The boat's in the barn now for the hurricane season, and she has been a great boat that has completed the original mission of the Great Loop and made us happy for 3 extra years. We're going to sell her this year so we can spend more vacation time doing other things, but we still love cruising. We're back home in Illinois now to enjoy the Spring and Summer seasons here.

We're in Key West, FL after a 100 mile cruise over the Gulf of Mexico from Marco Island.

Yesterday, we went down to the Everglades and took an airboat tour. It was fun, but mostly just an airboat ride, not an everglades tour because the airboat is so noisy that all you see is birds flying away and an alligator or two. The airboat had 4 passengers and the driver for the tour.


We went through a maze of mangrove islands and waterways, where it would be easy to get lost if you didn't know your way around. However, it's a huge area names Big Cypress National Refuge and we only saw the teeny part where the airboats usually go. The mangrove island channels were sometimes only as wide as the boat.

We also went through the "river of grass" areas. The airboat would run in an inch of water or even over just plain mud.









There was also a trail through the swamps where you could get a feel for the oppressive, closed in, watery jungle of the area. In the freshwater swamps there are lots of cypress trees, covered with ferns, epiphytes, and moss. This huge staghorn fern is the biggest one I have ever seen.


Today, we left early because it's a 9 hour cruise to Key West and said goodby to Marco Island in the sunrise.










It was a fairly uneventful ride to Key West, in somewhat lumpy seas because there were 3 foot waves straight abeam for most of the trip. We only saw the Key West fast ferry and this shrimp boat during the crossing.






It was nice to arrive at Key West where the islands blocked the waves as we passed by on our way to the marina on the Atlantic ocean side of the island.









We're docked there now and will be leaving the boat in the hurricane rated dry storage facility here for the hurricane season.

We're at Marco Island after a nice cruise in the gulf yesterday.

Today, we went and got our car from Sarasota and I fished off the aft deck when the tide was running to carry my bait away behind the boat in the tidal current. I caught this one nice sheepshead (we didn't eat this one) and three saltwater catfish.










It seems like there's always something interesting going on with sealife. While I was fishing, I was surprised to see this nudibranch (mollusk with no shell) swimming by in the tidal current. It's about 1 ft. long and it "flys" through the water easily with it's muscular wings. I have no idea what it eats or why it was swimming by here. It looks like a deep sea creature.

At the end of the block where our dock is located, there is a very nice corner lot that would be very expensive for a home, except it is already occupied by endangered burrowing owls. During the day, they are frequently sitting on this low perch or standing with their heads showing out of the burrow. There is a sign explaining about them and a warning not to molest them. They're only about 8 inches tall... not much for an owl. When we go by at night, they're not sitting there. Maybe they're out hunting at night.

The wave forecast for Saturday looks excellent, so we'll stay here Friday and make the 100 mile cruise to Key West on Saturday to arrive at our new marina where the boat will be during hurricane season.

We visited the Edison-Ford Complex today in Fort Myers, just a nice walk from the marina here and a nice sunny day. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford both had winter estates here in Ft. Myers. Ford actually worked for Edison before he invented his first car and started Ford Motor Co. They remained lifelong friends. Almost everything here was about Edison except Ford's estate next door and a couple Model T cars.

Edison's estate is a beautiful large property on the big saltwater river through Fort Myers, leading to the gulf 20 miles away at Sanibel Island. His house looks like two houses in a row because he designed a living area in one house with their bedrooms upstairs, and a second house with an eating and entertaining area and more bedrooms upstairs there. If they had company stay over, they usually stayed in the second house bedrooms. The houses are close together with wide double doors opening to the warm climate, so it's a little like the island living homes in tropical areas that have open floorplans with multiple buildings to comprise one home.

There was an excellent museum with lots of Thomas Edison's original lab equipment (the lab is gone now) and many early inventions. Of course, he invented the familiar Edison Cylinder Phonograph like this and there were dozens of patented versions.







