Late Coffee…Early Cocktails

Charming corner on Fleming Street

Key West is best seen on foot, an easy task as the island is only 2 miles wide and 4 miles long.   Every day the weather allows us to get off the boat, we hoof it around town drinking in the sights.  While Duvall Street and its neighbors are always an interesting conglomeration of local characters, tourists, merchants, and bars, our favorite venues are the residential streets with their parades of houses from an era long since gone.  Each avenue unfolds like a new tropical garden to explore as we stroll to the library, the post office,  or just follow our noses in search of the latest heady fragrance.

We are startled by the friendliness of the locals, a trait that seems dampened or killed in most towns packed with tourists.  While walking down Fleming Street, one of our favorites, we stopped to photograph the colorful bikes framing a quintessential Key West house and the bougainvillea tumbling over a fence.  We are dressed in full cruiser chic, well down the scale of fashionable propriety.  As soon as Greg started snapping away at different angles trying to capture the early morning light, the owner popped out the door of her very expensive home.

My eyes got  big as she approached and I wondered if she had called the police.  If you are surprised at my

Bike painted in tribute to Captain Outrageous

defensive reaction you have to understand that people who live full time on boats and no longer own property are often treated like a scourge, affliction, or criminal marine growth needing squelching.   And our appearances definitely did not allow us to be mistaken as a neighbor to this coifed, manicured, and elegantly-dressed lady.  We smiled tentatively and lead off with a friendly “hi, your bikes are so beautiful we just had to take a photo”.  She smiled, held out her hand and introduced herself, proceeding to tell us all about the bikes.  She had seen us taking photos and had not come out with a broom to sweep us out of her neighborhood but to share with us that the bikes had been painted by her daughters as a tribute to Captain Outrageous, a local legend!

This is not an isolated incident; later that same day locals stopped us on the street to ask what books we were reading, leading to a half-hour instant book club conversation.   People here rub elbows with ease and

Every street's a garden

seem to understand that what makes Key West charming is the diversity of its inhabitants combined with a high level of “live and let live”.  This is in stark contrast to the gated communities that have proliferated in the last ten years, “gated ghettos” promising that all tenants will look, speak, spend money and think exactly alike.

Earlier in the season fellow cruisers asked us which we liked better, the Bahamas or the Keys.  We couldn’t answer and just said the Keys were different than the Bahamas.  And that is a good part of why we cruise, to seek out and consider differences.    Different is a divine experience itself in this mass-produced world.

We’d planned full use of a 3-day weather window by scheduling an early morning start from Pumpkin Key providing our 5-1/2 foot draft with the high tide needed to clear the hard-bottomed shoal at Angelfish Creek. By 5 am the winds, forecast to be 15 knots, were pummeling us with 30 knot gusts. We groaned, covered our ears with our pillows and went back to sleep.

More weather analysis later in the day indicated our weather window was closing in and we feared that it would disappear entirely by the next morning. By 3 pm, the winds had calmed to a nice 15 knots and we decided to get out of Dodge on that afternoon’s high tide, one hour before sunset. We’d never sailed crab-pot littered Hawk Channel before at night but are pleased to report that once the sun sets and you can no longer see them, the crab pots become far less dangerous. And since you can’t avoid something you can’t see, it saved lots of jerky, close-range steering. We suffered a few thumps as pots hit the keel but remained unentangled.

We were reminded by the Coast Guard frequently through the night that 30 containers fell off a ship a few days ago and are floating north. This provoked much discussion as the typical container is the size of a semi-truck trailer. If we hit one of these floating just below the surface as they like to do we’d likely go down in a big hurry. Luckily, the containers stayed mostly on the other side of the reef that separates Hawk Channel from the Florida straights.

Jim King dinghies over from s/v Karma to lend a hand

It was a glorious sail south on Hawk Channel in perfect 15 – 20 knot winds, the full moon lighting a silvery path and car headlights twinkling from the Keys. The nice conditions and the fact that our 3-day weather window has dwindled to barely a crack, persuaded us to just keep on going and we turned the corner into Key West at 8 am. An hour later we were pulling into the mooring field at Garrison Bight and were hailed by our Southall Marina mate Jim King of sailing vessel ‘Karma’. Someone had just left the mooring ball next to him and he would meet us in his dinghy to help hook us up. This was very welcome news as Jim is moored on one of the balls closest to the dinghy dock and his assistance cut much effort trying to lasso the mooring ball as Key West thinks pennants are for sissies.

Soon we are tooling about Key West compliments of Jim’s van, reacquainting ourselves with the lay of this eccentric land. While Jim made a stop at West Marine, I checked out the latest magazines and just happened to open the February issue of Cruising World to p50 where Greg and I are pictured as part of a crowd on a beach in the Bahamas! You’ll need a magnifying glass to see us but we’re right on the left margin of the photo – my head is backed by a lime green beach chair and Greg is sporting a blue cap and a big ear-to-ear grin.

