Key Largo and a Giant Guitar

Fort Lauderdale – 3 kilometres walked, 50 metres snorkelled, 320 kilometres driven

The plan was to be in the car and heading to Key Largo by 9am. At 8:45 a full coffee was accidentally dumped on the cabin table, which splashed both Ana and Stella, ran all over the floor and into the bilge compartments, and soaked a cushion.

 

I was in the v-berth when I heard the screaming. “What happened?”

 

“We just got ourselves a 30 minute delay, that’s what happened,” said Ana as she looked at the coffee splatters on her lovely dress then grabbed a rag.

 

It took two hours to arrive in Key Largo, and the last 30 minutes was jammed with traffic. The approaching scenery was exactly like what I had been expecting to see in the Everglades – thick mangroves on both sides of the road, swampy channels, lizards and iguanas in the ditches and hanging off the trees, and no signs of development.

 

We decided to have a quick lunch before heading to the beach and found Dani and Mike’s Smash Burger – a small food stand beside the John’s General Store. The $10 burgers were probably the best value in Key Largo and we enjoyed them around a wooden picnic table shaded from the hot sun with a canopy.

Initial impressions of Key Largo were not what I expected. A two lane highway plugged with traffic ran through a commercial district with everything from dive shops to restaurants to hotels to industrial sites. You couldn’t see the ocean and, in fact, most of the areas we saw were not even that close to the ocean. The kids had done a bit of research along the way and we decided to go to the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park as it was listed as the site with two beaches and the best snorkeling. Well, the man-made beach had little sand and was mostly rock and hard packed gravel, yet full of people. The water was murky brown instead of the Caribbean blue we were expecting and covered with layer of floating foliage – tree needles, marine plants, seed pods. It was not very nice. I did discover they do have an impressive snorkelling reef, but the boat ride there costs fifty bucks per person then you get stuck snorkelling with a hundred other touristos like a bunch of harbour seals waiting to get snacked on by a Great White.

 

Stella and I went out snorkeling and saw a few reef fish, some sunken cannons, and she came across four very large fish that surprised her. We were going to give Anna a snorkeling lesson as she hadn’t done it before, but this really wasn’t the place to do it – we will wait for the magical waters of Bahamas.

 

We stayed at the beach for a while then walked to the Visitor Centre to see the aquariums full of fish, which was pretty cool. We looked at a map to try and find an oceanside restaurant to stop for a drink, but there didn’t appear to be any. But we did find Snook’s Bayside Restaurant & Grand Tiki Bar which faced Florida Bay to the north and it was a lovely spot. We sat at the waterside bar table, enjoyed Coronas, and watched the little fish swimming in the water below, the small motorized tiki bars inching around in the bay and at the docks, the nearby lizards sunbathing on the rocks, and the moored sailboats and catamarans. The restaurant, of course, was packed full of people and crazy expensive, but we had to keep reminding ourselves we were visiting in peak season and the Florida Keys are an exceptionally popular tourist destination, evidenced by the diversity of vehicle license plates in the parking lots, from seemingly every state in the US north of Florida.

Conveniently located beside the restaurant was yet another Salvation Army thrift store so my gang got busy thrifting while I briefly browsed the selection of books, but none veered from the subject matter of Fad Diets, Children's Stories, Jesus, and Crochet. I found greater pleasure standing outside and watching the traffic whizzing by.

 

By 4:30 we were ready to call it a day so plugged “Merle Fogg Park, Fort Lauderdale” into the GPS and took the return trip, which took us along a different, more scenic, and less busy route – the 905A. The two hours still felt like twice that and the only thing of interest we saw after leaving the Keys and hitting the congested freeways was a building shaped like a giant Gibson guitar, brilliantly illuminated, with a white spotlight mimicking a guitar neck, shining straight up in the sky as a beacon for rock and rollers. Google told us it was the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood. We may need to drive in for a close look when we visit Miami.

 

Back at the boat we had happy hour drinks and Ana made us a spectacular pasta and meatball dish. After dinner, all five of us sat in the cockpit for a lively two-hour discussion after Stella asked, “How was everybody’s 2024. What would you rate it?”

It is so nice having the kids here.

Krazy Salvation Binzz, Daily Dolphins, and Lauderdale Garbage Plates

Fort Lauderdale – 2 kilometres walked, 30 kilometres driven

I awoke at dawn’s light to the sound of heavy rain and went to check on Magnus in the cockpit. He was sleeping soundly, but the edge of his single sheet had dropped down, allowing water from the small creek that always develops on the cockpit floor during rainstorms to leech its way up the sheet and into the cushion. I woke him up and sent him down below to sleep on the seats at the table then removed all the cushions and pillows and threw them down into the cabin to keep them dry.

 

The interior of the boat was moist, hot, and close as we could not open the windows due to the continuing rain. I made it worse by lighting up the gas stove and making a big egg scramble for breakfast which jacked the cabin temperature by at least five degrees. But, in my opinion, the eggs were worth it.

 

Yesterday we had written out a daily plan in our boat journal for the remaining days with Magnus here and today’s said “Shopping”. I’ve never appreciated shopping as an activity. To me, it’s an unpleasant chore you are forced to do, as infrequently as possible, and with maximum haste. But that opinion is not shared by others in my family; in fact, shopping is their hobby. Our first stop was the Goodwill Outlet Store, which was a combination of Krazy Binz and a violent American football game. To the sounds of gangsta rap, dozens of people in the warehouse-style store, some wearing protective gloves, were rooting through big blue bins of clothing, household items, toys, games, books, and other knick knackery, all priced at $1.97 per pound. Yep, sold by the pound. Many of the folks in the store looked exceedingly poor and were not there for hobby or sport – they had to be there.

