Clearwater Florida

 We made it to Clearwater Florida today. We are at the Clearwater Marina today and tomorrow. Its a nice marina right in the middle of town. They have a kind of Pearl St (Boulder Co) right near the marina. The street is roped off and they have a lot of restertants on the main drag. They have dualing pianos at one place we may check out tomorrow.

 After that we are off to Hernando Beach where we are going to leave the boat while we go home for Christmas. The nice thing about the gulf is we can go out into the gulf and there is hardly any difference between that and the intracoastal as far as waves are concerned. We continue to see a lot of dolphins and we have also seen a lot of rays breaching the water. They really jump high but I don't think I will ever get a picture of one. They seem to just pop up when you aren't expecting them to.

 

 

These are some manatees that we saw the other day. Kind of hard to see but there were 3 of them.

 

 

 

 

The Gulf Side

After going through the bottom part of Florida where there is nothing but everglades, we made it around to the gulf side.  We stopped and anchored one night at the beach in Naples and that was beautiful.  Then we made our way up to Fort Myers, which is where we have been the last three nights.  We found a nice little marina (Salty Sams) and decided to stay three nights here.  They have a lot of excursions and rentals that use the marina and it makes it very entertaining.  There is a pirate ship that goes out that is pretty cool. Someone told us that the original captain on the pirate ship tried to keep the boat out of the hurricane and ended up losing his life.  So sad.  I guess this area got hit pretty hard by hurricane Ian and then again with hurricane Milton.  The marina has been rebuilding and they have all new docks and two new restaurants, which is really nice.     The marina is inside the bay and we walked over the bridge to ocean side where Margaritaville has a huge resort on the beach that is open to the public.  We had a nice lunch in the sand on the beach and then walked around Fort Myers beach area.  You could still see a lot of the effects from the hurricanes and quite a few buildings were empty.  Hopefully they will continue to rebuild these because it is such a nice little area.  

Wes has a high school friend, Scott, that lives here with his wife Bobby Jo and they came out and we had dinner at one of the restaurants then they had us over for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was so nice and they were super sweet with taking us to get groceries and letting us do laundry at their house.  They took us around their community in their golf court and we saw an alligator and a really cool bird (not sure what it was).

We've been making really good time and we only have about 150 miles to get to where we are going to dock the boat in nine days so it will be really nice to take our time instead of rushing like we normally do.     

Something about a sunset

There is something about a sunset that is magical. Especially if you don't see them often. Living on the front range of the Colorado Rocky Mountains you get to see the sunset when its about 10 degrees above where is sets. The mountains are in the way. It isn't the way it is in western Florida. It goes right down to the ocean. It seems to do that every night. Tonight my wife claims she saw the flash. I never have but I will keep watching.

Here are the last couple of nights of sunsets.

 

 

Fort Pierce to Palm Beach

We've been cruising through Florida at a pretty good pace.  We stayed two nights at the Fort Pierce City Marina, which was really nice because we were able to get quite a few things done on the boat since there was an Ace hardware near the marina and then they have a free ride service that took us to Publix for some groceries.  They had so many restaurants there we were having trouble figuring out where to eat.  Last night we picked an Italian restaurant that was really good.  The owner was actually from New York so it was the authentic New York Italian.

We headed out early this morning, like usual, since Taylor's alarm clock goes off at 6 every morning.  We went through Jupiter, which is where the light house is and then through Palm Beach.   We should have headed out to the ocean in Jupiter because there were so many bescule bridges to go through and some of them would only open on the half hour and hour while others open on the 1/4 and 3/4 hour.  It was really tricky to time it.  They have these rather than the 65' fixed bridges because there were sooooo many of these huge yachts all over Palm Beach that were higher than 65'.  But we are almost through them.  I think we have two more to go through tomorrow and then we should be good until we get to Miami.   

    M' Brace is actually Michael Jordan's boat

Florida, Finally

 We made it to Florida. We've been here about five days. I haven't wore shoes for five days and been in shorts and a tee shirt for five days. Its amazing how when you cross the border, the weather seems to get better. We are in Ft Pierce City Marina today. We got here last night and Karen liked the place so much that we decided to stay for another night. It is right downtown and there are a lot of restaurants and shops.