We adjusted again to life on a mooring ball and the frequent weather checks needed in Key West. This mooring

Roll cloud accompanying front

field is wide open to the north requiring a constant weather watch and detailed plans for completing chores between frontal systems. Within a week of settling in we received a forecast for a front with squalls producing 60 knot winds and are awed when a roll cloud forms right over Fleming Key. This particular roll cloud barely produced 20 knot winds before heading up the Keys to menace other anchorages. But the fronts continue to roll in, one after the other, with today’s gale forecast severe enough to blow dogs off their chains and prompt the suspension of this afternoon’s bus service. NOAA even has wind chill warnings in their forecast! Oh well, it beats shoveling snow, and early cocktails are still listed on Yoohoo’s order of the day.

Coast Guard Copter Over s/v Destiny

We spent seven days anchored in Miami Beach and knew from past experience that it would not be dull.  Cruise ships parade in and out Government Cut twice a day, tour boats drone by introducing the sights in English and Spanish, the Coast Guard seems to be on maneuvers by all means– air, water and land –and cruising boats jockey around the anchorages searching for a bit of peace and quiet beyond the fray.

At one point Greg tried hailing our friend Dave on sailing vessel Destiny via VHF radio, “Destiny, Destiny this is Yoohoo, over”.  We were amazed and amused when the cruise ship Carnival Destiny immediately replied in heavily accented English “Yoohoo, this is Destiny”.  They NEVER answer at sea in the middle of the night! Capt Claw was tempted to reply “Is Dave there?” or “Sorry Carnival Destiny but we were hailing the itty bitty sailing vessel Destiny”.

Yoohoo and the other Destiny

We were also amused by the newest means of parting tourists from their dollars,  a tour boat bedecked with

all the trappings of a tikki bar on a sand beach.  I’d like the marketing folks at Tikki Beach Tours to know that when this palm-frond streaming barge first rounded the bend and came whizzing toward us, I thought the largest duck blind known to man was invading our anchorage.  Perhaps not quite the image they were aspiring to.

On another breezy day a new boat into the anchorage came over for directions to the dinghy dock and, as is customary in cruising circles, left us their boat card before they dinghied off in search of groceries.  The

Tikki Beach Tour Boat - only the sunburn is free

card soon became critical as it became apparent that their boat was dragging anchor.  Luckily it was dragging at a leisurely pace allowing them to be roused from their lunch on Lincoln Ave to hoof it back on foot and in dinghy to retrieve the boat and put it back where it belonged.

Eying an unusual 3-day window of good weather which would allow us to hop down the Keys we hauled anchor, refueled at Crandon Park and headed south down Biscayne Bay.  We were in the process of hoisting our sails, shocking even ourselves, when we vaguely noticed lots of tiny laser-like sailboats zipping back and forth up ahead.  We set our course between the two largest groups and had just got the genny set when all of a sudden all these boats, perhaps 30 of them, turned and started streaming straight toward us at very close range.  Holy Sea Hazard!  We are headed straight for the starting line of an Olympic training race going the wrong way!  That explains the little bang, that big puffy buoy thing over there and the glares we are getting from all the athletes as we part the fleet neatly in two.  Capt Claw tried to steer straight through their flanks to avoid collision, wrapping the genny round the forestay in the process.  Horrors!

Luckily we didn’t leave any roadkill in our wake and suffered nothing stronger than a gesture or two. Or were they waving hello?  In our defense, the race committee, enthroned on a very expensive Nordhavn trawler, must have seen for at least five minutes that given our course, we would soon scramble their race if action wasn’t taken. They could have hailed us via VHF to warn us off or delayed the race 2 minutes until we cleared the area.   We straightened out our sails and soothed our burnt egos and glided on south, happy to see busy Miami Beach recede in the distance until it was just a little cluster of buildings perched on the edge of Biscayne Bay.

We are often asked by our dirt-dweller friends and relatives about the scary aspects of cruising. Usually the questions revolve around pirates or storms. Our stock answer is that living together in 300 square feet of space is by far the most fearsome facet of our lifestyle. And until now that has been true, our daily sacrifices to spousal content have been much more trying than the 50-knot storm we weathered at sea or the night a large, unlit cutter stalked us in the dark.

That was until 2 days ago when the issue that all cruisers fear more than any other reared its ugly head on Yoohoo. Something in our sanitation system was royally plugged, leaving the head kaput and the crew using a plastic bucket.

We were indoctrinated to the inadequacies of marine heads and holding tank systems on our first voyage on Yoohoo. Just one day out of Annapolis where we bought Yoohoo, Cap’t Claw went below and found his olfactory senses beset by a horrific odor. Soon he popped his head back up for a gulp of fresh air and announced that he’d discovered a cracked fitting on top of the holding tank, a crack which was now leaking. Ewwww!

His crew, brother Hurricane Charlie and myself, offered immediate support by pointing out that sanitation system repairs were listed under Other Duties Shirked on our sailing resumes. While the poor skipper cheerfully went below to repair and clean, his crew of ingrates promptly dubbed him “Cap’t You’re-In-Charge”.

