The Life Aquatic With Lazy Iguana

I promise this post will be far more entertaining than that stupid "Life Aquatic" movie. It was SO BAD that I could not even watch it.

And I have watched "Killer Clowns From Outer Space" more than once. So when a movie is so bad I can not handle it you know it is really horrible.

As I alluded to before, I am involved in something of a racket. The way it works is I put my boat in the water. Once in the water I boat around from here to there, doing stuff. What kind of stuff? Who knows. Maybe just looking out for stuff. Maybe more. You just never know.

And in return, the government pays for the gas. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

STANDARD WARNING!!!!!! All photos are linked to full size images. These images are fairly large, around 3 megs each. And so forth.

Now when the mission began, I wanted to check this out. I could see it from the shore.


That pole should not be sticking out of the water like that. But it is. And why is this? Well the sailboat that pole is attached to sank. There is an area of the bay where many boats are anchored / moored. Some of these boats are abandoned. Over time the abandoned boats fill up with water and sink. Each rain storm adds a little more water. Every gallon of water in the bilge means the boat is that much less buoyant. Eventually it sinks. This one sank. It actually sank a few weeks ago, I remember seeing it listing to one side.


Here is a closer view. I should have salvaged that white floating thing. It is a fender. That rail sticking up may also have some value. Not much, but someone with a sailboat that floats might have a use for it.

The rest of the boat is history. It was not worth much when it was still floating. But now it is even less than worthless. It will cost someone money if they want this hazard to navigation removed.

The hull is totally covered in marine growth. The sailboat is part of nature now.


This is ICW day mark 31, in Biscayne Bay. Or should I say it was a day mark. Now it is just a very dangerous steel beam sticking out of the water. The beam rusted out over time, and I guess the recent near miss storms provided just enough wind to snap them. Someone, most likely the USCG, put a buoy there. But what is left of the beam remains. The buoy is probably temporary, when they get around to it another marker on another steel beam will be driven into the bay. But for now it remains a potentially dangerous oblect. Should a careless boater pass too close to the buoy it will be a problem.

But I found an unmarked navigaitonal hazard of my own! A big ass log. It was a good 30 feet long. It was longer than my boat. it was spotted floating in Government Cut, around the area the cruise ships use. It was just floating there. I think it was a utility pole or a dock piling that fell off a barge or other ship. It did not seem to be broken off. The Coast Guard did not know it was there, it was first reported to anyone by my boat.

This was a very dangerous object. It was floating, but most of the log was underwater. It was hard to see. And it was getting late in the day. This area of the bay has no speed restrictions. And since it is protected water, when there are no cruise ships there and the cut is open to general traffic people like to go fast.

Anyone who hit thaty log would suffer major engine damage. Lower units would have been ripped off. It may have even caused injuries from a boat stopping really fast. People could have been thrown overboard, and possibly drowned. Boats could have been damaged to the point of sinking.



So I took it under tow. Here you can see the log being towed. You can sort of see it in the photo, but mostly you see the wake it is creating.


Here is the log again, under tow in government cut. I towed it out of the cut, and then to a public ramp owned by the City Of Miami. I left it there, after hauling it up on land. I hauled it out of the water because I did not want it to float away in the tides.

I was planning on using the truck to pull it to an out of the way area, but the log was very heavy. It would have been heavy when dry, but it was water logged. So it was extra super heavy. I tied a rope with a tensile strength of 4,000 pounds to it. The rope snapped. So I had to leave it where the rope snapped.

Anyhow that is how the day went. And this is what I do when I am out on a mission in which the government pays for the gas. I get to go out on the boat, which is fun - but sometimes I have to do something. Like tow a big ass log out of the water.