We decided to travel over to Fort Myers by car and catch up with our California friends, Kit and Pam.

They finally were able to get back on their boat in early February.  We just hung out and got a late lunch then met up with some fellow gold looper boats for “Docktails”.

The next day there was a parade in downtown that went right by the marina.

It was wall to wall loopers!  Next, it was time for a snack!

Kit has given up ice-cream for popcorn! Here he has created three different versions, I forget why, we just ate them all. We had a great time visiting.

We had our car stored near North Lake Okeechobee while we cruised the Keys.  Our friends Dave and Barb were gracious enough to allow us to store it at their place.  They decided to stop down to spend the night and pick us up to get the car.  We took them to our favorite hamburger place “Le Tub”. We know know someone at P99 will be jealous. We watched the sunset and ate huge burgers!

They drove us back to their place and on the way, we stopped at a “U-Pick-Em” farm where you can pick a five-gallon bucket of veggies for $12.00!  We will have to come back before we head north.

Once we got the car we stopped off an Roland and Mary Martin’s Marina for lunch.  The 2018 PanAmerican Bass Championship was just coming in for the weigh in.  Big Fish so far was 5.2 pounds.  We saw Roland and his son in the crowd.

The marina we are at now, has nearly all boats that are for sale.  Some were being prepared for the Miami Boat Show.  They do a lot of valet service and store the boats in Hurricane rated buildings. We are the only live a-boards that we can tell. Not much of a community life here and for the price; pretty sad. The restrooms look like a 5th grade boy has been in charge of cleaning. On the happier side, the grounds are very nice, gold fish pond, white stone trim around brick walkways, neatly trimmed grass, resurfaced fuel dock and lots of beautiful boats. There must be big bucks in harboring brokers.

We spent the first couple days cleaning the boat.  Bonner needed to walk round the front to inspect our work.

The marina is in a working canal area where small and large boats come in and out.  There are very large boats being worked on in the area.  A few of them are shrink wrapped so that the rain and weather does not delay any of the work. The small picture is scaffolding 4 stories high. It rests on a flotilla of interlocking cubes like our seadoo dock. There must be a mile of shrink wrap covering the structure!

We have to move our boat to the fuel dock to pump out our waste tanks.  The staff are not the most helpful. We had to catch our own lines, fuel ourselves as well as manage the pump out. For the price, again Westech Marina very disappointing.

We pulled anchor at 7:30AM, said good bye to Mark and Patti, then headed north to Miami.

We cruised through a couple sounds, passed under Route US1 bridge , and were in Biscayne Bay.

You could begin to see Miami in the clouds and it became larger and clearer the closer we came to it.  It was a nice cruise. We popped on top of the water and cruised at 19 mph. That’s fast for Paraiso!

We passed downtown Miami and Virginia Key, where the Miami Boat Show will be in a couple weeks. We saw new condominium buildings going up and the sign on then stated “Paraiso District”.  We thought this is where we will need to stay and get a boat slip for out Paraiso.

In Condo Canyon we came up on some novice boater who had rented SeaDoo’s – Captain Chris had to blow the horn at them to get them to move over for us.

Our next stop is Harbour Towne Marina in Dania Beach, FL

During our trip in Florida we have always pulled into a dock somewhere to spend the night.  We do this mainly because we do not have a dingy boat as yet.  The weather for the next couple days was going to be nice and we were going to meet up with a buddy boat Mark and Patti on Odyssey II (who did have a dingy).  They are seasoned vets of the keys and know all the best places! With a quick hale on the radio Patti guided us into the bay. We ended up at Sunset Cove near Key Largo.  We pulled in about 1:00PM and dropped out anchor.  Once set we monitored our GPS system to make sure we were not dragging out anchor.  There were a few other boats in the area as well, so we could also watch them to make sure we were not moving.

Mark and Patti on Odyssey II

Chris tried the crab trap out in hopes to catch a crap or lobster.  He also had two fishing poles out.  It would be nice to catch dinner. Not in the cards today.

Odyssey II (Mark and Patti) picked us up and we went into shore to Snook’s Bayside Inn to watch the sunset at their Tiki Bar. It was an awesome stop over, thanks to Patti and Mark!

We could not stay away!  It felt a bit like we were back home when we returned to Faro Blanco. The great loopers were all still here and welcomed us back at 5:00 docktales.

We decided to stay a couple days waiting for the winds to die down.  We also needed to find a diver to check our props.  We found one and she went under the boat on a pretty windy day.  She found a large ball of rope on our port-side prop.OMG! We did not see that one coming. So when you tell  the local cruiser: we did not hit a crab/lobster pot, the rope just jumped out of the water at us, they all roll the eyes and say yea yea yea heard that one before. but it is true in our case, and here is the ball of rope!

Janis celebrated her birthday with shrimp and beer, her favorites!  Plate of shrimp $6. Best deal in Fl. Chris went all in and bought two plates! We were shrimp drunk when we got home.

We again were looking for a good weather window to travel up north to Miami area. The winds have been blowing constantly 20 – 25mph.  We saw a small window for Monday Jan 29^th. We decided to get to Marathon and then hold up for a few days until the next good window.  We could then travel north in Florida Bay which is more protected waters from the winds, so it should be less bumpy.  We had our last shrimp in Key West.

