Category: Summer 2023

Hey, here’s the Atlantic Ocean again!

Wait, what?  What’s the Atlantic Ocean doing on the “Intracoastal” Waterway?  Well, this is the one place the ICW pokes its nose out into open water.  Not coincidentally it’s also the place at issue when our healthy aversion to six-foot waves kept us at Jekyll Island.  Sunday it was a bit chunky but not too bad.

Collectively we know a lot about submarines, because we both toured USS Silversides in Muskegon, Michigan, and one of us has watched The Hunt for Red October at least a dozen times.  What we really wanted, however, was to see one in the wild.  It’s not like we haven’t had chances.  We were all around Naval Submarine Base New London, aka “The Submarine Capitol of the World.”  Nothing.  We heard radio chatter from submarine escorts bring them in and out of Norfolk.  Nada.  On prior trips we passed NSB Kings Bay, where—according to unkept promises in the Waterway Guide—mariners should keep a sharp lookout because subs zoom by at high speed, creating big wakes.  Nope.

This time past Kings Bay, however, we found one in her pen.

Despite our best efforts at identifying her, we came up empty.  The British Navy Flag made us a bit suspicious, however, and then that little crown confirmed our suspicions: not one of ours.*

But at least it’s still a sub.  Give me a ping, Dana.  One ping only.

Then past Fort Clinch, which both sides used during the Civil War until someone realized that masonry walls were no match for rifled cannonballs.

There’s more than just Civil War and Ponce de Leon to the history around here.  In May of 1777, for example, the British had the temerity to fight back during an “invasion,” whereupon an American officer righteously burned British houses and killed British cows.

And now here we are tending to their submarines.  Crazy.

Anyway, we do like Fernandina Beach.

Hey, there’s Sunset Delight!  We last saw Clark and Evelyn when we followed them through the shallow shoals at the Matanzas Inlet, after that dinner at the fake European Village in Palm Coast.  They go up and down the ICW every year, however, so maybe it’s not that odd that we met up again.

Up and out early, past Florida swamps and Florida ICW docks owned by people who wish everyone would cruise by at no-wake speeds. Some of these sights along the ICW are just timeless.

No really.  Here’s Timeless, who we followed all the way to St. Augustine.

Whoa now!  That’s Ocean Voyager, who last appeared in this blog way back on Lake Huron and who now rudely tied up with the sun behind her such that our photo sucks.  Small world indeed.

More boats!  Here’s USS Lassen, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer most famous for that time she collided with a tiny fishing boat in Japan.  We’re not sure who, but somebody probably was more focused on doing the Wordle than watching where they were going.

Our former friends at Rivers Edge Marina apparently didn’t value our friendship enough to have space for us, so this time in St. Augustine we stopped at Camachee Cove instead.

Everybody will tell you that Vinny’s has awesome pizza, but really it’s just okay.  We only had time for mediocre pizza and a walk through town before Tennessee opened the basketball season with a win, so basically passing the Bridge of Lions on the way south this morning was the next noteworthy thing we did.

The dredge people were dredging that shallow part where we previously used Sunset Delight to test the waters, so no worries this time through.

In our travels we’ve seen all types of boaters, and we try not to be judgmental.  The owner of this beauty, however, obviously has no idea what he’s doing.  A seasoned mariner would know to put the fenders between the hull and the palm tree, not leave them dangling uselessly on the other side.

Yup, we’re back in Florida alright.

And by the way, claiming that you just wanted to give pelicans a place to stand is not a valid explanation.

None of that should suggest, of course, that we have a problem with all Florida boaters.  Our buddies on Exhale and Bucket List and Blue Goose, for example, are awesome.  And so is the guy who owns this pontoon.  Anybody who paints Tennessee Checkerboards on their boat jumps to the top of any list of cool people.  Rocky Top, you’ll always be, home sweet home to me.  Good old Rocky Top.  Rocky Top, Tennessee.

After a long day we collapsed at New Smyrna Beach.  Tomorrow, Cocoa Village.

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*We were hoping mightily that the sub would prove to be HMS Vigilant, but sadly it isn’t.  A Google search of the Vigilant shenanigans from a few years back is worth the effort.

Tuesday may be Soylent Green day, but Wednesday was manatee day.  For the first several hours, a large aggregation of them bobbed around us at manatee speed, which basically is the speed at which a manatee would struggle in a race against a sloth if sloths were aquatic.  And yes, we looked it up.  A group of manatees is called an aggregation.  This one had a population of at least fifty, although they stretched out over miles.  More manatees than we see in Arizona, that’s for sure.

