Back At Anchor

February 4, 2016April 12, 2018 / kk42sealife / 2 Comments

After a week of treating ourselves to a slip, we left Marina Paraiso on Tuesday, and moved to the nearby anchorage. Aside from Key West, which was a huge splurge, our budget doesn’t allow for long stays at a slip. Once we’d cleared customs and did some chores, it was time to go. We’ll miss our neighbors..

Ok, maybe not all of our neighbors..

We did a quick spin down through the lagoon, just south of the marina. There are several more cold fronts due to come through in the next week (yay, more wind!), and Scott wanted to check out the lagoon for a possible anchorage with better protection. We spied this crazy island, which made up of floating plastic bottles…quite a spread!

This little “cable car?” moves along a rope, to transport people back and forth.

Overall, the lagoon felt quite removed, and the marinas were filled with big sport fish boats.

It wasn’t our first choice for a place to spend a week or more, so we headed back out toward the harbor, to scope out a spot there.

We passed back by our slip at Marina Paraiso on the way..

It took a bit of time to find a spot to drop anchor. Several of the boats have two anchors out, which makes them swing differently. Being single anchor people, we searched the anchorage to find others doing the same. There are a few shallow spots, and an area where we watched a boat snag their anchor line on something on the bottom. They were tangled for hours before getting free, so those areas were also out. We finally decided on a spot at the edge of the anchorage, along side the I-95 path for tour and fishing boats. Not our favorite location, but we decided getting waked from them was better than swinging into someone or floating into shallow water.

All in all, it’s really nice out here. The wakes don’t jostle us very much, and we have nice views of the shoreline and town on one side, and the skyline of Cancun beyond the harbor on the other.

We’ll spend a week or so here, while we ride out the cold fronts and explore the southern end of the island. We have some good looking neighbors…a tall ship from Germany came in yesterday.

The Aluminum Princess has finally been lowered into Mexican waters! She has a new look, in her ongoing metamorphosis. Scott decided to take the black foam collar off. It was causing a rougher ride in a head sea, and he was losing overall speed. So she now has gone back to a regular rub rail, made of vinyl, to soften impact with us and other boats when docking. She still looks sharp!

So we’re afloat again. Here are some photos.

“Shells Sink, Dreams Float. Life’s Good On Our Boat!”

Our Day On Staniel Cay

November 21, 2015April 12, 2018 / kk42sealife / 2 Comments

Earlier this week, we ventured over to Staniel Cay for the day. There are few options to dock your dingy on the island. You can pay to dock it at the yacht club, but the logistics of our dingy make that difficult. The public beach next to the yacht club is available for free, but you have to anchor off shore and wade in..hmmm. The general store that we visited earlier in the week has a dock behind it, but it’s reserved for their patrons.

There are several places on the island that rent golf carts, the general store being one of them. The idea of a golf cart was fun, and we would also have the most hassle free dockage. We again tied up at the dock behind Isles General, were given a golf cart, and told that there was a battery charger under the back seat should we need it. Hmm…people use golf carts for long periods of time (like playing 18 holes of golf) without needing to charge a battery, but oh well. We were off and running..

We first did a spin through “town,” which consisted of the yacht club, two other restaurants, a church, a clinic and two more grocery stores; the “blue” store and the “pink” store are literally right next to each other.

Pink Store

Blue Store

When getting our golf cart, we’d asked about buying fresh bread. We were told to check at the yellow house, before the blue store. We found the yellow house, just before the blue store like they told us. I expected some kind of bakery, with a sign, but this was definitely someone baking out of their house.

I poked my head into the open side door (of someone’s house) and gave a hello. A woman appeared behind us with a big smile, and asked if we wanted bread. We had a choice of either white or coconut, we chose white. She pulled a saran wrapped loaf off of a shelf, where it sat between her paper goods and various other things. I blocked out the condition of said kitchen where I assumed this bread was baked, paid her 7.00 and we went on our way (the bread, by the way, is terrific!). I’m sure this isn’t the last time we’ll go into someone’s home for what we need.

We continued on, stopping at the “wholesale” liquor store and laundry, where we bought beer and then to the Atlantic side of the island. There are really big houses being built there, complete with ocean views on one side, protected piers on the other, clubhouse, etc. I’m sure this island will look very different in the coming years.