 

Over the course of fifteen minutes workers rolled out an entire row of bins. I wasn’t sure what was going on as the bins were still half full. But a while later they started bringing out new full bins and all the customers in the store dashed over, literally dropping whatever they had been looking at, and stood eyeing up the items within the new bins and wiggling their fingers, but not touching anything. The crowd gathered like this until nearly everybody in the store encircled this row of bins, like rugged linebackers squaring off at the line of scrimmage. I was scared for their safety. The last two bins were brought out, completing the full row. Still they waited. Then, the supervisor who had been directing the work looked down the line of scrimmage, across the anxious faces, waited a few strategic seconds, then gave a slight nod. People went mad, digging into the bins, throwing clothes around, holding items up to themselves then tossing them either into their own personal pile or back into the bin. There was elbowing, shoving, pushing, and some profanity. It was crazy! I saw my family in there, up to their elbows in clothes, getting knocked around as the rookies, loving it all. I just kept out of the way and took photos from a safe distance.

 

Our next stop was a mall and along the way Ana signaled to change lanes and started to move, then a fast moving bike came ripping up in the lane and had to swerve out of her way. She didn’t see him as he was wearing black and moving very quickly. And here, I must take an aside.

I wrote about my impressions of Americans the other day and there’s one thing I forgot to mention. They turn into jerks as soon as they get inside a vehicle. We have seen so many drivers respond to another driver’s mistake or bad decision with yelling out the window, flipping them off, blaring their horns, waving their hands and shaking their heads, pointing and screaming. They are downright hostile when they are in vehicles and it’s so easy to see how road rage can happen, made particularly more risky when half the population are driving around with guns. This guy on the motorcycle who had a close call started doing exactly that – yelling at us, waving his arms, shaking his head, then he even slowed right down and got up beside us. I rolled down my window to see what he’d say. He didn’t say anything, just had a look, shook his head, then took off. I suppose he was trying to scare us, and maybe he had a gun tucked into his motorcycle jumpsuit, ready to shoot out our tires if we gave him any lip. It’s so unnecessary. People make mistakes on the road, it happens to everybody, every day. From what I can see, life is much safer on the public transport or, better yet, traveling by foot.

 

The ladies and Magnus got out at the Coral Ridge mall and I drove back to a Harbour Freight we had passed earlier, curious as I had never been inside one before, but I knew it was a store similar to Princess Auto. Bunch of junk. All cheap, Chinese-made crapola. I returned to the mall, waited for a while, then when the gang returned with their treasures we continued onto a different mall, but not before doing an ocean drive-by and getting out to watch a bunch of kite surfers taking flight off the huge waves.

 

After our stop at the massive Galleria mall in Fort Lauderdale, we drove to Smokers Family Park and filled up our four 7-gallon water jugs, then returned to the boat after several trips back and forth in the dinghy to transport everybody and everything. The rain and clouds had finally passed and it was a pleasant evening. As I was filling up the boat's internal water tank from the jugs, I was surprised to see a dolphin surface – the first one we’d seen in this anchorage. I hollered at the kids to come and see and they did manage to get a look at the dolphin as it swam towards the bridge. It wasn’t long before more dolphins appeared, and Stella and Anna saw one surface directly beside our boat. They were overjoyed! I was so happy they got to see some of these beautiful creatures. Daily Dolphin is back!

 

I had something special planned for dinner tonight – authentic Rochester Garbage Plates. You take a big scoop of macaroni salad and an equal measure of French fries, home fries, or tater tots. Drop a barbequed cheeseburger or hot dog or both on top of this. Sprinkle on a handful of chopped raw onions, then apply a large dollop of spicy meat sauce over the pile. Decorate with strings of mustard and ketchup, serve with day old Italian white bread, and you have yourself a garbage plate. Delicious!

 

I went to bed shortly after 9pm but there was all sorts of activity happening on the boat until after 1am – kids on deck, laughing, stomping around, Ana back and forth between our room and the rest of the boat. I have no idea what was going on.

We Got Wheels

Fort Lauderdale – 5 kilometres walked, 140 kilometres driven

Ana and I were walking up Las Olas Boulevard by 8:30 am and we caught the first #11 westbound bus that came by. After a transfer to a different bus, a longish wait at the airport car rental pickup corridor, then a short drive in a courtesy van, we found ourselves at Easirent Car Rentals and relearned the two cardinal rules about American commando goods and services retailing.

 

1. What is advertised is not what you get

 

2. To get what you want, you will have to pay more

 

The guy at the counter with the bad haircut wearing the Easirent golf tee and forced smile seemed nice enough when he said, “How can I help you?” He certainly did help – helped himself to additional revenue courtesy of our credit card.

 

Ana had found a good deal on a weekly rental of a five-seater car (read fine print…”subject to availability”). The nice man offered us a cool black convertible Mustang…but to our disappointment it had only two doors and two body-hugging seats in the back, with insufficient space in the trunk to hold our fifth passenger. So we asked what else he had. Nothing. Nothing? Nothing…unless you upgrade. And somehow the move from a convertible Mustang to a base model Chevy Malibu was considered an upgrade. Bang, $150 more.

 

Where are you going, he said. We don’t know…all over the place. Well, you’ll need to buy the optional electronic toll device because there’s tolls on nearly all the highways and they don’t accept cash anymore. Can we avoid the tolls? Nope. Then why do you call it optional? Well, if you just want to drive around Fort Lauderdale you don’t need it. How much? $14. That’s not bad. Per day. Bang, $110 more.

 

OK, Kristofor, can you give me your credit card. We’ll pay with Ana’s instead. Can’t do that, the rental is in your name. Change it. I can’t. I don’t have the same credit card we booked the car with, it’s back on the boat. If I add Ana as a secondary driver, then we can use hers. Bang, $90 more.

