Category Archives: travel

We are headed north now.  We have a deadline—always a bad choice to have deadlines on a boat (so that is a bad decision!).  Mother Nature loves to mess with deadlines.  Another wise, old adage goes like this:

The most dangerous piece of equipment on boat is a calendar.

You see, we have a wedding in South Carolina in mid-April, and we want to be there!  We are also putting Pandora in brokerage this spring in order to buy another boat, so getting her to her brokerage home before the wedding would be the best plan.  I’m sure Mother Nature will have a good time with our plans, but we have to make the attempt.  So we are headed north.

For the past week we have sailed north and just taken enough time to stop each night to rest before continuing each morning.  These have been long days, either sailing out in the Atlantic or motoring up the Intra Coastal Waterway. We even had two days with good wind for sailing up the ICW. While these days have not included any shore leave, there have been lots of interesting sights on the water:  flying fish, manatees, dolphins, shore birds—even some very interesting man made birds that have been thrilling to watch as they fly overhead.

We missed getting photos of all the lovely wildlife, so I’ll just include some sunsets.

And this tiny island where someone had set up a tent!

Yesterday we arrived in Daytona and decided we’d like to see this city that we have previously always passed by.  We had a wonderful dinner at The Cellar, which is located in a beautiful early 20th c. house that used to be Warren Harding’s summer home.  What a lovely spot and a beautiful home.  The menu is amazing and so are the wine choices!

We ate in the pretty sunroom.  This photo (which I did not take!) was taken from the window table where Bob and I sat.

We arrived here on the last day of the annual ‘bike week’ here in Daytona.  We could hear the revving engines of many, many bikes as we set the anchor when we first arrived.  It put me in mind of the famous racetrack, and I did wonder if there were some kind of car race going on.  We will have to get ashore early this morning if we want to see the bikes before they leave town.  Perhaps this bike rally is a significant part of what makes Daytona so popular for college students on spring break.

Next stop is St. Augustine, a place we’ve visited numerous times, both by water and by land.  We will spend a few days there since we hurried out of town back in January when it was so cold!

It’s been almost three weeks since I’ve posted anything here—for various reasons.  I have been pretty productive over the past weeks, so it looks like I will head home with three new sweaters, and I have made enough progress on my Portuguese Man of War tapestry to feel that I know where I’m headed with that.  I set aside my third lace heart a few weeks back and have not touched it since.  And I made one, very fun, sock from Cat Bhordi’s Insouciant Knitting book.  Although that sock was fun to knit, I am not that smitten with the sock style and probably will never get around to knitting the second one….  Ah, well….

Here is that interesting sock…

And current progress on tapestry:

 There have been some unsettling moments over the last few weeks, and that is usually what takes me away from blogging.  We have had some sad news from several friends who are having health issues.  I am so worried for each of them and waiting for news is so stressful that it is very hard for me to concentrate on anything else.  I hate to even bring up this kind of thing here, but it has taken up so much of my daily thoughts I will just say that I am willing good friends to regain their health.

Also, we recently had two very frightening sailing incidents.  I hesitate to spend time describing what happened—this is, after all, a blog about weaving and other handwork, not about sailing!  But sailing is a major part of my life each year, and while sailing, Pandora is my floating studio.  Every sailor encounters bad situations.  I’m often reminded of the old adage:

Good decisions come from experience.  Experience comes from bad decisions.

After 40 years of sailing together,  I hope that we have gained enough experience, and made enough bad decisions, to be guaranteed in only making good decisions now.  Alas, not so!

Bad decision #1 is not one that carries much blame for us.  I will always take the easy route to get somewhere, so if it were up to me, I would spend our whole trip motoring and sailing up and down the Intra Coastal Waterway and never go out in the ocean!  Bob, on the other hand, would always choose to be out in the ocean, so he tries to pick the days that will cause me the least stress.

Going out in the ocean from coastal US below New Jersey involves using inlets because the entire southern coast has barrier islands.  Inlets are a sailor’s challenge.  Some are better than others, but since they are all dicey,  it’s better to avoid the bad ones entirely and to be cautious of the ‘good’ ones.  We have used Ft. Pierce inlet over the past few years since it is well known as one of the ‘good’ ones.

However, about a month ago, there was an accident in this inlet where a barge in tow sank and one person died.  This sunken barge is a significant hazard in the inlet, and the inlet has been closed since the accident.  We recently heard that the inlet is now open during certain times each day as salvage operations have begun.

So when Bob wanted to have a good day of sailing up the Florida coast from Key Largo to Ft. Pierce, he contacted the Coast Guard to see what the situation is with the Ft. Pierce inlet.  The Coast Guard told him that on the day in question there would be divers working on the wreck during the morning, but that the inlet would be open to small vessels by 11am.  We hit the high seas to make passage to Ft. Pierce.

