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Art busy cooking up fresh shrimp, fish and green tomatoes

This was my plate after going through the line…

then they start bringing you plates of fish and shrimp.

The Riverside Art Market

Vendors of all kinds…

and lots of good food too.

A few of the beautiful winter vegetables 

I think these may be the largest shrimp I’ve ever seen. The lady told us the red ones taste like lobster. 

The view from the market

The Chili Cook-Off

Ortega River Marina

The Pearl’s home for the next 6 weeks

The marina’s new deck, pool and bath house

The view from the marina’s new deck area…overlooking the docks.

Stan touching up some of the worse spots before we put a coat of Cetol Gloss on all the teak.

View from the flybridge at sunset

The baskets I’ve been working on this winter. This one is 8″ across and about 3″ high

Indian River – Anchorage

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” ―Cesare Pavese

Just a quick update to the blog to let everyone know where we are…life isn’t very exciting at the moment. We spent Tuesday in Vero Beach, it was cooler and windier than Monday, so we were glad we had spent Monday wandering through the beach area. Tuesday we took advantage of the local bus and went to Publix, had lunch and did a little shopping. Before returning to the boat we visited with friends that are docked at the marina. We spent the rest of the day hiding on the boat from high winds and cold temperatures. We have to keep reminding ourselves we’re in south Florida.

Today we moved north to Cocoa, which is a cute town we enjoyed visiting in 2011, but today we decided against going ashore. The high winds and cold temperature makes a ride in the dinghy very uncomfortable. In fact we spent most of the day driving from the lower helm so we could stay out of the wind and stay warm. Kind of fun for a change, but we both would enjoy a warm day…at least the sun has been out and that helps. This summer when it’s hot, I hope we remember these days.

Fritz Island – Anchorage

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

One of the things we enjoy most while cruising is finding small local places to eat or visit where we can talk with locals or just watch the world go by. While we were in Ft. Pierce yesterday, we found the Sailfish Brewing Company, not far from the marina, which had a nice selection of locally brewed beer. Another place we love in Ft. Pierce is the Importico’s Bakery. It’s a nice place to enjoy a relaxing breakfast and a great cup of coffee. We usually like sitting at one of their sidewalk tables where we can watch the town begin to wake up, but today it was just too cold to enjoy that.

The day warmed up quickly with winds far less than there were on Sunday, so we had a nice short cruise to Vero Beach. We’ve been cruising the east coast for five years and this is the first time we’ve stopped in Vero. It’s a popular place with cruiser because everything you need is easily accessible and everyone is so friendly. They have a wonderful free bus system that takes you anywhere you need to go. Some refer to this area as Velcro Beach, because cruisers pull in for a few days and just can’t seem to leave…we’ll see what happens. We plan to stay a few days to relax, provision and visit with some friends.

Sailfish Brewing Co.

A glass of Lone Friar and White Marlin

Importico’s Bakery

The winds were so high on Sunday we had white caps in the ICW

Vero Beach

The sunsets have been amazing lately

Lake Worth – Anchorage

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” – Rabindranath Tagore

We stayed in Dania Beach on Friday hiding out from another front that blew in during the night. Friday was another cold wintery day in south Florida. We’ve seen too many of those this year…and a stronger front is coming in tonight.

Saturday started out cloudy but turned into a wonderful day, boats of all sizes were everywhere and people were on their decks enjoying the warm sun. The Miami Boat Show starts next week so we saw A LOT of large yacht being moved that way. We traveled over fifty miles today through the land of excess…mega mansions and mega yachts. The economy here seems to be doing great because in every open spot new construction is going up. Travel through the ICW in this area is slow but very entertaining.

The sun breaking through the clouds…we left early this morning so we could get out of our slip at high tide.

You can see why we needed to leave at high tide…this picture was take Friday at low tide. 

We spotted six cruise ships in port in Fort Lauderdale

Another yacht that looks like it’s from the Star War movie

Not the largest yacht we spotted today but one of the prettiest

The yacht built for Steve Jobs – Venus is 260′ long making is a super yacht, but I don’t think it’s very pretty.

Here comes the next cold front

Dania Beach Marina

“Come walk with me along the beach, where sunsets seem within reach, we’ll search for treasures in the sand, as we walk hand in hand.” —Unknown

We began our morning on the flybridge enjoying our view of Boca Chita. This is a great spot and we probably would have stayed longer, but a front is moving in tonight and another one on Saturday so we needed to move on while we could get across Biscayne Bay.

The Miami skyline is beautiful as you cruise up Biscayne Bay and it looks wonderful from the water, but I have no desire to go ashore for a visit. Sometimes things are just better viewed from the outside. The port of Miami is a busy place with lots to see and a lot of boat to avoid…as pretty as the port is…it feels wonderful when we leave it in our wake.

We spent almost a week in Hollywood Beach in 2011 and enjoyed the area, so that was our destination today. Unfortunately the marinas in the area were full; there are a few places to anchor, but no shore access for our dinghy…so we moved up to Dania Beach. We’re at a nice marina just across the street from the beach and within biking distance of lots of shops and restaurants. After getting settled we rode our bikes along the boardwalk to Hollywood Beach. We enjoyed our afternoon visiting with a few people and watching the world go by. We’ll probably be here a few days as the weather settles down again.

Miami skyline

Miami from the water

A little hole in the wall kind of place on the ICW in Hollywood Beach…looks like a fun place.

We saw this catamaran in Hollywood Beach, it looks like it’s from a Star War movie 

Dania Beach Pier – located right across the street from our boat.

