..of a three day tour.  I’m getting my land legs back after a trip aboard a 30′ Grady White fishing boat that took us from  Tampa to Ft. Meyers- across the state by way of canals and Lake Okeechobee to Cocoa Beach.  Captain Steve White showed me the ropes of navigation, boating safety and nautical jargon, but I learned much more. For example:

Reading the paper at 30 knots is hard.

Countless miles of Florida waterways are low or no wake zones that make long distance boat travel a sometimes frustrating stop-and-go process that adds hours to the trip.  That’s seems a small price to pay for protecting these gentle and sort of mysterious creatures.  Despite the restrictions,  the scars on nearly every manatee we saw show that boat propellers remain the nemesis of the manatee.

Even a modest sized fishing or pleasure craft is expensive to operate. We got about 1.3 miles per gallon of regular, unleaded gasoline.  And they charge you a dollar more per gallon at the marina than you would pay at the Race Track across the street. That required a roughly $350 dollar fill up  at the end of every day.  I think sailing is more my speed.

I didn’t take this picture, but I saw an Agama Lizard in Jensen Beach.  They’re a non-native species from Africa that got a claw-hold in Florida in the 1970’s.  Crazy beautiful.

As you already knew, on land or on the water- don’t forget to floss.