Pelican Bay - Cayo Costa Island

May 26, 2013

For the last few days we have been anchored in Pelican Bay on Cayo Costa Island, one of our favorite anchorages.  We try to spend some time here at the beginning and end of our winter cruise.  It is a very beautiful place.

That said, it is also very busy on Memorial Day weekend.  We usually try to avoid being here on holidays, but schedule and weather made it the best choice.

A couple of sunset and sunrise photos:



Red clouds at sunset

Sunrise over the anchorage

Hiking around the many trails, we saw and heard numerous raccoons.   All along the west coast of Florida is prime Loggerhead turtle nesting grounds.  Unfortunately, the raccoons love to raid the nests, so the rangers are currently trapping the raccoons to reduce their overpopulation.

Upside-down Raccoon



Rightside-up Raccoon

Tomorrow we sadly leave here at first light for a looong trip up the coast to Tampa.  We will exit the sound at Boca Grande and travel off-coast up to Tampa Bay and then hopefully into the Manatee River for our final anchor of the trip.

Tom
Anchored Pelican Bay
Cayo Costa Island, FL
Map Cruise 2012-13

Horseshoe Bay - Sanibel Bayou

May 19, 2013

For the last few days we have been anchored in 'Horseshoe Bay' on Sanibel Island near the Ding Darling Preserve.

Typically we see a wide range of birds here, but this visit they seem somewhat scarce. 

We did dinghy into the Sanibel Bayou today and had a great 'drift' through a few miles.  You must go in at near high tide and when the wind and current are right, which they were today, you can turn off the outboard and just drift.  It is a great way to observe birds and other wildlife. 

We saw a number of ospreys hunting.  It is interesting to watch them as they line up on a fish at an altitude of 100-200 feet and then do a straight dive down.  They are successful most of the time and then fly off to a tree or return to the nest to eat. Ospreys will ONLY eat fish - they say that mice can have a nest at the base of a tree with an Osprey nest, and the birds will leave them alone.  This is not true of eagles, who will eat just about anything. 

When they are eating, they are somewhat easier to photograph because they do not want to carry the fish to another location.  The bird in the following picture had already moved once and presented what we call a 'butt shot', but his perch was precarious, so he was spreading his wings for balance - it makes the shot somewhat interesting.  If you look closely under the branch he is perched on, you can see the fish.

Probably our most interesting encounter was a group of 5-6 manatees that were hanging out in one area - probably eating some grass there.  We floated around them for some time and they kept come up around our boat.  They are hard to photograph because they are not on the surface for long and you do not know where they will next surface, but the following picture is decent.

The bayou, of course is comprised of mostly mangroves.  The yellow leaf in the following picture is a 'sacrificial' leaf.  The water here is brackish (part salt/part fresh) and most plants could not live here.  The red mangroves do absorb more salt than they can tolerate, but they concentrate excess salt in select leafs, and then drop those leaves- quite an ingenious system.

Yellow 'sacrificial' leaf

The following picture shows why red mangroves were called 'walking' trees by the native Americans in this area.

Tomorrow we plan to head a few miles north to Pelican Bay on Cayo Costa, one of our favorite anchorages on the west coast of Florida.


Tom
Anchored Horseshoe Bay
Sanibel Island, FL
Map Cruise 21012-13

Marco - Smokehouse Bay

May 16, 2013

We are currently anchored in Smokehouse Bay on Marco Island.

First a little of how we ended up here.  Readers of our blog may know that we had planned to return to Bradenton via the Dry Tortugas. After leaving Miami we headed to Little Shark River to wait out a cold front before heading to the Tortugas.  Well it is true that the front lingered south of Little Shark delaying a run in that direction until the end of this week and we are running out of time to get back to Bradenton by 6/1.  But if truth be told, two weeks of 'civilization' in Miami after 4 1/2 month in the Bahamas made us crave some more.  So we are here in Marco, the land of high-priced condos, restaurants, and especially Starbucks (Tom's emphasis).



Marco 'fishing camp'

We were told about Smokehouse Bay by a friend from Boca Grande.  It is not mentioned in any cruising guides and it is a bit tricky to get to, but it is a nice well protected anchorage.

