Friday, April 25, 2014

Those Amazing Dolphins

Life continues to go well for us on Carpe Diem in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon. Many of our winter friends have left already, but we were glad to catch one couple, Terri and Larry Howard aboard Vixen. We got them over for a meal two nights ago. They began their journey back up to Jacksonville yesterday morning. The mooring field is far from empty, however, and we've met a few couples on boats who will be here for the summer.

Some of our activities continue as they have. For instance, I spent yesterday at the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) volunteering as I now do once a week. As I mentioned in the last entry, I do this, in part at least, as a way of giving back to the community from which we get a great deal. I do have an interest in marine mammals as do many people, and I'm happy to help an organization whose mission is to study dolphins to learn more about them while treating them very well. While my volunteer activity does not require any specific background or expertise, my presence there gives me the chance to learn quite a bit about dolphins and a few other animals as well.

So what have I learned? For starters, I've come to appreciate all that goes into such an operation. There are 24 dolphins there now. Most of them were born there while a few are retired from active performing at other places. Two have been rescued – one from a shark attack when it was quite young and also seemed to have lost its mother. The other was rescued from the BP oil spill, also at a young age. They are all healthy now, but they could not survive in the wild at this point. Survival for dolphins is not something driven by instinct. They need to be trained by their mother to hunt for food and avoid dangers. At the DRC they don't get that training, since the mothers never learned it either. They get up to 25 lbs. of restaurant quality fish every day, so there's no motivation to try to catch food. In fact the lagoons they live in are full of fish that could provide them food, but the dolphins ignore them. Oh and by the way, the fish the 24 dolphins eat comes at a hefty price – about $800,000 a year. The fish come frozen and are stored in a huge freezer. Each dolphin gets a specific diet which is prepared daily. Their diets all vary depending on size, age and other factors. As this diet is prepped, the fish are examined and those not up to standard are rejected. The rejects come to as much as 50 lbs a day. I was glad to learn that it's not thrown away but given to a local bird rehabilitation center where the food standards don't need to be as high.

So when I think about the food bill together with the trainers and research workers plus those who deal with the public along with grounds keepers, I begin to understand the reasons for the prices they charge visitors to come in and to interact with the dolphins. This is a non-profit operation, and all their support comes through admissions and memberships.
These curious creatures love to swim along the shore of their lagoon people watching.

I've learned a bit about the dolphins themselves, as you might expect. For instance, they can stay submerged for seven minutes; they can put on a burst of speed up to about 25 mph; the young are nursed by their mother or a nurse maid for up to two years; they live in the wild to an age for about 25 years, but in captivity where they are cared for well, they can live longer. The oldest known dolphin in captivity is in its early 60s. The oldest at DRC is 52. Her name is Molly. She is a descendent of one of the original Flippers from the 1960s movie by that name. (In fact the movie was filmed here.) Her grandparent was one of the stunt doubles. It seemed that the dolphin who starred in the movie wasn't particularly athletic, so stunt doubles did the jumps and other such stuff. Molly still performs on occasion. Her most interesting peculiarity is her interest in scarfs. She collects them and hides them in her lagoon, bringing them out now and then.
A speed run


Trainers spend quite a bit of time with the dolphins. The training has more than one purpose. Of course this allows them to show off the dolphins to the public, but it also provides exercise for a mammal that in the wild travels quite a bit and thus get plenty of exercise. This training also provides a platform for some of the research. Some of the activities they performed, for instance, are not taught by the trainer but by other dolphins. They learn and copy. In fact, according to research done at this point, the dolphin is the best imitator next man – better than monkeys, for instance. I could go on about what I've learned of dolphin behavior, but this is probably more than enough for a blog entry. For those who might want to learn more, feel free to respond to this, and I'll try to answer any questions.

The coming month will include lots of activities for us. Our daughter Samantha and her family including our grandsons Nathan, Chris and Ryan will be arriving tomorrow. They'll be here for a week. Then my sister Kathy and her family arrive for a few days before we go up to West Palm for a family wedding. Then we'll prepare to leave Marathon and head slowly up to Vero Beach. There our other daughter Jenn will join us for a trip over to the Abacos for three or four weeks. So we'll be busy, but hopefully not too busy to continue this blog.

Captain Bob

Carpe Diem

While I was volunteering, Sandra continued to work on baskets.  This is her rainbow basket.


Wednesday, April 16, 2014

New Focus Begins


With this bit of writing, I begin a new blog. For those dedicated followers or even occasional followers of my recent blogging (Thoughts Along the Waterway), you will have probably noticed that nothing new has been added for some time. For the past few years we have been traveling up and down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and reporting on our travels. Our winters (and I use that term loosely) have been spent in the Keys and our summers have taken us to a number of places further north or west. Last summer, due to an issue with our engine, we ended up traveling by boat only a bit more than 200 miles to Vero Beach instead of the 1200 miles to to Virginia or much farther to the coast of Maine as we have on earlier occasions – in other words very little ICW travel. One could say that perhaps one year of a different travel plan doesn't negate the value for future years for continuing the blog. However, as much a surprise as the last minute change was, we ended up really liking the fact that we didn't have to travel that extra 1000 miles up and then return the same distance in the fall – all at six or seven miles per hour. Since we'd been along the ICW a dozen times or more already, we didn't feel like we would miss out on all sorts of scenery and great stopping points. We did enjoy our stops in several communities along the route, but not doing the trip meant that we'd have time to do other things in Florida.

