Beyond NSB



Met this guy on our way out of Ft. Lauderdale.
English Rose in front of us.



We finally managed to pull ourselves away from New Smyrna Beach on January 19.  Headed down to Palm Beach for our exit to the Abacos on Monday, but that weather window deteriorated faster than it appeared!  We had a good trip down to Palm Beach, although we had to fight our way through the weekend idiots on the waterway between Vero Beach and Palm Beach.  Shortly after anchoring in Palm Beach 'English Rose' pulled in.  We met Bob & Janet four years ago and saw them again last year.  They are such a delightful couple to spend time with.  Janet is from England and has that beautiful english accent that I could listen to forever - they have been cruising for about 7 years.  Bob is very sensible and like Jeff, does all his own work on their boat and he and Jeff have lots to talk about.  Bob and Janet are planning to go the Exumas and were planning to leave on the day we were leaving for the Abacos, so were stuck in Palm Beach as well.  The four of us decided to head down the inside passage and slug through 22 draw bridges to get to Ft. Lauderdale and then went outside to get to Miami.  I thought Palm Beach was the land of the rich and famous, but it only gets richer and famouser the farther south you go!!!  The whole way to Ft. Lauderdale I was oohing and aahing over houses and boats.  The trip on the outside to Miami was pretty bumpy - things came out of their place that have never moved before - books jumped out of the bookcase behind our bed and food jumped out of closed cabinets!  We surfed through the inlet to Miami with opposing tide.  WOW! What a ride!!

We've never been to Miami before and were excited to see what everyone talks about.  Miami harbour was obviously dredged and perfectly shaped islands were made and built on years ago when that was allowed - very interesting.  There is a road with little bridged connecting all these islands.  We are anchored with 'English Rose' between Palm Island and Hibiscus Island.  We are the only two boats anchored in here and it is very protected, at least so far.  But, we are definately fishes in a bowl here!  The first afternoon we were here we went over to Monument Island to meet up with some other cruisers we had met in previous years, Jesse & Ginny on 'Wind Dust', and Mike & Barb on 'Goose Bumps', as well as some other cruisers we hadn't met before.  There are many places to anchor in this area and boats everywhere, but Monument Island is pretty much in the middle of the area.

Bob & Janet took us ashore yesterday to see South Beach and the surrounding area, as they've been here many times before and are old hat at finding the hot spots.  Sad to say, we were unimpressed with South Beach itself - not as pretty a beach as we expected at all, especially since it is such a famous beach.  The road that runs along the beach is totally consumed with restaurants/bars/hotels.  I've never seen so many restaurants!!!  And you must walk through each one as the sidewalk runs right through them.  And every one has at least one or two people hussling you to stop for drinks, lunch or breakfast.  Unbelievable!  We did stop at one for lunch and promptly left when we found out the 'happy hour' 2 for 1drinks were going to cost us $12 each.  They flash you cards showing $9 and $10 for lunch, but don't tell you how high the drinks are.  We ate at a place on Lincoln Ave, which is an area leading up to South Beach that is closed off to traffic and just one store and restaurant after the other.  Quite interesting.  In the middle of what at one time was the street, there was a raised beautiful grassy area and Quaker parakeets would fly down out of the palm trees to pick up tidbits that passersby would throw out there.


Quaker Parakeets



Chart of the Miami area - see the perfectly shaped islands?!



The video below is us coming into Miami.

Till next time!!

Happy New Year!!

I know, I know, I’m a really bad blogger!!! I haven’t posted a single thing since we left home Nov. 20th and I’m not going to try and fool you into thinking I’ll do better in 2012 because you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

Some of the boats in our marina dressed up for Christmas



Salty Dog



Downtown New Smyrna Beach

We are in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where we left the boat for the summer. We do so love it here! The Christmas decorations were beautiful, on the water as well as downtown.

Waiting for the Christmas Parade to start - can you tell it was a chilly day?

Jeff finished the watermaker for the boat – yippee!!! We are really excited to try it out, but have to wait until we are in a place where we can see the bottom – you’re not supposed to use it in dirty water. The basic principle of a watermaker is that it takes clean salt water and takes the salt out and cleans it up and makes fresh water – it works by reverse osmosis. We should be able to make about 16 gallons an hour when the generator is running and that is most mornings for about one hour to top off the charge on our batteries. Since we use about 12 gallons a day we will have a few extra gallons a day to spare. And when you have to carry your water with you on the boat you learn to be very frugal with it.  Here in the USA it's not a big deal to fill your water tanks when you stop to get diesel fuel - it's free, BUT in the Bahamas it is anywhere from 20 - 50 cents a gallon! Think about how often you turn the faucet on at home and how long you leave it on and the amount of water that is coming out each time. Do you think you use more than 6 gallons per person? That includes showering every day and washing dishes. I bet I wash my hands a dozen times a day under a trickle of water, but then everything is done under a trickle!!

On a humorous note – we brought our RV down here to stay in for the first few weeks since we had some projects going on that made it hard to get around inside the boat. We parked the RV at a campground 3 miles from the marina, which was quite convenient. We had extremely hard rain all evening and night one particular day while we were staying there and when we woke the following morning and looked out the windows we thought we were on the boat! We were totally surrounded by water - some places were 8 inches deep. We were storing our empty gas jugs (for the dinghy) under the RV. They were floating all over the campground. Luckily the campground has pumps that are set up to drain the water away pretty quick, so by the end of the day we didn’t have to wade to the door.


This was after the water had receded some.

We drove back to Alabama to spend Christmas with Brian, Melanie, Kate & John. I am so glad we went!! We so enjoyed watching their excitement. And when we arrived we learned that Santa now sends an Elf to each house with children. The elf sits on a shelf (or somewhere else) and he/she watches the children for Santa by day and flies to the North Pole at night to report in, then back to the childrens houses before morning. But not before he gets into some kind of mischief at the house. And he always seems to be in a different place each morning. It is quite magical! And the mischief Kate & John’s elf got into was funny. One night he rolled the Christmas tree in toilet paper and was sitting in the tree; another night he dressed up in Kate’s Barbie clothes and was found in the bathroom reading a book to three of her Barbies. I guess the elf must have reported that Kate & John were pretty good, because they sure did haul in the presents on Christmas!!! I’ve never seen anything like it! They sure did enjoy themselves. As did the rest of us just watching them.


The New Year is here and we need to get ourselves in gear, finish up some small projects, and get moving farther south. The weather here has been wonderful. It is New Year’s Day and we took a dinghy ride in bathing suits! We have tried to enjoy every bit of it because we know it’s going to get really cold tomorrow night – 34* with a high of 50* on Tuesday - bbbrrrrrrrrr!! But it will be back in the low 70’s by the end of the week. The cold comes and goes.  Since the marina we’re in is right on the ICW we get to watch the parade of boats heading south. We thought we would be the very last one heading out, but I guess not.



She was instructed to stand guard while I went to get the next load!



HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!  May 2012 be a wonderful year!