He also invented the first regular record player phonograph.













And the first motion picture camera and projector....

and on and on. He was an extremely prolific inventor.










On the way back, we passed this boat on our dock. Cute boat name.

Obviously, this guy owned a Luhrs before this boat and didn't like it.










Tomorrow we're going to Marco Island.

We cruised South to Fort, Myers today. We plan to stay an extra day here to go see the Edison-Ford Complex... more about that tomorrow. Our marina is right to the left of these huge downtown condos before the bridge.




We passed a beautiful bald eagle sitting on a piling in the ICW looking for a fish dinner. It didn't seem to mind us when we cruised by so I could get a picture of it









On the way down, dolphins surfed our wake merrily and jumped for us.

Once, there were five surfing our starboard wake with two were baby dolphins.
They stayed very close to the big ones and didn't jump very high, but you can see them jump a little right before the end of the video clip.

We're heading back south because we have decided to leave the boat in Key West this summer for the hurricane season. There is a CAT5 hurricane rated indoor dry storage facility in Key West and they will keep Nonchalance on stands in the warehouse for the hurricane season. That took a special rider from our insurance provider, but it's OK. We and the Stones also arranged storage there for Loose Stones, the boat of Bill & Jane Stone, our prior cruising buddies. It'll be nice to see them again, although they may come later than we do.

We had nice visitors over the weekend. My sister, Beth and her husband, Paul, and my brother Jim and his wife Laurie all came to visit us on the boat.

They arrived on Friday and we went to the Selby Botanical Gardens nearby. The gardens have a beautiful orchid greenhouse.













We also walked the large outdoor botanical gardens, which are right on Sarasota bay.














Beth is really in her favorite element in any garden... in a state of complete eufloria.













The Selby Gardens also had a display of jungle masks carved by the Murales brothers from Costa Rica.













On Saturday we cruised down the ICW to Cayo Costa where there is an anchorage at a state park.
We took the dinghy in to a nearby beach, accessible only by boat. We picked up nice shells on the beach and found a very nice conch, but couldn't keep it because it was still occupied by the conch.


Then we dinghied in to the park dock where they have a ferry landing for the mainland visitors. That's Nonchalance anchored out in the background.








We walked the trail through the heavy jungle-like island palm forest.












On Sunday we cruised back to Sarasota. The dolphins cooperated nicely by surfing and jumping in our wake. Paul got good pictures of one jumping, which is hard to do. Then everybody flew back home to the winter weather in Illinois and upper New York State.

Just enjoying Sarasota and not much else here... taking Daisy to get her nails clipped today, painted a few spots on the door that had chipped paint. It's still cool with temps in the 60s, but nice and sunny. The forecast is for it to be warmer this weekend when we have family visiting for a cruise.


This big pelican sometimes sits on the piling right outside our aft deck window, just 2 feet from us. He can't see us inside because of the dark tinted windows there, so he's fun to watch. Hw will sit and look for unsuspecting fish and dive down from his perch to catch them, but I couldn't get a video of him doing that.

Chicago friends visiting...

Longtime freinds Harry and Debbie Vellines visited us today. They are staying on nearby Amelia Island and drove over to see Sarasota with us. We walked over to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens from our marina. It was sunny but cold today, around 60 degrees and breezy at times.

The Selby Gardens have a spectacular indoor orchid and bromiliad display where is was nice and warm and humid after the walk from the marina. Some of the flowers there are astonishing.










The outdoor grounds are full of hundreds of blooming plants and a jungle-like atmosphere, which didn't feel so jungle-like in the cold today, but at least the sun was shining and little wind inside the gardens. This huge colonade fig is actually one plant, a single living organism covering a lot of ground and arial territory. My camera couldn't get the whole plant into the picture and still show Kathy and Debbie close enough to recognize.

