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Monday, December 30, 2019

More Everglades



My lovely wife and I have moved to a different campground in the Everglades. We are currently at Midway, which is between Naples and Miami. I had almost no connection to the Internet at Flamingo. If you have AT&T there’s service, but everyone else is out of luck.

On Christmas day my lovely wife and I took the sailboat out into Florida Bay. It was a great day sail. We hadn’t been sailing out of there since before the Hurricane Irma. The channel into the the marina is heavily silted in.

We put the swing keel down in the marina basin then headed out to the channel. Part way down the channel we stopped dead. After lifting the keel we sailed on. Then the rudder started dragging and that had to be kicked up. Once we got to the end of the channel there was enough water to sail in.

One of the tour boat captains told me how he gets the big tour boat out into the bay. Basically he goes through the channel at full speed so the boat’s up on plane. There are places where he has to lift the motors so the props are barely in the water. The Army Corps of Engineers has studied the channel and is thinking about dredging it.

While it’s possible to get my boat out, the marina is useless to most boats. There’s a dismasted cat staying there, but it belongs to one of the workers.

My lovely wife and I enjoyed watching the wildlife. We even got to see a couple of rare baby American Crocodiles. The marina basin had a lot of manatees and that kept folks entertained. You’ve got to watch the vultures and crows as they’ll fly off with anything left at your campsite.

The warm humid weather has been very good for my lungs. I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in over a year. It only took a month.

The big downside on this trip has been the biting bugs, but that’s camping in Florida.

-Sixbears

6 comments:

  1. Gotta love those Florida bugs... NOT! I'm glad to hear the Florida weather is good for your lungs. I've had good results there too (even though I was told to stay out of the humidity).

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    1. I find the humidity is what I need. Nothing worse than the cold dry air of a NH winter.

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  2. Yeah, mosquitos. Especially Florida's salt marsh mosquitoes, those bastiges and female intact dogs that have black and white banded legs.

    Not much you can do unless you love the smell of OFF or Cutters, unless you have one of those propane-powered mosquito traps. Though those things are bloody expensive.

    Some humidity is nice. Some. 40degrees, 20mph winds, 80% humidity just cuts like frozen knives... Snuggle time with wool blankets over regular or flannel sheets, brrrrrr....

    And you have to worry about really cold nights, where your breath and the mist freezes on your tent and seals you in. Nothing like waking up gasping due to no air.

    Then there's the occasional frozen squirrel. In Florida. During winter. Seems we get these cold bombs that hit outside of metro areas, caused by the heat sinks pumping out warmer air and sucking colder, much colder air to the outer not-so-populated areas. Being pelted by frozen squirrels is... different. But usually the cold bombs also remove the mosquitoes and biting flies, usually.

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    1. We are heading south to the Keys. If it gets too cold down there, we are kinda stuck, as Cuba is off-limits these days. :)

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