When we arrived about 2.30 in the afternoon, we called the Coast Guard again for instructions on how to proceed into the inlet.  We had been told that the wreck was marked off with buoys to prevent boats passing over that part of the inlet.  But the Coast Guard then informed Bob that the inlet was closed until the end of the day because salvage operations, including divers, were still underway.  Ugh!

We noticed two other sailboats nearby us; one was a boat we have crossed paths with several times over the years in the Bahamas.  In fact, they had just sailed overnight from Chubb Cay based on the same information about going through this inlet by late morning.  They had arrived at Ft. Pierce at 11am and had been anchored off the beach all day.

This was one of those times when there were no good choices.  It’s never a good idea to anchor on a lee shore, which is what they chose to do.  But the other options were not good either: to sail back and forth near the inlet waiting for it to reopen which is exactly what Bob and I did.  For our friends, who had already been up all night for their passage from the Bahamas, this was not such a good choice.  Another option would be to keep sailing to another inlet.  The next inlet north is Cape Canaveral, and it was closed for the upcoming rocket launch.  So, given this lack of good choices we all did the best we could.

The third boat waiting for the inlet was not known to us, but after a chat on the radio we learned that he was onboard alone and had sailed from Miami with the same information that the inlet would be open by late morning or noon.

It was 6pm by the time the divers were up and the salvage barge with a large crane aboard had been up-anchored and moved to a safe location inside the inlet.

Here are the guidelines we always use for entering inlets.  It is best to go at slack tide.  Water does not like to be restricted—and that is exactly what inlets are.  The water approaching the east coast of the US has come all the way from Africa and is suddenly coming in contact with shallow coastal areas and then being funneled into a tiny inlet.  Just imagine what happens to all that water—it gets very agitated.  So it’s best not to add any further agitation such as flooding or ebbing tides.  Slack tide will have the least additional agitation. Wind also plays a significant part at inlets.  Never go into an inlet when the wind opposes the tide.

We planned our 2.30 arrival to coincide with slack tide.  There was moderate wind out of the east (yes, all the way from Africa), but with no tidal activity we should have had a reasonable transit through that inlet. It is almost impossible to get all these variables to be in sync with each other, but we do aim for as many positive players as possible.  But at 6pm in the evening, when we were allowed through, a number of things had become rather worrisome.  First, the sun was low in the west, right in our eyes, so it was quite difficult to see the obstructions that were marked in the inlet.  Second:  now the tide was at full ebb and the wind was from the east—bad situation.  The water was very confused.  Third:  I really hate to admit this—I have the highest regard for the Coast Guard– but on this day they were not giving out the best information.

Our friends on Five and Dime entered the inlet first, followed by us, and then Morgana, the boat that had sailed from Miami.  The Coast Guard advised all of us to ‘hug’ the north side of the inlet and proceed close to that jetty.  The wreck was on the southern side of the inlet. The waters were so confused we were all sluicing around and heeling over quite significantly in both directions.  Pandora was heeling about 30 degrees, first to port and then to starboard, so we were heeling a total of 60 degrees every minute or so.  We needed almost full throttle on the engine to keep her going forward; otherwise, she just sluiced around from side to side.

Shortly into the inlet Five and Dime ran hard aground in the area we’d been told to go.  She was right in front of us, so it seemed likely that we would run right into her.  It was harrowing to watch her pounding repeatedly on the bottom.  She was heeled over quite far, so she was pounding on the side of her keel and hull.  It looked terrifying.  They made an immediate distress call to the Coast Guard who, along with the local harbor police, came out to help within a moment.  A few big waves hit all of us then, and Five and Dime came off the bottom and managed to get back underway.

During this time, Bob saw no other option to avoid hitting Five and Dime than to turn around and head back out a bit.  The marked area we were to transit was a bit too narrow for turning around, so we ended up going over the sunken barge a bit, luckily with no incident.  By the time we did an entire 360 degrees, Five and Dime had progressed enough for us to continue forward.

Morgana did not have enough engine power to get through the inlet on power alone, so the captain, who was alone, had to go up on deck to put out his jib.  Boy, did I suffer a heart stopping moment watching him do that.  Our boats were all heeling and sluicing around, and I don’t know how he managed to stay onboard.  But after a tediously long few minutes, we were all safely in.  Five and Dime went to anchor near the Coast Guard station in order to be near help while they assessed any possible damages to their hull.  Morgana and we went further in to a protected anchorage.