 

After some more bullshit with him needing our home vehicle insurance policy details, which we didn’t have so had to sign a waiver, then had another waiver for glass and tire insurance, we finally got our Malibu (for twice what we were supposed to be paying) and peeled out of there in reverse, spraying gravel all over the Easyrent sign, the rest of the rental cars and, unfortunately, some of our fellow customers and a medium sized green iguana chewing on a fly. I laughed like a maniac and ripped off a cop turn like Bo Duke with Rosco P. Coltrane hot on the trail.

 

Now that we had a car we were excited to drive somewhere, anywhere. We made a quick stop at the boat to grab the kids and I crafted a sizeable stack of ham, cheese, and lettuce and a couple of tuna mayo specials on indestructible Sara Lee white bread. These I put into our hitherto unused hard-bodied cooler along with a selection of cold drinks and some fruit – an instant low budget picnic. Magnus was having trouble deciding on footwear so I offered him my new black leather sandals that Ana had scrounged from a thift store somewhere. He picked one up, inspected it, frowned, and said, “This looks like the kind of shoe little Latino kids get slapped with.”

 

“So do you want to wear them?”

 

“Not a chance.”

 

I slapped him with it but only half-heartedly since he’s only half Portuguese and that’s sort of Latino. I’ve been told Ana’s mom used to beat her brother with a slipper when he was caught misbehaving, so the Latino punishment culture varies somewhat between countries.

 

I pointed the car to the green Everglades area shown on Google Maps and we rallied down the beautiful concrete Floridian turnpike, laughing with joy when was passed through the $1.25 toll booth without a care. We arrived at the green Everglades part but really didn’t see much of interest. I was expecting it to be swampy and full of alligators and pythons and maybe even the Swamp Thing, but all we saw was a never ending dike on one side of the road and scrubby brush on the other. Major disappointment. Stella found some sort of nature park several miles away, which we were hoping would offer alligator-strewn trails through fascinating mangroves and swamp, but it was just a couple of drainage ponds littered by plastic bottles, grocery bags, and Bud Light cans at the edges with local fisherman tossing nets into the brown sludgy water for god knows what sort of brackish creatures. After some Googling we learned that the closest location to see the anticipated version of the Everglades was nearly an hour away and would cost us $35 for the car and another $32 each to take a tourist trolley with an experienced and very funny guide to entertain us along the way. After a group shudder, we instead drove to Doral Park in a suburb of Miami, ate our sandwiches without plates (just hold it) or napkins (use your arm) and were entertained by Anna’s childhood story of when they once visited this farm with free ranging animals and a lady got attacked by a small monkey who bit a mole off her face. It seems Anna had a very interesting and eventful childhood and I look forward to more stories of unprovoked animal attacks or other violence in the coming weeks.

 

We found an Aldi and loaded the car up with groceries then stopped at a Target for the ladies to browse deals while I mostly sat with Magnus at the Starbucks and talked about life. On the way back to the boat we stopped at a thrift store that was alive with the spirit of Jesus as piped-in Christian radio infiltrated every corner. I found a boogie board for five bucks and 25 feet of insulated copper strand electrical cable for a buck, which was the deal of the day.

Back at the dinghy dock we were hit with a lashing east wind and a Municipal Infraction Notice taped to our dinghy for using the dock without authorization, despite us having authorization through our monthly mooring ball rental. We’ll be making a call in the morning.

 

Ana found vacant cavities on the boat to jam all the groceries into then we roasted an Aldi wheel-sized pizza and had drinks. While we waited, we turned on the flashing LED multi-coloured lights in the cabin and had an impromptu dance party. I remembered The Floss and did my best rendition of it. The girls generously withheld any words of humiliation as I was doing a good enough job on my own. It was fun.

 

After dinner and some cockpit shenanigans I announced I was heading to bed, and Magnus said the same…but changed his mind when he realized it was only 9:30. I guess we forgot to tell them about Mariner’s Midnight.

The Band is Back Together Again

Fort Lauderdale – 11 kilometres walked

I was napping in the cockpit when my alarm shrieked me awake at 12:30 am. My peeps had landed! One hour later I watched as their taxi pulled up to the park and my beautiful wife stepped out. I hugged her first then kissed her. She looked amazing, even after a very long and exhausting travel day. Next was my sweet daughter who came over and gave me a hug that felt like it was never going to end. It seemed like a very long time since I’d seen her (3 months is a long time!) Magnus then bent over and gave me a strong hug, this grown man who, I am sure, was a curious little boy just moments before, holding my hand, looking up at me, and calling me Daddy. And our surrogate child Anna was next in the hug lineup, newest crew member of SeaLight and excited for what was sure to be an eventful few weeks on the boat. The band was back together again.

 

It took two trips to the dinghy to transport everything and their bags exploded inside the boat, like popped balloons filled with glitter ribbons, creating an unruly student dormitory in an instant. My clean and organized fortress of solitude was no more, but I no longer needed nor wanted it. The kids glistening with sweat, not accustomed to the heat and humidity, as they found their footing in their new base on the water.

We stayed up until after 3 visiting and it wasn’t until nearly 4 that we got to sleep. Ana and I got moving around 8am but didn’t drag the kids back into consciousness until after 11. Magnus made the gentlemanly decision to spend his nights sleeping in the cockpit, letting Anna take over the portside cabin that would be hers for the duration of her visit. We were not in a rush so after a crew meeting where we gave the kids a thorough briefing on boat protocols, we left the boat, and walked the length of Las Olas Boulevard, on a surprisingly overcast but warm and humid day. I was thrilled when Anna and Stella spotted half a dozen fat green iguanas lounging on sea walls, hopefully just the first of many wildlife sightings.

