01/11/2025 ICW Day 11 : New Bike Day

On a whim, I looked at Facebook Marketplace this morning right before we left camp. I sent out a message to a woman about 15 miles North of us asking if I could buy her folding bike. It was kind of a crappy bike, but I want to give it a try. If it works out, I’ll get a Dahon, because I had one of those in the past and it was fantastic.

She replied right away and sent her wife (the actual owner of the bike) to meet us at the Anne Kolbe Nature Preserve - we had been planning to land there anyway to see the nature exhibits.

The woman who arrived was named Tara, and she was from Palo Alto, ironically. We had the same 650 prefix to our phone numbers. She and her wife work delivering boats. For example, say a person wants to sail around the Bahamas, but they don’t want to deal with the crossing. Tara or her wife will take the boat out there for them. They are quite busy doing this boat moving.

And i got my bike! It is HEAVY compared to my Dahon. But the main thing is that it fits on board. Literally - on the paddle board.

In the nature center, Janet told the woman about the Iguanas we have been seeing.

“Yeah, they were in the trees? That’s good. Means it is warm. When it is cold, they just fall out of the trees. That’s our weather report in South Florida- means it’s cold and people pull out their parkas and winter gear.”

She laughed, but Janet and I saw people wearing pretty heavy winter coats (like in a New York winter) when it dropped down to 55F.

This stretch is devoid of legal camping, and since we had just endured a rain squall, I suggested to Janet we camp early - I had seen a place where it looked like the land met the water in a secluded spot on the Satellite. We went down this very shallow and narrow channel - only to find that the boat landing was about 1 or 2 feet of mud. If I had a plank, I could have made a gangway to go from the boat to the great campsite. We struggled to orient the boat in the narrow channel (so it would not get washed away by the tide). In the end, we gave up and found another secluded spot that is much better for us. Camping is hard enough in urban areas when you’re on a bike… trying to find a place to sleep with a boat makes it more challenging!

Thanks for reading. When I talked to Tara, I told her that Janet was worried about the crossing to the Bahamas.

“Go on the summer!” She said. “The water is so flat then, it looks like CGI”

“But aren’t there hurricanes then,” I asked…

“Yeah. Don’t go when there is a hurricane. But they predict those a couple weeks out. We took a boat out there recently, and there was some swell. But in the summer, it is no problem.”

This corroborated with my research. All summer long (even when there were nearby hurricanes) I saw days that met all of my crossing criteria for safety - days that looked easier than even the Catalina crossing we did this fall. However since I have been looking this winter, I’ve only see maybe two days that have met my stringent criteria to cross.

Since Janet doesn’t want to go to the Bahamas (including the option of me sailing there and she flying to meet me and then sail the shallow waters), I’ve decided to postpone the Bahamas trip. In the end, I think that the ICW will be more interesting anyway… but I still dream of long crossing and exploring far away places like the Polynesians did so many years ago on boats that looked quite a bit like the little Red Lobster.

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