Snowbirds 1-30-09

This is our very first year spending “winter” in a tropical location. It feels a bit unreal at times and we do have a touch of survivor guilt for having abandoned our home, family and friends in the frozen land. As we walk the docks and streets, we see transoms and license plates listing home ports from every northern state.

There is a large contingent of boaters from the Chesapeake area in this marina and they have been doing the east coast migration down to FL every November and then trekking back north in April. Sombrero Resort Marina has hotel rooms as well, and some of these boaters this year, for various reasons, decided to drive their cars down instead. Although they are land based at night to sleep, they are down at the dock every day checking out the action. They are a fun group and we have enjoyed meeting them.

We also enjoyed a visit from Wayne and Jill Hansen and their adorable Bichon, Gracie. They live in Silver Bay, MN which is about as far north as you can get to Canada and they summer in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior aboard their sailboat, HMS Loon. Since Jill retired a year ago, they have been making extended trips in their RV and are now in FL for 8 weeks. It was fun catching up with them and swapping tips for living in small spaces. It was also heart-warming for me to see a small dog aboard our boat again and laugh at her antics.

I take a walk every morning across a small bridge to Flamingo Island. You would think with that name that there would be flocks of those pink flamingo lawn ornaments all over the place. I have been looking and found only this one solitary lonely pink flamingo flapping in the breeze. This flamingo needs company so I was thinking-- how about you send your frozen flamingo lawn ornaments now in the garage down here for the winter. They could be like those travelling lawn gnomes that get to travel around the world. They want to be snowbirds too and they will thank you for it.

Fitting-in In Marathon 1-24-09

After fueling up at Poncho’s, we passed through the Marathon Mooring field on our way to Sombrero Resort Marina. We had heard from Barbara and Ken aboard their 50 foot Marine Trader” Barbara” that they had a great experience hanging on the mooring ball last year, had only planned to stay a few weeks and ended up there for 9 weeks.

I imagined Bob and I doing a similar experience and looked forward to waking up at anchor with a revolving 360 degree view throughout the day. Bob was not as enthused and focused on the more practical points—we would have to dinghy in to shore for everything, the new restroom/shower building was not open yet and boaters were standing in lines to use 2 bathrooms. With 240 mooring balls occupied mostly by sailboats with at least 2 boaters per boat, that is a pretty long line for the bathroom.

Practicality won out after many rounds of compromising by each. I agreed to go to a marina in Marathon if Bob could find one with a good monthly rate, a pool and a location so that we could bike or walk to Sombrero Beach. Sombrero Resort Marina met this criteria and I was happy.

This changed to apprehension as we approached the marina and the dock master, Kyle, directed us to the first slip pictured above. Our boat, Baby Grand, is 32 feet long and 12 feet wide and he assured us that we would fit. We proceeded in slowly which was hard due to the wind and current. Our more slender bow area made it past the rear pilings but as the girth of the mid-section of the boat entered----whoa. The pilings were tight against my beautiful teak that I had obsessively varnished all last summer. Peggy was not happy.

By this time, a crowd had gathered on shore and all were concluding that we were really stuck. Kyle was very apologetic, and with the help of other boaters, gradually pushed us off from either side of the dock so that we could squeeze back out without too much scratching. I protected the teak with towels, and with this great team work, we emerged unscratched.

The dock master directed us to slip 22 in the mega-yacht section, next to a 58 foot Kadey Krogen and 60 foot Offshore—I think we fit in, don’t you?