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.