Tikki Beach

Tuesday was the day for the volunteer party on the Tikki Beach party barge. Of course I went.

As you can see, it was a wild party. This photo was taken on the upper deck while I was sitting at one of the three bars on board. You can see the "sand beach". It is a thin layer of sand over the steel floor. It does add a nice touch however. Very beachy.

Most people at the event were on the lower deck. The food was there. The food was kept warm by those cans of gelled fuel, and the plastic windows were in place because it was a little breezy.

So I found it was better to hang out on the upper deck. There was a nice breeze, two bars (lower deck has one), fewer people, and I found the lower deck to be a little hot and stuffy.

This was the view off the stern. That is the back of the boat. So if the barge were moving, this view would be of where the thing was, as opposed to where it was going. In this case the view is the Ft Lauderdale Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) looking south. The photo was taken through a plastic window.

The ICW in Broward County is pretty neat. It is a wide saltwater canal, at least 15 or 20 feet deep. Or something like that. It is deep enough to accommodate the luxury mega yachts and large sailboats and stuff. It is the Venice of the USA. Branching off from the ICW are many other canals, each canal containing some very expensive homes, or any number of businesses such as bars, restaurants, boat yards, marinas, and so on.

This is one such home. As you can see it is nice. The seawall with the posts is where whoever owns the home can dock a boat. As you can see, there is one such boat there. A big one. I would estimate it to be at least a 50 footer. At least. And behind it looks like another boat of some sort. I would not be surprised is an even larger boat is usually docked in front of it.

The seawall with the boat is on one of the canals branching off the ICW. The seawall with no posts faces the ICW.

And this is just one such home. There are many others - a lot of them even larger. I heard that 80% of the world's mega yachts are sold from Ft. Lauderdale. And I believe it. The ICW is clogged with giant boats. I see a lot of ultra luxury yachts in Miami, but I see a lot more when in Ft. Lauderdale. They are everywhere. The boat you see in the above photo is not large enough to really stand out. You would see it and think "oh look, another boat".

Here you can see the view from the bow of the boat. That is the front. In the photo, you are looking north on the ICW. Remember what I said about the large number of big boats in the Broward ICW? Well just look. That half boat with the blue top you see is just an open center console boat. Lets just call it a 25 footer. In front of that is a small yacht, probably no larger than 30 something feet. Beyond that is a boat with the bow sticking out into he ICW. And then beyond that is another yacht. And this is only a very short section of the ICW. Maybe 1/4 mile.


So that about wraps it up. The party on Tikki Beach. And a few photos taken under shitty lighting conditions.

I do not know if I will volunteer for the WInterfest Boat Parade this year. I had a good time last year but it turned into an all day event. I had to wake up extra early, hitch up the boat, tow it 30 miles to Broward County, put the boat in the water, kill time for a few hours, go to my assigned location, watch the boat parade, and then return home. For the return home, the ICW was thick with boat traffic. I had never seen so many boats in one place ever. It was like driving on a freeway only I was in the water and going slow because the whole waterway is a slow zone. In Miami, you just do not see that many boats in any waterway. It was wild.

And then when I get back to the boat ramp (which was not at all busy and this surprised the heck out of me) I have to get the boat back on the trailer and haul it home 30+ miles to Miami.

But it is not over yet! No! Now I get to clean the boat and flush the engine. And then I get to put the boat away.

At this point I think it was past midnight. It was a long day.

So I do not know if I will volunteer this year. I will if I can, but who knows what my schedule will look like in December.

The Party Barge

I got something neat in the mail today.

WAY back in December, I volunteered the boat to work the Winterfest Boat Parade. I was a "control boat" and was supposed to do something. I was not really sure what, but I figured it could not be too hard. And it was not. I just had to hang out in an assigned spot and watch the boat parade. Really hard stuff there.

I got an orange flashing light and some boat banners and all sorts of good stuff. I think I am supposed to return all that stuff. But since I had never worked this event before I had no idea when or to whom I was supposed to return the stuff to. So I still have all the stuff. Somewhere.

