From tavlsv@radiks.net Sat May 5 14:37:30 2007 Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 22:32:27 -0400 From: Theresa A. Valentine To: Linda & Pete Blosser Subject: Valentine Travel Update Hello Everyone, Since the last time I filled you in on the adventure we have traveled another 415 miles along the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) from Sarasota to Palm Coast Florida (just south of St. Augustine). Incidentally you might be interested to know that we have traveled a total of 4,232 miles by water since picking the boat up in St. Petersburg in April of 2006. The last couple of months we have seen such a variety of landscapes that I hardly know what to tell you about first. This is sure to be wordy so if you get bored just hit the delete key! When we left Sarasota we had planned to stop in Venice to visit with some friends from St. Louis who moved there a few years ago, the plan was to stay at their dock. When we arrived we discovered that the dock was too narrow for the beam of our boat. To make a long story short we passed by Venice & continued down the Waterway, which, at this area, is a rather narrow canal with no possibility of anchorage. We finally found room in a marina in Englewood and it turned out to be a delightful stop. They had nice docks, cheap fuel, a pool & hot tub, good staff, clean bathrooms and best of all FREE LAUNDRY. I must admit that I do miss my washer/dryer, Laundromats stink. The weather was a bit unsettled with high winds and thunderstorm so we stayed put there for several days. The stop was made even more enjoyable when BG & Madelyn, our friends from Venice, drove down for a visit. As usual we met nice people while we were there, you may remember that at one point I said we had anticipated that we would anchor more than we actually do. We have discovered that this is not all bad because when we stop where there are other boaters we meet more people. When we left the marina we continued south to Gasparilla Island, unfortunately it was a weekend and the anchorage there was full. We have now learned that it is better to stay put on the weekends and travel on the weekdays. This is because the local boaters all come out to enjoy the water on the weekends and it is a lot more crowded in anchorages and marinas; if we have our spot staked out by noon on Friday we are more likely to find a suitable anchorage. Our fall back plan was to turn around and retrace our steps about 10 miles to a small anchorage near a residential area. This spot provided us with some unexpected bird watching when Larry spied a pair of Golden Eagles perching on an antenna of a house the first evening we were there. It appeared that the house was unoccupied and the Eagles seemed to be quite at home when they came each evening. On Sunday we launched our dinghy and set out to explore the mangroves where we noticed a sign that pointed to Don Pedro State Park. The park was a treasure, it is on an island that protects the ICW from the Gulf of Mexico and while the West side was mangroves the East side was a nearly deserted beach with waves gently lapping the sand. We picked up some shells for Lauren, the shelling wasn't the greatest but Lauren isn't too picky. On the following Monday we headed back for another look at Gasparilla Island and sure enough, there were very few boats and we just dropped our hook and backed up to the mangroves. Gasparilla is a barrier island that protects the FL mainland and the ICW from the Gulf of Mexico. Since the late 1800's Gasparilla (which was so named because the notorious pirate Jose Gaspar established his headquarters here in the 1700's) has hosted some very affluent guests. Some, including the Morgans, Cabots, and DuPonts, journeyed here in their private rail cars. One well known guest, J.P. Morgan, died while vacationing there. The beautiful Victorian style Gasparilla Inn was completed in 1912 and is kept in excellent condition. A walk through the public areas of the Inn is like stepping into a history book. The walls are hung with photos of guests from years past and all kinds of memorabilia. The porch is furnished with comfortable rocking chairs and small tables adorned with pots of blooming flowers. Some of the recent well known guests include Katherine Hepburn, and the Bush family. The private docks by some of the homes there are full of Hinkleys (which are, for the non boating readers, very expensive and very nice boats.) The town, Boca Grande, is walk able, there are golf carts and bicycles everywhere, and no condo towers; the local grocery also pumps gas from a pink gas pump In short it is charming. The town is named for Boca Grande Pass ("big mouth" in Spanish) which lies just South of the island. A "Pass" is a break in the coastline or the barrier islands that provides a reliable inlet from the sea to the inland water of a bay or river. As its name suggests Boca Grande is an excellent wide and deep pass leading from the Gulf of Mexico to Charlotte Harbor. Boca Grande takes pride in their picturesque community and are working to preserve the low key environment they enjoy from the rampant pace of overdevelopment that has overtaken much of the Florida Coast. We hope they succeed. Speaking of development; all too soon it was time to move on toward Ft. Myers. On the way we spent a couple of days anchored at Useppa Island before we finally turned our stern to the quiet remote areas and cruised into the city. The city of Ft. Myers, located on the Caloosahatchee River (roughly translated at "river of the Caloosa" - as in indians), is home to one of the first prefabricated homes in the United States. In the late 1800 Thomas Alva Edison came south to the city on the river searching for a healthful winter climate. He was charmed by Ft. Myers and soon bought property on the river that he returned to every winter for the rest of his life. He designed his own home and had it built in sections in Fairfield, Maine. The sections were then shipped via schooners to Ft. Myers where they were assembled in 1886. In Ft. Myers we visited with friends Carole & Mike Bartlow who were kind enough to take us shopping so that we could get Easter Basket things to send to Lauren. That was my big priority, actually they chauffeured us all over so that we could stock up on groceries and wine and get some new sandals. Those groceries started us on the refrigerator saga; the day after filling the refrigerator I opened the freezer to find things thawing. Yikes! Luckily the marina there had a boater's lounge with a large refrigerator/freezer and I was able to stash the newly purchased food there for a day or so. No real loss of food but we did have to have shrimp for breakfast, we hated that. The repairman came and diagnosed it as bad door seals, a known manufacturing