engine. At first seemed Sarah the culprit, having flooded the engine by squeezing the primer bulb when the engine was already hot. She was guilty until proven innocent, until a joint investigation by my dad and I revealed that the real problem laid with the kill switch.

He discovered that there was no spark in the spark plug cable. I noticed that water was dripping out of the kill switch. Two plus two equaled four, wiggling the switch resulted in the engine’s brief return to life.
A 12-inch long sea turtle came to investigate our investigation.

“It’s having a salad!”, Sarah exclaimed gleefully as the rounded creature slowly lifted its greenish head from the water to take bites of algae from the dock base. The flippers flipped slowly and methodically against the waves and current. Sea turtle was oblivious to any distraction. Nothing would interrupt this salad, not even a shell rubbing from Sarah or being repeatedly bashed against the dock by waves. It was almost as if us humans were invisible, as if Sarah’s hand on the shell was a gust of wind, as if my camera 4 inches from the face was just another part of the dock.
Those videos of divers riding wild sea turtles; they must be for real.

With relatively little visitation time and a good wind, fixing the kill switch could wait. Sarah and I raised the jib, sailed Gonzo to the anchorage just south of the marina. We all then take a delicious Chinese buffet lunch, seated next to an old woman in a pink bath robe. “Well there goes that meal”, the woman says to the man seated across from her after leaning over to puke discreetly in the corner, “Somebody will have to clean that up.” In the bathroom, the word “Chink” is scratched prominently into the paint of a toilet stall.

Then to Castillo de San Marcos, the big old fort downtown. Built in the late 1600‘s, the fort still appears today in great condition, the main tourist draw of the town. The structure remains almost entirely original, made of coquina blocks. This type of construction involved molding countless tiny fragments of coquina shells into large blocks, the result being a material that does not shatter upon being hit by cannon fire.

Many rooms and passageways(one two feet tall) inside the fort are open to the public, intentionally left dark and mysterious. Only a bit of sunlight streams in through the small windows, with much of the light coming from the florescent bulbs behind informational displays. Especially in the rooms without windows, the soft yellowish florescent reflects off the coquina in a very pleasantly eerie way.  As one can imagine, ghost tours thrive in St. Augustine. For the late-night crowd, there’s even a “Haunted Pub” tour. But the only thing scary, however, is probably the price.

“Get off the cannon please.”, a ranger yells at a young group of foreign tourists on the fort roof. The “active“ photography  of the cannon does not cease, then a moment later, “GET OFF THE CANNON!”. The ranger then stares Sarah down as she sticks her hand through a hole in a lookout wall. A sign on the wall reads, “Notice that some of the original red paint remains here. Please help protect it by not touching.” The rangers expression further darkens upon seeing my dad gently glide a finger across the red paint.
“This is why people write a punk song about mud”, I tell Sarah for the 10th time since arriving at the fort, an expression she also repeats to me on just as many occasions.

We walk down to Flagler College, probably one of the most magnificent buildings in all of Florida. Built by Henry Flagler, a colleague of Rockefeller, in the late 1800’s as a super-luxury hotel. The building remains today in all its glory. Millions of dollars in grants and donations have helped restore the building to its original splendor, intricately painted cathedral ceilings and all. Just the initial stroll into the courtyard at once leaves one staring in awe, turning in slow circles taking in the grandeur. Still an amazing inspiration today, but imagine what those viewing it in the 1800’s would have thought!
Walking into the main lobby only intensifies the admiration.  The floors alone here required 150 men working three shifts a day for two years! The only people building such expensively-detailed structures today are Saudi princes.
Maybe more amazing than the building itself is the fact that the outrageous oil fortunes required to build them are still being made over 100 years later, even thought the world has been technically able for years to develop other means of energy production.

Sit in marina lounge using wifi. In record time, my dad falls asleep in a wicker chair. Conscious one second, snoring the next, no exaggeration. Purchase wine(3 for $10!). The night’s end finds us at an Econo Lodge, which will be shared with Sarah and me for two days. It’s just great to get off the boat for a change, after having not spent a night away for nearly two months.

Saturday 12-12-09

Free almost-continental breakfast. Breads, doughnuts, coffee and juices. The hotel manager steps out of an office with a 12-inch-tall white cockatiel perched calmly upon her left shoulder.

