Fishing Tournament

We spotted this bike in the bike racks at the marina today.  These wheels claim to fame is that they roll over anything, I expect they are used to bike on the beach or something.

Fat tires to be sure

The Key West Harbor King Mackerel Tournament has been going on here for the last two days so we walked down to watch the weigh in today.

They were selling “homemade” ice cream sandwiches for $5 so we bought one to split.

Having never been to a fish weigh in we didn’t quite know what to expect but it was interesting.  Evidently you get to weigh in one fish each day and the winner is the one who has the most total weight over two days.

Hang em high

 

Fisherman like to pose with their catch

The big fish winner; 78 lbs.

They have multiple divisions, both amateur and pro.  The biggest fish was actually caught by an amateur.  It was blowing over 20 today and the fisherman were going 4o miles out into the Atlantic chasing the mackerel.  They said the waves were four to six feet which probably made for a tough day of fishing.  The fish aren’t any good for anything as they are full of mercury so they are turned into pet food.  I guess that explains why cats act like they do.  There is a lot of money on the line, the winning pro team gets $20k but it can’t begin to cover their expenses given the boats and motors they use, the fuel they must go through, dockage, hotel and food expenses.  Yesterday we were walking by one of the sponsor tents and the guy from Evinrude Outboards stopped us and wanted to take us out for a test ride to demonstrate one of their high horsepower motors.  They must have mistaken us for somebody who had too much money.

Freedom is here today, maybe they got tired of the craziness down town.

 

Tonight’s sunset picture for our friends up north

Dave

Well, we have had a lot of fun the last couple of days.  We spent yesterday with Bicki and Dave.  They picked us up first and we went to lunch and then to a couple of marine shops.  They then came over to the boat and the four of us put some sort of fluid down a tube for steering the boat.  We then took the boat out for a ride and then dinner.  It was just a great day.  (A lot of fun and a lot of laughs,  thanks Bicki and Dave!)

Today  we spent some time at a fish weigh-in.  One of the teams ask me to take a picture with their huge fish (they didn’t know me!).  Well, apparently the picture didn’t work and the fish headed off to be made into fish food before they realized there was no picture.   The team had nothing to show for all their hard work (oops!)   The team came back over to see if Dave had taken a picture and guess what he had!!!!  (Dave knew my picture taking track record!!)  I owe him big time!!!

While at the weigh-in we met a couple, Louisa and Scott, who are also cruising.  They came over to Liberty and had a drink with us.  We had a great time talking with them!

Well, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday and we can’t wait.  Our son, Brian is  in Arizona with the Blue Thunder, the drumline for the Seattle Seahawks.  We are very proud of our drummer boy!  We’ll be watching the game at the Captains Lounge here at Stock Island Marina!!!  Go Seahawks!!!!!

Bobbi

 

 

More Maintenance

Today we needed to go to the post office and to the grocery store for more provisions.  Our shuttle driver thought he knew where the post office was but “missed” as in taking us to the wrong shopping center.  He asked if we wouldn’t mind taking a ride downtown where he needed to drop off two women and would bring us back to the correct shopping center where he would wait while we did our shopping.  We don’t mind going for a ride and the two women were entertaining.  They were old friends vacationing together and the plan of these two middle aged women was to get a tattoo to remember this trip.  They were having so much fun that they were going to see about changing their plane tickets so they could stay in the area longer.  I told them they were supposed to be drunk when they got a tattoo, but maybe that is old school thinking now.  Anyhow it was good to see these two so excited about being in Key West.

Bicki and Dave picked us up early in the afternoon and we proceeded to go to a pizza place and then downtown to a marine hardware store.  They needed some Cetol for some brightwork finishing they are doing and the free spending skipper of this boat purchased eight electrical heat shrink butt connectors for the sum of four dollars.  We also went over to West Marine to eyeball the kayak again.

Before we left Erie we realized we had an issue with our autopilot.  I had taken the pump out to fix an oil leak and afterwards the boat would veer off course with the pilot engaged.  We thought the issue was air in the hydraulic lines which would require bleeding but we never were able to get around to that job before leaving.  It really wasn’t an issue as the boat holds a pretty straight course with out touching the wheel.  Today, with a crew of hearty trawler folk available it seemed like a good time to tackle the bleeding job.

