Northern Phoenix blog

There has been a terrible ice storm in the Toronto area (our home) the last few days.   Aver 2 inches of freezing rain, plus a few inches of ice pellets, snow, and other yucky stuff.  So we felt bad for the people stuck back home.  So to get an idea of the terrible icy conditions and slushy mix of stuff that would be on the road we:

(by Devon)The next day was a lot of shopping and we got a whole bunch of pinot-coladas mixes because at home there was a huge ice storm and we celebrated by having ice-drinks, it was so good we had about 3 of them including a mix of pinot-coladas and strawberry which was also great. 

(our version of icey and slushy

(Now by Sahara)
Okay, just to set things straight. Dad is making me write a blog post on cheeseburgers. Lets see how well this turns out.

So dad was listening to this song; Cheeseburger in Paradise(by Jimmy Buffet), and decided we had to make some. So we went shopping for meat and pickles and cheese and other stuff. Then we cooked the meat and made brownies and all that other stuff while listening to the song. Actually, it turned out really well. But there is not really much you can write about cheeseburgers, so I guess this is the end of the blog post.

December 20-26th
At the marina.

The brought our cameras to the pools because we thought of taking some (a lot) of underwater pictures, the pictures were really funny because they have a lot of background features that were funny. For example, you can see me swimming through Sahara's head.  The Marina has 4 different pools and 3 hot tubs to hang out in. The Pools are salt water pools, so no chlorine smell.  They have cookies at 3:00 each day.
 
 
 

December 20th

 Three days ago we arrived at port largos at around 6:00 and didn’t really do anything, which was because we were tired. Though the next day we rented a car and went to Key West(locals call it Key Weird) which was made for salvaging shipwrecks and treasures and is the most west Key. It was a pretty fun place because we visited a 2 treasure museums and found out that they had a lot of cool stuff, for example we were allowed to pick up a big silver bar at a museum and it was super heavy, also they had really old silver coins which were called “pieces of eight”, a piece of eight are silver coins that is a Spanish silver coin (and also means eight reales which is a measurement in older times) that were transported to the U.S.A as money.  We also visited a key lime pie place and got a whole pie, but we didn’t know how to carry it back to the car so we just ate it all (it was a good pie)

. Another thing that was really funny was that the entire key was infested with roosters and chickens, I thought that someone was about to run one over because there was so many. That was mostly all we did at Key West and we headed back to the boat to sleep.


Picture from one of the Look out towers on Key west.  Used to spot "ships A Shore".  Ships that had run aground on the reef.  The entire economy was built around the salvage of such ships in the mid 1800's.
 


 

December 19th
After our great visit with the Morrisons, we decided to head over to Marina Del Mar.  Only 5 miles by car, but by boat it was over 30 miles away.  It was on the other side of the key from us and there are limited places to cross over.  These crossings were scary, as on the map they only showed 4 feet of water.  But according to reports there was over 7 feet of water!!  Hummm...whom to trust.  So we left at 6:00 in the morning, before the sun came up to hit the cut (Sand Cut, at the north end of Key Largo) at one hour before high tide.  That way if you get stuck, there is more water coming in and you can turn back.  We made it through with no problems, the 7 feet was correct.  Scarry with the clear water, you can look over the side and see the bottom so clearly that you think it is only a few feet of water.

Had a spectacular sunrise.

 

We then proceeded down the Hawk Channel.  The is the deep water (12-20 feet) between the keys and the reef that follows the shore line.  Although the wind was up, 15-20 knots, we were comfortable sailing.  A bit rough, but we knew it would only be for a few hours.  The next scary part was the marina reported only 4.5 feet of water to get into the marina enterence, then it deepened to 10-12 feet.  We need 5.5 feet.  So we had to hit that place at high tide as well.  We got there about 1 hour after high tide and made it in just fine.  A nice day of sailing.

Beautiful water, and our shadow on the water.
 

The entrance to the marina is actually into a large complex of water ways.  Check it out on the google map.
 

December 15th (Second time posting this)

We woke up to the lovely feeling of being eaten alive by blood sucking zombie bugs. SOMEONE had left the hatches open the night before because they thought there wasn't going to be any bugs. So we quickly ate some pancakes that had some suspicious black spots in them and hurried off to the beach. Which was supposed to be the 7th best beach in all the US. I don’t know who made up the list, but hey obviously hadn't been to many beaches. I mean, the number 1 beach was only number 1 because you could see rich and famous people picking up trash.
 Anyway, at the beach there wasn't much stuff. just sand, water, more sand, Spanish people playing in sand, seaweed on the sand, seaweed in the water, and some scary anorexic person who dad thought the bugs had sucked all the life out of. Anyway, the water was clear and warm-ish, and the sand was soft, so we decided to test out the masks and snorkels and go swim in some grass. The only interesting thing we found out there was a big sand dollar type thing. We decided that the water wasn't exciting enough, so we went back to the beach and made some sand things. I can’t say castles because, well, they weren't castles. Just strange sand creations.
 When we finally headed back to the boat, warily as we didn't know if the bugs were still there, and found out they were. However, they were not too bad in the afternoon, but after diner- they are nocturnal buggies- they started coming out of whatever swampy stinky gooey festering hole from whence they came and started laying siege on our boat. Finally we convinced dad that we had to leave, as I would lie down and die if we had to spend a night in this. (They somehow kept getting into the boat).
When we got to our new anchorage, we spent- meaning Devon, dad, and mom- and hour trying to kill all the remaining bugs in the boat. And I didn't’ call them zombie bugs for nothing. Devon's tactic was to turn on all lights, then when he saw bugs flying around the light, bash it with a pillow. Mom and Dad just calmly wiped them off the ceilings and walls with a cloth. I just lay in my bed with my fan on blowing all bugs out of my space for someone to bash/wipe up.                                                                                                                                                               


 


Saw some strange houses on stilts. Only people who live here strongly worshiped the sea gods.

We got the boat ready to leave today.  Emptied waste tanks, filled water tanks, oil change, new cooling water engine pump installed and a few other projects.  Gerry stopped by to say good by and we left Miami.  Our weather window closed up and we will not be crossing to the Bahamas for at least a week.  You have to have southerly winds to match the north flowing gulf or it is just too rough.  But there are fun places to go so we are not too upset.  

We crossed the Biscayne Bay to Key Biscayne.  The first of the Florida keys and anchored in No Name Harbour.  We lucked out with a good anchor spot.  This place can get busy on a weekend.  And we lucked out with live Christmas music be played!!!  It was great.  We set the anchor and jumped into the water to freshen up.  Then made "Cheese burgers in Paradise"  Fresh home made buns with no lettuce no tomato, but had ketchup, relish, mayo and of course cheese.  It was amazing.  As we ate our dinner, we lucked out once again as there was a Christmas boat parade.  About 30 boats came into the little harbour (really just an area for anchoring, no docks) and did a loop.  The boats were all decorated and had 100's of people on them.  Hard to take pictures of lights at night.   But we tried.
  
Now we are peacefully anchored with our new chain(old chain was fine, but not long enough, this is almost double the length).  We hung up our Christmas stockings and put up some lights  only 10 more days till Christmas.