To get there you enter Marco from the Gulf via Capri Pass, exit the Marco River into Collier Bay, and follow the narrow, but well marked channel - in fact it is better marked than the charts would indicate.  It is very narrow and the key is to favor the seawall - that is where the water is usually the deepest.  I saw nothing less than 7 feet at high tide.  The Bay is generally 12 feet deep except for a 4' shoal on the westerly side, which we managed to find last night at midnight.  But it was a minor soft grounding, so no harm done.

The only negative is difficult shore access, which is typically the case in 'high-brow' locations.  The nearby Esplanade mall has a good restaurant and a Starbucks. After docking our dinghy there, I was given a rather stern OK by the Dockmaster with an admonishment to not leave the property.  We had lunch, coffee, and ice cream at Cold Stone, so I think we paid our 'rent' thank you. 

Esplanade - actually new construction, but quite nicely done to look like row-houses

We did break the rules by going across the street to Winn-Dixie, which we later found out has a dinghy dock.  There, after fielding a question about my Exuma t-shirt, we met a cruising couple who now live in Marco.  It turns out that the gentleman was one of the individuals who challenged the Marco anchoring restrictions back in 2007 and after taking the case all the way to the FL Supreme Court, ended up with a decision that made it clear that local FL municipalities can not restrict anchoring in 'navigable waters'.  All Florida boaters owe these gentleman a profound thanks!



Docking ladder near a hotel with private docking only. Are the wires unauthorized use shock-security? - just kidding.

Our current plan is to leave here tomorrow and head up to Pine Island Sound where we will spend the final weeks of our cruise before shooting up to Bradenton by 6/1.

Tom
Anchored Smokehouse Bay
Marco Island, FL
Map Cruise 2012-13

Little Shark River - Mangroves & Bugs

May 13, 2013

We remain anchored in the Little Shark River and today we took a 7 mile dinghy ride in the river and the mangrove forest.

The mangroves here are unique (at least in our experience) in that they are huge - 50+ feet. They also block out the sun from any shorter vegetation so there is very little undergrowth under the canopy. When you travel right into the forest via a little creek, it feels very primeval.

There are several places in the Bahamas where people talk about the mangrove forest. For example, on Shroud Cay in the Exuma Park, it is popular to time the tide and dinghy through the mangroves on the northern creek. There and anywhere else we saw them in the Bahamas, we have been underwhelmed by the mangroves. The soil there is so rocky and poor and the land is subject to periodic tropical storms, that everything grows sparse and short. Following are some pictures of Bahamian mangroves to showing a comparison to the Florida mangroves, particularly those at Little Shark.



Bahamian Mangroves at Shroud Cay



Little Shark Mangroves

During our ride we had a dolphin swim under our dinghy and bump the boat.  Dolphins, of course, seem to love to play in the bow wake of our sailboat and it happens all the time.  But this is the first time one tried to swim with our dinghy.  He headed under and turned belly up - next thing we knew we got a solid 'bump' on the bottom of the boat.  He then immediately doubled back and made another belly-up pass, not touching this time. We are not sure if he 'miscalculated' his first pass or if he just wanted a more vigorous belly rub.

Our 'neighbors' here so far have included turtles (Loggerheads we think), dolphins, manatees, and a variety of birds. In particular we have gotten some rather close views of several immature ibises; they are distinctive in that they have mottled grey and brown feathers, rather than the pure white of the mature birds.

This area is strikingly beautiful, but it is probably not to every one's taste. It is very desolate and wild. And then there are the insects! There is a bug for every temperature and the no-see-ums seem particularly bad this year (and we have been to this area in May several times before). Last night around 8PM we resorted to turning off all the lights inside the boat and listening to music in the dark until bedtime, something we have never had to do before. We have screens, but it is literally impossible to keep them out entirely.


Tom
Anchored Little Shark River
SW Florida
Via Satellite Phone

Little Shark River & Turtles

May 11, 2013


We currently are anchored in Little Shark River on the far southwest coast of Florida. This is a desolate, but interesting area rich in wildlife. Upon anchoring we were greeted by a huge turtle - we don't know turtle species well enough to identify him. He circled the boat a couple of times as if checking out the new 'big turtle' in the neighborhood and saying "Hey dude, welcome to Little Shark".

