Chapter I - Searching for a New Boat
November 5, 2002 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL
The trip down from New York was uneventful. The dinghy, which I was worried about flying off the racks at 70 mph and causing a major pile-up on Interstate 95, was rock solid. I tightened it down whenever I stopped for gas, but it really never got very loose. At night, I took it off of the car and put it in the motel room so I wouldn't have to worry about it being stolen. In the morning I strapped it back onto the racks, which I also removed and kept in the room. The whole process took only a few minutes and was worth the peace of mind.
I didn't want to stop anywhere along the way since each day's drive was about 10 hours long, but when I came to billboards on the side of the road every few miles advertising "Live in Viera", "Work in Viera", "Golf in Viera", etc. , I had to stop and take a look.
On Monday I put the dinghy and just about all of the boat stuff in storage and found a nice efficiency studio for less money than the Days Inn I stayed at the first night I got here. Besides the normal motel room amenities, it has a complete kitchen with a fridge, 2-burner stove, microwave, sink, cooking utensils and dishes. It will be nice to be able to cook.
On Tuesday I took a walk along part of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The ICW is a protected waterway which runs uninterrupted from Key West, FL to Norfolk, VA. I'll be passing this way on my way north in the spring.
I also found a boat that I am interested in. It's an S2 9.2A. Same make and design as my current boat, only larger. I emailed the owner and should be seeing it this weekend. It looks very well maintained from the pictures he sent me.
November 18, 2002 - Venice, FL
Ft. Lauderdale wasn't the best place in Florida to look for sailboats. This is because sailing options are limited for sailors in the area. You basically could sail in the Atlantic with the Gulf Stream only a few miles off shore, or in the narrow ICW with large power boats passing at high speed (which really isn't an option).
The Gulf Stream isn't a place you want to be if the weather suddenly turns or the wind shifts to the north. Seas build very quickly with a northerly wind because it opposes the strong, northerly-flowing Gulf Stream current.
During the two weeks I spent in Ft. Lauderdale I did get to look at a few boats, but only one boat looked promising. When I called back a few days later to ask for a second look, the owner told me that his wife just to a down payment on the boat a few hours earlier. At that point I decided to try looking on the west coast and drove over to Venice.
November 25, 2002 - Venice, FL
Thursday morning as I was walking along the Venice Inlet with a cup of coffee in my hand, I saw something large out of the corner of my eye, only a few feet away, rise out of the water for a second then go back under. About ten second later I saw it again and realized it was a dolphin swimming down the channel out into the Gulf. I quickly got out my camera but it didn't surface again until it was too far away from me to get a good picture. I walked out to the end of breakwater and watched for it to appear again and saw a school of several dolphins surfacing every few seconds about 100 yards out. I took some pictures, but they were too far away
On Sunday I drove to St. Petersburg for the Sail Expo. There were some good lectures by several authorities on cruising such as Liza Copeland, author of several books, one of which I just read a couple months ago about her family's 5 year circumnavigation "Just Cruising". She gave a great talk about cruising the Caribbean.
November 27, 2002 - Venice, FL
I saw several dolphins today at Venice Inlet. Three were swimming close to the end of the seawall but moved away when some boats passed close by as they entered the inlet. They then swam out about 50 yards to join a few of their friends.
There were a lot of pelicans around today. Pelicans are fun to watch as they fish. They fly a few feet off the water then suddenly crash dive, turning 180 degrees just before they hit the water. They come to the surface with their bill filled like big water balloon, then keeping their head down, they let the water drain out. When the all of the water is gone they lift their head to swallow the fish they've caught. I watched as one pelican caught a fish so big that half of it stuck out of his bill. It took him several minutes to swallow it, while several of his friends swam close by waiting for him to give up and spit it out.
As I was walking back to he car, I saw two dolphins swimming back out into the Gulf. This time I got a picture, although you can't see much of the dolphin. It's difficult to catch them at just the right moment since they surface only for a second at a time.
