#36 Key West, week one

Check out that gold and emerald cross, which is an exhibit in the Mel Fisher Treasure Museum. Imagine being the diver who found a black corroded box, brought it up, opened it to find it caked full with 400 years of mud, then extracted that gold cross. That had to be a moment for someone.

As Cheryl says in her night-time video below, “this doesn’t suck.” Waking up in Key West on our own boat is a surreal experience for sure. We’ve met a couple of people who spend three to four months a year here doing just that, and I can see why. I said to Cheryl the other day, only half kidding, “Hey, why don’t we forget this Loop thing and just stay here?” She didn’t say no, so hey who knows??

We don’t really have a routine yet, but so far, we’ve been getting around in the mornings and then I tinker with the boat while Cheryl does housekeeping chores. Afternoons and evenings we’re out exploring. You’d think that since we made it here, and the boat is running well, so what’s to do? A lot. Boat stuff, of course, I had to replace the reed valve in the outboard, a mounting eye for the dingy broke off while underway, (there’s a great store across the street, Los Cubanitos, which is a boating supply store, not large, but overflowing with boat stuff at good prices) had to order replacement fuel filters, fix one last rain leak, check the battery water, put bromine tabs in the A/C intake, and as you can see from one of the photos, I had a turbo hose start to develop a pinhole leak next to the hose clamp. It blew oily residue all over my clean white engine, but of course you have to order those hoses, so to get by I wrapped it with several wraps of black duct tape. As you can see, that pretty much fixed it. (I did order new hoses for both engines.) One morning I rode my scooter 5 miles up to Stock Island and back to get Yamaha parts. Worked great, these scooters are working out well.

Besides boat stuff, along with sight-seeing, we’re getting to do some of the things we love to do at home, like go to the theater. If you haven’t read the book “Tuesdays with Morrie”, I highly recommend it. We saw the stage play the other day, it was fabulous. We also got tickets to a comedy, and tried to get some tickets to a Fleetwood Mac tribute band but it was sold out. Just like at home!

We have a pretty extensive list of places to see, like:

Take a trolley ride

Take a Conch Train Ride

Rent a golf cart for a couple of days to explore

Mel Fisher Museum

Hemingway’s house

Ft Zachary and beach

Smathers Beach

Kayak tour

visit old hospital

the cemetery

Farmers Market

eat at all the cool places

Truman annex

Lighthouse

explore around island/mangroves in dingy

snorkel/kayak tour if the wind will quit blowing so hard

live music at night (We already have a favorite band)

And last, I suggested to Cheryl that we make a list of the 164 bars on Duval Street, start at one end, have a drink at each one and see how far we get. She didn’t seem too keen on that idea. Which is ok, I would have made about three and been done!

This place is simply fascinating in more ways than I can cover. Just one: The last few nights we’ve watched from up on top, where we sit to enjoy the breeze, as locals on dinghies leave the dock well after dark headed for their boats out in the anchorage. Nearly every single one is NOT running legal lights, and the Coast Guard is sitting out there in a cruiser. When they see one, they flip on the blue lights and escort him back to the dock, the CG turns around and leaves, and eventually the guy scrounges a flashlight or something and heads back out again, still not running full legal lights. Now you’d think, living on a boat in the anchorage, knowing the CG is out there after dark turning dinghies back, they’d just go get the correct lights. Cost is about $20. But no. 90% of the dinghies we see headed out are completely dark, or maybe the guy is wearing a headband light or has a small flashlight. Huh. Not sure what’s up with that.

This trip is a gas, a hoot, an experience, an adventure, a challenge, and a pain in the ass, all at once.  Like this morning, I got my shower bag ready, walked up to the showers, and my digital key card doesn’t work.  Back to the marina office, 100 yards away, to find out the electronic lock is not communicating so a guy walks up and unlocks it with a key for me. Another example of how we’ve succumbed to the temptations of digital life when in fact it doesn’t always seem to save us any aggravation or time. A simple key lock would work for 50 years.  With these digital gizmos, you are lucky when it does work.  I really dislike doing anything online anymore, the internet seems to be approaching a point where it has lost much of its utility. Just to buy tickets to a show you have to create an account, do two-step verification, prove you are human a few times, own a smart phone, then fight whatever glitch comes up.  And of course there’s no one to call. (AI seems to be simply making functionality worse while adding a false sense of credibility.) And yes, that’s my old man grumpiness showing, but ask anyone over 60 and they’ll pretty much agree with me.

So we’re here for about another three weeks, which is great.  Time to just goof around as well as show Cheryl all the sights.  It’s been something like 16 years since I was last here by boat, and not much has changed.  The plant life is amazing, everything is tropical, wildly colored and giant.  The laid-back Keys lifestyle is still strong, we are parked between an 80 year old lady living on a small houseboat that someone abandoned, and a 40-something guy living on a rough sailboat who works on one of the ferries to Ft Myers.  Today I was waiting for Cheryl on a bench (She was getting a Pina Colada. Yes, we are now getting drinks at 3 in the afternoon) and a 95 year old guy sat down and started to chat, he’s been coming here for decades. The anchorage is full of semi-derelict boats, all with stories. The yachts are here too, one pulled in near us yesterday, about 75 feet of gleaming extravagance.  Hope to get out in the anchorage in the dingy to explore around the anchorage and the mangroves when the wind drops a bit.  Every day we try to go to one new place, yesterday it was Ft Zachary fort and the beach there, tomorrow it’s the Hemingway house.  It’s always busy one way or another, people we’ve met keep coming by or calling to invite us over. Here at the dock we met Arch and Melissa on M&A, gold loopers, and today we ran into Summer Breeze, loopers who are up a few islands north from us right now. Cheryl likes to walk so I go when she does since I need the exercise.  Today I spent a couple of hours route planning and calling marinas. Just a lot to do and see and be busy with.

I do miss home, friends there, my house, and Reese, but I don’t want to leave this either.  Somehow both feelings exist at the same time.

I also think, after all this time on the boat, that we have a touch of Margarita Malaise or Latitude Lassitude or plain old boaters fatigue. Lots of sun and wind and walking; we walked over two miles today just for lunch. That has left us laughing about how little we seem to get done, compared to home. Those hoses for the engines got here today, at home I would have them installed in an hour. Here? Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow. It’s very pleasant, so I don’t think I’m complaining, but it is a different way of life. Lots of photos this time, again this is about two percent of it all, but it will give you a taste of what we’re seeing every day. We have tried four Key Lime places so far, the one in the photo had the best pie so far. Oh yeah, I tried to go the Key West look for a while, I quit shaving a while back and haven’t had a haircut in months. Today I gave it up, shave and a haircut for me. Just didn’t work. Cheryl approves. And last, we went to a farmers market, and what the heck are those spiky red things? Plant or animal and how do you eat them? I didn’t ask nor did I buy any.

Here’s a link to a local webcam, the view is not great but you can see our boat when it pans to the far right, we are behind the small houseboat about halfway out on the right side of the dock, (where we’ve seen tarpon and even a large shark) although about all you can really see is our radar arch. And maybe a University of Kansas flag!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ypYTZs-7o

That’s all from me, Cheryl is up next in a few days.

“Much of man’s joy of life is squeezed out by social constraints, be they sensible or petty.”