The winds had freshened quite a bit during the late afternoon.  We set our anchor, but now neither of us remembers how thoroughly we backed down on the anchor to set it.  Clearly, not well enough.  At just after midnight, which meant it was now Friday, March 13^th, Bob got up to check things.  He often does this at least a couple of times each night.  To his horror he found that we were no longer even in the anchorage.  We were dragging quite rapidly toward the bascule bridge that was just beyond this anchorage.  He called me to come up on deck as quickly as I could.  I also was horrified as I came up the companionway to see the bridge rapidly approaching our stern.  Of course, it was entirely the other way around, but it did look like the bridge was bearing down on us, instead of us bearing down on the bridge.

I took the wheel while Bob went forward to assess the anchor.  As he left the cockpit he warned me not to run over the anchor.  Yikes.  I set the throttle at a moderate speed hoping it was not too much to overtake our anchor.  Then I looked back at the bridge and was terrified to see that we were now very close to one of the huge abutments.  Fear took over and I pushed the throttle to full forward.  I can think of only one other time in my life when I was this scared.  I could actually feel us hitting the abutment and our mast striking the bridge–although it never actually happened.  I was in quite a state!  Pandora felt the kick of the full throttle and began making slow progress forward.  I guess we were in quite a current pushing us toward that bridge.  It was deadly dark, except for the excruciatingly bright lights on the bridge, as we tried to re-anchor in this overly crowded anchorage.  This time we backed down good and long to make sure the anchor was well set, but neither of us felt confident enough to go back to sleep.  It was a long night.

I do not blame us for the harrowing experience of getting through Ft. Pierce inlet.  We did our best to choose a safe sailing day for the trip, and we did due diligence by contacting the Coast Guard about the use of that inlet before setting out.  Sometimes things just conspire against your best efforts.

But the anchoring fiasco was entirely our own poor doing.  And the danger of dragging rapidly back to that bridge was quite a bit higher than even the experience of a bad passage through an inlet.  It still haunts me, two days later.  I think it will haunt for me quite a long time to come.

Over a decade ago Bob and I edited and published a book about a man who sailed the East Coast of the US in a very small sailboat.  He had a marvelous ability for understatement and often referred to these harrowing experiences as a “busy cup of tea.”  The whole day was indeed a very busy cup of tea for us!

And I’ll end with another old adage:

Boating is hours and hours of pleasure, interrupted by moments of sheer panic!

Frankly, I often feel it is the other way around….

It’s almost here, and I hope it comes in like a lamb!  We just got word from our oil company that we are dangerously low on oil and that the truck cannot get in our driveway due to the closed gate.  No one can get that gate open when there is so much snow piled up on either side of it!

There is not much to report here.  The weather window for heading out of Florida has closed so nobody is leaving which means we are still anchored back in the mangrove swamps.  The herons and egrets and pelicans have good hunting back here and are wonderful to watch.  It seems that everytime they strike at something in the water they are swallowing a tasty morsel.  The juvenile eagle ray swims by Pandora at some point every day.  I think he must also find good feeding back here.

Our older son Rob came for a visit this week after having some business in Miami.  It was wonderful to see him!  We spent a day together in Key West, using his rental car for the trip.  As you know there is only one road that runs down the Keys, US 1, and that road has only one lane in each direction.  Much of it is causeway going over water.  When there is an accident it pretty much closes down the ability to move in any direction.  If you are stuck on a causeway there is no getting off.  That is what happened to use on the trip back up to Marathon at the end of our day in Key West.  It was a bad accident and had the road closed for most of the day, so in the long run we were pretty lucky.  I’m sure lots of folks never got to their destination that day.

Here are Rob and Bob enjoying some cool refreshment on a pretty front porch in Key West, at a bar called “The Porch.”

I have a good crop of mint growing in my window box– along with cilantro and bright red geraniums– and we used the first mint harvest to make mojitos!  Yum!

It was quite hard to say goodbye to Rob, not knowing when we will see him next…. and quite hard to learn the news that Chris has decided to move to San Francisco temporarily in order to make some connections out West for his banking start up.  This vagabond life is a little hard at times like this.  It’s hard enough to get enough time with my kids without also disappearing off the grid for months and months.  Sigh…

Our dinghy got damaged several weeks ago, and although Bob bought a repair kit, the fix was not to his liking.  We decided to have it re-done professionally.  Here it is going back in the water after a day at the shop.

We had to stay ashore for the day while the repairs were done–no other way to get back to our boat.  I found a beautiful spot for us to pass some time while we waited….and have lunch as well! This lovely resort is on the other side of Marathon so we were looking out over the Gulf.  Some dolphins came near shore to entertain us during lunch.

Today will be a quiet day onboard.  I have plans to make bread and get back to weaving!