After spending a good long while browsing the shops, Magnus and I opted for an excellent sushi lunch while the ladies found gourmet sandwiches at Johnny’s Hungry Hoagies, then we walked back to the anchorage, stopping at a few more shops along the way, crossed the bridge, and entered into the Friday night party atmosphere of Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard with its mob of partygoers filling the bars and restaurants, tourists walking the darkened beach, and chachis in their fancy cars and street bikes ripping down the street, exhaust systems whining, popping, and croaking. The kids browsed a couple of the beachwear shops and the girls found new bathing suits for ten bucks. Magnus liked the festive scene, but was miffed that the US of A does not allow those under the tender age of 21 to purchase alcohol or cigars; despite having access to procure and use military grade weaponry. I assured him that the best party in south Florida was on SeaLight and all the drinks were free.

And we did have a party on the boat. Ana cooked up a delicious dinner of mushroom chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and garlic bread and our new friend Alice joined us, enthralled with Stella, Anna, and Magnus as they played games together and did some colouring. Her mom and dad joined us later and we ate, drank, visited, and laughed into and well past Mariner’s Midnight.

It was an excellent first day.

Living in Modern Luxury

Fort Lauderdale – 8 kilometres walked

My day today was simple. I spent five hours deep cleaning the boat and doing a few small jobs then walked to the Publix supermarket (stopping for Indian lunch at the Bombay Darbar along the way – Christmas present to myself) and picked up a few groceries. It was 26 degrees today with high humidity and it felt fantastic. As I was paddling the dinghy back to SeaLight I saw Corey was in his cockpit so stopped for a chat with him. After that I finished up a few things on the boat then did a daring solo water raid to fill up my four jugs and ensure we had maximum water supplies onboard for the teenage cyclone that was about to hit. After this I just hung around, waiting for my family’s 12 am flight and subsequent taxi to arrive so I could give them first class chaperone service to their vacation home on the water. I am so, so excited to see them!!

I did come across something today I'd like to write about.

 

I follow a Toronto real estate developer named Brandon Donnelly who writes a daily blog primarily about real estate, but he covers many over topics too. Today he mentioned another online blogger named Justin Welsh who wrote the following:

 

Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.

 

I thought about this all day. It’s a profound statement. It seems clear to me that this sailing trip is the ultimate in modern luxury.

 

Think Clearly – I have been able to think clearly simply because I have less to think about. My entire attention has been focused on getting this boat from place to place safely. I have not been thinking about the thousands of things that regularly clutter my mind at home (work, house, vehicles, administration) because these are either being taken care of by other people or I’ve deemed them currently unnecessary.

 

Sleep Deeply – I have been sleeping deeply and I have been sleeping longer. Admittedly, on sketchy anchorages I have not been sleeping as deeply, but on rock solid morning balls, I drift off to la la land shortly after 9 pm and I do not wake up until 5:30 or 6 am. That’s over eight hours of sleep every night, at least an hour more than I usually get at home. And I have felt great. Now, some nights I am woken up by my menopausal partner doing all kinds of weird shit – piling all the pillows and blankets on top of me as the hot flashes erupt, then taking them all away when she cools down, leaving the stable-temperature, innocent partner lying there freezing. She also flicks the cabin fan off and on with her toe all night. I don’t even think she knows she’s doing it – her toe is automatically regulating her temperature. She also gets terrible insomnia some nights and I’ll be awoken several times by the blue glow of her phone illuminating her face as she is playing a strategy game or catching up on the latest in American politics. Menupause also requires 6 to 11 bathroom visits per night so that can be disruptive. But with practice, I am usually able to sleep through most of her nocturnal frenzies but I think she’s starting to secretly hate me for it.

 

Move Slowly – There is nothing easier on a sailboat than moving slowly. It’s built right into the operating system. For our land excursions, we do move slowly, taking time to stop and smell the whatever flowers are around. We don’t have to be in a rush, so we are not.

Live Quietly – We don’t quite nail this one. It’s impossible to have much quiet in our life as one partner is Portuguese and permanently rigged to volume 11 (especially when on the phone with her parents) and the other is addicted to music and needs something playing in the background at all times. As for the trip, there has been precious little sailing so SeaLight’s 54 horsepower diesel is running a lot, and it is loud, boisterous, rumbling, and vibrating beast. But we have had some beautiful quiet moments - in anchorages, in parks, sitting on the deck of SeaLight as she is gliding through the water with the engine just a faint drone in the background, and in the v-berth at night before going to sleep as it is dark, quiet, and snug. If we put our minds to it, I think we could adjust routines to provide more quiet time. Wait, the kids are about to arrive. Scratch that plan, it's nothing but noise all the way from here!

Boat Explosion and Giving Myself Permission to do Nothing

Fort Lauderdale – 2 kilometres walked, 4 kilometres by paddle board

A Christmas morning unlike most. I woke up with a plan, and the plan was to do nothing productive. No boat jobs, no errands, no difficult things – just do whatever I felt like doing, as a Christmas gift to myself.

 

I began the day with some writing, then peanut butter toast and cereal, then a long and sometime strenuous paddleboard ride through the neighbourhood of waterways, and upon my return I spotted a pair of Morning Manatees passing by the bow of SeaLight, which just made my day. I had a Christmas call with Ana, Stella, and Magnus, my buddy Andrew, my dad (Mom was yesterday..) and then I rowed over to our neighbours to offer season’s greetings and suggested late afternoon drinks and apero on SeaLight, which they happily accepted.

