Monthly Archives: March 2018
Stiltsville ~ History Can Be Interesting.
From the Bilge is where we post picture(s) that we have not used, that don’t fit into any specific blog post or that highlight some of our favorite places. The pictures might not be stunning, but they will recall something we think is worth sharing. We hope you enjoy these non-chronological items as they pop up From the Bilge.
Stiltsville as seen from the bow of LIB.
During our ICW travels in Miami-Dade County, we saw buildings in the distance that were built over the water. At the time, I had no idea what they were, but I have since learned a bit about their history.
Approximately a mile south of Cape Florida on the “Safety Valve,” the shallow sand flats that run along the Florida coast near Biscayne Bay, is a group of buildings built on stilts.
In the early 1930s a man named “Crawfish” Eddie Walker built a shack on stilts and from there he sold fish bait, beer and his own famous crawfish dish called chilau. “Crawfish” built his shack toward the end of Prohibition and because it was a mile off the coast, gambling was legal. Although I didn’t read that gambling actually took place there, one imagines there was a reason “Crawfish” chose to be a mile away from shore.
Soon a few of “Crawfish’s” friends also built buildings on stilts. The area took on a life of its’ own and at is largest, around 1960, Stiltsville had 27 buildings!
Image taken from Google search.
Fairly early on, some clubs were built in Stiltsville including The Calvert Club whose members were from the Miami Beach Rod and Reel Club.
The most upscale club I read about was The Quarter Deck which was built in the 1940s. Membership for The Quarter Deck was by invitation only and required a membership fee of $150. The Quarter Deck became one of the most popular spots in Miami and I would wager the crowd was considered a bit ‘racy.’
An excerpt from an article about Stiltsville in a 1941 LIFE magazine read, “extraordinary American community dedicated solely to sunlight, salt water and the well-being of the human spirit.” The club was described as “a $100,000 play-palace equipped with bar, lounge, bridge deck, dining room and dock slips for yachts”.[4]Stiltsville was immensely popular with the well connected and monied crowd in the 1940s and ’50s but the area was damaged by Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and other subsequent storms.
Fortunately before Stiltsville declined completely and the Florida government abolished the rights of owners to maintain the remaining buildings, a last ditch effort to save Stiltsville and claim it as historically significant succeeded.
Today Stiltsville is part of the Stiltsville Trust whose stated purpose it to preserve the seven buildings that remain of the area.
Follow this link to learn more about the Stiltsville Trust.
Thank you for visiting our blog page. Feel free to add your comments or share our blog. If you want to hear from us more often, check out our FB page.
Curacao ~ Our Third and Final Island of the ABCs.
Apocalypse sky?
When we first sailed to the entrance of Willemstad, Curacao, the sky looked like a movie depicting the pitfalls of pollution. The combination of the brightly painted buildings, the smokestacks emitting greenhouse gases and a few gathering rainclouds made us wonder if we were sailing into a grisly movie set recreating the industrial age! Our first impression of Willemstad was negatively affected.
The walking bridge swings open to allow LIB access.
But in fairness to Curacao, during the remainder of our stay, the sky was mostly clear and blue and that first sky was the worst one by far. On a positive note, Curacao has an active group called GreenTown that is working hard to raise awareness among Curacao citizens, children and industry of the opportunity (read need) to clean up the island. This is a very important step and one of the only groups we have seen in the Caribbean trying to affect change! So, even though Curacao has an issue right now, there is hope that GreenTown will manage to make a big impact on the future of the island.
As you know from our last blog, we moved to Curacao to meet Deneen, who has bought LIB. Our first few days were spent preparing for the survey and haul out, then meeting Deneen and her broker, Robert. (We were very impressed by Robert and thought he did an excellent job.) Kind of surprisingly, we had a great time with the haul out and survey and especially getting to know Deneen. The fact that Curacao Marine did such a careful job lifting LIB made the whole process much easier.
Every boat owner gets a little jittery watching his boat lifted out of the water and over concrete! But LIB was carefully tended and the survey went well, so our girl was only out of the water for about an hour.
At the end of a fairly long day, Deneen, Robert, Frank and I went to dinner at Kome in Willemstad. The dinner was excellent and the company even better. It was super fun getting to know Deneen and Robert over a relaxed dinner.
Deneen agreed to join us the following day for a stroll around the quaint shopping area of Willemstad. The pictures will do more justice to the walking area than I will….
Willemstad along the canal.
This picture shows a bit of the walking bridge that crosses the canal and is shown above as it opened for LIB to enter.
Frank and Deneen strolling along; probably talking boats.
Pretty examples of the colorful buildings.
Lunch break!