So it was not a great surprise to Cap’t You’re-In-Charge that this time I offered my full support by searching for cheap, shore-side lodging as he prepared to delve into our problem. Desperate to get the boat out of the cold waters in Stuart, we had departed and made a two-day trip to warmer waters knowing that we’d be dealing with a dead head at least until we arrived in Miami Beach. We debated continuing on to the Keys due to a good weather window but decided to suck it up and fix it here.

We anchored off Star Island, home to 18 million dollar estates and many big names because in the past, we’d been the only boat anchored here and a marine store was a short dinghy ride away. We wanted to be far away from any other boats but close to the store if we needed parts. Cap’t You’re-In-Charge armed himself with boxes of vinyl gloves, plastic garbage bags, lots and lots of tape and one clothespin for the nose, then gingerly started dismantling that dead head. Through a long, tedious process of elimination, the head mechanism itself was proved working, then each section of hose, then the vented loop, before finding the clog in the hose section between the vented loop and the diverter valve.

Cap't You're-In-Charge & Scuppers at work

I’m sure you don’t want the full details but marine sanitation systems are subject to a build-up of calcified scale caused by a mixture of the salt water used to flush and other residue. This mortar mixture ensures that if you do not properly maintain your hoses by removing each section and wacking it against a hard surface until the mortar breaks free, the hoses will fully close and pumping cease. The pure distastefulness of this process meant it never ranked highly on our endless list of system maintenance chores. Without a proper hard surface to wack the plugged hose, Cap’t You’re-In-Charge sat in the cockpit and skewered the hose clean with a long, copper ground wire.

We’ve noticed while doing refit projects in the marina that the more embarrassing a project is the more likely friends and strangers will appear to offer suggestions and opinions. So our anchorage, picked for isolation, soon filled with about 8 other boats many anchored within the “sniff zone”. Then friends on sailing vessel Destiny called on the VHF, welcomed us to Miami Beach and said they’d drop by this afternoon. “Ummmm, please call first, we’re ummm working on a ummmmm big system and we wouldn’t want you to witness our ummmmm dissaray”. The crew on Destiny, seasoned cruisers, instantly figured out from that cryptic reply that we were busy rotor-rootering and found better things to do that afternoon.

Meanwhile, due to our plush location anchored right off Will Smith and Vanilla Ice’s homes, the tour boats

Happy tourists making the rounds

from Miami kept running right by Yoohoo, keeping the eager tourists busy snapping photos of our pretty sailboat at anchor. Cap’t You’re-In-Charge obliged the photo opportunities by grinning and waving the hose in greeting as each boat went by. Priceless.

Six hours later, all hoses and fittings were reassembled, clamped, checked and rechecked, Yoohoo and crew were thoroughly bleached and, God bless our intrepid hero Cap’t You’re-In-Charge, the head was working smoothly. If we ever are boarded by pirates we will hand over our booty in that very special plastic bucket with fond and humble memories.

The tall ship Bounty

One benefit of cruising is the opportunity to see every imaginable type of vessel. If it floats we’ve see it. As we entered the anchorage south of Lake Worth inlet, the tall ship Bounty, as in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ departed a dock and backed across our intended course giving us a close look. We’re not sure if Captain Bligh or Christian Fletcher was at the helm but we did notice that this replica seemed to have large diesel engines powering her unlike her namesake back in the 1700’s. At least they had the decency to forego the bow thrusters. Given our predicament with the inoperational head I wondered if they had a nice oak bucket we could borrow. If you’d like to tour The Bounty she is currently docked on Peanut Island. Pitcairn Island would have been so much better. Arghhhhh!

The next morning we hauled anchor at 5 am and inched Yoohoo out of the cluttered harbor with no moon to illuminate parked barges, dredging pipes as long as a football field, navigation markers, manatee signs or unlit anchored boats. This tense crawl paid off in a smooth departure through the inlet right at slack tide and an Atlantic sunrise accompanied by wisps of golden mist billowing across the waves.

We passed another interesting vessel, on the trendy end of the nautical time continuum, anchored off busy Fort

Dockwise Yacht Transport ship at anchor

Lauderdale waiting to enter Port Everglades. This Dockwise Yacht Transport ship does nothing but cart recreational boats around the world to the “most desirable cruising grounds” so their owners don’t actually have to cruise anywhere to “go cruising”. The ship is “semi-submersible” in order to lower its cargo deck below water allowing boats such as ours to be driven straight onto its deck. When all the boats are loaded its deck is raised back up and away they go.

We know of people who used Dockwise to ship their boat back to  the States when their cruising was interrupted by real life.  We also know of people who shamelessly speak of their “circumnavigation” when, in fact, their vessel was shipped on certain legs via a Dockwise Transport Ship. We don’t know where this particular one was headed but since we just encountered The Bounty I’d like to imagine they were making a breadfruit run to Tahiti.

It was a long debate to decide whether we stop in Miami Beach to commence head repairs or continue on to the Keys. In the end, Miami Beach, with its new, free, city-wide WiFi system and easy access to a marine goods store won. We hope to retire our little plastic bucket soon!