Harry is reading the descriptive sign for another jungle fig with buttress roots that support it's great height in shallow soils of the jungle. These are trees planted here by Marie Selby, wife of an oil magnate, in the 1920s when it was her home and garden. By 2010, these trees have achieved huge size and dramatic proportions in the tropical climate around Sarasota.

After the botanical gardens, we just got stone crab claws and deli salads to bring back to the boat for dinner while watching the sunset on our aft deck. It was nice to see our friends from home here in Florida.

Chapel On The Water

We've never seen this barge boat before, but it came in to Marina Jack's at Sarasota for fuel today and then went back out towards Little Sarasota Bay and the ICW. This picture was from our deck. It has a complete chapel built on a big barge that has it's own engines and navigation. Interesting idea to have a chapel for weddings on the water.

We have friends coming over for a visit tomorrow and I hope it's nice out. This evening it's temps in the 50s and gusty winds.

Sheepshead! (Yes, more fish pictures.)

I caught this large sheepshead under the bow of our boat today. The docks here are covered with oysters and barnacles, which the sheepsheads eat by chewing through the shells until they get to eat what's inside. I just reached down and grabbed an eating sized oyster from our dock, took the oyster out and put it on my hook and caught this one. These are delicious, owing to their all shellfish diet. I filleted it and we had it for dinner.




Strange vegetable...
We went to the Sarasota farmer's market downtown yesterday. They block off about 6 blocks if city streets the middle of downtown for it every Saturday. We bought regular vegetables and fruit and this "Romanesco", which I had never seen. It is a huge flower bud of a cauliflower type plant, but green and better tasting than cauliflower.

We're in Sarasota at our favorite marina, Marina Jack's. It's right downtown so you can walk to almost everything, although we have our car here too.

We cruised here through the bays and ICW past lots of beautiful homes on the ICW side, stopping to anchor overnight at the Cayo Costa beach park.









We also went past Cabbage Key supposedly about which Jimmy Buffet wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise". It's an interesting place to go, but too cold for a long dinghy ride from the anchorage.







The dolphins surfed our wake 6 or 7 times. You've probably seen my videos of them jumping in the wake plenty, so here I tried to get them "eyeing" us. They will surf the wake and come up to about an inch below the surface, swimming on their side so their eye looks up, out of the water to see us. Some are jumping, but one big one eyes us 2 or 3 times in the video clip. It may be hard to see with these small blog videos, but it's very evident what they are doing when seen in person.


We'll be here in Sarasota for about 3 weeks, and then we'll take Nonchalance to put in storage for the hurricane season so we can go home to enjoy Chicago's spring and summer.

We stayed on Sanibel Island with some Illinois friends, that have rented a house on the island for the month of February. It's quite a nice 3 bedroom house and it was good to have a really big shower last night, compared to the rather small showers on Nonchalance.




Jay and Kay Strayer are long time Illinois friends and invited us over and took us to dinner at The Green Flash restaurant. The food was good, but I can't figure why they named it The Green Flash since you can't even see sunsets from the area of the restaurant.



This morning, we went to the beach there and it was a really great shelling beach, loaded with all kinds of shells. Kathy picked up a few for her collection, but of course, Kathy is loaded with seashells already so she only added a few of the more colorful ones.






This afternoon, cruised up to the Cayo Costa anchorage and the dolphins happily surfed our wake in the bays. We're staying here at the anchorage tonight, even though the temps are forecast to be only 41 degrees overnight here.... it just doesn't feel like Florida! We're going on to Sarasota tomorrow.

We're back at Marco Island, after crossing 100 miles of open Gulf waters today. It was a little too lumpy (confused 3 to 4 ft. waves) this morning and then OK this afternoon. We saw dolphins, but none decided to surf our wake.

Coming in to Marco Island is always nice because of the pretty condo's lining the shore beaches and the inlet.











There was a really nice sunset this evening from the private dock at Marco Island. This picture just doesn't do it justice.