Lucky for us, Deneen had been to Curacao and remembered this cute restaurant from her previous visit. She didn’t get a chance to try Mundo Bizarro on her last visit so we agreed we had to make it happen this time. Great choice as the food was excellent. I should have taken a picture of the bar inside. It is worth a look if you are ever nearby!
Aren’t these great?
I have no idea what this building actually is, but I loved the artwork and had to capture it.
“Lock your love on the Punda Love Heart.”
Although I do not know how effective it is to lock you love on the “Punda Love Heart,” it seems to be a popular thing to do. What happened to setting your love free and if it comes back to you it is yours forever? Different cultures or do we live in a possessive era? Just kidding ~ that is way too deep for my frivolous blog! 😉
Just a little wave action in the harbor.
The first 10 days in Curacao, the wind just howled! The water was kicking up so I thought I would try to show the power demonstrated in these waves.
But really, a still shot doesn’t capture the strength of the water and wind.
After Deneen flew back to Texas and the survey was completed, we had a few days to chill and drive around Curacao. Frank and I find it interesting that in the two weeks we have been on Curacao, we have rented a car perhaps six days. During our whole stay in Bonaire we only rented a car four days. This alone demonstrates how different each island is for a cruiser!
Eveline sent this pic of Cap searching the tall grass in the yard.
Captain went to stay with Eveline of Yuka’s Dog Services & Training because we didn’t want her wandering around, untended during the haul out and sea trial. Eveline is fabulous and I strongly recommend her for boarding your dog and for training or agility classes. Cappy had a great time and came home happy and tired.
We wanted to take Captain with us while we explored the islands since she had been away for a couple of days. Unfortunately all of the beaches and the national park we saw prohibited dogs!
This made for an abbreviated day but we did get a chance to see the island, take a few pictures and have lunch.
Fishing boats at anchor.
Although here at Curacao Marine the water is not pretty, Curacao does have some beautiful beaches.
A perfectly protected bay for swimming.
The sand was fine and white and the water crystal clear, but very few people were swimming. Instead they were stretched out on lounge chairs or hiding from the sun in the shade, enjoying a good read.
If Cappy had been allowed on the beach we would definitely have been in that water!
One last fun sight we found was a darling kids’ playground where the nature had been decorated or painted to make it look like a sea-scape. Look how clever this artist is!!
What a creative and happy place to play!
Currently we are waiting for our new IridiumGo to be released from customs so we can begin our journey back to Texas. Unfortunately, between eZone and Customs, our package has been seriously delayed! We await the release of our new IridiumGo and we won’t leave Curacao without it. Two thumbs down on this delayed delivery!
For those who don’t know, IridiumGo is a satellite communication system that allows us to access weather and send limited e-mails while in the middle of the ocean. A very important safety measure that we want to have working for our passage from Curacao to Belize since it is about 1,200 nautical miles! We will be at sea for approximately seven nights and we want to use the IridiumGo to update the weather.
Until the IridiumGo is up and running, we will simply wait in Curacao and enjoy our surroundings.
~HH CATAMARAN~
Now that Let It Be is sold, we will be even more anxious to take delivery of our new catamaran. We are working very closely with HH to set up our boat so it will work well on long passages with only Frank and me on board and for continuing our lives as sailboat cruisers.
I absolutely cannot stress enough how important it has been to have Morrelli and Melvin working with us on the purchase of this boat. Gino Morrelli has been an amazing resource and we are thankful beyond words for his guidance and help! (And patience!)
On his recent visit to China, Gino sent us a couple of picture of our HH55 in construction, including this one of the master cabin bed area. I really like the large window at the head of the bed and along the outboard side in our master cabin.
Here is our aft, port stateroom area under construction.
The completed room looks a lot prettier as seen here on Hai Feng, HH55-02.
When we visited HH55-01, Minnehaha, in Ft. Lauderdale a year ago, owners Deb and Doug were very generous in allowing us to poke around their beautiful boat. While Frank was opening every engine and electrical compartment, I took myself off to the master hull to check out a few of my own “wanted” items. Sitting up in bed and reading is a luxury I have missed, so I was delighted to see there is a generous headboard/backrest on the HH55 ~ perfect for reading. And I love that I will be able to see outside while reading in bed!
Thank you so much for visiting our blog! We appreciate your time and hope you will drop us a line in the comments. If you would like to hear from us more often, please visit our FB page.
Location Is Working
We have re-activated our IridiumGo! and now you can see where LIB is located. The device is set to update our location every hour.
Find our location by clicking on “Our Location: Follow s/v Let It Be” found on the right side of the page under the second heading “More About LIB.”
We leave today for Belize and anticipate the passage will take seven or eight days.
We won’t have much communication while we are sailing, but I have a blog post or two written and scheduled to post while we are sailing.