How many people does it take to bleed a hydraulic line? Evidently four.

The two ladies were on the fly bridge feeding new fluid into the upper station pump, Dave Howell (we have lots of Dave’s) under the back deck opening and closing bleeder valves and the other Dave in the pilothouse exercising the autopilot.  The Dave under the back deck thought it was odd that when the other Dave pressed the autopilot button to turn to port, the hydraulic cylinder wanted to turn the rudder to make the boat go to starboard.  We ignored this issue at the moment as the real job was to get the air out of the lines.   After we did this is was time to run some sea trials (go for a boat ride).

While the ladies sat on the veranda with their wine glasses the Dave’s hung out in the pilot house as we cleared the harbor entrance and engaged the autopilot.  Same issue as before, the boat wanted to go into a hard turn rather than holding a course.  Noticing that pressing the button for a port course change caused the boat to veer to starboard, Dave H got out the manual, turned to the trouble shooting chapter and read that either some electrical connectors were backwards or the hydraulic lines were reversed.  Of course Dave F said that the pump was hard wired into the ships power so that couldn’t be the issue and he carefully labeled the hydraulic lines before the pump was pulled so that couldn’t be the issue either.  Anyhow the skipper went into the basement to verify both and found that yes, the power wires were spliced into the pump with no provision of having them them reversed and yes the hydraulic lines were properly labed with F and A (forward and aft).

Looking a little closer at the lines it became obvious what the issue was.  The line labeled F was aft and the line labeled A was forward.  Since the lines have quick disconnects it only took a few seconds to reverse the lines so that they were properly oriented on the pump.

The skipper rectifying the reversed hydraulic hose issue

The only explanation (excuse) the skipper can come up with for this obvious foul up is that our previous trawler had it’s autopilot pump oriented such that when you were facing it you were facing aft in the boat.  On this boat you are facing forward.  Old habits (and orientations) must be hard to break.  That is our story and we are sticking to it.

Of course after switching the lines the autopilot is behaving perfectly.  Now the danger will be in using it and not paying close attention to what is ahead in open water and then finding ourselves surrounded by hundreds of crab pots.

After we got back to the dock we treated ourselves to some wine, a vegetable tray and then a nice dinner of fettuccine with shrimp sauteed in olive oil and garlic for a job well done.

Dave

Maintenance

The skipper awoke this morning feeling much better than the previous day.  It was time to get some work done.  After a much needed bowl of oatmeal which tasted pretty good for a change (the skipper doesn’t like oatmeal but it helps keep the cholesterol level down) all hand fell to work, except maybe the ships mascot which we have never seen raise a hand (or claw) to help.

Fill the water tanks, top off the water in the house battery bank,  give the decks a quick scrub (lots of dirt in the air around here for some reason) and run some system checks such as starting up the generator and air conditioner which haven’t been operated in a week.  Our new vacuum relief valve for the holding tank showed up today so we got to install that.  What should have been a quick and simple replacement turned into fairly long ordeal as the old one seemed to be welded to the tank.  The biggest pipe wrench on the boat was the winner for removal.  You wouldn’t think that a pipe wrench would be useful on a boat that doesn’t have any pipes per say but you would be surprised how handy one is at times.   The purpose of the valve is to vent the holding tank as it is being pumped out as a strong suction can collapse the tank.  We noticed it really wasn’t doing it’s job last fall and somebody decided to try to save the $46 for a new one by trying to “fix” it.  Well the fix didn’t exactly work and we were having to vent the tank manually during the pump out process.  Again, we should have fixed it right the first time; well it is now.  By the way, every time you fix something right on a boat it costs money.

Old and new relief valves

While the skipper was busy with these chores, the mate was doing laundry and rearranging her closet while cleaning the forward cabin.  All items passed inspection so the ships company got the rest of the day off, besides, we don’t want to overdo things just yet.  Reading, watching TV, a trip to the exercise facility and showers occupied the rest of the day.  Lunch was one half of a turkey sandwich, dinner one half of a toasted cheese sandwich and one half bowl of chicken noodle soup.  Full rations tomorrow.