As we continued on, we quickly realized why we were given a charger. Our battery was obviously on the older side, and wasn’t going to last us the entire day. Our golf cart had really hard time on inclines. This was a frustrating, as the hills here are not big by any means. Big, four-wheel drive-type carts would pass right by us, making Scott crazy. We’d rented the cart at 9:30, and by 11:00 we were at a quarter charge, and on the Atlantic side of the island. We decided to head to the yacht club for lunch and a plug-in.

All routes back to the west side of island involved a hill. We chose the one with what seemed to be the smaller hill. Once up that hill, our only road took us up another, bigger hill. Yeesh. Scott got out and walked to the top of the hill to make sure that there was a public road on the other side, and not someone’s private, do-not-enter driveway (this had happened before).

By now, our battery light was blinking, meaning that we were on borrowed time. Trying to save every bit of usable juice we had, Scott got out and pushed, while I floored the gas pedal (ha…if we only had gas!). We just made it up the hill without rolling backward, and Scott got his cardio for the day!

We paused at the top. Scott caught his breath, and we took advantage of the views.

The term “road” was used loosely, for the route down on the other side of the hill. It was a steep decline, made up of ruts and large stones. In addition to being power-challenged, our gimpy little golf cart also lacked good breaks…on a flat surface. The whole way down this stupid “road,” I was terrified that we’d blow one of the tires (which were low on air, so maybe that was harder to do), break an axle or just plain flip over. I prayed that disaster would happened sooner than later. Flipping at a slower speed meant less chance of death.

By the time we reached the bottom, the poor cart was rattling to beat the band. The road bottomed out into a big puddle from the previous night’s downpour, and veered hard right, toward the road to town. Thankfully, no one was coming or going, and Scott mercifully missed the lake-like puddle as we careened to the main road. At this point, I considered an entire liquid lunch. I hoped that their beer was cold.

We literally coasted into the yacht club, and were shown were to plug in (no one around us was plugged in, because their carts worked!).

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-t7Em9oUtPXc/Vk-IbDAyAWI/AAAAAAAAVTc/aaPkVLimXkc/s720-Ic42/P1020769.JPG

Our lunch in the bar at Staniel Cay Yacht Club was great (I decided to add solids to my liquid lunch). The James Bond movie, Thunderball, was filmed throughout the Bahamas, and underwater scenes were shot right near the yacht club in Thunderball grotto. There are photos on the wall of the cast, hanging out at the bar. The yacht club has been around since the late 50s, and seemed to be quite the hangout in the 60s. It’s polished up a bit since then, but still has a great atmosphere.

So we’ve eaten lunch, had some beer and cooled off. It was time to check the battery. On the way, we stopped to see the nurse sharks at the sea wall. The yacht club feeds them, and some were sizable.

Back to the cart. The battery was still blinking bars for “empty.” It was time for a trade in. We managed to get back to the general store, having to push up a small hill along the way. They close from 12-2 for lunch, but we lucked out and found the man who had helped us in the morning behind the counter. We explained our dilemma, and he brought us a replacement cart to use for the rest of the afternoon.

It soon became clear that we had gotten his best cart the first time. This poor thing had an even harder time going up hill. It also made a random, scary, shuddering noise. Determined to see the ocean, we continued on. When we found the ocean path, Scott backed the poor cart up the path as far as it would go…until it stalled. I was now sure that we’d either have to walk back to the other side of the island, or spend the night right where we were. Luckily, we’d had a huge lunch and I had brought plenty of bug spray with me, so we were good either way.

We followed the rest of the path to the ocean over look. The views were beautiful, and we were glad to not be traveling out in it. There were white caps out as far as you could see.

When we returned to the cart, it had half a charge, and she thankfully started up for us. We headed back to the yacht club for another drink, and another shot at a better charge. Here’s our second, even sadder ride.

After some mango daiquiris, we gave in and decided to head for the general store. I wanted to make a stop at the blue store along the way, and it was getting close to sunset.

We coaxed the cart up the ant hill of an incline to get to the blue store. This one was half the size of the general store, not offering hardware or auto parts. I grabbed some fresh stuff for salad, more milk, some Ramen noodles and Scott added some cookies to the pile. Here’s the scale the the woman used to weigh my tomatoes. Scott loved it.

We drifted down the ant hill and back onto the main road. There was one more hill that we had to get up, to get to the general store. So once again, I floored it while Scott pushed the even bigger cart up the hill. The cart shuddered it’s way into the general store lot, and we left her to die. All in all, it was a fun way to see the island, and was worth the hassle and the heavy breathing.