Prayers for a safe and beautiful passage are always welcomed. See you in Belize.
It’s Official ~ LIB Has a New Owner.
The documents are signed, so now I can tell you that the reason we moved to Curacao was to meet the prospective buyer of LIB, take her on a sea trial and have our boat surveyed.
I am happy to report that all went well. Our floating home passed inspection with flying colors, the buyer loved Let It Be and our home has been purchased.
As LIB was lifted out of the water a man watched how she sat on the trailer. (See him?)
We were very impressed with Curacao Marine, the yard that pulled LIB out of the water for the dry portion of the survey. The men were extremely professional and careful about the haul out process. The trailer is well maintained and they even put plastic over the support pads so LIB would not have any scuff marks. One of the guys was in the water using a controller to manipulate the support pads precisely where they needed to be under LIB. We have been very impressed with Curacao Marine during our stay here!
The surveyor had a few minor comments about Let It Be which we have already addressed. The starboard engine was vibrating a bit at idle and we had a Volvo mechanic address that issue. We actually thought the idle setting of both engines was a little low, so while the mechanic was here, he adjusted them to meet the Volvo specifications. The tiller arm on the port rudder was a little loose, so Frank went to work and fixed it the very next day! The surveyor came back by and has inspected and approved that work already!
No moss growing here!!
We are very pleased with the results of the survey of Let It Be and if I were buying a boat that received this kind of report, I would be thrilled. Big kudos to Frankly for his excellent and detailed care of our boat!
Ironically, the person who has bought LIB is a woman I had “met” through the FB group Women Who Sail. We had texted a couple of times about a few subjects over the last year or two. (But she didn’t realize LIB was my boat when she decided to make an offer!) She is also friends with our friends, Amy and David of s/v Starry Horizons (who have the excellent blog and vlog Out Chasing Stars.) AND! our buyer lives in Texas, so we have that excellent connection as well.
An evening sail in Bonaire. Thanks for the pic, Clayton.
During our discussions about selling LIB, we agreed to deliver the boat to Galveston, Texas which will be her future port. Frank and I think this is a great arrangement because it saves our buyer the expense of having LIB delivered, we get to explore the western Caribbean along the way, and we can return to the U.S. via boat instead of airplane.
Arriving by boat is much easier than flying with Captain!
Per our agreement, we will arrive in Galveston by May 15th. This gives us ample time to find excellent weather windows and allows us to explore a few anchorages along the way to Texas. This May delivery time frame allows us to break up the 2260 nautical mile trip from Curacao to Texas into several shorter passages.
Our tentative plan for returning to Texas is to make three stops between here and Galveston. The first leg will be to the San Blas Islands of Panama; about 650nm. The second leg to Belize will be approximately 760nm. From Belize we will sail to Isla Mujeres, Mexico which is a quick 200nm. And our final leg to Galveston will be about 650nm.
Needless to say we are happy and sad about the sale of Let It Be. She is a fabulous boat and has taken great care of us. We have had very few issues with LIB and we have made many changes to make her perfect for our sailing needs.
It’s hard to let go of a boat that is in great shape, sails well, has been our home, and functions well for our purposes! (Plus I still love the cushions we had made for the cockpit and helm area!)
So, there you have our news about Let It Be and our anticipated route through the May delivery to Galveston.
I guess soon we will have to figure out what to do while we are ‘boatless/homeless’ until our HH55 is delivered to California!
Thank you so much for visiting our blog! We appreciate your time and hope you will drop us a line in the comments. If you would like to hear from us more often, please visit our FB page.
Leaving Bonaire. It’s Hard to Say Goodbye.
Our final sunset on Bonaire.
Well it was hard to leave Bonaire and say so long to the great people we met as well as the beautiful island. We spent our last few weeks taking advantage of the wind for kiting and the fabulous reefs for diving.
We also said goodbye to many people we had the fortune to befriend while visiting. Jerome, Aga, Sebastian and Basi invited us to their home for dinner in their back yard. Aga made a delicious dinner and we enjoyed it in while watching the sun set beyond their dock as the boys played in the surf. Thank you all so much for sharing your lives, your local knowledge and your home with us!
Bonaire shirts and a mug depicting our day of sailing!
We also received this fun memento from the BSSA sailors! Now each morning we are reminded of them as Frank has his coffee. Thank you so much for the shirts and mug but mostly for welcoming us into your group.
Frank passed a Gatorade to Rudo, that day’s winner.
We loved having the BSSA kids sail by LIB and Frank often tossed them Gatorades. These memories are very special to us! Keep sailing kiddos. We look forward to hearing how you are progressing and we will truly miss seeing you sail or hearing you call to us from the shore!