Today completed our three day trip from Miami. Yesterday we transited from near Key Largo to Marathon, where we got some fuel and anchored outside of Boot Key Harbor channel. Today it was through the Moser Channel bridge into Florida Bay and up to Cape Sable and Little Shark. We had a delightful broad reach sail for most of the trip! Also noticeably absent were the mass quantities of stone crab traps that typically cover this area. The season is over in a couple of days, and we have heard it has not been a good season so many crabbers appear to have already pulled their traps.

We had planned to continue to the Dry Tortugas after a day of rest, but the weather is not encouraging with an approaching cold front. On the plus side, there is probably no better place to weather a cold front than Little Shark. Huge mangroves line the banks of the river completely blocking most wind.

Lastly, we will be without cell phone or Internet for at least a week or so. This seems particularly strange after our Bahamian data phone provided these services almost all the time we were in the Bahamas. This post is being sent by satellite phone.

Tom
Anchored Little Shark River
SW Florida
Via Satellite Phone

Heading West from Miami

May 9, 2013

This morning, we left Miami after two weeks of 'civilization'. Civilization includes American food stores, coffee shops, book stores, restaurants with familiar food, and parks with beautiful flowers and trees.

We do not often rely on our alternator for battery charging because our solar and wind generators normally produce all the power we need. Late last week, after a lot of cloudy weather and little wind, we decided that we should run the engine a bit to top off the batteries. At that time, we found that our 100-amp alternator was only producing about 10 amps. Fortunately, this happened in the States, so Tom was able to buy a new alternator and install it, and we were ready to leave a couple days later. So, civilization also includes engine parts available the next day, and miraculously, it was not an exact replacement but it fit our 18-year-old boat.

This is the beginning of our trip west to Bradenton, where the boat will be docked for the summer. Tonight we are anchored near Key Largo. We are planning to go to Marathon tomorrow and then to Little Shark River on Saturday. When we arrive in Little Shark, we will be without Internet for up to two weeks. Since we had Internet for most of our time in the Bahamas, this will be a long time disconnected. Our current plan is to stay in Little Shark until Monday and sail overnight to the Dry Tortugas, provided weather cooperates.

Joyce
Anchored at Rodriguez Key
Key Largo, FL
Map Cruise 2012-13

Miami Adventures

May 6, 2013

We have been enjoying our time in Miami.  We were able to get a mooring ball at Coconut Grove Sailing Club, which is a very convenient and relatively inexpensive base to explore Miami.

Other than a car rental for a couple of days to accomplish provisioning, laundry, etc., we have been using the excellent Metro Dade Transit system to get around.  It starts with the Coconut Grove 'Circulator' (the 249 for us 'experienced' mass transit riders) which travels around the Grove and takes you to the Metrorail station.  At 25 cents it is quite a bargain.  The Metro Rail runs north and south through Miami. We have traveled south to South Miami (Paneras for the first time in months!)  and Dadeland Mall (for a new iPad for Joyce);  north we have traveled to Vizcaya and Bayfront.  Traveling by mass transit is an interesting experience!



MDT Day Pass - $5 ride all you want!

 

 

Downtown Miami from the MetroMover



Downtown Miami from the MetroMover

 

We visited Vizcaya for the second time. This beautiful mansion and gardens were built in the early 20th century by a rich industrialist. They are now maintained by the city as a 'museum'. One of the interesting facets of visiting Vizcaya, is that it is THE site for Quinceanera pictures. This is a 'coming of age' celebration for 15 year old Latin girls. The 'old fashion' dresses they wear are very ornate and beautiful; they also usually take other pictures in two or three other outfits (usually more contemporary). It is quite a show with the photographers, wardrobe carriers, and others in the entourage.

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow (Tuesday 5/7) we plan to leave Miami and head down the Hawk Channel and back towards Bradenton, hopefully via the Dry Tortugas.

Tom
Moored Coconut Grove
Miami, FL