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