 

After a light lunch I dug out the hammock, which I believe has not seen a single use this trip, and slung it across the solar arch, then planted myself in there with a novel and read for a good long while, possibly nodding off for a moment or two between chapters. To wake myself up I walked down to the beach, full of people enjoying the holiday warm weather, and finished my novel as I laid on a towel in the sand, then went for a refreshing dip in the ocean. I returned to the boat, learned Sweet Child ‘O Mine on ukulele, smoked a Black and Mild cigar accompanied by a shot of iced Sailor Jerry’s rum, then got the apero organized for my guests. Ana is the master of snack plates and charcuterie boards and is always in charge of this, but I think I did pretty good with this one. 

 

Corey, Marie, and their daughter Alice hung out with me all night and we had a whale of a time snacking, drinking, and talking. The hours melted away as we covered all the basics – where ya from, where ya going, where ya been, whaddya make of the world. Alice made me a beautiful, custom Christmas card so I slipped her a bag of gummy worms and snakes at the end of the evening to show my appreciation. She winked at me and slid it into her pocket. They are a lovely family and I expect we’ll be seeing lots of each other in the coming days.

 

Despite not being with my loving family for Christmas, I have enjoyed this time alone. Yes, I missed not being at the annual Christmas Eve get together at my brother-in-law Mark’s place to see him and Stella, Ana’s folks, and my beautiful nieces, and I also missed the Christmas day rituals - morning stocking opening at our house with just the four of us, then turkey lunch at Ana’s parents’ place with the same crew. I missed all that. But I also enjoyed being here on my own, in the beautiful warm weather, walking on a beach, swimming in the ocean, doing things at my own pace on my own schedule. It felt liberating. It felt peaceful. Christmas at home is fun, but it is not peaceful. It’s a lot of work, costs a great deal of money, it’s stressful, and it is rarely relaxing. Most people typically race from house to house, event to event, getting in all their seasonal visits, in a mad frenzy to get as much done in the time available, which is always too short. Fun, but not peaceful.

This year, Christmas for me was very peaceful and I feel exceptionally fortunate to have had the chance to experience this.

To finish up on a less happy note, I’ve had a few queries from people about the boat that exploded in Fort Lauderdale. It was about two kilometres away from where we are anchored and I did not hear the explosion or see the smoke. But I knew something was happening as a police helicopter was circling overhead for at least an hour and the sounds of emergency vehicle sirens were everywhere. It’s a horrible tragedy and my heart goes out to the families of the victims. 

Merry Christmas from Fort Lauderdale!

Fort Lauderdale – 3 kilometres walked

Today was financial reconciliation day. Each year around this time I do a deep analysis of our year’s spending, investment performance, and progress on goals, then I put together a presentation for the family. I had considered not doing it this year as part of my plan to break away from our regular life and routines as much possible, but Ana has asked if I was going to do it, and was hoping I would. I started work on it around 7, and took a few short breaks to defrost one of the refrigerators as glacial cooling had turned the chicken, beef, and hot dogs into a single, multi-coloured, icy mass making it impossible to retrieve any food.

 

I finished around 6pm, happy with the final results, then made myself a Christmas Eve dinner of yellow-fin tuna steak, kale salad, and spicy rice and enjoyed it slowly as my trip hop playlist flowed and oozed from the boat speakers. I could feel my back starting to whine after being slumped over the laptop all day, so I lowered the dinghy, paddled to the dock, then started walking towards the beach which, I assumed, would be quiet as surely nothing would be open on Christmas Eve.

I was wrong about that.

 

In the park by the beach was a stage with three zoot suit crooners backed by a brass band playing Mack the Knife to five hundred people. It was crazy! There were people everywhere, many wearing Santa hats, carrying cans of beer or cocktails, watching the show. Ana called as I was watching the band as she was so worried I was moping around the boat all lonely with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” on infinite repeat. Fortunately, Fort Lauderdale is a party every day. 

I watched the band, I went for a walk along the beach, I walked past all the busy bars, and by 9pm I was back at the boat shortly before Christmas rain began to fall.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Chores, Iguanas, and New Neighbours

Fort Lauderdale – 8 kilometres walked, 8 kilometres by bus

I decided today that I was going to celebrate Christmas Day by doing nothing productive, which meant I had to get my arse moving to finish up some tasks in the next two days. Being without a car is great, as it forces you to exercise a lot more and be more strategic with your movements, but it does mean that things take a lot longer. For example, it took me a full six hours today to get supplies at Walmart and do laundry, which required a lot of walking, waiting for bus transfers, and lugging gear. I overdid my shopping, resulting in a packed and heavy roller carrier, a full backpack, plus a big bag of laundry. I forget there are usually two of us for carrying things….

 

As I waited In the laundromat, a local fellow came over and sat across from me with some ragged scratch tickets. He told me he had found them in the street and was carefully scratching off the validation number with a tarnished nickel as he explained that it wasn’t necessary to play the game on the card.

 

“One of those might be a big winner,” I said to him.

 

“If I win, I’m going to get a hotel room, have a long hot shower, and go for a meal at a restaurant. That’s what I’ll do,” he said as his eyes shifted between me and the card on the table. “That would make for a real merry Christmas.”

 

“Well I sure hope you win,” I said as I looked at his torn shirt, dirty pants, scraggly hair, and kind eyes.

 

“It would be a true blessing. Have a merry Christmas my friend, God’s blessings,” he said then pulled himself up and disappeared out the door before our conversation could go any further. I was happy I’d had the chance to meet this man, albeit briefly. I hope he won. I was rolling our encounter around my head as I finished folding clothes then began my return walk to the anchorage. After a block, a rustling sound snapped me out of my trance and I looked over to see a huge green and beady-eyed iguana rapidly and effortlessly scaling a tree. I stood watching him for a while, wondering what it would feel like if he used those needle-sharp claws to climb up my back.

