Boca Raton: The Yamato Colony and a Temporary Leave from the Boat

Boca Raton is a wealthy town.  This was obvious to Phoenix and me as we walked along one of the town's main streets this morning.  Fancy shops, gold-colored fountains, perfectly manicured everything.  A bit of palm tree charm offsetting an overly clean street.



The town is relatively young, first settled in 1895.  It had a slow start, and in 1900 there were still only "six white families."

An interesting and unexpected part of Boca Raton's early history is the Yamato Colony.  This was a small Japanese community that was started in 1904 by a Japanese man named Jo Sakai who had recently graduated from New York University.  It is speculated that either Sakai saw an advertisement enticing settlers to the area ("No better location for pineapple culture in the state….In sight of the Ocean, 40 minutes by rail from the big hotels with their electric lights…") or that he was invited to start up the colony by the Model Land Company who very much wanted to increase its revenue from land sales and encourage use of its associate Florida East Coast Railway.

Whatever the reason, Jo Sakai started the colony and worked to bring Japanese immigrants to Boca Raton to buy land, clear it, and plant pineapple.  The Boca Raton Historical Society has an impressive amount of letters, telegrams, personal accounts and articles describing the colony's development and progress and the efforts made by Sakai.  We learn that Sakai had the colonists pretend to be students wanting to study in the U.S. when applying for entry, that there were difficulties during the Russo-Japanese War and that settlers endured much anti-Japanese sentiment during both World Wars.

The colony ultimately failed, unable to compete with the Cuban pineapple industry which at the time had a hefty hold on the northern U.S. pineapple market.  Nonetheless, the colony was able to leave somewhat of a legacy as one of its settlers, George Morikami, amassed a great amount of land, became a millionaire, lived a hermit-like life on a trailer on his land and towards the end of his life, donated his land to Palm Beach County.  This land is now Morikami Park and hosts the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens.

Jo Sakai's efforts remind me of the powerful influence that one man can have in starting an enclave of immigrants in an incongruous location.

In Hawaii, I work with many Marshallese, a group of migrants from the Marshall Islands allowed to live and work in the U.S without visa restrictions under what is called the Compact of Free Association.  I could waffle on about the difficult plight that many Marshallese find themselves in here in the U.S, but will try to not digress.   The connection I make with the Yamato Colony is that the second largest Marshallese population in the U.S. (Hawaii has the largest) is in Springdale, Arkansas because of one man.

John Moody was a Marshallese graduate of a college in Oklahoma and started the migration of Marshallese to Arkansas in the 1980s after finding a job in Springdale, marrying local, and sending word back home about the job opportunities in Arkansas.  Since then, employment offered by Northern Arkansas's multiple poultry plants and the low cost of living there have continued to draw Marshallese migrants who are now estimated to number over 6,000. 

I wish I could entice all my family and friends to join me in Hawaii.  
___________

WHERE WE ARE:  New Orleans and Bakers Inlet, North Miami, ICW mile 1079.7.

WHERE WE STARTED:  Anchored in Pineapple Lagoon, Mile 1042
___________

THERE TO HERE: 

40 miles, 8 hours 

BY NANCY:

Jamey and Sage are due in Hawaii for Sage's kindergarten interview next week.  We have been slowly piecing together logistics for their trip:

1. Where should Jamey and Sage fly out of?  A normally straightforward question is more difficult to answer when you are traveling by boat.  With the uncertainties thrust on us by weather delays and potential engine issues, we cannot know for sure where we will be more than two or three days ahead.   We decided on Fort Lauderdale when we booked their tickets last month and figured that a rental car could make up whatever distance is needed.

2. What should the rest of the family do?  Drive to New Orleans and visit my family -- yay!  If we leave a few days before Jamey and Sage, we will be able to visit with cousins who are there for the weekend, visiting from Tennessee.

3. What should we do with the boat?  We asked Jamey's parents if they might want to use their boat while we are away.  They replied enthusiastically, "Why wouldn't we?"  While we are away, Janet and Gary will sail around on C.Spirit for part of the time and will leave her moored the rest of the time down in the Miami area.  They will arrive tomorrow night and spend a day and a half with Jamey and Sage.

4. Rental car.  Have one delivered? Take a taxi or bus to pick it up?  We find the best option:  Budget has an office in Boca Raton located one mile from a public dock.  It is an easy tie up to the dock, a short walk to pick up the car, and it is totally stress-free loading up the car and sending Jamey and Sage back off down the ICW.

The Palmetto Park Bridge and the dock at Silver Palm Park, Mile 1047.  Very strong current; luckily there was a flood tide and ample depth. 

It was sad for me to say goodbye.  Sage is super excited to be an only child for a week.