Dave

 

Sick Bay, Abbreviated Shore Leave

Last night the skipper had to report to Sick Bay then a few hours later had to make another trip.  For the last few days he hadn’t been feeling 100% and had evidently contacted a stomach virus.  Last night things came to a head (there is a joke there, a head is the toilet on a boat).  Bicki and Dave e-mailed to see if we wanted to come out to play today, but the skipper wasn’t going anywhere.  As a matter of fact he didn’t really crawl out of the rack until about 6 PM this evening.  It was a good thing the marina crew came aboard this afternoon to empty the holding tank as it has been a week and it was getting rather full.  Last evening didn’t help matters any.   The days rations consisted of watered down Gator Aid and one piece of dry toast.

We had been looking forward the party the marina was sponsoring this evening.  After a shower the skipper was somewhat revived so we walked down to the Shrimp Road Bar and Grill to join in the festivities.  The mate got some wine to go with her dinner (they had a pretty nice spread including some chocolate peppermint cake for desert) while the skipper drank nothing with his plain rice, bread, chicken finger and piece of fish.  The folk singer was good and we would have really liked to have made a party out of it but need to take it slow.

These tables did fill up. We got there early.

The mate is evidently going to do laundry tomorrow, something about the berth sheets having cooties.

Dave

Well, today was a quiet day, the captain was a tad under the weather.  I fiddled around and read most of the day.  Finny kept Dave company down in the cabin most of the afternoon.  (I think Finny knew Dave wasn’t feeling well!!!).

We did go over to the party given by the marina.  The food was great!!!  I really enjoyed the folk singer.  We only stayed a short time since it was the first Dave had been out of bed all day.  (He’s a trooper!!!)

Well, tomorrow is another day.  Hopefully Dave will feel better and life aboard Liberty will go on!!!

Bobbi

Publix

You know you are retired when the highlight of the day is going to Publix for groceries.  Actually, the real highlight of the day was simply sitting around and catching up on some reading.  The trip to Publix was a necessary evil.  We “needed” some ingredients for making some Painkillers.  Orange and pineapple juice, cream of coconut, a bit of nutmeg combined with some Pussers rum (which required a trip to the liquor store, conveniently located next to Publix) allowed us to sit on the boat deck and watch the sun go down with a Painkiller in hand.

We just don’t drink at sunset as we are civilized folk.

Tonight’s sunset picture. We don’t seem to get tired of this.   How do you make a GB 42 look small (just below the sun)?  Have a Krogen 48 tied up alongside (just to the right of the GB with the blue stripe).

The fishing boats are starting to appear here for the weekends king mackerel fishing tournament.  There is one fishing boat docked three boats down from us, they brought a drone and were playing with it this evening.

This drone appears to be rigged with a camera although I don’t know if they were using it.

There is a $10,000 prize for the winner of this tournament, weigh in’s are later in the afternoon at the fuel dock just down from us so that might give us something to do on Friday and Saturday afternoon.

Our social calender is filling up as we are “invited” to the 1st anniversary of this place tomorrow evening.  Free food and drinks; that is almost better than a free dock so count us in.

Key word is Complimentary

Sunday there is pot-luck dinner for the Super Bowl at the Captains Lounge.  Bobbi says if it is too crowded we can always go to the exercise facility as they have two TV’s there.  I am not sure how they feel about people eating and drinking in that place, and I am not sure I even want to.  Actually, one of our boat neighbors have a big screen TV mounted in their cockpit and I bet we could sit on the dock and watch the game.