Returning to the city marina, my dad and I make a laborious kayak journey against the current to Gonzo. The journey is further enhanced when a light rain develops.With the hotel and its facilities, there’s no longer a need to be paying $10 a day for dinghy dockage. The kayak can be deflated and stored in the back of the van as long as it can be reinflated later. Hence the need for the return trip to Gonzo, to retrieve the pump.

Many of the boats anchored near Gonzo are entirely derelict, an observation that came as quite a surprise considering the close proximity to downtown. Hatches missing, cabins half flooded, sitting crooked in the water, hulls green with algae. One sailboat even had a gaping tear in the aft section of its fiberglass, only kept afloat by a tarp that had been wrapped around the hull to keep passing waves from flooding it.

We attempt to take a shortcut back by landing the dinghy along the town’s seawall, but that plan is thwarted by the low tide, leaving a wide muddy swath between the wall and the water.

With the rain now falling harder, we made our way 14 miles south in the van to Fort Matanzas. The Matanzas River inlet is the “back door” to St. Augustine. The fort was built here in the 1740’s to protect the city from invaders wishing to sneak in and attack the city from the south. Also made of coquina blocks in the same style as its much larger sibling fort downtown, Castillo de San Marcos, Fort Matanzas has largely remained original, with extensive restoration work having been done in the early 1900’s

Probably the only reason the structure still existed at the time of its restoration was no doubt due to its island location, between the mainland and the waterway that has since become the ICW. Otherwise, people surely would have robbed it of every usable brick and block over the years it sat unused. Access is granted only by boarding the tour boat that docks at park headquarters on the mainland, a few hundred feet away.

Most of the benches on the dual-motored pontoon-style boat were wet except for the innermost edges. The captain was an entirely butch female accompanied by a more feminine female and a slightly feminine male. The females were dressed in ranger attire, while the male was dressed in the attire of a period soldier, a functional musket included.

Docking across the waterway, the women remained under the shelter of the boat while the man provided the tour. Festivities began with a firing of the musket. “I was hoping to shoot one of the cannons for you”, said the tour guide, but unfortunately none of my cannon volunteers showed up today. It takes at least two people to fire the cannon.”
“I’ll help you!”, one of the tourist quickly offers.
“No, it’s a state requirement that you go through bi-annual cannon school.”, answers the guide.

Cici’s Pizza for lunch, a national all-you-can-eat buffet chain offering at least a dozen different kinds of pizza’s. The cost, just $5!
We take advantage of a break in the rain to further explore downtown. A woman selling photos in a town pavilion approaches me and Sarah from behind as we browse her table. In each of the many pictures appears rays of sunshine striking various objects.
“What kind of lens did you use to take these?”, I ask her, noticing the odd pixilation.
“My cell phone and my third eye.”, she answers.
Not quite having caught the last part of her sentence, I reply, “Oh, a cell phone.”
The woman is quick to correct me, “AND my third eye.”
And of course, as anyone can imagine, her description continued on in much greater detail, “These are pictures of Rainbow Bridges. They are gateways to the other side, the universe that the world will convert to in the year 2012, at the end of the Mayan calendar. Anyone who can‘t see Rainbow Bridges by then will die. I even see flames shooting from the ground at times, which is quite disturbing when you‘re driving.”

In exchange for the entertainment, we buy a $2 postcard sized print.

The annual parade of lighted boats is about to start at 6PM, but so does the rain. We sit in the van waiting it out, my dad snores in an instant, as if someone simply flipped the sleep switch. The falling water teases repeatedly, quickly becoming steady again after each lull.
Temperatures in the upper 60’s, but not quite warm enough to be comfortable wet. Change of plans, we’ll see a movie instead. The first choice had been “The Road”, based on a book I read, but that flick was unavailable even in the town’s 16-screen cinema. Instead we chose “2012”, which coincidentally happens to be about the world’s destruction at the end of the Mayan calendar.
This movie was all very realistic except when a live giraffe was carried underneath a helicopter through the Himalaya’s without earmuffs. If you’ve seen the movie, then you’ll get the joke. It is at least worth watching for pure entertainment value.

Sunday 12-13-09

Repack van. Checkout of Econo Lodge.

“Some things you just don’t ask.”, my dad’s words in a hotel parking lot near St. Augustine Beach after having just been denied parking permission from a clueless clerk inside. The only reason he’d asked in the first place was in response to my question, “Have you ever been towed?”.