How do I account for the ‘fluther’ of Portuguese Man of War that drifted into our little mangrove creek yesterday?  It has to be serendipty.  Bob jumped in the dinghy and got lots of photos for me.  Now I have plenty of good images to draw from for my tapestry.

The poor things will die back here as they tangle with the mangrove roots.  We will have to be very careful going under the lines we have tied in the mangroves as we go to and fro in our dinghy, as well as when we leave and Bob pulls in those lines. At low tide the lines droop down in the water, so there is a good chance the lines have poison on them and can sting Bob’s hands when he pulls them back aboard in preparation for leaving. We’ve put dishwashing gloves on our provisioning list.

The water is a very weird color back here in the mangroves–a milky green.  We think that it’s caused by something the mangroves themselves produce and leech into the water, but we have no certain knowledge about this!

What I do have certain knowledge about is the collective word for jelly fish: fluther! A fluther of Portuguese Man of War.  I love collective nouns; they are so evocative.  A ‘murder’ of crows is one of my favorites.  A “bloat” of hippopotamuses, a  “kindle” of kittens, a “parliament” of rooks. Last night when I went searching for a collective word for jelly fish, I found that a ‘gaggle’ of geese is for geese on the ground.  When they are flying they are called a ‘skein’ of geese.  I love that! Ducks also fly in a skein.

Just now Bob called me up on deck to see a small spotted Eagle ray– a juvenile.  Isn’t he beautiful?

I’ll end with a shot of Bob I took yesterday.  He was attempting to befriend a pelican.  Not successful!

Those are big concepts…. and words that come to mind for anyone who is at the beginning of a new project.  Excitement for the new idea and the commitment to try it jostles with the anxiety of entering the unknown and doubts about one’s ability to tackle this new idea.  In the case of weaving, and especially weaving tapestry, there is the calming process of making the warp, spacing the warp threads and weaving a header.  This process involves relaxing repetitive movements with your hands that help chase away the negative doubts and worries.  If you are very lucky–and I am!– you are holding a bobbin made by John Moss, a beautiful tool that you know was made with great care and precision and feels good in your hand.

I am trying a continuous warp this time, where I have all the warps on both front and back of my copper pipe loom and will advance the warp around the loom as I progress.  Normally I make a continuous warp that has half the warp on the front of the loom and half on the back and I bring the two together with a shedding bar.  Making a warp the way I have this time allows me to weave something twice as long as my small loom.  The downside is that when I advance the warp around the loom I will have to be very careful about keeping things straight!  I have been meaning to face this fear for years!  I also have to keep the back warps from distracting me so I have inserted a card so I will only see the front warps!

There is just nothing so soothing as the look of a brand new warp.  There is no other time in life when things are so neat and tidy and every warp thread is perfectly parallel with its neighbor, with even tension across the whole surface.  Life is certainly never as even as a warp!

Several weeks ago I made an acquaintance with a tapestry weaver from the Baltimore area, Ann Booth, whose works I’ve enjoyed seeing online.  I’m using up a data this year keeping myself inspired by looking at artworks online and staying in communication with other weavers.  Next year Ann and her husband may be out here sailing down the coast and across to the Bahamas.  I hope our paths will cross.  Perhaps we can even weave together!

When I mentioned that I had only met one other weaver during our three years of cruising (and that woman, a Canadian, had left her looms behind and brought only knitting along for her trip), Ann introduced me to Doris Florig, who is currently living on her sailboat in Guatemala.  Doris is such an inspiration!  She reminds me of the enthusisam and quest for knowledge of my younger self, when I was so intrigued by learning everything from the ground up: spinning my own yarn, dyeing, weaving cloth.  It was in my young adulthood that I learned these techniques.  Somewhere along the way I have lost the wonder of these things.  I still spin and dye and weave, but over time that original awe and wonder has left me.  Doris is still cultivating and nurturing that spirit of adventure.  The main saloon–or cabin– of her boat is not very different from my own on Pandora, and she has set up a large tapestry loom in that space.  Wow!

I can tell Bob is worried I’ll want a set up like this soon!

We sailed from Miami to Marathon, with a one-night stop at Rodriguez Key near Key Largo, over the past couple of days.  The wind has been extreme but mostly at our back which is far better than sailing into the wind.  It was a hard couple of days for me since I get seasick easily, but even Bob found the long days hard going.  He has to do all the hard work by himself.

We are now in Marathon, and it is the most crowded harbor I have ever seen in the US!  You’d think every boat from the US and Canada is here.  There are no moorings available for rent, which is no surprise.  We are #32 on the waiting list for a mooring, and I thought that would mean we had small hope of getting one before June, at least! The bigger surprise was that there is no room to anchor in the harbor.  We arrived late in the afternoon, not long before sunset and I was quite worried when I saw how crowded things are.

