2020: Faro Blanco Marina Life

29 January 2020
Depart: Faro Blanco (maintenance run) 1:20 
Arrive: Faro Blanco 5:20
Distance: ~ 18 nm


Faro Blanco is a pet-friendly marina. Ann on "Morning Star II" knows each and every dog by name and their doggy treat preferences. She has a prime slip to greet every dog that passes by.  One of the dogs living on a boat here is Stella. I met her at Ann's boat. Clark had the opportunity to say hello to Stella on her boat and give her a scratch. Every time Clark stopped petting Stella, she grabbed his arm to pull him back again.

Stella just did not want Clark to stop petting

Fast friends instantly

When he attended the recent MTOA boaters' Happy Hour, Clark got the name of someone who could come to the boat and do a safety inspection for us (Sue Redding U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary). When she is not inspecting boats, she is training and grooming dogs. When she came to inspect our boat, she brought two beauties with her that she is currently training . Since the dogs' nanny is Spanish, she is training the dogs in both English and Spanish commands.

She is learning not to jump; he is learning not to bark.

Meanwhile, Sue's own, well-behaved dog, stayed in her car while she inspected our vessel.

Clark made a point of going by to say hello to this lonely pooch

Dogs are not the only non-human inhabitants at the marina. Besides numerous pelicans that hang around the fishing boats, we also have herons and egrets that come to visit. The egret shown below was standing on one leg sleeping in a strong wind - pretty amazing that it could keep its balance on a boat!

A number of fishing boats call Faro Blanco their home port. They regularly take out hopeful clients. Every once in a while they come back with exciting catches.

Sailfish

Caught on fishing trip with
Blue Magic

Usually Faro Blanco is home to trawlers, i.e. slow-moving, live-aboard, vessels. On occasion, we have a fast-boat invasion. This happened last weekend - the same weekend as the Mardi Gras party. Twenty-five fast boats came in for a two-night stay.

Fast boats at Faro Blanco

We took "Sunset Delight" out for a maintenance run the day they arrived. It felt like we were "playing chicken" with them as they raced towards us and then flew by us as we left the marina and they entered.

Since they tend to be noisy crowds, I am always happy when it is time for them to leave. The loud vroom, vroom, vroom of the boats gets to be a bit much pretty quickly. I am sure they are trying to impress everyone with their engines. Not me!

We have a small group of folks that gather outside Ann and Mel's boat nearly every night for docktails. On Thursday night, however, we have "heavy hors d'oeuvres" night. The expectation is that everyone attending will bring an hors d'oeuvre such that, at the end of the docktails gathering, no one has to go home and cook dinner. Unfortunately, Clark likes his dinner and is not so keen on hors d'oeuvres, so this plan does not work for us. Even if I get enough to eat, I still have to come back to the boat and prepare something for Clark to eat.

Twice now, AC on "Hour Plan" has invited the boating ladies in the marina to attend a "Ladies' Coffee" on her boat. She had one of those today. She provides Cappuccino, Americano Coffee, and Decaf Tea. Folks attending bring cakes and such to go with the drinks. Today we had bagels (from AC), mini-sandwiches (from Ann), iced cinnamon rolls (from Faith), and a variety of other treats. The table was overflowing with yummy goodies.

When I got back to the boat around 11:00, Jim ("Hour Plan") was telling Clark that he was taking his boat out for a maintenance run today. Looking at weather and activities over the next few days, Clark and I decided we should do a maintenance run today as well. We had lunch and left the marina shortly after 1:00.

The northerly winds we have been blowing sea grass into the marina that stacks up around the boats on our side of the marina. When it first comes in, it is not a problem. However, when it stays for days, it begins to stink. This morning my allergies were rebelling against the rotting sea grass collected around our hull.

As we readied to pull out of the slip, desperate for some fresh air, I asked Clark if we could go for longer than the usual one-hour run. I suggested we find an anchorage and drop anchor to hang out for a while. I thought it would be relaxing to sit and read.

After doing some checking on options, Clark came back with the suggestion of going to the Bahia Honda North anchorage. This choice allowed us to travel a reasonably short distance and not have to pass under any bridges to do so. The only thing we had to worry about was crab traps, and they were numerous. Auto pilot proved useless as Clark constantly maneuvered around pots.

It took about an hour to travel the approximately 9 nautical miles to the anchorage. He posted me on the bow to scope out the bottom for a good place to drop anchor. The water is so clear hear that I could see the bottom and know if we were over sand or weeds. What I could not tell from my view was how deep the water was. It looked like I could reach down and touch the bottom. Clark said we had over 8 feet of water. Amazing clarity!   We dropped anchor in sand as desired.

Once settled, I sat down to read. That did not last long! When we anchored, I mentioned to Clark that the bow of the boat had grown a green beard. Obviously the maintenance run, even riding for an hour, was not sufficient to remove the beard.

Fuzzy green bow!

I thought Clark was going to join me and read his newspapers. However, he decided the beard had to go. He checked the water temperature and found it to be in the 70s. Next thing I see, he comes out wearing his bathing suit and carrying a towel. He's going swimming to check out the boat bottom and tackle the beard.

That was the end of my reading - not even 5 minutes long! He asked me to spot him as he dove under the boat as well as be available if he needed brushes, scrapers, tools, etc. I decided to monitor him with a camera in hand.

"Get me a scraper, please!"

Clark working his way forward scraping the hull.

Cleaning off the green beard!

After he did the scraping, the long "hairs" were gone. Then, he asked me for a sponge to get off the rest of the green residue on the hull. The current helped him float back to the stern where I handed him a sponge with a scotch brite backing. Then he circumnavigated the hull one more time to produce a nice clean bottom!

Coming back for a sponge to complete the job.

We wanted to get back to the marina around 5:00 in time for docktails. To do that we had to leave at 4:00. Clark finished up his boat scrubbing just about then. He quickly changed clothes and had us heading back to the marina by 4:05. As we traveled, he asked me to check the weather forecast. Weatherbug said that it was currently raining in Big Pine Key with rain and thunderstorms coming our way.

He decided to add a little oomph to the throttle to move us along a little faster. We got back to our slip at 5:20 with no encounters with rain or thunderstorms. After tying up, we walked up to attend docktails and met some folks who just came into the marina today -- Nancy and Doug on "Belle".  They will be here for the next month.

Around 6:15, I headed back to the boat to make dinner (typical). I cooked up the remainder of the fresh catch fish our friend Dave on "Uptick" gave us when he stopped by a few days ago. As we ate dinner, we watched the news and learned about current events (again typical routine for us).