Living in Paradise

Hello everyone! I don't want our loyal readers to stop following our blog, so thought it was about time for an update. We are still in Boot Key Harbor hanging on a mooring and becoming part of the cruisers network here. Not too much has changed since our last update though. We have been enjoying the weather and doing lots of outdoor activities that we know and love, like running and roller blading. Steve even got a hockey stick and has been playing roller hockey. We've been invited to play tennis, but we'll have to do a little practice session as neither one of us has touched a racket in years! We also found out that there's bocci balls, but the set is missing the polena, so we're trying to find a golf ball to use as a replacement.

We also went diving again, this time at Sombrero Reef - about 6 NM off the Boot Key Harbor. When we inquired on our morning cruisers' net about other divers, we met another couple who were interested. Claus and Rose on a Gemini Cat, took us out on Gypsy Rose. Again, easier to dive from a cat than our sailboat. Also, Claus is a captain of a dive boat back home (in Canada), making two trips daily. So, again, it was nice to have help with our dive - mainly getting our equipment on and getting into the water, and then getting equipment off and getting back into the boat. Claus also kept an eye on us when we were under too. We also kept checking our location to make sure we didn't stray far from the boat. The waves at Sombrero light were higher than we would've liked, about 3 to 4 feet, but the water temperature was in the low 70s. The visibility was fair - 20 to 30 feet. We dove to about 30 feet. The fish were shyer here than they were at Molasses Reef. They pretty much stayed down in the reefs and didn't come up to the boat. That could be because the mooring we caught was surrounded mostly by sand and not directly over the reef. We did see quite a bit of fish once we were over the reefs. We also saw a huge stingray that was pretty cool. The pictures can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/sombrerodive (thanks John for the tip - I knew about it, but wasn't thinking about it).

We still have about a week and 1/2 here at Marathon and we are not sure of our plans after that time. We may stay here even longer and visit Key West by bus as we have been hearing that the anchorages in Key West are not that great. It is looking as though we will not go over to the Bahamas at this point, but that is not definite yet. So we'll keep you all posted as our plans develop.

Key Lime Pie

We are definitely in the Keys! Every restaurant and coffee shop claims to have the best key lime pie in town (or on the Keys)- award winning. We did have a really good slice of key lime pie with an excellent cup of coffee the other day, but I forget the name of the joint - I'll have to get back to you on that one. We've been having a great time here - even though it's been just a llittle chilly - 55 - 65 degrees most of this week. Tomorrow promises to be back into the 70's. The wind had also been kicking up the seas, so we haven't been able to go out diving this week.

But what we have been doing is socializing. There are 226 moorings in the harbor and they are all curisers! Marathon is a cruisers' paradise, but maybe we've been here too long??? Tonight when we went to the Dockside to see Joe Mama perform, a nice gentlement named Joe helped us tie up our dinghy. When he saw the name on the dinghy he said, "Oh, the infamous John Ray!" Well, maybe we've been on the Marathon Cruisers' Net too much anyway. (Steve needs to stop listening to the trivia session - which is a very long story that I'm not going to get into now.) Plus, Michele asked if anyone had an extra solar, all around white light, (for the dinghy or the cockpit when at anchor). You know those lights that you use on your walkway or in your garden? Since these lights come in multiple packs, I thought maybe someone had an extra one. Well noone did, but turns out quite a few people wanted one. So, off we went to Home Depot to buy 2 six packs of these lights to share the cost with 10 other cruisers which we distributed last night at the meet and greet. Well, we sure got to know even more cruisers - in case we haven't met too many already.