Kathy made Dudley's Fudge Pie so we'll have a nice Valentines Day dessert. We're cruising to Sanibel Island tomorrow, where we'll see our Chicago friends the Strayers, and then on to Sarasota.

Endangered Species Expedition!

We went for a drive down the Keys to see if we could see some Key Deer, and to get one more lobster reuben sandwich from the ParrotDise Grill on Little Torch Key. Key Deer are a very endangered species that live only in the middle Keys, and are only about half the size of their Whitetail Deer cousins. They live mostly on Big Pine Key and the surrounding keys, so that's where we went.

We drove all over Big Pine Key, which has lots of roads and houses or mobile homes on the lots and also lots of mangrove, scrub palm, and brush forests. We saw about 3 deer and got this picture of one... I thought "we were lucky to see them and at least I got a picture of one".



We went "4 wheeling" on a bad gravel road through the brush and I got a better picture.... but no bucks, just does. Of course, Daisy could smell the deer and was very interested.








Then we drove out to No Name Key, which is a small key here with only one low bridge leading to it and no electricity or central plumbing for the houses. All the homes there catch rainwater for their water and have solar and generators for electricity.

We went down "No Name Lane" on "No Name Key" just past a house named "Nowhere" (I'm not making this up) and there were LOTS of Key Deer on the road and eating the plantings in people's yards.








As we were driving back on No Name Road, this magnificent little buck was standing by the side of the road and just watched as we drove past. This is not a picture postcard, it was just standing there.

So it's evidently easy to see the endangered species here, they were everywhere out there today.

It was a nice day out in the Atlantic so we cruised out to Sombrero Reef nearby Marathon, hoping that the murky waters had cleared up. There are about 30 mooring balls over the coral reef where you can just pick out a mooring ball and tie your boat up to see the reef without damaging the corals with an anchor. The mooring balls all accept boats up to 65 ft, and there is one mooring ball for larger boats.

We moored in about 18 ft. of water and I just went skin diving to see the reef, but the water was still so cloudy that visibility was only about 10 ft. I could see nothing as I swam down and then when I was within less than 10 ft. of the bottom, things would start to come into view. The water was not too cold so I just went snorkeling some because I didn't want to go to the hassle of getting out my wetsuit and scuba gear just to scuba in cloudy waters. There were lots of fish every time I dived down. It's a pretty short video because you don't get a lot of bottom time skin diving, even at just 18 ft.




This evening, after we were back at the dock, we had 6 or 8 of the other boaters from our dock over for drinks on our aft deck and saw another really pretty sunset. It's a very nice group of people that winter here at marathon key.

Manatee!

There was a manatee swimming around the marina today. It just cruised very slowly under the docks and between the boats and looked like a big gray inflatable dinghy tube.









The only time it came up is to breathe and then it only sticks it's nose up above the water. It's a face only a mother manatee could love.

SHARK!

.... well, a teeny baby shark anyhow. Along with a bunch of Creval Jacks and other small fish, I caught this baby Hammerhead Shark, so it's another post of fish and sunsets today. It's always fun to fish off the aft deck because you never know what you're goping to catch. I had something very large hit my bait yesterday, but it got off before we could see it.

We're still just hanging around Marathon Key. We may go to Key West if the wind and waves forecast is for 2 good days in a row. There was another beautiful sunset tonight and at dusk a group of manatees were feeding across the channel from us. The only thing to see is big swirls in the calm water and then the occasional huge head popping up to breathe.

We think we'll be going back to Sarasota to arrive there between 2/15 and 2/19.

The Google computers that run blogspot with this blog have been having a problem running the videos. All the blogs are reporting "video unavailable" for a week or so. If you tried to watch my scuba videos, just try in the next few days.