 

A new boat had arrived at the anchorage, a Catalina 27, and I stopped by in the dinghy to say hello. They were a couple from St. Thomas, Ontario and were cruising with their young daughter. I had a feeling we’d be getting to know each other.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon writing our annual Christmas letter, then Stillman, Ester and the girls arrived around 6pm with four boxes of pizza. The evening was deliciously warm, like the pizza, and we enjoyed a meal together and a good few drinks as we lounged in the cockpit. I got the girls busy doing some colouring down in the cabin, which they seemed to enjoy, and it gave us a chance to talk. It’s been nice spending time with them, especially getting to know Ester better. We talked a lot about her home country of Switzerland and I learned a few new things.

I dinghy’d the gang back to the dock, we wished each other a Merry Christmas, then I stopped by the new boat and properly met Corey, Marie and their daughter. I liked Corey right away when he handed me a cold Yuengling seconds after hooking up with their boat. We chatted for half an hour, traded a few stories, then I headed back to the boat. There will be more to come.

Thoughts on Americans

Fort Lauderdale – 5 kilometres walked, 3 metres swam

Today was a lazy Sunday. I did a lot of writing, a few minor boat jobs, went for a beach walk, swim, read, and played some uke. I am still struggling with giving myself permission to do nothing. The urge to be constantly productive is very, very tough to fight as that’s been my entire life, as it has with most people. While Ana was away, I was hoping to sling the hammock from the solar arch and read books for hours, nap in the afternoon, write some sailing-inspired song lyrics, and lay in the cockpit looking up at the sky, thinking about stuff. I haven’t done any of that yet, and if I’m not able to do that with the massive amount of free time I have now, it’s likely not possible for me. My body and mind seem to require perpetual motion, checking things off lists, not “wasting” any minutes. It is possible for me to relax, and I’ve had some lovely moments walking along the beach in a meditative state, but my relaxing seems to demand motion.

 

I think I will reserve Christmas Day for the above activities. I’ll force myself to be unproductive and will probably come up with some fantastic ideas if I give my brain a chance to do so.

 

So, because little of interest happened today, I want to instead write about Americans. I had a call with my friend Mike the other day and he wanted to know my impressions of Americans after traveling through nine states and meeting so many people. My answer to him, in a word, was lovely. Without exception, the people we have met along the way have been kind, friendly, helpful, generous, thoughtful, peaceful, and gracious. I will admit, we were not expecting that, and I will explain why.

 

Since the first election of Donald Trump, Canadians have taken a dim view of our southern neighbours. Worse than normal. Canadians like to claim a certain level of moral superiority over Americans which, I think, is little more than a reflection of our status as a weak country living next door to the most powerful one in the world. Canada’s status in the world has slowly and persistently dropped since the heyday of World War 2 when Canada was truly an equal partner with our American, British, and Commonwealth allies, and we backed that partnership up with money, soldiers, and sacrifice, not just empty words and “training missions”. Canada’s worldwide reputation has suffered, our productivity continues its downward spiral, and the future for young Canadians is uncertain. But you won’t hear that from our politicians. Instead of focusing on fixing our problems, they like to admonish the Americans, lecture them on moral standards, give them tips on how they can improve their health care system, provide military support only grudgingly, and just love pointing out the flaws of the US. Despite this, we still maintain this false sense of security that the neighbour we love to slander will always have our back, militarily. Until, one day, when they don’t.

 

It also pisses Canadian off when they meet an American who is clueless about our country. Not knowing what language your next-door neighbour speaks is insulting, never mind not knowing they have provinces instead of states, a Prime Minister instead of a President (or Governor…thanks Mr. Trump), and they do not live in igloos for most of the year. Canadians think they know a lot about the US, but it’s only because of television. Many of us have never been there. If you gave a typical Canadian a quiz on our next nearest neighbours, namely Denmark, Russia, Norway, or Iceland, they wouldn’t know a damn thing.

 

Along comes Trump. Canadians simply could not believe that our friends and neighbours who are so like us in so many ways, could elect a leader like Trump, a person we see as a morally bankrupt, bullying, snake oil salesman. This view is driven not just by the liberal media, but he himself in his actions and words. We felt a country-wide sense of disgust at the outright racism, cruelty, lies, theft, and stupidity displayed by him and his cronies, driven at us constantly through social media. And we project these feelings onto all Americans. This is wrong.

 

For me, this trip has corrected this distorted view we have of the US. We have been treated with nothing but kindness by every American we have met. Sure, we’ve seen plenty of good ‘ole boys driving pick-up trucks plastered with Trump flags and freedom insignia, but we see those types in Canada too. We’ve also noticed that people here don’t talk about politics. Of all the bars, restaurants, museums, shops, and public spaces we’ve been, I don’t remember overhearing a single conversation about politics….except that one guy in a sailboat beside us waiting for the motorcade at Mar-A-Lago who leaned out and yelled, “It’s all Trump’s fault! I didn’t vote for that knucklehead!” People just want to do their jobs, have a safe place to live, enjoy their lives, and be left alone - no different than Canadians. What we see on tv from the late night shows, news outlets, tweets (or X’s or whatever they are called now), and Facebook posts simply do not match the everyday reality we have seen.

 

Now, what unique traits of Americans have we noticed? First, Americans love to work and they love to make money. As we’ve struck up conversations with people, it tends to always begin with what they do for work, and sometimes it barely goes any further than that. It’s clear they work hard and take pride in what they do and want to be the best at what they do, no matter what it is. Making money and getting rich is part of the motivation, but not the whole story. They expect each other to be productive. And they are not afraid to fail, but when they do, it’s seen as a bump in the road, a good lesson, and they are encouraged to keep going until they make it. Failure is simply a part of the process.

