Waiting

March 17, 2024

Happy St. Patty’s Day! We are in Key West now. Arrived on Thursday after a couple days in the Everglades. It was fun dinghying around and seeing it, but man-o-man, the bugs were bad. I’m still still recovering from the no-see-um and mosquito bites.

We took a 5 mile or so dinghy ride to the Smallwood Store in Chokoloskee, FL and also had a lovely lunch at HavAnna. It was a nice ride except the water was pretty shallow at low tide, even for the dinghy. We managed to plow through the water though. On the way back the tide was high and all was good.
Our second night we anchored off Crane Key. Quite a snickleway path into to it through shallow water with a narrow channel, but it was very nice spot and not nearly as buggy as the night before. Crane Key had lots of nexting tropicbirds which was fun to see.

Waiting for a Weather Window

We are now waiting for a weather window to Mexico. It is not cooperating. You know all those storms you are seeing cross the US? They are not making the waters of the Gulf and Caribbean very nice. That combined with needing to cross the Gulf Stream twice and it is being a bit difficult. We are working with a weather router and biding our time checking out Key West.

St Patrick’s Day

Today we met up with a bunch of Krogen folks and celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. Everyone in Key West seems to be wearing green and celebrating. Yesterday there was a foot race and a pub crawl (nope, not for us).

I’ve never been to a St. Patrick’s celebration where St. Patrick joined us. He was providing little shots of Irish whiskey from his serpent staff. How generous!

Excitement on the Mooring Field

There are several large mooring fields and several marinas as well as lots of anchored boats. Many of the folks who work in town live on boats as housing is soooo expensive.

A picture of our mooring field from our radar. We are the little green cross at the center and each of the red blobs is a boat. Those long red blogs are land. The biggest we’ve ever been in.

Jim and I were biking around yesterday doing errands when we noticed heavy black smoke from the direction of the mooring field. Yikes! We check all our devices that monitor our boat and we THINK we are not the doomed boat. (We are not!)

Turns out is is a sale boat two boats away from us. The fire boat heads out and dumps sea water on the boat until it sinks. Still hooked to the mooring ball. Luckily the couple and their dogs were in town so on one was hurt, but their boat and all their belonging are gone. I can only imagine how they are coping.

We loaded up the bikes and dinghied back to the boat. We were relieved it was not our boat. Most of the smoke was gone by the time we got there and luckily it had not been blowing over our boat. By the time the fire boat was done, they had put so much water on it the boat was sunk, still attached to the mooring ball. Not sure what happens now. There it sits. There is another sunken boat in the mooring field and rumor has it a boat burned last week.

The Eclectic Key West

We’ve been enjoying Key West. It is an inviting community, very open to people and vibrant. Except for the heat and humidity, I can appreciate why folks like living and visiting here. I’ll let Key West tell it’s story in pictures.

The day we arrived we met up with Mike and Maria Metts. They often spend the winter in the Keys on their boat Tuscan Sun. It turns out happy hours are a big deal in Key West and Maria knows the timing of each one and which are the best. It was good to see them again. They are ready to head back to their boat on Stock Island, just a bit north of the main part of Key West.
Beautiful roosters are everywhere in Key West. There are reported to be roughly 2000 of them around the island. perhaps brought by early Cuban settlers, for cockfighting and food, they are now protected and seem to be accepted by the locals for the most part, except when they crow in the middle of the night. There is now ever a Chick Fest each year. But New Mexico has the Deming Duck Races, no why not?
Key West does like to brag about their southern most everything whether it is a bar or a Moose Lodge.
Jim and I had a wonderful breakfast in a small, very popular café. Our waitress had my 3rd east coast saguaro sighting of the trip. She really knew nothing about saguaro and said this was just a work shirt for her. Isn’t she cute?
I do love oddities see in various places. The back story would be so interesting to know. But, I can make up my own which works pretty well.
There are so many cute fancy houses. 600 sq feet for $800K. Maybe this is a tiny bit less expensive, but look at those flowers!
And right next door to the flower house is this interesting home. What can I say?

And So We Wait

We are hoping that perhaps Tuesday night we might find a weather window. However, the Winter weather has been sucky (even scuba trips by the various companies have been mostly canceled) The weather forecasters do not see much of a change for the rest of the month, but our fingers are crossed and we keep looking for that small 2 – 3 day window to jump across. Wish us the luck of the Irish!

Our 2nd St Patrick’s Day drink.