On our way home, we stopped at the yacht club’s fuel dock, for gas. They are the only location on the island that offers fuel, and regularly run out! We’d heard on the vhf radio (aka island phone) that they currently had fuel so we stopped. It was comical how high the fuel dock was.

We paid for our 5.35 a gallon to fill the tanks for the Aluminum Princess and then headed back to the boat. Quite a day!

Here are the rest of our Staniel Cay photos.

“Shells Sink, Dreams Float. Life’s Good On Our Boat!”

Grocery Run

November 16, 2015April 12, 2018 / kk42sealife / 3 Comments

Yesterday we ventured out to one of the three general stores on Staniel Cay. We’ve read that it’s one of the best stocked around and they also have a dock that we can tie up to, which is always a plus. I’ve stocked the boat with a lot of canned goods, rice, pasta, sauces and such, but wanted to get some fresh foods.

We arrived at low tide, so it was a bit of a challenge to tie up the boat and climb up onto the pier, but we managed fine.

Not a bad view from the pier either.

Disposing of trash can be somewhat challenging while cruising. Small islands usually don’t have dumps and trash service. However, Staniel Cay does have a dump, and the general store will take your trash, so we brought it along (Scott is still loving his big straw hat).

It was HOT, HOT, HOT inside! Within minutes, I was soaked in sweat. Aside from being a sweat box, they managed to fit a lot into the relatively small space. We found groceries to the right. Below is the produce section; this is all there is. We grabbed bananas, green and red peppers, avocados, romaine lettuce and “pink” tomatoes. Canned goods, crackers, sodas and such are at the back wall.

The baskets stuffed with food on the floor belong to crew members who were buying things for a charter yacht. We felt bad for the locals, as these guys put a dent in the fresh stuff. Stores on the island get their stock from the mail boats that come once a week, so these greedy shoppers irritated Scott to no end. He gave them the stink eye the whole time we were there.

Along the wall is the refrigerated and frozen food section. One refrigerator was empty, but the other had milk, eggs, butter, sliced and block cheese, some juices and sodas, yogurt, and limes. One freezer held chicken, beef, hot dogs, steaks and lunch meat. The other had frozen vegetables (peas, mixed veg., corn on the cob and broccoli) and ice cream (one flavor of Breyers, and some Klondikes). How someone, in a car or boat, was going to get ice cream back home without it turning to liquid is beyond me. You’d have to bring your spoon to the store. Even then, you’d have to race to eat it in that sweat box.

Through the openings is the side which has hard goods.

Paper products and “household” items were in the far corner. Jewelry and nautical charts were on either side (of course). I grabbed a box of quart-sized, Ziploc freezer bags….for 7.75!!

The last corner held tubs of interesting miscellaneous items.

In the center of the store were boat and motor parts and chemicals, cleaning and laundry items, hardware items, charcoal and snorkel masks. There were also racks with cards and videos. I meant to get photos of this stuff, too, but by then I had sweat in my eyes.

We were held up checking out, because the charter crew had so much stuff. The woman behind the counter looks up the prices in a binder, and adds it up on a calculator. Once it was finally all boxed and totaled, their card didn’t go through. Mercifully, another crew member appeared and payed with cash. By this time, sweat was running down my entire body. I was afraid that it was going to start to pool on the floor at my feet.

While we were waiting, a local man cut in front of us, wanting to pay for a can of WD-40 spray. They couldn’t ring him up, because the register was tied up with the greedy crew. The can was $12.00, and he had a 20.00 bill. The woman told him to come back for the change on Monday (they are closed on Sundays)…HA! How would that go over in the US?

Finally, it was our turn to check out. As she weighed my peppers, the woman thankfully let me know that, by the way, your red pepper is $6.00! ONE red pepper! It promptly went back to the bin. Our little basket of things came to $87.00. We loaded our cold items (which were now half warm) into the cooler bag we’d brought, and headed back to the boat. I managed to not succumb to heat stroke, and we are now experienced island shoppers!

“Shells Sink, Dreams Float. Life’s Good On Our Boat!”

Exploring Great Harbour Cay

November 3, 2015April 12, 2018 / kk42sealife / 1 Comment

We have been exploring the area around our anchorage. Scott has done some snorkeling at the two boat wrecks that are near us, as well as the wreckage of a DC-8

We also took a ride around the nearby small islands and went into and around the harbour here.

Scott had read that there is a path through that mangroves, which takes you through the island and over to the Atlantic side. We decided to check it out, and loaded the Aluminum Princess up with chairs, towels and such for a beach day.