defect, and ordered new doors. This would never have been welcome news but now it was even worse because we were in a time crunch to get across Lake Okeechobee before the water level fell much more. No problem, he would have the doors sent to a vendor on the East Coast and we could catch up with them in Stuart. Sounded easy enough but nothing is ever quite as simple as it sounds. Lake Okeechobee is the second largest freshwater lake lying entirely within the United States (only Lake Michigan is larger) and it is conveniently located right in the middle of south Florida. This is great because it provides a shortcut across the state so that boats don't have to go all the way down to the Keys and around the bottom of the peninsula. From the West side the Caloosahatchee River leads boaters inland to the lake (which is about 25 miles across). On the East Side of the lake the St. Lucie River leads you back to the ICW and the Atlantic. We would have liked to have spent a little more time on the Caloosahatchee but felt that we best hurry along and get across the lake while the getting was good. An interesting thing about the locks in this water system (on both sides of the lake) is that they raise and lower the level of the water by simply opening the gates a little bit to let water in or out, there were no valves built into the locks to control the water. Even at the current low water levels there was quite a bit of turbulence as they let water into the Ortona Lock where we went up about 6 or 8 feet. The problem this spring is that Florida is experiencing a rather severe drought and the lake was quite shallow in late March, with the water level dropping daily. Our boat draws 4' of water and we feel most comfortable with at least an extra foot or two under our props. We crossed the lake on March 29th and the Corps of Engineers was calling the navigable depth 4.46 ft. That was scary thin but we scooted across with no problems and we never saw less than 5' on our depth sounder. A boat just ahead of us got blown out of the channel by the wind and hit a rock doing some damage to his prop and we heard a number of others talking on the radio about their damage. Larry did a great job of keeping us in the center of the channel (no easy task with a 15 knot crosswind) and we got through the first 5 or 6 miles, which is the shallowest area, without a problem. We were really relieved when we turned the corner and left that stretch of thin water behind us. Once in Stuart we spent a couple of days on a ball in a mooring field which is sort of like an anchorage except that someone (typically the local government or a marina owner) has permanently screwed large anchors into the seabed and attached long cables to them and then a floating ball to the cable. A boat picks up the ball and attaches their own line to an eye on the ball, and then the boat secures their line to their cleat and is secured for the night. These areas are often referred to as "mooring fields" because the mooring balls are planted in rows and the boats tied to them all swing the same direction depending on the wind or the current; thus the end result is rows of boats. We could land our dinghy at the small dock and the town was an easy walk. Stuart has really made their riverfront attractive with a boardwalk along much of the area and restaurants within easy walking distance. We even found a small park for our dinghy and then it was only a short walk to the grocery and to a fish market. This was a good thing because our refrigerator now had the doors taped closed most of the time and it was still not keeping food very cold. We had expected to refrigerator parts to be installed on Monday April 2nd in Stuart. The day came and went and no repairman arrived. Living on a boat isn't that much different than living in a house after all! We decided to head on up to Ft. Pierce where we have friends and wait for the repairman there. He finally showed up on Friday and replaced the defective doors with the instruction to wait 24 hours for it to chill down before we stocked it with food. Not a problem, we were enjoying our visit with the Hobbs' and at this point what was one more day. By Sunday it was apparent that the new doors did not solve the problem with our refrigerator. By now I am getting impatient with the situation and I am totally fed up with this vendor. Given their responsiveness to our problem so far I am envisioning not having cold food in this month, maybe not this year! It is time to head north; call the manufacturer, again, and hope that they can refer us to a vendor that at least acts like they care about customer service. We set out for Palm Coast Florida which is about 20 miles south of St. Augustine. The marina here is considerably less expensive than the marinas in St. A, this is important because we plan to stay a month while we sort out the refrigerator and travel to Boise for a week. It proved to be a great choice because the marina staff and the local boaters were just so helpful and friendly. As we traveled between Ft. Pierce and Palm Coast we agreed that the east coast of Florida is not nearly as pretty as the Gulf coast, generally it is much more developed and the water is not the same shade of azure blue that we saw on the west coast. Just to give you an idea one of the bodies of water that we crossed was named "Mosquito Lagoon", sounds inviting huh? The locals tell us the name is appropriate. We also passed Cape Canaveral but we decided to postpone a visit until we return to this area next fall. The new refrigerator service company is very customer friendly, they scheduled us in quickly and showed up when they said they would. After observing the unit run (and since the new doors hadn't done the trick) they decide the problem was likely in the sealed compressor and recommend that the manufacturer replace the unit. They called the next day to advise us that the manufacturer agreed and a new unit is on the way. I am hopeful that we may have a cold glass of milk again in this year. Then we went to Boise and had a great visit with Dennis & Mary and, of course, Lauren (the star of the show). It was a wonderful (and too short week) of playing in the park, giving baths, reading new books (Ten Redneck Babies was an instant hit with her), exploring the contents of Grammy's purse, and taking about a million pictures to keep us supplied with her big smile until the next visit. We arrived back at the boat a couple of days ago and the new refrigerator was in and working great. Yesterday we grocery shopped and it actually chilled the food down and kept frozen things frozen! Life is good. In a few days we will once again point our bow north and in a couple of days we will be in Georgia. More on the wild horses of Cumberland Island next time.