We are used to being UNDER the bridge. 

The rest of the day for Phoenix, Indigo, Skye and me is fourteen hours of driving.  We pass speedily by many small towns and through a couple of larger cities.  I feel a bit of culture shock traveling the 800 miles from Boca Raton to New Orleans so quickly when it has taken us three entire months to travel around 1,500 miles from Massachusetts to Florida on C.Spirit.   Driving is so different from traveling on the boat where our sluggish pace forces a connection from us to each town or locale.  And if not a connection, at least an opinion or observation.

BY JAMEY:

Jamey promises to post his version of the day soon. (OK here it is).

BYE BYE GIRLS

Most of the girls left the boat this morning. They are headed to New Orleans by rental car to visit family for the holidays, while Sage and I continue on south for Miami. We had planned to anchor in Lake Boca Raton and then take the dinghy across the ICW channel to the boat ramp about 1/2 mile away. We left early at first light so the girls' 14 hour car ride would not go too late into the night and arrived at the drawbridge right next to the boat ramp around 8 am.  There was a strong current flowing through the bridge, oddly carrying dozens of coconuts and other debris, which I assume was cast adrift by lazy landscapers tending the ridiculously lush properties lining both sides ofthe canal. 

As we passed through the open bridge, our targeted public boat ramp appeared immediately on the right.   We passed quickly but noticed that there was plenty of room at the adjacent public dock. Approaching this dock would mean heading downcurrent straight back at the now closed drawbridge, then making an abrupt u-turn at the very last minute and coasting into the dock. We radioed the bridge tender to let him know our plan and to check if he knew how deep the water was alongside the dock.  All cleared, we tied up uneventfully, happy to avoid the time consuming chore of anchoring the boat then launching the dinghy and rowing back and forth to the ramp with luggage and a full crew. After about 45 minutes, Nancy arrived back at the dock in the rental car, and we packed up and said our farewells.  

Back on the boat, it was so much more quiet and empty.  On my first trip below decks, I was surprised to notice a whole different acoustic quality.  With less stuff and fewer people, there was a noticable echo in the boat.  Funny how all those things that drive me crazy, like the constant chaotic noise of girls (playing fighting negotiating crying whining singing screaming), the incessant clutter of shuffled things (clothes books toys towels sleeping bags crayons maps) and the hourly spillage (milk cheerios pasta juice crumbs salsa sunscreen) become so normal that life seems empty without them. This must be a sneak preview of what empty-nesters feel when their kids leave for college, gulp!

Sage and I spent the rest of the day motoring down the ICW. We made 40 miles, seeming to find our rhythm in timing the frequent draw bridges, anchoring twice when we did have to wait and using that downtime to eat lunch and hang out together.

The end of the day was tricky.  We got fuel at Baker's Haulover in North Miami and wanted to drop the hook in a well reviewed cove about 1/2 mile off the ICW right before the fuel dock.  You can see the perfect crescent beach and the small cut you have to go through just to the left of our pinned anchorage below. Being a Saturday afternoon there were dozens of powerboats anchored just off of the sandbar that Baker must have had to "haul over" long ago. I read the directions for entering the harbor and headed in. There was a Towboat US and a Seatow boat standing by for boats running aground on this extremely shallow section of the waterway.  Immediately after leaving the dredged channel, the depth was too shallow, I slowed, reversed and got back in the channel to regroup even as the towboat captain was barking at me on the radio... hmm where did I go wrong? It was getting late, I was tired, and had no good copy of the chart, so I decided to continue on south and find another spot.  Doing so meant traversing the notoriously shallow haulover, but lots of other boats were doing it, so I didn't give it a second thought.  

After crossing through the haulover by simply following the bouys and taking what seemed like a reasonable line through the channel, I started considering options for anchoring.  I couldn't be sure to find something suitable in short order, and the weather forecast was gentle, so after about 10 minutes, we turned around for the first time on the trip and headed back north. We got to re-try the shallowest stretch of the ICW in Florida!

I must have picked a slightly different line this time, because as we passed the sandbar filled with frolicking weekenders, we bumped once, twice, three times before the depth finder even showed shallow, and then we were back in deep water. On this shot through, Bakers Haulover was more like Bakers "Bumpover" for us.

We dropped the anchor about 4:30 in the midst of all the motorboats playing at the sandbar and took a short swim.  Slowly, as afternoon faded into evening, boats began pulling up anchor and leaving. The last boat left after dark at around 8:00 pm and we had this slightly open spot to ourselves for the night.  Sage and I had scrambled eggs for dinner and played dominoes for a while.  We made a few versions of the domino castle below which we could not have done with everyone on board, then went to bed around 9.