We made our way down to the entrance of said path and followed as the water got more and more shallow, and the “path” got more and more narrow!

The mangroves were really thick on either side of us. The boat, and sometimes us, took beating at times. I kept trying to stand up and take pictures and video of the path ahead, but it wasn’t easy.

I’m fairly sure that the path was meant for kayaks and such. However, we managed to squeeze our way through, and were rewarded with pretty blue, sandy-bottom water (the water at our anchorage is clear, but the bottom is covered with grass, so it’s a darker, green color).

The plan was to stop at a restaurant on the beach first, but being a Monday they were closed. Not such a bad thing, as the winds off of the ocean were blowing right at the location, and would’ve made it difficult for us to get off in the bumpy water.

Most dingys can just beach onshore and then get off at the bow, but with the enclosed pilot house, we can only get on an off of the Aluminum Princess at the stern end. We’d have had to anchor and make our way to shore in chest deep water (at least for me). Not appealing.

Ok, so now our lunch was going to be boxed Chex Mix that I’d brought for a snack….no problem! We were just happy to be able to spend some time on a spit of sand and wade in some clear water. We chose a spot around the corner, out of the way of the ocean swells.

Scott was not going to waste time with sunscreen, and made is way right into the water.

While I napped, he walked around toward the ocean side of our spit of land, which got more and more rocky.

A quick video:

There were many, many snails in and among the rocks, and a lot of conch shells that had been empty and discarded.

After a few hours, we squeezed our way back through the crazy mangrove trail. It was a great day, except for the fact that I was an all-you-can-eat buffet for the bugs while on the beach. Bug spray, bug spray, bug spray…I learned that lesson the hard, itchy way.

Here are today’s photos.

“Shells Sink, Dreams Float. Life’s Good On Our Boat!”

The Aluminum Princess

October 22, 2015April 12, 2018 / kk42sealife / 5 Comments

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Aluminum Princess, here is her story:

In 2003, the surge from Tropical Storm Isabel damaged the boat we had at the time. While it was off being repaired, Scott was without a boat, and terribly upset about it. Our neighbor across the street sold him an open john boat for 100.00. Of course, Scott had to “upgrade” it, and after several phases, the Aluminum Princess was born:

A dashboard was installed, with steering wheel, radio with Ipod plug-in and of course…cup holders! There are also two comfy seats inside for us. Scott uses the handle of the outboard to dock the boat, but all other steering is done from inside the pilot house. The speed is controlled with a cable that he installed, which runs from inside the pilot house back to the motor.

Scott has used this boat extensively. It took regular trips from our cove to Annapolis and Baltimore, and has spent many, many many hours on the bay in general. The Aluminum Princess has been to St. Michaels, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and back and has also made several trips out through the inlet at Ocean City, Md. and up into Delaware waters in the ocean.

For the last ten years, the Aluminum Princess has been used in all seasons. In the winter months, she is equipped with a portable propane heater and a sheet of vinyl that folds down in the back to seal the pilot house in, keeping it toasty warm inside. Scott regularly took her through the ice in our cove (she can break through ice up to four inches thick!) and out into the bay, where he shared the waters with only barges, Coast Guard boats, and an occasional sailboat. She was handy to have in early spring, when our big boat was still winterized. We would often take her into Baltimore for lunch on nice days. Even in months when our bigger boat was ready for travel, it was nice for Scott to be able to just jump in the Aluminum Princess and spend time exploring the waters near our cove.

Since our cruise budget did not allow for us to purchase something that Scott could use in the same way, he went about figuring out how to make the Aluminum Princess more cruiser friendly. Her sharp edges were not conducive to tying up next to rubber dingys, or the fiberglass sides of a boat that we may be visiting. After much thinking and research, Scott purchased closed cell polyethylene foam to construct a collar around the sides and roof of the princess. He installed a solar panel on her roof to power the boat, a depth finder and some navigation lights for night travel.

She hasn’t had any final water testing, as the last of the collar installation was done as we traveled south. But finally, here in Biscayne Bay, she got a maiden voyage with her new look!

All went well, and the collar has even improved her ride.

We will still keep our rubber dingy, which is now my ride! It’ll be good for just going to shore for quick trips and such. The Aluminum Princess will be invaluable to Scott for diving, fishing and long range exploring. She and Scott have covered many miles and hours on the water, and we can’t imagine this adventure without her!