 

Second, people seem more free to do what they want. There are fewer rules, especially when it comes to business. They seem to be able to sell anything anywhere, from beers on the street, to food trucks plopped down where you’d least expect them, car washes on Manhattan streets, to vendors in parking lots. It’s nice and feels very entrepreneurial. I know there are tons of rules and regulations behind the scene that we can’t see, but still…seems anything is possible. One that really strikes me as odd, though, in Florida, is people riding motorcycles without helmets. Freedom! Just don’t crash…

 

Third, and this was a surprising one to me, but there appears to be less ethnic diversity here. It seems there are three groups: Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. We’ve seen very few Asians and South Asians – Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Pakistanis, Indians, Sikhs. Part of this observation is likely due to where we come from - southern Ontario - which is a smorgasbord of colours and cultures, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, where if you were parachuted into an inner city neighbourhood blindfolded, you simply would not have a clue what country you had landed in. And it would probably take you a while to figure it out. Now I know there is a massive amount of ethnic diversity in the US…but somehow we just haven’t seen it.

 

Fourth, Americans are outgoing and interested in each other. It’s amazing. Every day we see Americans meeting and talking to each other in busses, on streets, in cafes, making connections, being curious. They swap business cards. They help each other. They are always looking for a way to expand their network, learn, and maybe profit from each other.

 

Fifth, the military culture is overwhelming. Every second person we meet has some sort of military connection or background. Small towns display posters of their war dead. War monuments are everywhere. Military cemeteries are commonplace. Military hardware abounds, particularly during the first half of our trip where we were surrounded by it.

 

My last observation, and maybe the most important, is the poisonous, impassable chasm between the rich and the poor. Our path along the rivers, channels, cities, and towns of the ICW has given us a view into more wealth than we’ve ever imagined - superyachts as common as bicycles, ultra-massive mansions (and mostly empty of people), private airplanes, high-end automobiles, designer clothes. But we’ve also seen grinding poverty, and all you have to do is walk over the bridge to see it. Young and old people in rags, sleeping on the sidewalks, picking food out of garbage bins, looking for discarded cigarette butts. Moms with barefoot kids walking down the street, pushing a shopping cart with all their stuff. And nearly all of the desperately poor people we’ve seen are black. You just don’t see that in Canada. Yes, we have poor people. And yes, we have fabulously wealthy people. There just aren’t that many in either of those categories. 

 

As far as Canada goes, we tend to define ourselves by what we are not. We are not American. We are not British. We also tend to be more reserved and certainly less entrepreneurial. It almost seems that as a population we are embarrassed to make money, and more so showing it off. When somebody does become wealthy, we don’t admire them; we scorn them. They don’t deserve it. They got lucky. Money is going to ruin them. Why should they have so much when I have so little. And when entrepreneurs fail, well it serves them right, they should have known that idea would never work. Let’s bring them back down to our level. We are afraid to fail, so we usually don’t bother trying. Let the government take care of us.

Now, I may sound like I’m being tough on my country. But I think Canada is one of the best places in the world to live and raise a family. It is safe. It is quiet. It is secure. The natural spaces are beautiful and unspoiled. The milk is delicious. I would not have wanted to raise our kids in any other country, and we certainly could have done that if we had wanted to. But we chose Canada. And we still choose Canada because we love it.

 

But we are having a hell of a time in the USA!

Boca Raton Beach Barbeque

Fort Lauderdale – 14 kilometres walked, 25 kilometres by car, 53 kilometres by train, 3 metres swam

The morning low of 14 degrees Celsius froze Floridians to the bone. I’d been invited to join Stillman and his family for a beach barbeque in Boca Raton and during my long walk and bus ride to the Tri-Rail train station, I saw people wearing sweaters, long pants, jackets, gloves, and one guy had a damn toque on his head. I’ve had no use for long pants for quite a while now so I was wearing shorts, my awesome tie-dyed Sailorman shirt, and a long-sleeved white button-up shirt over top. I declined when a rando in a passing vehicle offered me a blankie.

 

I arrived at Stillman’s door 45 minutes ahead of schedule after an enjoyable $5 train ride. Surprisingly, there are two separate train systems in this area – the high speed Brightline and the slower one I took called Tri-Rail. On it were all sorts of riders – business people wearing suits (even on a Saturday), students carrying rucksacks, kids with scooters and bikes, and folks that looked to be on the lower end of the social scale, including one guy I couldn’t help staring at who had a set of dentures with gold teeth in his hand and was picking bits of old Poli-Dent from the plate and between the teeth, rolling them up into little balls, and flicking them on the floor, ready for parasitic attachment to somebody’s shoe tread. I watched as he finished then rubbed the grill on his dirty jeans for a final cleaning, pulled a tube of fresh adhesive from his pocket, applied several strings of paste along the inner gumline, shoved them into his mouth, then looked over at me, and I swear there was a single sparkle dazzle from a golden incisor and a ding noise as he smiled at me and winked.

 

Stillman showed me around their cool and spacious apartment which features, yes, a Christmas tree, and large decorated Yuletide wooden letters on their table lined up to spell “JOY” which I artfully rearranged to say “YOJ” then asked the girls if that was some sort of special Florida celebration. They immediately recognized my childish sense of humour and accepted me as one of their own. Stillman then took me and their eldest daughter for the short drive to the Publix to pick up supplies for the barbeque, including fresh Wahlburgers and a brand new meat temperature probe which would later be cleverly employed by the girls in checking the readings on the interiors of their sand piles on the beach. My young accomplice called me over and showed me a box of Kinder chocolate Santa Clause treats where somebody had pressed their thumb into one of the heads and squashed it. We laughed uproariously!