Here’s a layout of all the moorings, now full.  All additional space is taken up with boats on their own anchors.  Sheesh!

We motored up into a creek off the harbor that leads into a mangrove swamp.  There were already about a dozen boats up there “Med-moored”–short for Mediterranean moored– to the mangroves.  This is a technique where you put down your anchor in the middle of the creek and then back the stern of your boat toward the mangroves and tie your stern onto the trunks of the mangroves.  The boats end up lined up next to each other like in a parking lot.  There was less room than we’d like between boats, but we managed to squeeze ourselves in.  Luckily the two boats on either side of the spot we chose were very welcoming! We barely got ourselves settled as the sun went down.

Tied to the mangroves!

The wind is still howling, but we’ve learned that once the wind stops there will be gazillions of no-see’ums.   I guess I hope the wind stays up! There are some cautiously optimistic weather predictions that March may come in like a lamb this year.  If the weather truly does get milder many of the boats here in Marathon will head off to the Bahamas.  We do not plan to go yet, so that may leave us room to move into the harbor. Maybe we’ll even get a mooring!  Early next week we plan to meet up with old friends who have a 2nd home down here, and our older son is planning a visit next week after he finishes a business meeting in Miami.  I am really looking forward to that!

On our first trip to shore yesterday we encountered this manatee.  Shortly later we saw a group of four floating together in one of the small canals.  Amazing creatures! The water is very green in this harbor.

So, now that I have done all the preparations I will start weaving today.  I want to explore some ways of depicting water in cotton thread, and attempting the Portuguese Man of War that we saw in Boca a couple of weeks ago.  For those of you who have seen my past postings you know that I plan to weave a large tapestry of a Portuguese Man of War.  I’m looking forward to playing with water images today! Hopefully I will gain some insight on what I can do with the larger tapestry that is waiting for me at home.

There should be no surprise that when I avoid chores as well as I have lately, they just pile up more and more.  I really love to make things and, for some reason, detest finishing things.  My little tapestry is still waiting to get the back threads trimmed and buried and have its warp ends finished in some way.  While avoiding this tedious chore I have been knitting the “For Irene”sweater.  As of this afternoon, it is now also completed and that means it also needs finishing.  Not sure which I detest more: finishing tapestries or sewing sweaters together.  Ugh.

I had one of the worst night’s sleep ever last night because of high winds blowing through our anchorage.  When the wind is blowing Pandora is much like an anxious dog.  She tends to tug as hard as she can at her anchor line, first pulling as hard to port as she can, which includes heeling over a bit.  Then she’ll pull hard to starboard and heel over there too.  Back and forth… all night.  When it gets really windy it feels like I might fall out of bed.   Who could sleep through that?

Shortly after we got up this morning a really nasty squall came through.  Our middle of the night wind was nothing compared to this.  Bob thinks the gusts probably hit around 70 mph.  We both thought we would drag our anchor right across the harbor and crash into either a mega yacht docked in any of the mega-mansion back gardens or one of the other traveling boats anchored along with us.  Other boats around us did drag rather significant distances, and we all felt lucky that no one bumped into each other.  Bob thinks we were probably a bit closer to one of the mega-mansions with mega-yacht than we had been the night before.  During the big blow there was a solid wall of horizontal water coming at us.  Poor Bob had to go out in the cockpit during this squall in order to keep vigil in case he had to deal with an emergency.  The whole storm lasted less than 30 minutes, but it was NO fun.

Afterward we saw some lawn furniture float by from one of the mega-mansions, and Bob saw what looked like the entire top of a palm tree in the water.

I have been meaning to mention that although I never did get afternoon tea at the Breakers, we did have a fun time there.  We did not find afternoon tea, but we made do with having an afternoon aperitif!  Most expensive drinks ever!  Bob had a draught beer and I had a glass of house wine, and the bill was over $30!  Still, there aren’t many places where the actual bar, where you rest your drink, is an aquarium, and right in front of you is a wall of glass for admiring the Atlantic Ocean.  Sometimes you have to pay for a view like this.

I’m pretty certain that the hotel is closer to the water’s edge than it was a decade or so ago when Bob and I stayed here for one of his business meetings.  Hmmmm….

This year is our first visit to Boca Raton.  We have anchored in Lake Boca before, but for some reason we did not go ashore.  Now we have seen a bit of what we’ve missed!  It’s a lovely town for walking….lots to do!  Naturally I found some gardens and houses that I couldn’t resist photographing.  The mailbox seems so completely out of place at this house.

I loved this pale lavender house with green plants and planters and the deep rust of the gate.  Great color choices!