Dave

 

 

 

Zero for Three

The major excitement of the day was taking the marina shuttle into Key West.  We caught the 1 PM ride downtown where they drop you off at the water front on the north west corner of the Key, away from the touristy Duval Street.  There is a large West Marine store nearby so we went in there to see what we  really don’t need.  We keep looking at this Apollo kayaks, the same one that caught our eye in Annapolis.  It is a three part boat, you can use it as a single with the bow and stern parts, or include the center to make it a double.  What keeps us from purchasing one (besides the $800 price tag) is how to effectively store it on the boat.  If we were like most cruisers, it wouldn’t matter where we kept it, to heck with aesthetics.  I can’t seem to do that, it needs stored in a  secure place that doesn’t detract from the look of the boat.  I believe that we could store the bow and stern parts along the outsides of the fly bridge, making an acrylic cover for them if necessary.  The center part could be stored just about anywhere on the boat deck and covered.  I think we can live with that but we need to give this some more thought.

The mate went into a few of the stores that seem to sell stuff directed towards the people that are disgorged from the cruise ships.  One of the locals at the marina knows the tour ship schedule and says that she only goes downtown on Thursdays, the only day a ship isn’t in.  We need to remember that.  All this activity worked up an appetite so we went to Dantes Key West for a late lunch.  They have a tiki bar (of course) and a nice pool for restaurant patrons.  I am sure this is a hopping place on a hot evening.  It better be hot as the pool is not heated and the water cold.  With enough rum in you I suppose it would be tolerable.  If two people have lunch here, only order one lunch and split it.  They give you way too much food; we only had planned for soup on the boat tonight and I am not sure I will be hungry enough for that.

Slow day at the restaurant, only kids were in the pool.

Bierig recently made the sails for the boat, the Hindu which is spending the winter in the Keys.

Next stop was Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street where the mate “insisted” we have a drink, just to say we were here and imbibed.  We didn’t see our old buddy Eric (0 for 3 now ) and the waitress didn’t recognize the name.  I mentioned that he looked like Jesus Christ but she said that it didn’t narrow it down as a lot of people fit that description around here.

Rather noisy as the place was pretty much full at three in the afternoon.

Specialty drinks (cheap ones) are $7.50. A simple rum and tonic is $7.00 and beer starts at $4.50.

A few more stops on Duval street and it was time to hot foot it back for our 4:15 appointment at the pick up point.  One of these Thursdays, when there are no cruise ships around we will have to spend the evening downtown and watch the sunset at Mallory Square where they have a nightly arts festival show casing arts, crafts, street performers, psychics and food carts.  The last shuttle comes back to the marina at 10:30 PM, hopefully we can stay awake long enough to not miss it and have to spend the evening sleeping on the streets.

The sunset happy hour might be celebrated in the saloon of the boat tonight as the winds are 15 gusting to 25 (windy for this neck of the woods) and the outside temperature currently at 70 degrees.  We won’t get too much sympathy from the folks back home.

I just heard the conch horns going off again, they get blown every night at sunset.

Speaking of sunsets, this was last evening:

A few minutes later….

 

Trick picture. Actually, this image is rotated 180 degrees. These boats are across from us and while appearing upright are actually a reflection on the water (note the flag)

Dave

Well, today was a fun day.  We took the shuttle downtown and met two interesting couples, one on our way and the other on our way back.  Both couples are doing the great loop (both for the first time).  This must of been the year for retirement!!!

We had a nice lunch and visited some of the shops (I shopped while the captain waited outside patiently!) We also made a stop at Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street.  We sat at the bar and listened to music for a bit.   It was actually very nice no matter what the captain may think!

I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring, but I guess that is what this adventure is about!

Bobbi

Three Hour Cruise

A few people have wondered if we had died so here is an interim report:

First a story:   The other night when we were having a Painkiller (alas, they are now all gone) up on the boat deck.  The people (guy and his two young lady friends) on the sailboat beside us were also sitting out enjoying a few libations and the sunset.  Somebody motored by in a dinghy and they guy hollered over to him that two of the hottest babes in Key West were here.  I corrected him and said that actually three of the hottest babes in Key West were here.

Now the update:  We spent one enjoyable evening having dinner aboard the Howells Lord Nelson Victory Tug, docked at the Navy military base marina two miles east of us.  It is the first time we have been aboard one of those boats; Dave and Bicki keep the boat in great condition and have all the latest electronics that are well integrated.  They, like us have redundant systems so that if one goes down (or they lose all 12V power) they can still navigate with GPS enabled tablets, phones etc.