Boca Raton beach and the adjoining park was simply lovely. And I think the way they keep it lovely is by charging the public $50/day to park, but giving massively subsidized rates to locals. We carried 700 kilos (1543 pounds) of gear down to the beach then plopped down and relaxed. Well, we didn’t relax for long as the girls are at the stage of their lives where a minute not spent petitioning an adult to join them in an activity is a minute wasted. So we all kept busy with the little ladies swimming, walking, building sand art, opening coconuts, getting buried in sand, kicking a ball around, and yet somehow throughout this activity, Ester managed to spot two manatee just offshore cruising down the coast. Morning manatee is back!

 

We had a break for lunch in the park and enjoyed charcoal flared organic and grass-fed beef burgers, then balanced out that advertised healthiness with a bunch of roasted marshmallows (vegan marshmallows, the package claimed, but I don’t know how any version of marshmallow could be anything than treacherous for one’s health). The food was delicious and the surroundings serene with palm trees, leafy trees, nature paths, and very few people. The girls invited me for a game of soccer with modified rules – to score a goal you had to kick the ball into a tree trunk. Any tree trunk. And no blocking. Simplified, yes. Super fun? Absolutely. We had a great time together.

 

We returned to the beach after lunch to enjoy more of the glorious sun, sand, and ocean. The hours melted away and after the short drive home we wrapped up the visit with sipping rum and Cokes on their balcony overlooking the neighbourhood lights with the salt-tinged, warm Florida breeze cooling off our sun-braised skin. It was a fine day indeed.

 

I returned to Fort Lauderdale by about 9pm and Las Olas was heaving in an orgiastic Christmas extravaganza. The restaurants were packed, bars were overfull, music played from all directions, and people wore their finest clothes. The young Kris inside of me immediately thought, “Yeah, let’s find a bar, sit down for a drink, and enjoy all this wondrous activity, and maybe get caught up in an all-night drinking session,”  but then the middle-aged Kris slapped the young one right across the face, knocking him flat, and caught a bus back to the boat to avoid the last 30 minutes of walking, ate a can of Dollar Tree’s $1 tamales purchased for provisions testing, had a call with my beautiful wife, then collapsed in the darkness, peace, and solitude of the v-berth.

Tarpon Scavengers and Playing the Bachelor Card

Fort Lauderdale – 2 miles by dinghy, 18 metres swam

For the last workday of the week I constructed an immaculate breakfast egg scramble, cojoined by a raisin and cinnamon bagel. I wasn’t sure about the flavour pairings, but it worked just fine and I enjoyed my eats in the cockpit as I watched the boats, cars, and people coming and going.

 

I had plans today to meet my buddy Stillman and his friend Scott at Coconuts for lunch so I spent the morning working on boat jobs and fixed one of our two remaining water leaks by taking a wooden dowel and hammer, swimming to the front starboard side of the boat, and banging it into the thru hull of the forward head. One of the previous owners had removed the toilet in the forward cabin and converted it to a shower room, so the valve connecting the holding tank to the thru hull hasn’t been in use for years, but we discovered early in the trip that this valve had been leaking. The temporary fix worked and next time we take the boat out of the water I will replace the entire assembly.

 

I rode the dinghy to Coconuts, which is just across the ICW from the anchorage, and enjoyed an excellent Mahi-Mahi sandwich and French fries for lunch. Stillman’s friend and business partner Scott is a great guy and they told me all about the two start-ups they’ve worked together on for the past ten years. We decided to dinghy back to the boat for a beer before they had to return to Boca (Stillman had ballet-dad duties to attend to), but as we were leaving they pointed out the dozens of smaller fish and two giant tarpon hanging out in the waters beneath the restaurant deck, no doubt waiting for a morsel of food to drop off somebody’s plate – a ketchup-dipped French fry, a wad of mayonnaise-saturated brioche bun, a leaf of feathery lettuce, or if they were really lucky, a scrap of their flame-grilled buddy they were just swimming around with a couple of days ago, making crab jokes and checking out the lady fish.

 

I gave Scott a tour of SeaLight, we had a drink, then I zipped them back across to Coconuts to pick up their vehicle. I then returned to the boat and did not leave for the remainder for the day. I made some calls – spoke to Ben and Kate in Bahamas, my buddy David Leng in Brantford, Ana and Stella, and later on that night had a long call with my bro Marty and caught up on all their news. I wrote for a while, did a bit of reading, then looked at “Exercise” on my daily list of things to do, and the twinge of guilt I felt propelled me to loop a scrap of rope over our solar arch, tie on one of the boat cleaning brushes, and do a few sets of desperate lifts on the jury-rigged pull-up bar. I thought for sure the stick would break and I’d plunge into the water, likely smashing a body part on the way down, but it held, and the only resulting injury will be some sore muscles tomorrow.

As sunset approached, I paddled over to see Cheyne and Marilyn on sailing vessel Herkee, and to invite them for a sundowner. These are the folks on the catamaran we met briefly when we first arrived at the anchorage. I apologized for not connecting with them sooner and explained that Ana was back in Canada for the week (hence, unwittingly and accidentally playing the coveted and foolproof “bachelor card”). They insisted I join them instead for drinks and dinner, and after a quick run back to the boat to grab my contribution of two sausages and a bottle of red, we enjoyed a long, slow, delicious dinner then an extended visit where we shared our various life histories. I introduced them to a game we invented in SeaLight’s cockpit this summer with our friends Greg and Sharon. Each person has ten minutes to tell the others their life history, from birth to now. Marilyn took a bit of prodding as she is quiet and proclaims herself an introvert, but once she got going, the stories flowed rapidly. Cheyne is a great talker so he had no problem filling the ten minutes, and I think he went into overtime for 70 minutes longer. They have an incredible shared history, full of surprises and globetrotting adventures. They’re on their fifth trip to Bahamas so gave me many tips and suggestions for our trip. I can’t wait for Ana to return so we can meet up with them again.