We also happend on a beautiful florist along our walk.  The arrangements on display would have fit right in at the Breakers.  I guess lots of people have foyers on that scale.  For Pandora I just needed a tiny arrangement.  It was hard to decide between cut hyacinths or spray roses.  Finally it was the yellow and pink that won out over pale lavender and purple hyacinths….but it wasn’t easy to decide!

At the dinghy dock in Boca we saw a flock of very tame ibises who are used to having their photos taken.

Most interesting of all to Bob and me was that we found a Portuguese Man of War floating between the dinghy dock and the ICW bridge.  I think it’s pretty unusual for them to come in from the ocean.  Seeing it made me wish I had my big loom onboard so I could continue to work on my PMoW idea.  Sigh….  If you look closely on the left side of the creature you can see his tentacles.  Menacing tentacles!  I love what happened with the swirling water in this photo….very painterly!

So, now it is mid-afternoon and we have arrived in Ft. Laurderdale at the anchorage we have visited for the past three years.  It’s considerably more crowded than we’d like, and I keep thinking about squalls brewing.  It’s still quite windy and now the harbor is narrower and more crowded than Lake Boca, and I wish the wind would calm down a few notches.  Sewing my sweater together is not looking like such a bad chore now.  I think I’ll get on it.  Hopefully I’ll take photos soon!

First, I have to admit that I have forgotten to bring a LOT of important stuff onboard this winter.  Each week I am discovering something I meant to pack.  This does not induce confidence in my aging mental capabilities.  So the most recent thing I regret not having with me is Peter Collingwood’s book Techniques of Rug Weaving.  I need it for all the finishing options for the edges of my miniature tapestries.  I don’t even know the name of the edging I wanted to use.  After a decade of Archie and Susan style finishing I have very little experience of these other techniques.

I was hoping to find some instructions for Damascus edge, half-Damascus, and Philippine edging online, and certainly a few videos on Youtube.  But I didn’t!  I found a PDF of Collingwood’s book, but when I uploaded the file I found I only had the first 120 pages of the book, not the part with the finishing techniques!

Tommye Scanlin came to my rescue within moments.  First she sent me a scan of the half-Damascus technique which is the one I am most interested in doing.  And she let me know that the whole Collingwood book is available, in 4 pieces.  I had only gotten the first section.  Whew.  I’ll be back ashore later today to visit a wifi café to get the rest of the book.  Thank you, Ralph Griswold and Univ. of Arizona for making this available!

I spent the 2^nd half of yesterday enjoying downtown West Palm Beach!  What a spot!  There are some amazing choices for restaurants, so it was hard to choose just one for dinner.  There is a huge linen store full of stunning bedding and household linens.  Quite drop dead gorgeous….

The best find of all was a very large old fashioned fabric store, right in the center of the downtown area.  You don’t find that in many places these days.  It was a feast of incredible fabrics, from upholstery to fine silks for ballgowns.  Embroidered silks and linens and heavy upholstery fabrics, and aisles and aisles to walk down and swoon over endless ideas.

Here is an aisle of nautically inspired fabrics.

The aisles were arranged by color, and I might have had the most fun in the orange aisle!

There were two fabrics that happen to be fun weaving structures that I love.  This deflected double weave is my favorite, but I had to pass it by at $98/yd.

I also loved this design, but I reasoned with myself that I’d have more fun weaving it myself.

I could not pass up this incredibly happy blue onion china print on an orange ground.  This will become a large tote bag for me for spring/summer.  I could even get started on it now since Bob has his sailmaker’s sewing machine onboard.  I’d have to make peace with using sailmaker’s heavy Dacron thread, so I think I’ll wait.  I want to use the bright blue color of the onionware for thread….

So, if you ever find yourself in West Palm Beach, check out Mac Fabrics!

And here are some views of West Palm Beach at night.  Lovely!

Our view of West Palm from Pandora at anchor.

Today we will take a long walk across a bascule bridge to Palm Beach.  I will visit the famous Worth Ave and perhaps the Breakers for tea?  ….if they serve tea!  And then back across the ICW via another bridge and back to our little anchorage.

It’s still a bit chilly down here at the top of the Gold Coast of Florida.  Bob keeps posting photos on Facebook, saying how cold we are, and you can imagine the responses from friends living in New England!  They are NOT sympathetic!

However, we are cold!  Try living outside in 50-degree temps with near gale force winds.  There is no going inside for the day when you are under way; you simply must stand in the chilly gale in order to steer the boat and navigate.  Then after 12 – 14 hours of this you can go down below which is the same chilly temperature, but at least without wind, and try to warm up.  In the long run we get into bed each night as cold as we’ve been all day, and get up each morning still cold.  Oh!  And I should mention that at least half the days onboard there is no hot water, so I also have to wash up with 50-degree water in my tiny 50-degree head (boat-ese for bathroom).  It’s not all bliss down here!