The problem with manatees is that they barely break the surface—so photos are hard to come by—but right about here we were surrounded by dozens of them.

Dana did manage one decent photo out of significantly more than one try, however, which should be enough to prove we’re not making this up.

Although this time through Haulover Canal we didn’t see any alligators, in addition to photo-averse manatees there were lots of birds hanging about.  And a collection of trees that are very vaguely reminiscent of the big W where Smiler Grogan buried his loot, although Dana mostly took the photo because they look cool.

Haulover Canal bisects NASA property, which explains the signs.  That’s why they call this the “Space Coast.”  Duh.

Speaking of NASA, we can’t pass through here without a photo of the Vehicle Assembly Building.  That’d be like ignoring the Statue of Liberty.  It’s just not done.  Any building that can house a vertical Saturn V has to be one of the coolest buildings in the world, at least according to us.

While on the subject of NASA, how about VFL Josh Dobbs?  Despite the fact that almost single-handedly he extended the abysmal Butch Jones experiment, that time he drove the Dobbnail boot into the lyin’, cheatin’ Georgia Bulldogs was historically awesome.  Then last week the miserable Cardinals—who desperately want the opportunity to squander the first pick in the 2024 NFL draft—traded him because they can’t afford another win.  Whereupon the NFL promptly named him the Offensive Player of the Week after the improbable Viking victory in Atlanta.  That’s goosebump stuff right there.

After all that exciting wildlife and NASA stuff, we rolled up to Cocoa Village.  Cocoa Village is a short scooter ride from Cocoa Beach, which would be very important information if (1) we had felt like scootering to the Ron Jon Surf Shop and (2) we hadn’t already used more than an acceptable number of I Dream of Jeannie references in prior posts.

Yesterday brought a glorious sunrise that the Hubert Humphrey Bridge mostly blocked, before we made the run down to Melbourne.  

As we pulled in to Melbourne Harbor late yesterday afternoon, we learned that NASA was launching a SpaceX Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center at 8:28.  Well, well!  This’ll be awesome!  The dockhand said the rockets fly right overhead, and Tumbleweed’s bow would be an excellent vantage point.   Let’s tie up, eat dinner, and get ready.

As the sun set, youthful sailors returned from sea, undoubtedly as excited as us to watch the early stages of the trip to resupply the International Space Station.

Meh.  We set everything up for a fabulous photo.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  We watched the countdown and the launch on NASA’s website so we know it happened, but it damn sure didn’t happen over us.  So here’s a photo of where the rocket was supposed to be, taken at precisely the time it would’ve been visible if the dockhand hadn’t brazenly lied to us.  Or maybe there were clouds.  Or maybe it went the other way.

Whatever.  The rowers were out this morning even before we walked past the public art installation on our way to breakfast.

Now about planning.  What the hell is the point of it?  When we first headed towards Florida and the ship that’ll carry Tumbleweed to British Columbia, the loading date was about Thanksgiving.  No worries, we’ll have the girls fly to Florida for a few days.

Then the shipping date moved to the first week of December.  Grrrr.  Okay, book plane tickets and a rental car and we’ll fly to Sacramento for Thanksgiving with the girls at Shannon’s house in Napa, then fly back to load the boat.

Then a couple of days ago, word arrived that we’re pushed out at least another week.  Now we know why people abandon their boats in Florida.  The point is, we had been slow-playing the trip down but who wants to sit around in Florida for a month when you can’t even see a flippin’ rocket launch?  Nobody, that’s who.  So luckily we found a spot in Fort Pierce and hustled down this afternoon.  Cancel the plane tickets.  We’ll drive a rental car across to Arizona, have Thanksgiving with the girls, then fly back when it’s time to meet the cargo ship.

But first, some more abandoned-boat porn.

Turns out, people even drag boats from other places to dump them in Florida.  For example, here rests the sad remains of Ultim’Emotion 2.  This quite-expensive racing trimaran was 160 miles from shore and leading a huge field in a race from Newport to Bermuda when her 102’ mast snapped off.  Now her future is uncertain, because the guy who bought her failed to realize that (1) there’s no place along the Florida coast that can accept her beam and (2) the ICW bridges only have 65’ of clearance.  Oops.

This guy hasn’t abandoned his boat, but slowly tacking back and forth across the narrow channel—with no radio—still makes him a jackass in our book.  It wasn’t until later that we realized he basically was naked to boot.

