Goodbye Florida!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written my blog and that’s because it’s been a very busy few weeks. As I write this, we are preparing to begin the next big leap in this adventure, the jump across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas, very exciting and a little scary too.

Florida is a strange place. It is home to the obscenely wealthy, with their mega yachts docked in front of their mega mansions, as well as home to poverty, with many derelict boats littering the waterways. It’s a place where people have come to escape harsh winters, some for a season and some permanently, and this all adds up to an unusual mix of different cultures and attitudes, some wonderful and some not so great.

My favourite Florida region is known as the “Space Coast” that stretches from Port St. John to approximately Vero. The heart of this area is of course NASA’s Kennedy Space Station, the birthplace of US space exploration. We spent a day touring Kennedy, walking through history and the command center of Apollo’s first missions, touching a genuine moon rock, seeing many rockets and the Atlantis Space Shuttle up close. Not only does Kennedy pay homage to the past accomplishments, NASA works hard to inspire young people to pursue STEM education and grow the next generation of space exploration. Allen and I left Kennedy humbled and moved with what has been achieved and what is yet to come.

An unexpected bonus of being on the Space Coast was an up-close view of a rocket launch. Space X (Elon Musk) operates from Kennedy and launches satellites several times a month (Bezos’ Blue Origin is there too). The public can buy “front-row” seats to view the launches from the space center, but if you have a boat and good weather, you can have a free and nearly as good view from about 30 km away. Add good friends, food & drinks, a rocket-themed playlist, and you have a Launch Party! Thanks Teri and Craig for hosting a memorable evening aboard Cala II – the entertainment was “out of this world”.

The Florida heat can be difficult to take, especially when you have a thick, fur coat. Cat Stevens always looks for the warmest, sunniest spot to nap – at home in Toronto he occupies the west-facing window seat all afternoon. When we were in Mexico, he basked on the sunny concrete steps all day. Unfortunately, the old guy can’t take the heat as well as he used to, and became dangerously dehydrated. It was frightening how quickly he went from being his normal, friendly self to a listless lump that cried when touched. We were lucky get him into a veterinary clinic where he received IV fluids and antibiotics and after a heart-wrenching (and expensive) 24 hours, he came home good as new. My feline first aid kit is now supplemented with a saline drip bag, needles and antibiotics.  It was a close call and a good education for me to keep a closer eye on Cat Stevens, intervene at the very first sign that something is off and to keep him out of the sun as much as possible.

Christmas was approaching and we needed to get close to Ft. Lauderdale so I could fly to Cleveland to spend the holiday with my family. Since airfare and dock space are extremely expensive during this season, Allen and Cat Stevens remained in Florida and stayed in anchorages until I returned. It was quite an ordeal getting to Cleveland and back (I flew on Southwest!) through the winter storm, but at the end it all worked out and it was wonderful spending time with my dad, son, siblings and extended family. With my batteries recharged, I returned to Florida to finish this chapter of our adventure.

As we continued south and the yachts and mansions got bigger and grander, we felt a significant shift in attitudes from the locals. The message is clear– cruisers are not welcome.  While the waterways are public, the shorelines are private. It has become increasing more difficult to find places to land our dinghy so we can go ashore to shop and provision. Even marinas and yacht clubs do not allow dinghies to use their docks. We must resort to public boat launches, that are usually quite a distance from the anchorage and sometimes under bridge overpasses with difficult access and often in sketchy areas (other boaters have warned us to lock the boat and motor and not to leave anything in the boat). We have seen buoys with a “No Anchoring” warning that local homeowners have installed, despite it not being enforceable. On weekends the local teenagers enjoy wakeboarding among anchored boats, trying to rock or spray them as they pass by. The message is clear – you are not welcome here, so….. Bahamas – here we come!