But I admit it looks pretty blissful….Pandora on a mooring in Vero Beach….she’s the boat at center in the distance.

But the sea life, the birds and the plants don’t seem to be suffering.  We still see dolphins playing around us every single day as if life is very good indeed!  Yesterday Bob missed the most exciting photo opportunity of this year. We were several miles offshore, sailing from Ft. Pierce to Lake Worth, and at one point we passed a giant sea turtle!  It was right near the boat! The turtle’s shell was almost 5 feet in diameter, and his head was like a cantaloupe!  Bob said he raised his head and looked right at Pandora!  I missed this auspicious moment because I was in a stugeron– induced fog due to always being seasick when we are offshore!

Such lush ivy growing on a wonderful tile.  The climate is certainly mild enough for tiles outside!

Doesn’t this palm frond make a lovely headdress for Bob?

 Every year Bob and I plant a window box of herbs and flowers that becomes my little garden onboard.  It’s my one little connection to life on land.  This year I could not get to my favorite nursery in Ft. Pierce, so I’ve had to make do with plants from the Lowes that was right on the bus route in Vero.  I’ve got a small mint and parsley plant and two red geraniums.  I hope they will thrive as well as the plants in previous years.  This little bit of green and red makes me so happy!

I need to knuckle down on my little landscape tapestry.  Time is growing short if I am to finish this in time to send it off to Scotland for an exhibit of miniature tapestries called “Postcards from Home.”  First it will travel to New Hampshire where it will be boxed up with other tapestries before it goes on its journey across the Atlantic.  Doing this piece has made me realize that I’d like to do a series of miniatures based on the changing scenery we find as we head south each winter.  It will be a nomad’s view of winter along the US East Coast.  But first, I need to stop weaving/unweaving and just finish #1 of this series!  At this point I am not ready to photograph it!  It still has so much that disappoints me….hopefully soon it will be looking better.

And I’m making good progress on the Carol Sunday sweater, “For Irene.”  There was a glitch with the sleeves, but once again, Carol came to my rescue very quickly.  I had gotten an email ages ago saying there was a corrected version of the pattern available with a link .  When I followed the link and downloaded the new pattern I really couldn’t see any differences between the two, but I figured I just wasn’t looking carefully enough.  Well, it seems I have two copies of the un-corrected pattern.  Carol very nicely sent me the corrected pattern as an attachment.  It does mean that I had knitted most of a sleeve where I kept fudging the lace pattern in order to get it centered.  I have set that aside to knit the correct version and am now nearing the end.  I will then rip out the first sleeve and knit it again.  If I can just make some good progress on my little tapestry I will get this sweater done in no time!  And if it does get done soon I’ll be wearing it too!

Bob and I vacuum packed our down coats and wool sweaters about a week ago.  We regret that but haven’t yet taken the plunge to dig them out.  We did UN-vacuum seal one of our blankets though since we’ve been very cold at night after all the long hours of standing in the wind and chill each day. That means we hae 3 lightweight blankets on us at night! Anyway, I’ll be happy to have another new sweater to wear!

I’ll close with this morning’s sunrise.  I was up for it, but it was Bob who took the shot!

We are now in Cocoa, Florida, just past Cape Canaveral.  The space coast of Florida is delightfully mild, and we are beginning to thaw!  Saturday was the first day of sunshine we’ve had since getting onboard Pandora, and the feeling of warm sun on my face was glorious!

We left New Smyrna yesterday and arrived in Cocoa mid afternoon.  Both towns are very charming with pretty parks right at the water’s edge, pretty pastel colored low, stucco buildings and historic bungalow style houses along quiet residential streets.  Cocoa’s waterfront park was teeming with families yesterday, and I realized it’s a 3-day national holiday this weekend to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.  And even though the town was bustling with folks who could enjoy their Sunday without worry of what Monday would bring, the residential streets were still very quiet.

This first image is actually a small church on the corner of the street with so many pretty bungalows.

It’s funny to me that when I get ashore I spend a lot of time walking through residential streets and snapping photos of houses and gardens.  I think I really miss life on land!

Along the waterway near New Smyrna there are lots of small estuaries, full of mangroves, and nesting/hunting grounds for a wonderful selection of water birds and sea life.  While we were underway, Bob saw a number of baby dolphins swimming alongside their mothers. And we saw colorful crabs tucked into the roots of the mangroves.  I did not know crabs came in such brilliant colors!