Hollywood Beach

Biscayne National Park

“At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough.”—Toni Morrison

I’ve read and seen pictures of Boca Chita for years. It’s a beautiful little spot that is part of Biscayne National Park. Biscayne National Park is within sight of downtown Miami. The park protects one of the most extensive coral reef tracts in the world, the longest stretch of mangrove forest on the east coast, the clear, shallow waters of Biscayne Bay and the northernmost Florida Keys. Ninety-five percent of the park’s 172,971 acres is water.

Mark C. Honeywell, a wealthy industrialist and his wife purchased the Boca Chita Key in 1937. They built many structures on the island between 1937-1940 including a chapel, a lighthouse, a pavilion for holding picnic, a generator room and a garage. The Honeywells and their guests would come from Miami in their luxury yachts to enjoy picnics and parties held on the island. The canon located near the lighthouse would be fired to welcome their guests. Honeywell’s wife died before a house could be built on the island and he sold it in 1945. It became part of Biscayne National Park in 1990 and is one of its favorite islands. We heard it can be a loud obnoxious place to be on the weekend, loaded with partiers and music that is played late into the night, but our experience was just the opposite…it was very quiet and relaxing. We enjoyed hiking around the island, walking on the beach and looking at the lighthouse. We had the island almost to ourselves…definitely one of our favorite new places.

Boca Chita Lighthouse is used as the symbol for Biscayne National park. It is 65-foot and was built in the 1930s. Honeywell built it with the objective of using it as a navigation guide for his business operations on the island. However, a few hours after the lighthouse was lighted and commissioned, it was closed down, as he had failed to inform and obtain permission from the U.S. Coast Guard about the purpose of his project. The U.S. Coast Guard considered it a navigation hazard, as it was not charted. The top deck of the lighthouse provides scenic views of the bay, ocean, Miami, Key Biscayne, and the skyline of the Miami Beach.

The view from the top of Boca Chita Lighthouse

If you look very close you can see the Miami skyline on the left side of this picture

Boca Chita Lighthouse

Looking into the harbor from the lighthouse

The Chapel

Looking across Biscayne Bay to Miami

Treasures from the sea

One of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen

Blackwater Sound – Anchorage

“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.” ―Robert Henri

We’re moving up the Keys. Our day started in Islamorada enjoying our coffee on the flybridge…our favorite way to begin our day. Our next stop was Key Largo. We anchored in Blackwater Sound and took our dingy through the cut to Largo Sound and John Pennekamp State Park. Pennekamp offers snorkeling trips and glass bottom boat rides out to the reefs, but the park also provides mooring balls at the best sights so private boats can stop and snorkel. We’d love to visit some of those sights one day, but the Atlantic was a little too rough and the water a little too chilly for us today.

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was established in 1963 as the first undersea park in the United States. The park and the adjacent Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, it covers approximately 178 nautical square miles of coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove swamps. It extends 3 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and is approximately 25 miles in length. These areas were established to protect and preserve a portion of the only living coral reef in the continental United States.

We wandered around the park and went through the visitor center and aquarium, it would be a great place to visit in a RV but we both were glad we anchored in Blackwater Sound instead of staying in the park.  After visiting the park we did a little more exploring in the sound before we stopped at Sundowners for an afternoon snack. We spent the evening enjoying a nice dinner onboard with a great view of the sunset. It felt wonderful to be swinging on the hook.

Our morning view

The Marvin D. Adams Waterway that runs between Blackwater Sound and Largo Sound

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

A few of the tanks at the aquarium 

Barley Basin – Anchorage

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

We’ve had a hard time deciding whether we’ll go to the Bahamas or not…one day we say yes and the next we are thinking we’ll just move up the coast enjoying some of the places on the east coast of Florida we haven’t visited before. Our apprehension about going has more to do with the weather than anything else. We’d love to meet our friends in the Exumas to explore the beautiful beaches, small cays and fantastic snorkeling spots, but we really don’t want to spend six weeks or more just hiding out on our boat from high winds and rain as cold fronts move through that area of the Bahamas. It’s been a very strange winter here in the Keys and in the Bahamas. Cold fronts normally don’t come this far south in the Keys and they seldom go as far south as Georgetown in the Exumas…it’s the reason cruisers enjoy spending winters in these spots. But this year has been an exception…every few days a strong front has moved through, dropping the temperature, large amounts of rain and creating heavy winds.

One of the best things about cruising is not having a set plan. We don’t have a schedule we need to keep and we don’t have anywhere we really need to be…we are very flexible. We left Marathon this morning and have decided to slowly move north. Our car is in Jacksonville…so at the moment our plan is to see a few new places and a few favorite places along the coast as we make our way back to our car. Unlike many of our friends who are hiding out from the cold winter of the north, the weather at our home is about the same as it is in southern Florida…so we’ve decided to head home a little early to enjoy a visit with our little ones and maybe spend a few days cruising on Texas Pearl.

In early spring we’ll be back on The Pearl and head north. Our plan is to spend the summer in New England, Maine and maybe even make it to Nova Scotia…but it’s just a loose plan and by no means carved in stone. We can change our minds at any time and that’s just another reason we enjoy cruising…the freedom to go where we want, do what makes us happy and to be able to change our minds at anytime.

Dinner with a view and fun friends at Lorelei’s

Burdine’s…still a few clouds in the sky when we left and we did get a little wet on our way home.

Local entertainment by Ty and Cory at Burdine’s

Fun with new and old friends

Fried key lime pie…one of the reason we needed to get out and ride our bikes this week

Sombrero Beach on Friday was a busy place…a little cold for the water, but the sun felt wonderful.

The couples who made our picnic a reality. We had 58 people attend.

Ted and Sally were in charge of cooking up the hamburgers and hot dogs…they did a great job.

A few of the MTOA members who came out to the picnic 

Cruiser’s Net swap meet on Saturday

A farewell dinner with the crews of Amici and Exuberant. It’s not really a goodbye…just a see you later. We’ll see everyone again later in the year.