Yesterday we took the marina shuttle bus to the local shopping center.  Walgreens, Home Depot, Five Guys Burgers and Fries, Office Max, K-Mart and Publix rounded out our four hour trip.  We had a close call when we almost had to visit the Verizon store as we thought Bobbi’s cell phone had died.  It wouldn’t turn on and plugging in the charger had no effect.  My line is eligible for an upgrade and while you can transfer upgrades to different lines on the same plan, I have read that some people who have done the transfer also lost their unlimited data in the process, something we don’t want to risk.  We used 25 GB last month and will probably be above that this month.   If we lose the unlimited data it will cost us about $200 more per month for data.  We were willing to pay the $100 deductible on our maintenance plan for a replacement phone but in the end a hard reset of the phone fixed the issue.

You meet interesting people cruising.  There is interesting, and then there is  “interesting”.  The “interesting” people we met in the shuttle were sailors that seemed to have purchased boats that need more than their fair share of work.  One boat had all sorts of engine problems.  No sooner did the engine get fixed than the transmission decided to pack it up to the tune of $3k.  I guess they just replaced the whole thing with a new engine and transmission.  They talked about finding out the decks were rotten and had to re-core them, then the ports in the cabin sides were leaking and when they removed them they found rotten core all around that needed repair.  I forgot what the other boat’s issues were besides the fact that they claimed they hired out a ton of work and then found that everything they hired out needed to be re-done.  I don’t know if these people have contests to see who has had the most problems or what.  I did see the first boat at the dock and the workmanship on the entire boat wasn’t the greatest.  Actually, I believe it was tied for next to last and I would have hesitated to cross Erie Harbor in the thing.  The sails were in little heaps next to the masts and there couldn’t have been any life left in them.  That boat was only here for two nights as I expect they needed to save their money for the next thing that was going to go wrong.

Since our experiment with the seafood boil went so well when we had Dave and Bicki over, we thought we would give it another try.  Publix very nicely provided all the ingredients once again.

Dinner (Two nights worth)

Yes, that is water in the wine glass.

After sitting at the dock for a few days we though we should go out today and let the old girl (Liberty that is) stretch her legs a bit.  Bobbi has been going over to the air conditioned exercise facility that is here and we don’t refer to her as “the old girl”.

We took a short trip (20 miles all told) though the harbor at Key West and motored through some of the anchorages that were outside the harbor.  The track shows the southern most  path that we will see from the boat at least for the near future.

Southern most track

Heading West towards the Key West proper

 

The water and sky are the most beautiful shades of blue and green.  Pictures can’t capture the reality.

The shrimp boats are anchored out, we suspect waiting for nightfall.

Freedom came up from astern and radioed us asking for a slow pass. The last time we saw them we were in Georgia. What is interesting is that they were taking pictures of us as they passed by.

Off Key West Harbor the yacht America (2). This is a steel replica of the yacht that initially won the Americas Cup in 1851. She was in Erie a number of years ago. It appears that Appledore II is off in the distance.

Cruise ship at the terminal in the harbor

Boats in the anchorages were the usual assortment that ranged from nice to derelicts.  There were a few boats washed up on the beaches and shoals as we have come to expect.  A fair number of boats had no dinghy alongside so all these people must be on shore for the day, or the boats simply hang on the hook until the local owners decide to use them.  I wasn’t impressed with the location of the anchorages, most being exposed to northerly winds.  They are forecasting 20 to 30 knots out of the north for the next few days and those placed just don’t look comfortable.

This afternoon the local air show consisted of five A10 Thunderbolt (Warthogs) coming in to land.

The schedule for the rest of the evening is cocktails on the boat deck at sunset, followed by the left over seafood boil.  For what it is worth, the sunrise is 40 minutes earlier and the sunset is 40 minutes later than in Erie.

Dave

Well, Key West has proved to be a winner!!!  So far so good! I’m really pleased that we decided to rent our slip for a month, it has given us time to relax and enjoy our time.