So we’re tied up in Fort Pierce for the next month.  We’ve schlepped stuff up to the minivan in anticipation of a morning departure.  When we next post something, hopefully it’ll include a photo of Tumbleweed being hoisted for her journey to Victoria.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Over Thanksgiving in Napa, we got the notice:  Tumbleweed is going to Victoria on UHL Frontier, not Bruce like they first told us.  And UHL Frontier was scheduled to arrive on December 7, which is way earlier than Bruce could’ve gotten there since she’s still in Europe.  Grrrr.  Applying Bayesian logic we were pretty confident that we’d rush back to Fort Pierce from Scottsdale only to have the date moved out again, but missing the boat would cost a large pile of money.  Which means on Friday we rushed back to Fort Pierce.

Because we only planned to be in Florida for a few days—and had no plans to attend any fancy dinner parties on any of those few days—we intentionally left our dress clothes at home.  And by that we mean we didn’t bring jeans or shirts that don’t start with t.  But then as we walked around town we happened by the Sunrise Theatre.*

We looked in.  The lights were on.  People who didn’t leave their finery at home were walking around in that finery.  Hey, it’s The Nutcracker!  Show is at 7, and they have tickets left!  One of us is a sucker for The Nutcracker, and the other one of us is a sucker who forgot that ballet mostly involves a bunch of people silently prancing around on their toes with their arms and wrists flapping awkwardly.  So we went, confident in the knowledge that any well-attired snoot who peered down his or her nose at those of us dressed for pickleball would never see us again.

We shouldn’t have bothered worrying at all.  Every member of the audience but us was related to a performer and thus was too fixated on little Susie or whoever to pay attention to our state of underdressedness.**  But Clara got the nutcracker of every young girl’s dreams and there was way less rap music than that time we scored last-minute Hamilton tickets in Chicago with Second Wave, so it all worked out.  All in all, Fort Pierce was a great success.***

Saturday morning instead of watching football we headed south to Stuart.  Lots of stuff to see along the way, but sadly we took the camera back to Arizona and iPhones suck for any distant detail.  Here’s a photo of one of three little regattas we passed, however, just to show something that would’ve been much cooler and crisper with a zoom lens.

No matter how far we travel, there’s always a new hazard to avoid.   Several clowns on boards tried to ram us in the middle of the channel but we foiled them.

After we tied up, the Tiki Taxi full of revelers cruised close enough to the dock for us to hear shrieking, which also put it in phone camera range.

Remember No Drama in Quebec with the Arizona flag?  And the two other Arizona boats at Jekyll Island?  Well in Stuart, we found ourselves next door to Desert Deviation.

Turns out Jason and Amber live about a mile away from us when they’re not on their boat.  Crazy.

The funny part is that we were so taken aback by the Scottsdale boat that we never paid attention to the DeFever docked on the other side of it.  Then later—about the time we were rooting for a sinkhole to open up under Mercedes-Benz Stadium and swallow Georgia and Alabama and all their fans—we got a knock, knock.  Who’s there?  Gary and Monique!  Woooo!  We last saw Star Gazer in St. Michaels.  2021.  Great to catch up, although all we have to show for it is a really horrible photo that we can’t blame on the phone.

Oh yeah.  We also took the drone home.

In an effort to time our arrival in West Palm Beach so as to avoid the treacherous cross-current that surprised us last time, we awoke this morning for a pre-dawn departure.  Fog again?  Get the fog outta here.

But we left anyway, because sometimes it really does burn off.

This poor slob also left before dawn, but ran up on something right by the sign that said “Danger.”  Dana cheerfully offered pleasantries before dutifully taking his photo.  As an aside, Dana hates taking pictures of people in distress.  She thinks it rude.  But she also hates three hours of “I can’t believe we don’t have a photo of that guy on the shoal.”

Did we mention that the ICW is shallow?

Here comes Santa Claus.

Here comes Santa Claus.

Right down Santa Claus lane.

Not only did we enjoy holiday vibes from multiple Santa Clauses, the trip was as smooth and easy as we could’ve hope for after Doug dropped and broke the auto-pilot remote about an hour into the trip.  Grrrr again.

Nearing West Palm Beach, the boats significantly increased in size.

We’re guessing there’s much booze in the blender on Margaritaville at Sea.  We looked it up.  For a few hundred dollars you can spend two nights traveling to and from Grand Bahama Island with all your parrothead friends, although the online reviews are mixed.

Then on into Palm Harbor, where this time we didn’t almost wipe out $10 million worth of Hinckleys.  Where’s Waldo?

On our walk through town, we found a 35-foot tall, seven-ton sand Christmas tree, which seems to be the cornerstone of West Palm Beach’s Christmas celebration.  

Bucking our strong preference to be in pajamas before sundown, tonight we ventured out to see what all the fuss was about.  The streets were packed with people who obviously aren’t familiar with Looper midnight.

