Sweating it Out in South Florida

I spent the first 18 years of my life on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Thus, one could reasonably assume that I would be fully aware of how hot Florida can be during the summertime. However, it turns out I am delusional, because even though we don't have a generator and thus no air conditioning at anchor, and even though we are staying on anchor the vast majority of the time, I thought we would be comfortable cruising in Florida during June. Friends, I was wrong! We have been very, very hot. The heat melted away visions of spending a week in the Keys learning how to scuba dive and caused us to accelerate our pace to make it to Madeira Beach, where a dock with an electric plugin awaited us. Scuba diving lessons will have to wait.

Heidi isn't dead - she is just hot! This is pretty much how we all felt the entire way through FL.

After spending a few days in St. Augustine, where we restocked our rum supply at St. Augustine Distillery and had an excellent dinner at the always amazing Ice Plant Bar, we headed south and began a two week long marathon of 10 hour offshore days and little downtime. Though our mast height and draft forced us to sail around the tip of Florida rather than taking the Okeechobee Canal as a shortcut, we decided to skip Key West, cut through from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico at Marathon Key, and head directly north from there. This view from anchor was all we saw of Miami.

Heading south through Biscayne Bay, we saw the remnants of Stiltsville, a prohibition-era cluster of nightclubs built on stilts in the waters south of Miami, formerly a haven for drinking, gambling, and whatever other forms of vice you couldn't get away with on the mainland. Many of the structures were destroyed by hurricanes, but seven remain, now under the purview of the National Park Service.

Our first stop along the Gulf Coast was Marco Island. From Marathon Key to Marco Island is about 90 nautical miles and was the longest one-day jump of our entire trip. Leaving at 5AM sharp we made it to Marco Island just in time to get anchored and settled in before watching the sunset. On the way to Marco Island, probably 30 miles offshore, I saw a solitary flamingo floating in the Gulf.

We took a day to explore Marco Island and visit the Snook Inn for their surprisingly strong tiki drinks.

From Marco Island it was only three day-long hops to Madeira Beach, where we finally got to pass under my hometown's bridge on Altair and rejoined air-conditioned civilization, for now...