Shortly after we tied up in West End a local fisherman came to our boat selling lobster tails and conch. It was pouring rain and the wind was blowing 20 knots, but he was cheery as could be. “Just caught them today!” he said. Drew couldn’t resist, so we brought out some ziploc bags and he filled them up with his catch for a grand total of $20.

Conch (pronounced “konk”) is a local specialty here. You probably know what the shell looks like; inside it lives a large sea snail whose meat is fairly neutral-flavored so it can be prepared in lots of ways. The trick is getting the snail out. We have one of Mimi’s old cookbooks aboard, “The Cruising Chef” by Michael Greenwald, which describes how to extract a conch from its shell in hilarious/lurid detail. (Step one involves vise grips.) Sounds like a challenge, so we were happy to have pre-shelled and pre-cleaned conch.

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We took a short day trip to Miami yesterday, and the definite highlight* was visiting Wynwood, a formerly run-down, crime-ridden neighborhood that’s been transformed into an arts center. Once upon a time it was Miami’s garment district, so it’s filled with large, windowless buildings — perfect for art galleries and studios, who started to move there in the nineties. Then followed all the attendant hipster stuff like funky restaurants and artisanal bakers.

But the really unusual thing (and the reason we went) is the art out on the streets. Tony Goldman, a local developer, looked around at all the graffiti in the neighborhood and decided to make a mecca out of it. He invited 30 graffiti artists from around the world to paint murals in what’s now called “Wynwood Walls,” and many more have since followed. Wynwood now has more street art than anywhere in America. Clothing stores, abandoned lots, auto body shops — anything and everything is painted in the most diverse array of styles you can imagine. Beautiful.

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In the end the weather never cooperated for a sail down the Atlantic coast, so we motored down the ICW instead. We arrived in Fort Lauderdale yesterday, the whole trip taking 12 days.

At first the shore looked like African savannah: wide stretches of grassy marshlands, tall trees in the distance, roseate spoonbills and bright white herons gliding around us. We saw dozens of porpoises, especially in the early morning, lazily snorting when they surfaced.

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Cabot Lyman, the owner of Lyman-Morse, had some advice for us way back in August. If friends want to visit, he said, tell them they can pick a time or a place, but not both.

In other words, don’t count on us being anywhere at a particular time. We simply don’t know when weather or illness or boat problems will monkey with our itinerary.

Latest example of this phenomenon is happening right now. We’re in Fernandina Beach, Florida, where we were towed (again!) to the Amelia Island Yacht Basin after our engine conked out on us (again!).

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We made it through the first section of the ICW and then sailed overnight to Charleston, SC – all of which Drew is preparing to tell you about in a blog update. In the meantime, here’s a tidbit about Charleston.

While running some errands one afternoon we wandered into a grocery store called Southern Season. It was more of a specialty foods store than a supermarket – aisles and aisles of spices, grains and beans, fresh-baked bread, and so on. But there was no mistaking that we were in the South when we saw an aisle labeled “Cheese Straws.”

And then this:

An entire aisle dedicated to hot sauce and BBQ sauce. How can you not love?