But the traditional lighting of the sand tree was cool enough, and walking past the other sand sculptures allowed us to end this post with a nutcracker.  That’s some symmetry right there baby.

As of this moment, UHL Frontier is scheduled to arrive in Port Everglades on December 8.  Fingers crossed.

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*You can tell the Sunrise is a classy joint because it’s a “Theatre,” not a “Theater.”  Unless you’re in Canada, in which case even raunchy adult movies show in “theatres” because Canadians are still trying to be British.  Except the ones who live in Quebec.

**When the box office dude said there were tickets left, he failed to mention that the production was roughly on the level of All Saints Episcopal Day School’s Spring Show, only longer.  We immediately knew something was amiss when the announcer optimistically described the mostly pre-teen troupe as “pre-professional.” Bless their hearts.

***Except for the $&!#ing birds.  During our three week absence, the entirety of the Fort Pierce bird population decided our bow pulpit would make a most excellent porta potty.  And on the viscosity scale between cold tar and cured concrete, Fort Pierce bird poop falls much closer to the latter.  After what seemed like ten hours of scrubbing we got about 80% of it off before giving up.  We’ll give it another go as soon as we find someone to loan us a jackhammer.

When Andy Williams proclaimed that this is the hap-happiest season of all, he damn sure wasn’t trying to ship a boat from Fort Lauderdale to Victoria.  On some level we know the screw-job isn’t targeting us personally, but the effect is the same.  More on that later.

First, one last bit of Yuletide cheer before leaving West Palm Beach over a week ago, because nothing screams Christmas like surfboards and wiener dogs.

Short run down to Boynton Beach, with not much of note along the way.  At one point the tow boat Valkyrie ran us out of the channel, but she was doing the Lord’s Work by salvaging a derelict boat so we let it slide.

We also didn’t find a lot of excitement once we reached Boynton Beach.  The tiny city marina does sport one of the more pleasing offices, however, and they put us in about the easiest in and out spot possible.  Very nice.

We took the second of those photos from the bridge that led us out to the turtle sculpture and the beach.  Uninspiring sculpture.  Sweet beach.  No unsupervised kids running amok and no litter, which probably isn’t coincidental.

Lots of rich people around these parts.  This monstrosity looks like it should be a museum but isn’t.  We’re guessing the summer air conditioning bill is about as large as the house.

The trip from Boynton Beach to Fort Lauderdale is notable for the bridges.  Which mostly suck, except for the ones we could get through without waiting for an opening.

Did we mention that rich people’s houses line the ICW down here like Alabama fans line Tuscaloosa’s main drag for the Tooth Decay Celebration Festival Parade?

This starkly modern beauty is in Boca Raton.

Boca Raton is famous as the town where Kramer ran for board president of Del Boca Vista Phase 3—because the Boca Breeze would’ve eaten Morty alive—but then lost in a landslide when the tip calculators he used as bribes all proved defective.

Some folks actually have modest houses, of course, but then have not so modest boats parked on their docks.

Who does Sea Tow call when it needs help?  Certainly not TowBoatUS.

Anyway, we finally made it to the self-proclaimed “Yachting Capital of the World.”  A few days too soon, of course, because the nice shipping people pushed the loading date out to the 10th.  Of course they did.

Maybe Fort Lauderdale’s claim is true.  Maybe it isn’t.  But we can confirm once again that there are a lot of enormous boats in the area.  For example, here’s Archimedes.  This $100 million bad boy carries 16 guests and 18 crew, which frankly seems like an extravagant ratio.  However, owner Jim Simons is a mathematician who figured out the stock market so who are we to second guess?

Fortitude charters for $105,000 per week, but maybe more if you’re willing to pay for gas rather than just get towed around.

Yup, huge yachts are stacked up around here like Alabama fans at a pork rind smoothie stand.

Ok, enough about superyachts.  Bahia Mar—which means either “Ocean Bay” or “Money Drain”—was the only place with room for us.  Not surprisingly they stuck us out on the small boat dock again, although they charge like we’re a superyacht.

And then the loading date for UHL Frontier got kicked out to the 12th.  You’ve got to be kidding.  Lola Fandango was right: “Life isn’t all beer and roses.”**   But we could see that the ship left Morehead City as scheduled, so the 12th should be final.  We’ll box and strap and wrap and secure everything on the 11th.  Get those plane tickets now, because we have halls to deck and a tree to trim before the girls arrive.