He reparks the van elsewhere while Sarah, Clara and I begin walking down a long brand-new boardwalk to the beach in near-80-degree sun. Portions of the walkway are surrounded by water covered with a solid bright green layer of duckweed. The perfectly flat, brightly colored surface offers the illusion that one could walk right across it, but anyone trying to do so would quickly realize their mistake upon finding themselves in the stagnant water underneath.

A few private cars drive up and down the spacious beach, allowed to do so with the purchase of a permit. The people are as sparse as the cars, just a few here and there, The total number of people may have been great, but were barely noticeable with so much available space.
The tide lowering down the long gradual slope of the beach left a wide wet swath, leaving anyone walking there to appear a saint, the illusion of walking across open water.
“It looks like a sea mushroom.” my dad says of an odd lifeless creature found washed up. More solid than a jellyfish but of the same clear slimy appearance, the strangeness had a base that looked as if it was once attached to the sea floor.

Denny’s lunch. We have a bet, for entertainment purposes only, as to how long our waitress has been a waitress.
“I’ll ask her”, Clara readily agrees.
“Well lets ask after we get the food, in  case she thinks we’re making fun of her.”
But the truth is that nobody would ever think Clara was making fun of them, even if she was, and the waitress answers quite happily, with whomever guessed closest to 30 years having won the bet.

We struggle to find downtown parking amid the heavy weekend tourist crowds, eventually finding a resting place for the van near the magnificent Memorial Presbyterian Church. The towering building was constructed in just six months by Henry Flagler, the builder of the old super-luxury hotel we’d looked at on Friday night. The reason for the haste was that Flagler’s wife was seriously ill at the time. He wanted a place for her and he built one in grand style. Anyone would guess that construction must have taken a decade or more, as the building shows no signs of haste whatsoever.

We enter the old super-luxury hotel, now Flagler College, through a back door just as a tour is starting. We follow the tour from the lobby to the courtyard, then back inside to the dining room, all fit for a king.
“I notice you don’t have a tour sticker”, the especially cheerful young student tour guide says with a smile to the last two people to enter the dining room, “Would you like to pay to join the tour now?”
Sarah and I slither off to a corner, out of sight until the guide resumes her speech. As for my dad and Clara, nobody would suspect them anyway, and if they did, Clara would just use her mind control on them.

The students at Flagler College must be some of the luckiest students in the world. Where else could they find such luxury, and for basically the same price of a mid-grade state-run school. In all of the remaining years of my life, there is a good chance that I will never dine in such a room as the one here. Even the Vatican can’t have much on it. The original thousand-dollar-a-piece chairs have been cleverly replaced with identical fakes, but the rest is as it was since the 1800’s. Absolutely perfect in every detail.

Moving on to the equally fantastic and nearly as spacious ladies parlor. “This is the largest piece of white onyx in the northern hemisphere”, the tour guide says of the mantle, “The chandeliers are all Austrian crystal.” The list of extreme luxuries goes on and on. The ladies parlor is not open to the general student population, its doors unlocked only for tour groups and special events.

“All the bums come out as soon as it gets warm”, Sarah says of all the dirty men milling about with backpacks in the town square. True enough, there had been only one or two out in last night’s tepid wetness. “Let me see a kiss!”, one of them yells up a sidewalk at Sarah and me. We oblige. The old man cheers.

A white straw hat sits on top of a downtown roadside pole for the third straight day, a hat which looks like it would be just perfect for sailing. “But after three days”, we observe, “it would be like taking a relic from the Titanic.”. Only a photo is taken. However, upon closer inspection, this was a nasty hat anyway.

We drive the van to the water’s edge, inflate the dinghy and say goodbye. The family reunion had come to an end. My dad and Clara watch from the seawall as we row off into the light of sunset. We find the hook end of a boat hook along way. One of Gonzo’s boat hooks just so happens to be missing the hook end.

Monday 12-14-09

Wore shorts and short sleeves for the first time in nearly two months. Warm even at sunrise.