So lets see, besides seeing the Murray's again, we met Cheryl and John on Windrifter. We first met them up at Solomon's Island, Maryland. They are originally from Massachusets (south shore), but have been living up in Sebago, ME for the past 30 years. After meeting them, they introduced us to Bertha and Roy who are from Attleboro, MA. We also met Eddie and Kendra on Degage' from Scituate, and Glen , originally from North Quincy but lives on the south shore on Gandolf (an IP 350 which was up in Hingham right across from John Ray). The Great Catsby also made an appearance here in Marathon, but already left to head to the Bahamas - that is Rich and Carol from Point Judith, RI. We know them from looking at their IP 380 for sale a couple of years back before they bought their catamaran. Back in Hampton, VA we saw them again. So there's been lunches, dinners, happy hours, and football game drinks and appetizers keeping our calendar quite full. There are also several other IP cruisers that we met too, including Lauri and Jim from Kismet, Butch and Gretchen on Lucidity and Ileanous (didn't get their boat card yet and not sure how to spell their names-they're French - I'll get back to you on that one). Their are also many, many more people we've met here, but it would take me all night to list them all. Besides, you'd probably be bored reading it since you don't know any of these people anyway. But let's just say, this cruising thing is pretty cool. We like it a lot.

Here is the link to the latest pictures: http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=278786653/a=102133856_102133856/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink

Molasses Reef Dive, Key Largo, FL

Below is the link to our last dive at Molasses Reef. (Donna you can let me know how I did with labelling the pictures.) My camera would take excellent pictures and then just take blurry ones. Sorry about that. I did delete some, but kept some too.
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=249725571/a=102133856_102133856/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink

Marathon, FL

Well here we are in the Middle Keys of Florida. Marathon is a cruiser's hot spot. The mooring field of the City Marina is packed with sail boats, cats, cruisers and trawlers. The marina has free wireless and their facilities looks like an Internet Cafe (except with laundry instead of coffee). There are laptops plugged in all over the place. Each morning on the radio, they have a cruisers' net. First new boats introduce themselves and then people who are leaving. After that there is a comments and questions session. Following that is the buy, sell, trade session and then trivia. New boats get a welcome bag (a canvas tote), but I'm not sure what's in it as ours has not arrived yet. Cruisers who come here tend to stay a while. And that is the case with us. We took the mooring for 1 month! We are going to decide during that time our next move - finish the keys and then the Dry Tortugas or Bahamas. There is a buddy list posted with other boats and their plans to head over to Bahamas if anyone wants to join them and stay in radio contact on the way.

Mail can sent to us here at:

Steve and Michele Papile
800 35th Street, Ocean
Marathon, FL 33050

(no bills please!)

We were happy to see Leighia, Cameron and the kids when we got here. We haven't seen them since Annapolis. They joined us for an impromptu dinner on Tuesday night. Last night there was a meet and greet pot luck dinner at the marina and it was very well attended -tons of food.

The laundry and showers are in need of work - which they are doing as we speak. A new shower and laundry building has been built, but not yet open. Maybe before we leave????? As of now, there are only 3 showers, UGH! And the laundry has a queue all day long.

This morning Leighia picked Michele up for her very first Yoga class ever! I think there is Yoga class every other day. It wasn't bad for stretching, but I think I need a more aerobic workout. There is also a beautiful park right next door with bocci courts, a roller hockey rink (yeah we brought our roller blades), a softball field (games twice a week with equipment included :), a skateboard park, shuffle board, and much more. The grocery store is a mile away so we will probably start to use the fold up bike we brought. There is also a huge bike parking lot that we can lock our bike up to. Let's see what else, oh free pump out once a week. The diving and snorkeling here is also supposed to be really good too.

So, if anyone wants to book a flight and come and stay on the boat for a week - now is a good time to do it!!! (Beth, you can always drive.) It's pretty cold here today (60's), but supposed to warm up after this front moves on by Sunday. I hear it's in the teens in Boston though, so I'm not complaining. Pat and Bill, are you sure you don't want to come down? I think Jenni has an extra room??? Signing off for now, but will post again when there is something interesting to write about.

Leaving Key Largo

I'll write more in a few minutes once we're under way!

Ok, so I lied. It's been way more than a few minutes. But I was really tired and didn't have the energy to write a log while we were under way or when we arrived in Boot Key Harbor last night. I now have plenty of time to catch up on the past week's events.