December 6, 2002 -
Venice, FL It's overcast and cool this morning so I'm sitting in my car out by the
Venice Inlet updating this page on my laptop computer. The dolphins are
back this morning and I'm watching them swim about 100 yards out as I'm typing
this. It seems they are very common around here and I've seen them almost
every time I've come down here. Right now they are leaping out of the
water. I would go out onto the jetty and try to get a picture but it just
started to rain, so I'll just watch them from the car. Saturday night, Venice had their annual Holiday Parade. I went downtown
to watch since I had nothing better to do. It was okay, but got a little
boring after awhile so I left early. Earlier that morning as I was driving
down to the water, I saw lines of chairs all up and down Venice Avenue. At
first I was wondering why they were there then realized that everyone brings
their chairs down to the parade route in the morning to claim their spot.
This weekend Venice is having their annual Holiday Boat Parade where boaters
decorate their boats with lights and other ornaments and parade them up and down
the local waterways. That should be interesting. I hope to get some
pictures. I've looked a few more boats this week and hope to make an offer on one this
weekend. When I do finally find my boat, I plan to cruise down the coast
to the Keys where I'll hang out for a while and maybe head across to the
Bahamas. In the mean time I'm enjoying my stay in Venice. It's a
nice little town and the people are very friendly. Also, I've got a great
rate on a nice hotel room ($25 per night) so it I'm not rushing my boat shopping
process.
Venice Holiday Boat Parade
December 18, 2002 - Venice, FL
Today I left a deposit on a 1982 Pearson 323 (32' 3"). As you can see from the first picture, the boat is from Maine. It was purchased by the current owner from the Hinckley boat yard in Southwest Harbor, Maine where the current owner had worked. It has had light used over the past few years as has been kept in pristine condition. I am currently trying to set up a pre-purchase survey and hope to purchase the boat in the next week or two.
December 20, 2002 - Venice, FL
I took these this afternoon at the Venice, Inlet. It was quite choppy this morning, so there weren't any boats out (well I saw one fishing boat going out, but he came back in several minutes later). It was however, a great day for 'Kite Boarding' (I think that's what it's called). The guy in the pictures below was really good and was doing 360 degree aerials in the surf. Oh, and the dolphins were back again. Hopefully one of these days I'll get a good picture. I always seem to miss them when they jump out of the water. It seems I never have my camera ready. They sometimes jump out of the water just like you see them do at Sea World when jumping through a hoop. I don't know if they are chasing a fish or just playing when they do this.
December 28, 2002 - Venice, FL
I had scheduled a haul out and survey of the boat for Friday, 27th but had to cancel because the owner couldn't get the boat out of the channel behind his house. The tides in the area are greatly affected by the wind. If it blows strongly from the north or east, water is blown out of the bays and harbors which makes the tides a lot lower than normal. So for now I just have to wait until the wind and tides are favorable. We're shooting for Monday or Tuesday.
Last Sunday I drove down to Sanibel Island near Ft. Myers to see the J. N. 'Ding' Darling National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was named after the famous political cartoonist and conservationist from the 1940s. He signed all of his cartoons with his nickname 'Ding' which is an abbreviation of his last name. Sanibel is a beautiful island with nice houses, stores, and restaurants and I was very impressed with the place. There were bicycle trails throughout the island and it seemed that everyone was riding bikes.
After parking the car and paying the one dollar entrance fee I started down the 'Indigo' nature trail. There was a sign at the start of the trail with the rules and regulations. I pretty much ignored the sign and walked on. About a half mile down the trail I came upon an alligator lying in the sun at the edge of a stream only a few feet off the trail with no fence between the two of us. I wasn't expecting to see that, and only few minutes earlier and a few yards back I had walked down to the edge of the stream to take some pictures of a flock of White Ibis. When I saw the sign again on the way out, I noticed that two of the rules posted were, "Stay on the trail" and "Don't approach the alligators".
I also saw a lot of birds that I'd never seen before, one the most interesting was the Roseate Spoonbill which was a bright pink and white with a bill which was flattened at the end like a spoon. The bright pink color supposedly comes from their diet of shrimp, and the intensity of the color varies with the amount of shrimp they eat and with their age. Unfortunately they liked to hangout in the middle of a large pond so I couldn't get a good picture. There were also some interesting looking ducks and other birds on another trail. One species, the Common Moorhen, had a bill that was orange and yellow and looked like a piece of candy corn. I couldn't get very close without scaring them away and it was starting to get dark, so again I didn't get a very good picture.