We left Stock Island Marina ahead of a rain storm.  We could see it behind us, but we were heading into clear weather.  The waves were 3-4 feet and we only had to travel for 4 hours.  We made it with no rain until we were about 15 miles from the next marina.

Then it down poured on us and the wind kicked up as well as the waves.  Boner did not like it one bit. The crab traps were hard to see and on top of that we hit some rope or something that was floating in the water that we did not see.  Now we had a vibration in the port engine and it was hard to steer with the port prop. The rain lasted about 30 minutes and then clear blue skies were upon us. Captain Ron says: its just a squall they come on you fast then leave you fast!  The wind calmed down just in time for us to get refueled and docked.  We decided to return to Faro Blanco where we spend the month of December since it was on the Florida Bay side and then from here we will travel up to Miami in a few days.

Our friends Linnea and Mike came to visit with us while they were in Fort Lauderdale visiting their daughter and grandchild.  The Keys are only about 4 hours south.  They were reading Janis’ mind because she was on her last two beers and Mike pulled out two 15 packs when they arrived!!

First night we took the shuttle to the historic shipyards and had dinner. The local bartender told us there are three lies of the keys:

1. This is where the locals eat… (no, unless there are 300 bicycles out front)
2. We have a happy hour (no, we just rolled back to normal prices with rules, unless your really dumb, then prices will very upwards dependent on competency)
3. All people from Jersey have money to spend.

Of course we had to try out some happy hours and see the sunset at Mallory Square.

This time however, there were two cruise ships blocking the sunset but we still could find a little peek of a set!

After that we relaxed and enjoyed the marina area.  Linnea showed us a trivia game you can play for money.  It may have over a million people on it but it is interesting how many are eliminated by the 4 and fifth questions.  We did not win anything but it was fun to play.  We took a hike around the neighborhood and went to a wood fired pizza place that was pretty good.

The next day they left and we had to think about when we would be leaving.  The winds have been blowing quite a bit and we needed to find a day to head back up north. So back to the weather internet sites and key charts. Finding cruising windows is actually kind of fun. The only schedule is the mother nature dishes up.

We were looking for three days of good weather to travel to Fort Jefferson – Dry Tortugas.  However, the cold fronts and winds were not on our side.  We decided to go on the Yankee Freedom III, a ferry boat which is a 110-foot catamaran.  We picked a sunny but windy day, so we could see how bad the waves could get.  (Janis was not thinking about the other persons on the boat and if they would get sick or not).

The Fort Jefferson is 70 miles due west from Key West.  It took about 2.5 hours to get there.  The waves were 4-6 feet with a few 8 footers showing up at times.  There were about 150 people on the boat but we were able to get a seat up near the bridge so we could watch the captain drive.  It was nice to see that the big ferry boat also had to dodge lobster and crab traps. On land they sold single shots of dramamine for a buck. We thought that was just another way of hosing the tourist.  We got a bit worried when the crew began to hand out “white airplane bags” but everyone near us was a little green but didn’t toss their cookies, thank goodness!

Once we arrived you could listen to a 20 minute talk about the Fort, take a 45 minute guided tour, or just walk around for a self tour.  There was plenty of information to read and they provided a walking tour download before our trip via email so we had enough to do the self guided tour.

This was neat to see – they would heat up cannon balls before they shot them at boats. Hot balls would set the boats on fire. Who knew how evil we could be.

IRMA took out this section of the moat wall. It stood for over 200 years before Irma.  Amazing that it could do that.

While we were eating lunch we talked to a person who was camping.  You can spend up to 3 nights on the island.  There are only a picnic table  at each site.  Anything you take on the island you must bring back including your trash.  The ferry boat serves as a place for the campers to use the restrooms – take a shower – eat a lunch each day.   We thought it would be fun to camp for two nights sometime.  The stars must be great out here away from the lights on the land.

The trip back was not quite as bumpy and they had a cash bar open so we relaxed up top enjoying the sites and our drinks.

We passed Malory Square before sunset and could see the crowds building to watch the sunset.  This is an every night event.

We were able to convince the driver of the shuttle, to drop us off at the Seafood Festival that was held at Bayview Park.  It was only $5.00 to get in and they had different craft and art vendors as well as food and beer vendors.  We strolled around for a couple of hours trying out the shrimp and lobsters.  We thought this might be a place to try different seafood at a low cost, but found out this was not the case. The beers were $3.00 each, so that was not so bad.

We stopped by the Coast Guard tent and played the “How Long until it Degrades” game.  We were close we just missed two items. We had a Vessel Inspection done a couple of days before and we saw the person who performed the inspection.

We also talked to the National Weather Station representative and go some information on different weather websites to check out.  There was one vendor who showed us some ceramic ware that was used for grating garlic and other spices and such.  It was interesting, so we watched the demo and then purchased a couple pieces. It works great, and the one piece is small enough for easy use on the boat.

After we were done at the festival we had to walk to a pick-up point along the shuttle’s normal route.  We decided to check out the charter boat row which is the largest in Florida with many different charter boats. We also saw the Tiki Hut boat bar in action.  We had seen one of these in Hollywood, FL last year.  They look like fun!