We’re not really the types to photograph food, but last time we were in Fort Lauderdale our Uber driver dropped us off at a place with bruschetta so messy and delicious that we took a picture.  Good thing, because we had no memory of the restaurant name or where it was.  We literally showed the photo around town until someone told us it was Noodles Panini, which fortunately still is in business so that we could take a new one.  Yum.

Here’s the Elbo Room, still rocking some 63 years after Basil offered free beer to everyone and then slowly came around to Connie Francis after the fake Yalies had their way with Mel but before Merritt found true love with Ryder on the same beach we walked up and down repeatedly while killing time until the 12th.  The snowman, however, is new.

On Monday, UHL Frontier pulled up to the Port Everglades loading dock just as planned.

Yippee!  Green lights across the board.  We’re scheduled to load at 1300 hours on the 12th.  So we hustled around packing everything away in tubs, took Starlink down, and generally turned Tumbleweed from liveable to shipable.  Only after that did the dreaded update arrive:  the “routine crane tests are delayed,” so we’re bumped out another day.  Change the flights.  Change the hotel.  Swear a lot.  Grrrr.

Even worse, the new date came with predicted winds in excess of the loading standards.  And rain.  WTF!  We haven’t seen rain since before we left for Thanksgiving, and it picks our new shipping day to return?  And it’s only predicted to get worse through the weekend:  40 knot gusts every day.  Now this is foul.

Speaking of fowl, here’s a pelican on the dock and a funky Muscovy duck at the Mexican joint.  They probably won’t mind the rain.

We tried for one last Atlantic sunrise before the storms rolled in, but had to settle for what would be one last Atlantic sunrise if the clouds weren’t in the way.

The next Atlantic sunrise we’ll see actually will be a Pacific sunset.

This morning we awoke to the high winds as predicted.  The rain started about two hours before our loading window, which sketchily remained open.  Eight-foot waves at the inlet we had to cross.  But even before that, we had to get out of our slip, in 30 mph wind gusts, without hammering the shiny new $2 million Sabre that shared the well.  Oh yeah.  One more thing, as if we needed one more thing.  As we prepped to leave the slip, the bow thruster stopped working.  But our choices were go to the ship or go broke, so we rigged a bow line to allow the dock guy to pull our nose around the piling, and we snuck out with very few inches to spare between us and not one, but two expensive boats.

On the way down to the loading berth, we passed a sight that seemed oddly familiar, yet oddly different.  Who does TowBoatUS call when it needs a tow?  Certainly not Sea Tow.

Anyway, a terrifying story that felt like days made short, after three thrusterless tries we finally landed Tumbleweed alongside UHL Frontier.  Unbelievable.  And frankly, we’re the lucky ones.  We were relatively early on the first loading day of three.  Twenty-one boats left to go after ours.  With confidence borne of experience, the tender guy predicted that they’d have to suspend loading any minute, leaving everyone else until at least Sunday.***  Absolutely horrid weather for that sort of thing.

Now about the Panama Canal.  The man with the first real plan—a Frenchman named Ferdinand de Lesseps, by the way—probably didn’t anticipate global warming that would deplete Gatun Lake and slow international shipping to a dribble, but that’s what happened.  And we’re caught in the thick of it.  In fact, as of post time UHL Frontier still is dithering about whether to wait indefinitely for canal passage or just suck it up and take Tumbleweed through the Strait of Magellan, which is as close to rounding Cape Horn as possible without actually rounding Cape Horn.

Whatever.  We’re just glad to have the boat safely loaded and be on our way.

Since that time back on April 12, 2018 when we finally broke free from Deltaville’s evil clutches, we’ve traveled over 20,000 miles around the east coast.  Hundreds of stops in villages and towns and cities.  From the Florida Keys to Prince Edward Island, around all of the Great Lakes, up and down rivers and through canals.  We’ve boated to 26 of the 50 states and five of the ten Canadian provinces.  Although almost all of it was epically awesome, we’re ready for something new.  Our next reunion with Tumbleweed will be in Victoria.

So that’s a wrap on 2023.  Happy Holidays and all that.

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*Wooo!  We finally get to work in one of the great palindromes of our time!  Also, Toby Harrah was the first Major Leaguer named with a palindrome.  And if that’s not enough, Dana recently bought a Taco Cat shirt at Chuy’s.

**Yup, while we were killing time we finally watched the original Where the Boys Are, which isn’t at all Oscar-worthy but is significantly better than the first 30 minutes of The Hotel New Hampshire, which is all we could stomach that time we suckered for it after visiting the filming site in Tadoussac, Quebec.

***To be clear, we’re talking about the guy who drove us back to shore on the tender.  We have no idea about his personality.