Yesterday I finally got some pictures of dolphins. Well the water was clear enough so we could see what they were doing under the boat. We've probably seem 500 dolphins on the way down here They almost always approach from the front. Then they would disappear from view for 30 seconds to a minute. We thought they were just going to the bottom so they wouldn't get hit by our boat. But we found out yesterday that they are swimming right at the bow of the boat. Here are a couple of pictures.

  

  Taylor, our dog, is fascinated by the dolphins.

Florida

We actually made it to Florida on Saturday.  We hit the first port that is in Florida early Saturday morning, which is Fernandina Beach and then anchored for the night on Saturday just South of Jacksonville.  It is so much more populated once you hit Florida but there are so many more beaches rather than marsh, which is great for Taylor.  Last night we stayed at the Conch House Marina in St Augustine.  It was a really nice place to stay and there was so much around us but their internet was down so we walked to a sports bar and we were able to watch the Broncos kick some butt on the Chiefs Woo Hoo!!

Today we've been cruising along at around 7 knots and we are making some good time.  It's
about 4:00 Monday afternoon and we are passing through Daytona Beach.  We are hoping to get to the other side of Daytona and find a place to anchor before it gets too dark. The sun is setting really early (at around 5:30) and we like to be in our spot for the night before sunset.  

This was a turtle that was right inside the marina

This was the restaurant at the marina and they had tables on stilts where you could eat above the water

Sights around St Augustine

These are all the bridges in Daytona.  There were 5 in a row but only one that we had to hail for opening.  The others were all over 60' and our mast is only around 49'

 

Through the Carolina's

It's been a few days since we posted but we've been making our way through the Carolina's. We stopped for the night in Georgetown at the Harborwalk.  We did have one alligator sighting but that's it, which is ok by me.   Then Sunday we hit a cold front when we got half way through South Carolina so we stayed put at the Dataw Island Marina for three nights being that we have no heat unless we are hooked up to shore power and then it's just a little space heater.   It got down to almost freezing and the winds were around 20 mph.   The marina was in a very remote gated community area.  A very nice area but there was nothing around us except million dollar homes.  At least they had a really good restaurant at the marina and a very nice lady that Wes helped get their boat off the dock gave us a ride to Walmart so we could stock up on some stuff. 

Then we made our way to Hilton Head and spent the last night on anchorage across from the lighthouse.  

Tonight we are staying by Blackbeard Island National Wildlife Refuge.  We found an awesome spot that had a really nice beach for Taylor to run which is about halfway between Savannah and Jacksonville.  We are hoping to get to Florida by Sunday but we will see how it goes.

                                                    Our First Alligator Sighting

I love all the different bridges we get to go through

Hilton Head Lighthouse

MORE DOLPHINS!!!!

Cruising Through North Carolina

We've been cruising through North Carolina and mainly anchoring the last couple of nights.  Last night we stayed in Morehead City at Wrightsville Beach.  It was a really nice anchorage with a very busy harbor. The sunset was beautiful and the full moon was even better.

We were able to take Taylor for a walk on a small beach that was by the anchorage and it was loaded with seashells. I've never seen so many sea shells on one beach before.  Taylor was just looking for sticks though-not interested in the seashells.  

It was so nice because we haven't had any issues for the past couple of days and we've just been able to enjoy the ride.  Yes, we quickly knocked on wood.  The new engines have been running very nicely.

We saw so many dolphins while we were cruising.  They love swimming by the boat.

Today, Thursday 11/6 we made it to South Carolina. We are staying the night at the Myrtle Beach Yacht Club Marina.  This is the lighthouse going into the channel.  It's not a working lighthouse but it is very cool anyways.  

Belhaven NC

 A lot has happened the last two days. First I sank my dingy engine. It fell off the back of the dingy when I was coming back from taking Taylor for a walk. I was doing 25 knots in the dingy and the boat started going all over the place. When I looked back I didn't have a dingy engine. It took me 25 minutes and two nice people on a boat to get it back in. It was on my cable that we use to chain up the boat. 

I got the engine running after a lot of swearing and several oil changes. It took about 4 hours of pulling on the start cord but if finally started. It still doesn't go a high speed because I had to rig the fuel cable I think I can get a new fuel cable and that should fix it.

I also put two new props on. They are bigger and have more pitch to them. It was nice having the extra speed today.  I get about one and a half more knots at 2000 rpm's. So I'm moving at about 6.5 knots when cruising. That may not seem like much but when you go 50 knots in a day that helps a lot.

I also crushed my middle finger yesterday. I dropped a trailer on it and it is just about useless today.