And then to compound matters even more, I am NOT a Ft. Lauderdale / Broward County person. I have no idea what the hell is going on up there. Where is Commercial Blvd in relation to Sunrise Blvd? Beats me. If not for my truck GPS I would not have any clue. And then there is the traffic. Ah yes the traffic. Unless you leave Dade County at a magical time, the traffic to get north is horrible.

All these reasons conspired to cause me to still have all the stuff.

But volunteering for Winterfest had some side benefits! First off, I was able to check out a new waterway. I got to see Port Everglades from the water, and the ICW up there is not like the ICW in Miami. The waterway is more like a salt water canal with large expensive looking homes all over the place. There are many businesses / bars / restaurants that are on the ICW and are boat friendly and offer docking for patrons to arrive by land or sea. And then there are the many many MANY large yachts.

The crappy part is it is all a no wake / slow speed zone. So it takes forever to get anywhere. I might as well have been in a sailboat. It was that slow.


But I got an invitation in the mail today for the volunteer party. So it seems they have not forgotten about me and my little boat barely worthy of being in the Broward waterway. The parade has big name sponsors, and apparently generates some coin. I suspect this because the party is going to be on Tikki Beach.

So what the hell is Tikki Beach? Why does the one reader I have from Broward County not know where the heck Tikki Beach is? Because Tikki Beach is not a geographic location.


This is Tikki Beach. As you can see it is an ugly old barge, dressed up into what could possibly be the coolest floating party platform on the planet. There are two decks, the upper deck being most visible in this photo. The barge is 100 feet long, and has a beam of 30 feet. In relation to my boat, if you took out all the bars and tables and tiki crap and stuff, you could fit 30 of my boats on board. 15 on each deck.

This is one massive party barge that is not playing games. You want a floating party platform? This is what you need. No question about it.

It seems that volunteering to trailer the boat to Ft Lauderdale so I could help with the parade thing was a wise thing to do.

Weekend Update WITHOUT Dennis Miller

Time for a weekend update! I had a lot of stuff to do. I was going to get the boat ready for the Winterfest boat parade control boat thing. I was going to wax the hull (I expect to get a ring of two cycle oil on the boat, the wax makes it easier to clean), weld together an orange flashing light holder thing, affix the banners, install a second (temporary) radio, find my extra anchor (I need a stern anchor), make up some more lines, and check my navigation lights to see if they still work.

I got none of that stuff done. But I did make a spy mission to Broward! I am going to launch from the 15th Street Boat Basin. There are only two ramps there, but they are good deep water ramps. Not a lot of parking spaces there either.

Broward County has the shittiest boat ramps I have ever seen. Truly shitty ramps. I am glad I made the spy mission, the park I had picked has TERRIBLE ramps. The ramps are not steep enough and do not get into deep enough water for me to float the boat off without getting the truck wet. I want to avoid dunking the truck into the water. Trucks hate salt water. The 15th Street Boat Basin has steeper ramps, in better condition, that drop off into deeper water than the other place I was going to use.

I also....got a new digital camera! Yes Christmas came early. I now have an Olympus Stylus 790 SW. The SW stands for "shockproof" and "waterproof". This little 7.1 megapixel camera is waterproof to 10 feet for 1 hour. Perfect for boat use. My other Sony camera has a better lens and takes better photos (even if it is only 5 megapixels - megapixels really do not mean very much to be honest - it is all about the optics) - but the Sony is about as waterproof as a towel. One drop in the right place and it is done. I can jump in the water with this Olympus. And it is small (unlike the Sony) so I can carry it around easier. I plan to get the waterproof housing for the thing later. The housing is waterproof to 160 feet. Right now I can use the camera snorkeling but with the housing I can take it diving.

This is a photo of Skipper taken with the new camera. Skipper is on top of Max The Lizard's temporary winter house (a 55 gallon Aquarium). You can see the lizard "heat lamps" in the background, along with some paper towels. Max is not in his inside cage, it is currently warm enough for him to chill in the backyard cage. He likes the backyard cage better than the indoor cage.

The full size photo of Skipper is a little over 3 megs. This is the full resolution of the camera. The photo seems slightly out of focus, but I have not really read the instructions yet. There may be a setting the thing has that takes sharper photos.