In addition to leaving shore friends, we had to say so long to many cruisers. Because we were in Bonaire a long time, we made some very dear friends in the cruising community. We can only hope our wakes cross again in the future!
A huge pod of dolphins!
We left our Bonaire mooring ball for the last time on Sunday morning. Just past Klein Bonaire, we saw a large pod of dolphins in the distance. I’m guessing there were nearly 50 dolphins in the pod and we decided to turn a bit in their direction and get a little closer. Soon part of the pod came to play in front of LIB’s bow!
How cool is this?!
Perhaps 15 dolphins came to play and were cavorting just in front of us, looking up and smiling as Captain went crazy, barking at them from above.
I so wish I could jump in and swim with them.
The water was perfectly clear so I could get this picture of two dolphins swimming just below the cross beam of LIB. I, and nearly everyone I know, seem to smile any time dolphins come to play. Somehow they manage to raise the happiness level of the boat, even when we weren’t unhappy about anything!!
Our plan was to stop at Klein Curacao for three days and two nights and take the opportunity to be away from any city lights or traffic. The day we arrived, our plan looked golden. We knew there were some serious swells north of us but we hoped they wouldn’t arrive for a day or two.
A wide angle view of Klein Curacao from our mooring spot .
We grabbed a mooring ball and settled in for a quiet day. Klein Curacao has perhaps two little places to grab a lounge chair and drink. These are visited mostly by the day boat passengers and are fairly crowded until late afternoon.
Cappy’s friend is left on shore.
Frank paddled into shore with Captain and she managed to make friends with the only dog on the island. But after romping along the beach and rolling in the sand it was time to come back to LIB.
Private boats anchored off of Klein Curacao
Since we arrived on Sunday, there were several private boats from Curacao anchored or rafted up and enjoying the day. But we knew that before dark most of the boats would head back to Curacao and we would be nearly alone.
By late dusk only a few stragglers remained and they left just a little later.
The sun looks like it is melting into the ocean.
We watched the sun set from the deck of LIB and loved having a completely quiet evening. Bonaire is fabulous, but the street does have a good deal of motor noise in the evenings. It was a nice change to hear only the water playing across the beach and hear the fish jumping nearby while watching the sun wave goodnight.
The buildings on Klein Curacao have character.
While this old light house looks kind of charming, I wasn’t sure if it actually functioned, but sure enough, her beacon flashed through the night warning sailors of Klein’s shores.
We planned on scuba diving off of Klein Curacao Monday, but when Frank took Cap to shore that first morning, a group of surfers were unloading their gear. The arrival of serious surfers did not bode well for the comfort of our anchorage. Sure enough those northern waves began to roll in around 11 am. Rather than stay on Klein, we decided to finish our morning chores and head to Curacao and a protected anchorage.
Our decision was a good one as is evidenced by these surfers loving the waves on the north end of Klein Curacao as we motored by.
The waves were pretty close together.
The waves we saw were a decent size and they were expected to become larger over the next 24-48 hours.
That boat is partially hidden by the waves.
If our sons had been on board, I am sure we would have stayed on Klein so they could catch a few waves, but Frank and I aren’t surfers, so we think our decision to leave the unprotected shores of Klein Curacao and find a protected anchorage on Curacao was a good one.
~HH55 Update~
So our big news is color! We have chosen the exterior paint color for our new boat. HH has kindly put together a rendering of the HH55 with an approximation of the color we have chosen.
A rendering of our pretty, unnamed, future boat.
I actually think the paint will be a slightly darker blue than this rendering shows. We are pretty excited! It seems like the HH66 owners have chosen bold and unique paint colors and the HH55 owners have chosen very subtle colors. We decided to go with something in between. How do you like our color choice?
Thank you so much for visiting our blog! We appreciate your time and hope you will drop us a line in the comments. If you would like to hear from us more often, please visit our FB page.
27 Cascadas ~ Falls
From the Bilge is where we post picture(s) that we have not used, that don’t fit into any specific blog post or that highlight some of our favorite places. The pictures might not be stunning, but they will recall something we think is worth sharing. We hope you enjoy these non-chronological items as they pop up From the Bilge.
Perhaps my favorite excursion during our travels has been our trip to 27 Charcos de Damajagua in the Dominican Republic.
First we followed a trail beautifully shaded by an arching canopy of trees, then the real adventure began…
We swam through streams…
climbed over rocks….
slid down water smoothed rocks….
and jumped from cliffs to return to our starting point.
The whole return trip was made through fresh water that was just chilly enough to be invigorating. And the jumps, slides and swims were just daring enough to make one stop occasionally to take a deep breath….. and go for it.
I highly recommend this trip if you stop in the Dominican Republic!
As always, thanks for stopping by to read our blog. What do you think of our new section, From the Bilge?
