Thirsty Thursdays

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These pics are some of Biscayne Bay. Stiltsville is a great place to visit.

Title explanation: Just thought I would use that worn out night club slogan. Like "Drinkin' with Linkin

Not really good for you, and those fading memories of crappy night clubs gone by make me grateful for the present.

Today's temps should reach upper 70's. This is why I live here and not some other nice places. South Florida is grand, but winter turns the joint into New York/Boston. With warmer weather.

Nothing like a crush of mass-holes driving their Mercury Marquis/Buicks/Cadillacs at the break neck speed approaching 25 knots, doing a Jersey slide from the left lane to make that right turn they've been dreaming of.

Boating in Biscayne Bay has to be an experience best done, personally.

Really.

Beautiful azure water, warmly oozin over breathtakingly white sands. Lobster and other creatures frolicking in the six foot crystal clear water, while huge fish of unknown pedigree (I call 'em poo-pike) lazily traverse past your anchored boat.

It's really nice. Right up to when those folks I described driving a couple paragraphs past, whiz past you in your anchorage going the speed of heat, waking the daylights out of your boat.

I have an intracoastal waterway chart book, and it is a wonderful tool for exploring your bays and waters of Florida. They even include valuable Lat/Long waypoints with magnetic courses printed on the blue parts. As we headed to Elliott Key one day, I was wondering why we were getting run over about every four minutes. I quickly realized that they were using the same book, and instead of actually driving manually, these safe boaters had punched in the waypouints on their computers and set the autohelms to acquire these waypoints, most ricky-tick!

Wouldn't be so bad, since I looked like the big dummy, having not read the memo. So I started setting my courses and waypoints about three hundred yards to the port. There. Showed. Them!

Photo on the bottom of the page is me setting waypoints, off of Miami.

I'm thinking that a trip somewhere, this weekend, may be the plan. With temps over 70 degrees, I am obligated to go out and see the sea.

Up in North Florida, we have beautiful rivers and not so clear waters. So all the nice folks from the north tend to pass us by on their way to reliably warmer climes.

In fact, the St Johns river has so much effect on local water clarity, we don't see the bottom of the ocean until you get south of St Augustine!

Good deal for me.

I spoke of the crowds in South Florida. Up here, we have a huge river (bigger than Biscayne!) and maybe six boats on it at any given moment. I'm not counting bass boats and small fishers.

I can anchor in a cove (Colee Cove is my favorite!) and we will reliably be the only boat.

See the sunset picture above.

I gotta figure out how to place pix where I want...