We're still just living in Marathon, enjoying ourselves, fishing, watching sunsets, Kathy's knotting, reading, etc. Temps have been 75 to 80 most days and sunny to partly sunny, although there's supposed to be a 30% to 50% chance of rain for the next 3 days. We have been intending to cruise to Key West, but I have been waiting for 2 solid days of low wave forecasts on the north side of the keys so we can anchor out on the Gulf side and look for lobsters. The weather and wave forecasts don't look good for that yet. We drove to Key West, just 50 miles down the keys, to see a movie (Up in the Air), get our favorite mango bread from a local artisan bakery and stop at the Parrot-dise Grill for a lobster reuben sandwich.

I have been fishing off our aft deck almost every morning. It's almost luxury fishing because when the tide is going out, you just drop a hook with a live shrimp off the aft deck and the tide takes it out into the channel while you enjoy your coffee and mango bread toast after breakfast. I usually catch 2 or 3 fish per hour for 2 or 3 hours. I've caught lots of Creval Jacks, pinfish (baitfish), ladyfish, one Pompano, this nice little Spanish Mackerel or Cero, and threw them all back. Kathy didn't want me to make shashimi from the Spanish Mackerel. There are a few sheepshead here, so I may try oysters to catch one sometime, but the oysters on the docks here are a different kind than up north and are very thin.

We'll be in the keys until February 10 to 15, depending on weather to run across the gulf back to Marco Island and then Sarasota.

I went scuba diving today out at Sombrero Reef, which is a nearby marine sanctuary coral reef. I went on a dive boat, of which there are many around here, because a fellow Hatteras Owner's Forum member, Pat Murphy, recommended it. There has been poor underwater visibility for the last week and today it was only 15 to 20 ft, but I went to see the reef anyway and was glad I did. It's a very nice reef with loads of tropical fish. In the videos, it may look "grainy" or cloudy, but that's exactly what I saw.


It was very nice to see a Queen Angelfish, which is one of my favorites and not very common.



There were lots of colorful fish swimming near the corals and then lots of barracuda swimming more out in the open water. When the barracudas would come near the smaller fish, they darted into the corals.


This foot long spiny puffer fish was not afraid of me or the barracudas, owing to his spines and the fact that he can puff up like a spiny basketball. Very hard to swallow.


There was a long thin trumpet fish, which usually hangs out vertically near the vertical branches of gorgonians or soft corals, looking like just another branch, until a small fish swims by and becomes dinner. At the end of this little clip there is a large midnight parrot fish too.

This evening, Kathy and I went with about a dozen other local dock mates to the Marathon High school benefit dinner, cooked and served by the high school culinary class. It was just OK, but a nice outing anyway.

Just enjoying Marathon Key today. It was 82 degrees and sunny all day.

This is our lunchtime view from the aft deck, right into the Atlantic Ocean, with beautiful turquoise water, Ospreys and Pelicans fishing in the flats, and constant little fish jumps near the boat. I caught one Pompano, two Crevale Jacks, and a Ladyfish by tossing a line off my aft deck at the dock. I released them all even though the Pompano would have been good to eat.

For dinner, we just had wine and cheese, salami, raw veggies and strawberries and watched the sunset. It was another glorious sunset this evening, and last night we went to a sunset party on the neighbors boat next door.

We're at Marathon Key, tied up to our favorite dock space where we can see sunsets directly into the Atlantic Ocean right from our aft deck. Very nice!

We left Marco Island just after dawn and passed the many condos on the beach as the sun rose. We did wonder how many of those new condos are still vacant though.








We crossed 100 miles of the Gulf from Marco Island to Marathon today, arriving in tome to get tied up, plugged in and watch the sunset. It wasn't one of those glorious sunsets, but as the sun dropped below a cloud shelf, it did look rather tropical. Kathy says I have too many sunset pictures anyhow.




Pods of dolphins picked us up 4 or 5 times as we crossed the gulf. They all just liked to surf the bow wave instead of surfing and jumping in the wake.

We'll be in the Florida Keys for 3 weeks or so, centering a few cruises out of Marathon.