So after our exciting night during the storm at our anchorage, the next day (Thursday) we laid low to regroup. We had tentative plans to go diving with Chet and Donna, but none of us really wanted to go because the weather didn't seem to be that great. By the afternoon time, however, it was beautiful. The wind died down and the seas were fairly calm. Oh well. Plans were made to dive on Friday. The winds were still blowing pretty good, which made the seas higher than we wanted on our first dive. Instead of going 6 miles out to Molasses, we went to Hens and Chickens which was a little further south, but only 3 miles offshore. Turns out it didn't matter so much. The seas were 2 to 3 feet. We dove anyway and had a great time. At first, we were a little tentative and it took a while for us to get acclimated. We ended up doing about a 30 minute dive and then we were exhausted. Chet was gracious enough to follow us on top with the dive buoy in case we got into any trouble. We did quite well once we got ourselves and our equipment organized. After we did our dive, then Chet and Donna did theirs. They typically go one at a time so as not to leave their boat (with the dogs) on the mooring unattended. (They can do that since they've been diving for 30+ years.

Steve and I had tentative plans to leave the Key Largo area the next day and Chet and Donna mentioned they might go diving again. If we didn't leave and they didn't dive, then we made plans to have lunch. So lunch it was. We went ashore in the dinghy and got our tanks refilled for our next dive. After walking to town and then back, we ended up going back to town to go to lunch at the Pilot House Marina where they keep their boat "the Calypso Voyager." They picked us up this time though. Lunch and Margauritas were excellent. Chet and Donna then took us to Pulbix for groceries. They also managed to talk us into staying yet another day to dive the Molasses Reef which is supposed to be one of the best. The weather was also promising light winds.

On Sunday, we headed to out to Molasses. Steve and I did much, much better diving. However, Chet still followed us above with the dive float. This time we stayed down for about 40 minutes and used most of our air. The diving was amazing. My pictures were a little disappointing though. They would come out clear and sharp and then turn fuzzy and blurry. I'll have to play with the underwater settings on the camer and try to figure out the best one. The pictures that are clear though, came out amazing. So be sure to check them out.

After the dive, we invited them to come aboard John Ray to check it out. Since there wasn't any wind and the water was flat it was comfortable enough to stay rafted for a while. Well, a while turned into a couple of hours, as we had wine and dinner. A good time was had by all. We departed company then, but with definite plans to meet again. Ah, the life of cruisers.

Oh What a Night!

Well, here we were just chilling out last night (7ish), making our plans for a dive today. I was updating the blog and Steve was checking out the dive maps, when suddently we heard this aweful noise. It sounded like a freight train. We both jumped up and realized that a gust of wind was the culprit! And there was more coming. There was a cold front supposed to come with 10 knot winds and a chance of showers, but we certainly weren't expecting what was about to happen - nor had we heard of any warnings to this effect. We jumped into action, closing hatches, stowing stuff, turning on the weather for any warnings that may have been posted, and checking the radar (basically battening down the hatches.) In only about 4 or 5 minutes we were getting slammed with 35 to 40 knot winds and pelting rain. There wasn't any time to hoist up the outboard on the dinghy (because we know what happens when dinghys flip over.) We were very concerned because of the shallow water we were in and how close the shore looked. After putting our life jackets and shoes on, Michele realized that a marker (huge pole - along it doesn't look so ominous in the picture to the right) which was previously about a half a mile away from us near Rodriquez Key was suddenly right next to us. Our anchor was dragging and bringing us along with it. We immediately started the engine. Michele took the helm to try to keep us from slamming into the marker and off the shore while Steve went forward to pull up the anchor - all in the pitch black, pouring rain. It is amazing that we even saw the marker because visibility was almost nothing (and that goes to show how close we came to it!) Anthing that could go wrong with pulling up the anchor did. The chain kept getting snagged and it took almost 15 minutes (which felt more like an hour) for us to be free of it. We then were able to motor away from the shore (which incidentally has a couple of wrecks already submerged - thus the marker). But where to go? We couldn't see anything directly in front of us (only the lights from Key Largo (which also has a wreck in front of it - see picture) and the shoreline of Rodriquez Key - which is very difficult to judge distance at night).