Getting Closer

As you all may or may not know, I have been on a quest. A quest to generate hate mail. So far, no hate mail.

So that means I am not trying hard enough! It is not like my secret email address is a secret or anything.

But I have generated some hate comments! Here is a segment of a comment from THIS blog.

"In closing..
You're about as funny as screen door on a submarine.
As far as old goes, I bench press 300 lbs and am ranked 7th in the south pacific Chinese Kempo championship, so blow me !"

So there we go. According to someone even more anonymous than me (this person is using a non-blogger ID and does not leave a link to anything) I am about as funny as a screen door on a submarine.

By the way. I think this was the punch line to a joke I last heard in the third grade. Awesome sit down comedy here! And what is the difference in stand up and sit down comedy? Sit down comedy is not worth standing up for. Jokes I heard in the third grade qualify for this distinction.

Anyhow the old punchline is not why I cross posted this. It is the second part. See I may have accused the guy of being "old" and I may have also given the helpful advice to not get his blood pressure up too high or else he could blow a gasket.

So to "prove" he is not old he had to add that he can "bench press 300 pounds". My ass. Why do people even try to pull this? EVERYONE on the internet can bench large amounts of weight, run 4 marathons a week, free dive at least 500 feet, and has placed in the top 5 riders in the Tour de France.

The "I am a kung-fu" master addition is also typical.

So yea, this guy can bench 300 pounds, is a kung-fu world champion, was some kind of Don Juan during the Kennedy Administration, and can probably leg press more than Pat Robertson.

Why, I better be careful! This ninja master may come over here and bench press the outboard engine off my boat! Then he can leg press the hull, because it only weighs 1900 pounds without the engine (which is already bench pressed off the transom).

This brings up another interesting point. There are no fat bald ugly people on the internet either. EVERYONE is hot. All the hot people are on My Space, sending pictures of themselves to other hot people. Meanwhile, what do I see when I go out? More ugly people than hot people. Clearly because the hot people are all on the internet, and not out in public.

So no - I am not at all impressed by people who make grand claims on the internet. Nor am I intimidated. OHHHH SCARY!

In other. FAR MORE IMPORTANT news - I have my control boat orders for the Winterfest Boat Parade. I am in. No backing out now. I am Control Boat EE (echo echo) and I am to be stationed in the ICW near the Las Olas bridge. I got an orange flashing light! This means I am special. If you have an orange flashing light you are not just some creep off the street! No - you have authority.

Giving someone an orange flashing light is like giving someone a clipboard. You have to be REALLY CAREFUL. I have seen ordinary people turn into Super Supervisor Man when they were handed a clipboard. Did they have any real authority over me? No. Did they think that someone promoted to them to God? Oh yea. Suddenly they had the clipboard and they would be barking orders at others who had the same job title as they had. And there was NO WAY they would put that clipboard down! Oh hell no. They would never hand it off to anyone else either. Not even to go take a leak. The clipboard was power. I found this to be highly amusing.

So yea, I have an orange flashing light. And I have signs and stuff that clearly mark my boat as part of the parade control boat fleet. Get that? FLEET!!! I am part of a FLEET! I have never had this distinction before. I am going to like being in a FLEET. It sounds very naval. I might even pipe some calls - as I have a boatswain's whistle. I need more practice with it however. But the captain (that is me) does not pipe calls. The boatswain (pronounced "bo-son") pipes the calls. So that kind of ruins that. I wonder if they will allow me to carry some 25 pound cannon? You know - for pirates. Problem is the 25 pound cannon would weigh as much or more than my boat, which would probably effect the stability of the vessel.

But I shall not abuse the power of the orange flashing light. The power of the orange flashing light is too powerful to abuse. If allowed to fall into the wrong hands, the fate of the entire universe could be in peril. I must be responsible with my power, and only use it for good.

Really my job is pretty simple. Get to my station early, drop anchor where I think I should drop anchor, and then keep anyone from anchoring beyond my spot. The big boats in the parade need the ICW to be clear, and so I have to hold the line so to speak.

Other duties include NOT drinking a beer till the event is over.

I just hope no ninja masters come by and bench press my outboard engine! I am going to need that thing.