We’ve been able to see Bicky and Dave a couple of times and have had a great time with them.  We had dinner together on our boat one night and then a great dinner on their boat a few days later.  I like Lord Nelson Tugs!!!!!!

The marina here has several perks!!  They have free coffee, a free shuttle, great showers and laundry and a really nice exercise room.  (Someone has gained a pound or two since leaving home!!)

Today we took Liberty out for a little ride.  We thought we’d have lunch out on the water.  The wind was fairly mild and the temperature was around 70. There were a lot of sailboats out getting ready for a race.  It was nice to watch for a bit!!

Tomorrow we plan on taking the shuttle into Key West and check out Duval Street again.  It’s a little hard to buy anything with limited room on good old Liberty.  I rationalize my purchases by buying things for the kids!!!! (What can I tell you, it makes me feel good!!!)

Well, it’s happy hour in a few minutes for today, then off to Key West tomorrow!!!

 

Bobbi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key West, Change of Plans

Last night while pursing the Internet I happened to click on a link to the Stock Island Marina and Village, where we are located.  There is more information listed when viewing it on a PC than on an Android phone.  What I noticed was the monthly cost per foot; it almost looked reasonable.  While preparing for our departure this morning I casually mentioned it to the crew who then suggested that I talk to the office to see if we might “stay”.

To make a long story short, we are (were) paying $3.25/ft/night.  To stay a month the cost is $35/ft/month or $1.15/ft/night.  If we were 39 feet instead of 4o feet the cost would have been $30/ft/month.  Since we can’t trim a foot off the boat I guess we would have pay the higher rate if we stayed 🙂

We decided to stay; as the bird voted with Bobbi (she always does).  Initially they told us that there really wasn’t room for us beyond the end of this week as another boat was scheduled to get our slip and there was a fishing tournament at the end of the month that has the place booked to capacity.  After some searching and discussion, they said they might be able to accommodate us if we were willing to keep changing slips but they would have to kick us out for a few days at the end of the month to make room for the fisherman.   I agreed to move around if necessary and said there was no problem with us leaving for a few days as we could anchor or visit the Garrison Bight mooring field.  They would charge us at the reduced monthly rate even though our stay was not contiguous.  They could convert us over to the monthly rate so we  would already “save” $2.10/ft/night for the first two nights we were here, or something like that.

As you can imagine, this made the ships company very happy.  We are on brand new floating docks and they have a free shuttle to Publix market and to downtown Key West that operates five times a day (10 AM to 10:30 PM for the late party people), free coffee, they come and pump your holding tank at your dock once a week and have a nice laundry and showers.

We got a call later stating that they worked things out such that we won’t have to leave temporarily and we can stay where we are until February 1st when we will have to move over one dock.  By then our neighbors will be tired of us anyway.  The staff is incredibly pleasant and accommodating and all the boaters we pass on the docks seem to be enjoying themselves; who wouldn’t?

The new plan is to stay here a month, giving us two months to get back to the Chesapeake.  That will take us to mid/late April.  We can spend a few weeks in that area before we start back up the coast as we don’t want to be into the Erie Canal until the second week of May, getting us back to Erie by Memorial Day.

I figured it was about time I logged onto my university account, just to make sure that they didn’t delete me.  I also need to update the boats web pages with all the unfinished jobs that we took care of before we left.  Well, that only took a few hours (logging on to my accounts) as I misplaced my notes on how to do this.  Lets see:  Run VPN client to connect ISP to PSU, then run Map PSU Space to map a local drive to the my files located at University Park.  Run Remote Desktop to get the Academic Cloud Server to access my files on the server at Behrend.  Now I can use my local install of Microsoft Word to edit the HTML files and attach images befoire re-saving the file at U.P.  During this process I came across this picture of Liberty, taken one year ago, 2/10/2014.

Do I miss having to shrink wrap the boat? Not exactly.

We much prefer this picture of the boat, taken yesterday.