Bypassing the engine kill switch was so easy, unplugging a single connection, but the quick fix revealed that the underlying problem may be more complicated than just a bad switch. The engine started instantly upon disconnection of the cable, then I expected it do die again once the cable was reconnected, but no, it just kept running until I pressed the kill switch!
As far as I understand, pushing the kill switch completes a circuit that shuts off the engine. The spring-loaded switch is only in the “closed” position when pressed, which would explain why disconnecting the cable allowed the engine to start. Then it gets confusing. All evidence had pointed to water damage having caused to switch to remain stuck in the “closed” position, which meant that then engine should have died as soon as the cable was reconnected.
And no, it wasn’t a fluke. The same thing happened in multiple tests. Still, there is a chance that the universe is playing a practical joke on me, that water just so happened to be moving around in the switch at certain times as to make this unlikely scenario appear to be occurring. However, considering that this unlikely scenario passed three tests, the odds are strongly in favor of it.

Departed St. Augustine.

Sarah lost my green bath towel, my only bath towel  probably in revenge for my having shed hair into her purse. I’d hung the towel on the lifelines do dry in the southerly breeze, to bask in the 75-degree sunlight. Little was my innocent fuzzy friend to know what Sarah had probably been plotting for days, maybe weeks.
“Your towel fell off”, she calmly called down into the cabin as I sat typing on the laptop. I went to the bow with a hook, desperately scanning the water’s surface as Gonzo circled around the supposed crime scene, but to no avail.
Sarah had most likely ripped the peaceful cotton entity to shreds an hour or so earlier, tossing the severed limbs over her shoulders with an evil grin, mentioning the absence only now in a premeditated attempt to hide her transgressions.

With good potential anchorages very limited in this part of the ICW, we chose a canal leading to a cement factory. The Skipper Bob guide reads that the canal is a popular anchorage where boaters should use two anchors to keep themselves from swinging into the center of the canal and blocking barge traffic from the factory. A sign, “Keep channel clear for barges”, was entirely overgrown, leading to the probability that that barges are no longer present. Factoryish sounds could still be heard in the vicinity of the factory, however, so we did use the second anchor just in case.

Soon following Gonzo was two trawlers, then a sailing catamaran, then finally one more sailboat. Not as much as a ripple in the water all night long, and relatively little tidal difference. It was almost as if we had a bed on land.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 29° 29.837’ – 81° 08.830’

Tuesday 12-15-09

A new boat breakfast invented; grilled bacon and cheese sandwiches. The deliciousness made possible by the modern advances of generic Velveeta and pre-cooked bacon. As you may remember from the supermarket, both items are sold unrefrigerated.

Heavy fog. I run Gonzo aground within five minutes of departing the anchorage. Sarah takes up a watch position on the bow, coffee in hand, directing me towards channel markers and away from crab pots and logs. The widespread fog turns into just occasional fog banks by late morning and we return to our regular routine; one in the cockpit one in the cabin. The sun becomes hot to the point of sweating, but the fog banks never entirely dry up, constantly replenished by the ocean and pushed in on an easterly wind.

Daytona Beach. The tops of oceanside residential skyscrapers protrude from the ground clouds. With the cost of real estate so high($1 mil for a little fixer upper lot), the most economical method of large-scale construction becomes the skyscraper.

An especially heavy fog bank moves in from 3 till 4PM. Visibility of less than a quarter mile blocks all channel markers and all reference points, including land. Sarah retakes her lookout position on the bow as I focus my attention to 150 degrees on the compass.

“There’s a tanker”, she says without emotion. The mass had appeared from nowhere withinin seconds, lumbering again into nothing within a moment of passing. The country sheriff speedboat appears in the same fashion, but at many times the speed. The uniformed driver suddenly cuts away upon sight of Gonzo, passing within 25 feet and never slowing down. Quite an example they are setting, in heavy fog with “Slow – Manitee Area” signs posted every few hundred feet.

We take up anchorage near an ocean inlet by the town of Isleboro, spending the sunset hour exploring an uninhabited island just north of the anchorage. I school Sarah on ant lions, expending much effort in catching a victim fire ant. The ants were no dummies, quickly jumping off my scooping leaf each time I scooped one up. Finally success. The ant lion did its job. But, we didn’t stick around to watch for two reasons. The bugs were biting and some descent-sized creature was rustling around in the bushes.
“I think it snorted”, says Sarah.
“OK, lets go then”, I reply, “we have to Google ’how to fight pigs’”.
However, this may have not been a pig. Probably just a raccoon, based on all the tracks in the island sand.

Anchorage GPS coordinates: 29° 03.636’ – 80° 55.943’