We felt our way through very shallow and picked a spot which we figured was far enough away from shore; however, the anchore refused to set. Every time we set the anchor, we just kept drifting back to the dreaded pole and shore. By this time we were both soaked and freezing (and Michele a nervous wreck). By the third attempt, we decided to try our luck with our other anchore. This time it held. After a while the rain stopped and the wind died down to a reasonable 10 knots. By this time it was close to 9:00 p.m. We started to relax and assess the situation that just happened. After much discussion we decided that we both handled everything perfectly. Although my legs were shaking uncontrollably at the helm, I did remain calm and composed. Steve also demonstrated his excellent captain skills.

The winds did pick up again at about 10:30 to midnight, so it was a long evening! Today the weather is much calmer, but the water is still a little choppy. The winds are between 5 to 10 knots and the air is chilly. With the current circumstances, we decided that it is not the best time to venture out into our first solo dive. We would rather calmer conditions and a more relaxed state of mind, so we will try again tomorrow.

Key Largo

We're going diving! We arrived at Key Largo yesterday which is known for it's spectacular diving. So today we went ashore and had a little orientation of the dive sites from a dive shop. We then purchased our own dive tanks to go along with all the rest of the gear we purchased at Christmas. Unfortunately, the dive shop that we were at (right at the place we dinghyed ashored to) didn't sell tanks, so we walked a couple of miles to a huge dive shop which did sell tanks. The only problem with this senario was that we had two extremely heavy tanks to lug back. Luckily, when we inquired about a taxi, there was another cruiser in earshot who overheard us and her husband came in the store and asked if we wanted a ride. Well, YAH! And even more lucky, they are very experienced divers and were also planning to dive at the same spot that we plan to dive at tomorrow. They also offered to bring us to the grocery store if we needed - which we ALWAYS do. It's amazing how quickly we go through our provisions. Chet and Donna also live abourd their 47' trawler (with their two dogs). They are holed up here for a while Key Largo for a month or so getting ready for their trip to the Bahamas. So they are at a slip and they bought a car while they're here.

So now, we only to need to refill the tanks after each use instead of renting tanks every time we go.

I will upload pictures of us diving as soon as they become available. I promise it will be very interesting! We also ate at a cute little tiki bar and restaurant for lunch.

OMG - Yikes! Gotta go. Something big is coming . . . (Wed. eve. 7 pm - ish)

We're in the Florida Keys :) !

Tonight we are anchored in Ceasar Creek. We chose this anchorage because we wouldn't have enought daylight to get us all the way to Key Largo. We'll just hang here tonight and move onto Key Largo tomorrow morning. Biscayne National Park is just north of us, on Elliot Key. However, I wouldn't feel too comfortable leaving the boat here while we went ashore exploring, because there are no other other boats anchored here. Although we can lock the boat up when we leave, I still don't want to chance it. That's all for tonight folks.

Still in Miami

Our anchor has been in the same place since New Year's Eve day! We're loving this little anchorage we're at. It is in a little basin near Oleta River State Park. There's a little beach here, a huge park with lots of walking and biking trails and mangrove canals where we explored in our dinghy (rowing). Of course, if we rented kyaks it would've been more efficient, but the dinghy did just fine. We saw all kinds of cool wildlife (mostly birds), but a huge iguana was following us along the shore too. Dolphins swim by our boat daily. The signs here say to drive cautiously because it's a manatee zone, but we haven't seen any since leaving Titusville.

Yesterday we took a bus to South Beach and spent the day exploring there. It was like being in a foreign country. We didn't hear too many people speaking English. But the scenery was amazing. South Beach is a great place to people watch. There were tons of restarants and stores and, of course, a beautiful beach. Definitely take a look at the pictures for this leg of the trip (if you can handle seeing us enjoying 80 degree days - sorry :). http://www1.snapfish.com/home/t_=102133856 (click on Miami) - if you can not see the pictures, send Michele an email at mpapile@papile.net .

We finally got to go swimmig off the boat here too. The water is still a little chilly, but the color is a nice turquoise. Once we get to the keys, we hope to start doing some diving with our new dive equipment! So tomorrow, we will reluctantly pull up the anchor and leave this little oasis. But the next stop promises to be even more spectacular.