Key West March 22

Total Miles Traveled 1690

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It’s been a windy winter season this year, but we have managed to get out in the dinghy a few times. 

Spending the afternoon at the sand bar with our friends Kevin and Jill.

We had a couple of Stingrays swimming around the area, Kevin tried to get an underwater picture.  I forgot my GoPro.

Another dinghy ride to the Hurricane Hole for happy hour.

One of our resident manatee’s stopped by for a visit, he just wanted to snuggle behind our boat for a while.

Buildings in Key West must follow strict building codes when being remodeled or renovated.  Most of the homes we see are gutted, new foundations installed, then rebuilt from the ground up, maintaining the same footprint and exterior appearance as the original structure. 

We’ve had some awesome mega yachts stay at the marina, some of them fly foreign flags.  When we started coming here the boaters were just the average boater like us getting to a warm place for the winter.  The marina has made huge changes to accommodate the bigger yacht’s……..and the cost to stay here keeps increasing every year.  The shuttle driver made a pretty good point, “the millionaires were driving out the average boater, now the billionaires are driving out the millionaires”.  

The outboards keep getting bigger and bigger, this 35-40 boat has 1800 total horsepower.

These boats usually come down from Miami

It's always amazing how big these cruise ships are up close.

We went into town for St Patrick’s day and had a great time seeing the sights of the St Patty’s Bar Stroll event.  Never a dull moment at Key West.  

Not sure why spiderman needs a scooter?

I think some of them came in on the short bus.

Nice ponytail……..

We attended the Key West Bicentennial on March 25^th.  In 1822, John Simonton purchased the island of Key West from Juan Pablo Salas.  He, along with many other merchants, immediately settled the island.  Following soon was Lt. Matthew C. Perry who planted the United States flag on the island on March 25, 1822.  A granite time capsule has been placed at Mallory Square with several documents and local items placed inside.  The capsule will be sealed, and then opened in 50 years by four Key West children that were designated as ambassadors for the 250^th anniversary celebration.

Hey Bartender, I'll have what he's drinking.

Hmm, a Russian band singing Ukraine tribute songs to another standing only crowd at the Green Parrot.

This is our fifth year at Key West and every year we have wanted to cruise to the Dry Tortugas, but we needed at least three days of good weather to travel the 68 miles of open water.

The Dry Tortugas National Park preserves Fort Jefferson and the seven Dry Tortugas islands, the westernmost and most isolated of the Florida Keys.  Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress, is the largest brick masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere and is composed of more than 16 million bricks.  The park is accessible only by seaplane or boat with no electricity, fresh water, cell, or internet services.  The fort remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War, it was later used as a prison until abandoned in 1874.  Dr. Samuel Mudd, famous for being the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth in the wake of the Lincoln assassination, was imprisoned here for conspiracy with three others until early 1869.  We took a tour of the fort and it really had some interesting stories as told by the tour guide.

So, finally, we had the perfect (we thought) weather window on April 2^nd to make the trip.  Kevin and Jill (Chasing 80), Rick and Christi (Inked Mermaid), and Randy and Sherri (Priorities) were also going.  We all checked various weather apps and made the unanimous decision that we would have awesome weather for the trip there and back.

When we arrived, we found the protected anchorage behind the fort had several boats anchored so we slowly worked our way in and found a spot with plenty of swing room in any direction.  We were in 25 feet of water, which I normally do not anchor in, but since the three days were supposed to be 5-6 mph winds and “no” chance for storms, I decided this was a good spot and let out about 140 feet of chain on our 80 pound anchor.

The blue dot is our anchorage.

We had a great evening with an awesome sunset and turned in about 9:30 p.m. 

Note this picture, the fort is behind us and to our right and the catamaran in front of us to the right. 

We dropped an underwater light after dark to see what it might attract.

This is a 5-6 foot nurse shark circling around the outside darkness.

At about midnight my anchor alarm went off, indicating the boat had moved out of my set swing radius.  The wind was howling, and it was pitch dark.  When we anchored there were no boats behind us but now the catamaran (above picture) that was in front of us broke loose and was now behind us and we were drifting toward it.  We had a glancing blow to the side of our boats and my anchor reset holding our boat in place the remainder of the night.  Several boats in the marina recorded 40 knot winds when the storm arrived then dropping to the 20 knot range for the next several hours.  There was no rain, thunder, or lightning, just wind shear.  Needless to say, we were up all night with all fenders out.  Four other boats broke loose in the anchorage but as luck would have it, there was no major damage to anyone’s boat or injuries to their crew.

The following morning, we weighed anchor, and anchored outside the fort with five feet of water under us and 150 feet of chain deployed.  The previous night’s event was not going to happen again.  Kevin and Jill (Chasing 80) decided to head back to Key West. 

A view of Best Mate from the fort window.

Best Mate--no boats near us and plenty of swing room.

Another window view.

Inside the fort walls

We had a great day, visiting the fort and took the dingy over to Loggerhead Island about three miles away to explore the island and snorkel.

While at the fort, we talked to the captain of the Tortugas tour boat, he said it was a freak storm last night and his last weather report forecast was for calm weather, no chance for storms.  Later that afternoon, while walking around Loggerhead island Moni said she heard thunder?  We kept listening and it was hazy on the northern horizon, but no storm clouds, but sure enough we did hear thunder.  We headed back to the boat and turned on the VHF radio and found that someone had satellite internet access and a major storm had just been reported at Key West and was heading in our direction arriving in about 40 minutes.

The storm arrived and several boats recorded wind gusts of 50 knots, we did have some rain with this storm, but it was mainly a wind event and blowing all night.  The wind kept the boat pointed toward the wind, but the waves from the Gulf were hitting us on the beam rocking us side to side all night.  Monday morning arrived with waves less than a foot, so we weighed anchor just before daybreak and headed back to Key West.  This will undoubtedly go down as one of our most memorable boating events.  I liked Inked Mermaids comment….”I'm sure glad we came down on a good weather forecast instead of a bad one”.   

We didn't notice that the extreme bouncing around during the second storm popped out one of our swim platform teak inserts that are installed with adhesive and screwed in from the bottom.