So, you may be wondering, does that mean that we won't do any more traveling by boat? Not a all. It just means that our semi-annual trips on the ICW will not happen. We'll spend more of our time in one place or another and less time traveling. For that reason, I've been unmotivated to write additions to Thoughts Along the Waterway. I plan to make this the initial entry in a new blog focused more on living aboard, since we are still doing that for most of every year. There are activities, events and challenges enough to fill many entries in the months to come. For those who read my blog to enable you to vicariously travel with us, you may lose a bit of interest. However if you bear with me, you may find that that which I write about remains relevant, since we deal with some of the same issues whether we travel or remain in one place. Life on a boat is such a different lifestyle from that of dirt dwellers.

To begin I report that we've enjoyed our “winter” here in Marathon as in previous years. With all the stormy, cold weather in the rest of the country, we were happy to be here where a cold front brings a shower, a bit of wind and temperatures dip down below 70 degrees by a degree or two. We've been out to the reef a few times snorkeling, traveled to Key West as many times and kept pretty busy here in Marathon. We've had company. Sandra's sister Paula came for a week; a friend Priscilla Temple visited for several days, and our daughter Jennifer surprised us with a brief visit as well. We look forward to our other daughter Samantha and family coming down in less than two weeks. Then my sister Kathy and family will drop by for a couple of days after that.

We've continued to remain involved with Tai Chi classes, attending from two to four classes a week when we didn't have other plans or company. [At some point I'll have more to say about Tai Chi and the benefits we felt and seen in others.] Sandra has continued making baskets and teaching others how to do so as well. She's also been doing more painting, inspired by the clouds and scenery of south Florida. I've been looking for a way to give back to this community for we've enjoyed so much. I finally decided to become a volunteer at the Dolphin Research Center a few miles from here. I go once a week and definitely enjoy my time there. [More on this in a later blog.]
Finally in this blog I'll speak a bit about living aboard at anchor or on a mooring and a few of the differences between this and land based existence. We ran into one last fall and winter as we went through the process of changing our residency from Virginia to Florida. Life had become complicated with multiple mailing addresses. This may not seem important, but your address determines where you pay taxes and registration, what insurance costs are and to which company you pay. As we began the process we had at least three working mailing addresses. We had a PO box in Virginia, but that wouldn't work for registering the car. It was necessary to have a physical address, so we used the marina address where we kept the boat in the summer. It was also where we had lived for a few years prior to our cruising. But neither of these would work while traveling, so we also used a mail forwarding service in Florida. We had most of our mail sent to this address, so we could receive it regardless of our location. This worked for quite a while, but became more of a problem last summer when we never made it back to our “Virginia address” and weren't sure when we'd next be there if ever again. Our auto registration info continued to go to that marina, even though I worked diligently to get them to use the PO Box for correspondence. Our bank was a local Virginia bank, so we were forced to do all our banking online or via a phone call when problems arose.


Since it appeared that we'd be spending more time in Florida than any other place, we decided last fall to change our residency to that state. Of course one must have a physical address in a particular place in order to become a resident. On a boat that can move on a whim, we faced a peculiar problem that you land based residents never think about. As I reported in the sentence above, our real goal was to become Florida residents, but that's not possible. One must become a resident of a particular town and have a street address to call home in that town. Fortunately our mail forwarding address is a street address and not a PO box. Since the service deals with cruisers often, they've added to their website most of the information one would need to become a Florida resident. It turned out to be a lengthy process, but we are now residents of Green Cove Springs, Florida. Of course, the only time we've been there was in January when we stopped by to get our photo drivers license. And I must admit that there were awkward moments when we were asked how long we've lived in Green Cove Springs, and whether we owned a home or rented. We feel fortunate that we signed up with the mail forwarding service back a few years ago. Their site provided most of the answers to those and other questions that arose. Otherwise this process, which is not set up to accommodate cruisers, would have been quite a bit more difficult.
Coconut Key from our anchored boat
As I complete this first installment of the new blog, we are quietly anchored by a small mangrove island in Florida Bay. Looking at the included photo, one might surmise that it has little to offer. However, we share this spot with the many birds that call the island home and the fish the swim around our boat. We kayaked around the island and saw lots of cormorants, egrets and herons. We also saw a nesting frigate bird, an unusual sight. In the water we saw lots of fish including rays and even a four foot shark. All this by an island that appears to offer nothing at all. An  we are totally alone. We can look down and clearly see the sand and grass below our boat.

It's a spot we come to often to get away from Boot Key Harbor and all the activities of Marathon. During the winter we have lots of neighbors, since all 225 moorings in the harbor are used as are five marinas in addition to more than 50 boats at anchor. At this point, the season is coming to a close for many of those winter residents, and they have begun their trek back to their northern homes. We see boats leaving daily. We won't be following for another month, so I'll have more to share about our life here. Until then...
One of Sandra's recent basket projects

Her painting of a scene captured in the Keys.
Captain Bob
Carpe Diem