I love how pelicans fly in formation together.  Bob took this photo right before sunset when the pelicans are glowing with the last of the light.

We waited ages for this ibis to take flight, and then when he did all our photos are blurry!  It was a beautiful sight!  You’ll have to trust me on that!

Isn’t this crab amazing?  I had dreams last night about giant crabs in vivid colors…..

The highlight in the town of New Smryna was a beautiful gallery of pottery and stained glass right along the residential street at the edge of the harbor.  It is called Clay Gallery, and you must pass through a stunning garden before you get to the galleryn entrance.

What a lovely spot!  And they have a wonderful beehive oven, very similar to what Bob has been wanting to make for our house.  Great inspiration for him to get started this summer! I particularly love the shells imbedded in the mouth

I have been avoiding my computer problems by knitting.  I have been knitting for a ridiculous number of hours each day and am racing through the front of the pretty “For Irene” sweater by Carol Sunday.  I knitted the back of the sweater while traveling in Portugal, in the fall, then put is aside to finish up the Merle sweater to wear during the cold weather we’ve had while onboard. I got myself in trouble at the beginning of the front of “For Irene” doing the short rows, and with internet so unpredictable on a boat, and with the fear that I might wait days for an email response from Carol, I decided to call her!  I felt quite uncomfortable about this, but I really needed to keep knitting so I wouldn’t have to face the overwhelming job of sorting through photos and files on my computer.  She actually has her phone number posted on her website, and I could not resist getting instant gratification for my questions.

I want to wear this sweater to a wedding in the spring.  The wedding is 3 months away, which may sound like ages….but not in my circumstances!  I need to know if the sweater will be flattering on me with enough time left over to determine if I can find anything to wear with it as we travel south along the coast.  That’s a tall order! So 3 months is not that much time to pull an outfit together from a boat!  I don’t have the luxury of a car, so I only have access to whatever is available in the little shops along the coast.   Mostly these shops have beautiful clothing for beautiful people…..who wear a size 2!

Anyway, Carol actually answered her phone!  And she was patient and friendly with my questions.  And of course, my problems were entirely my fault, nothing to do with the pattern.  I cannot convey how thankful I am for her immediate help because I had an entire day of knitting and managed to start the front over again and make it all the way past the armholes!  I am making this sweater in Phildar Cotton 3 because I want to wear it in the milder months.  The colorway is “Eben” (#223), a warm medium brown, which I hope will look nice with either cream or pale blue silk pants.  I am changing the pattern a bit below the armholes (it is a top down pattern) by increasing one stitch at each edge every 8 rows, and then every 12 rows, to create more of an A-line tunic. I also intend to change the sleeves to 3/4 length, so I can actually do stuff while wearing the sweater.  I love the idea and the look of sleeves that drape below the wrist, but it just doesn’t work for my lifestyle!  I cannot cook… or eat… while wearing long, flowing sleeves, and there you have it!…in a nutshell!…. why I don’t wear a size 2!

I sure hope I like the finished garment!  It’s so nice to have a flattering sweater that you have knitted for yourself!

It has been cold and damp ever since we moved onboard Pandora. ….and there has been fog!  When it is pea soup thick and we can’t see anything but a bit of water on all sides of us, I can imagine that we are in Maine in June rather than Florida in January!  Then out of the gloom I’ll see a bit of salt marsh and realize we really are in the south.

Bob took some lovely photos of the marsh as it materialized now and then out of the fog.

He is using our GPS to navigate the narrow channel of the ICW (Intra Coastal Waterway) and radar to find other vessels that might be crossing our path.  There are lots of bridges along the ICW, many of them draw bridges that only open at certain times, so approaching them in fog is a bit dicey for my liking.

We ran aground at one point on a hump that was right in the channel, and we got stuck for about 10 minutes, just long enough for me to begin to make peace with staying put until the next high tide.  That would have been a good long time since we were traveling on a falling tide that morning.  Bob used the engine to get us off, which always means stirring up a bit of mud from the bottom as he powered off the shallow hump.  It creates a bit of stirred up water and mud and certainly a lot of noise.  I took a photo of this pelican who didn’t seem to mind all our noisy, turbulent endeavors.  I guess he’s seen it all before.

 These photos made me realize that I’d like to do a series of small tapestries of the beautiful landscapes we travel through on our winter journey.  Of course I’m a bit worried about colors!  I brought a lot of yarns along to work on a particular image I’d planned before we left, and I don’t think any of them will work for creating these foggy landscapes that are so compelling to me now.  That will be a challenge!

I should finish the aplaca/silk infinity scarf today.  I hope it will go in the mail tomorrow (my birthday!) in time to reach my sister when she returns from celebrating her birthday!  We are almost twins, a decade aparty!