Naval Air Station Key West is a few miles to the east of us on Boca Chica Key.  There is a permanent detachment of the Strike Fighter Squadron 106 (VFA-106) on this base and they fly F/A 18 Hornets, providing us with a mini air show as they take off and land.  The Howell’s Lord Nelson Victory Tug is spending a month at the military marina on the base, one of the perks of being ex-military.

Again, seeing how there won’t be much boat movement excitement for a while, we don’t know how often the blog will get updated.  Of course if something significant happens we will record and post it for “posterity”.

Dave

Well, we are in Key West for a month!!  The marina here is a great place, they have a Captains Lounge with a big screen T.V.  (Super Bowl here we come!!!!)

We had dinner with  Bicki and Dave last night (we stayed at their dock in the Chesapeake on our way down south).  We made a seafood boil (thanks to a call to brother-in-law, Dale, giving me the directions how to make it).  The boil worked out great and a fun time was had!!!

Well, time to relax and enjoy Key West!!!

Bobbi

Key West, Stock Island Marina, Day 2

Early this morning I took a walk down to check out the Skippers Lounge (empty) and get a better look at the Mega Yacht that was taking up a good portion of the fuel dock.

The captains lounge (and you don’t have to be a captain to get in) is on the second floor.

Aztecta (236 feet) is owned by the guy ranked 150 something wealthiest in the world. Some of the crew were busy washing the salt from the lower part of the hull.

Our Lord Nelson Victory Tug friends, Bicki and Dave picked us up at 10 AM sharp so we could tour Key West.  They have wheels!  Dave’s favorite parking spot (the kind you don’t have to pay for) was taken so we ended up on a metered street.  We had exactly three hours to explore the waterfront area downtown and we made the best of it.

Appledore with her recent Bierig sails was sitting at the dock at the southern part of Key West.  One hundred years ago, in another lifetime while I worked at Bierig Sailmakers we made flax sails for one the the Appledore’s that went around the world.

The 170 foot schooner Meteor from the UK was docked near the cruise ship terminal and was quite the sight with her perfectly varnished woodwork.

Everything about this yacht was perfect.

The electric winches probably cost more than most boats.  The turnbuckles on the shrouds were massive.

She sails at 15 knots and has a displacement of 298 tons while drawing 14 feet of water. Absolutely magnificent.

The marker that designates the furthest point south in the US had a (long) line of people waiting to get their picture taken in front of it.  We decided to forego that exercise as tomorrow we will be moving the boat around the southern tip of the peninsula and will actually be further south than this marker.  The marker is for land crabs.

Dave knew of a good restaurant in the area, the southern most restaurant in the US so we ate a very nice lunch there and watched the J70’s race off in the distance.  It was a light air day for them.

Back to the car with 10 minutes to spare before our parking pass ran out we drove to the City Marina to talk to the dock master about the Garrison Bight Mooring field.  It turns out they have at least a dozen moorings available so we will be exiting the marina tomorrow and heading down to the $19/day mooring balls.  We plan on staying for a few days before starting our way back north.

Back at the boat we had complimentary certificates for two glasses of wine at the Shrimp Road Grill, which is on the marina property.  We couldn’t let these go to waste so we strolled down during the late afternoon and cashed them in.  Talking to the bartender, we found out that he previously worked at the place on Summerland Key where we watched the NFC playoff on Sunday.  As a mater of fact, the woman who owned the place recently sold it and started up the bar and grill here, bringing the bartender along.  As we head north, if we stop at Summerland Key, we probably shouldn’t mention that we met the old bartender as things were kind of contentious in the end.

Dave and Bicki came to the boat for a seafood boil.  Clams, stone crab claws, shrimp, crab legs, potatoes and corn were combined into a large pot.  Rather than the traditional method of just dumping it out on the table (which would have made a big mess) we chose to fish the delicacies out of the pot with some tongs.  There were no complaints so we believe the meal (the first time Bobbi has made it) was a success.

Dave & Bicki Howell

Tomorrow we move the boat to the mooring field; we have no definite plans beyond that.

Dave  (Bobbi has once more fallen asleep while I type this, her last words were that she will be adding her 2 cents tomorrow).

Key West, Day 1

Twenty six miles and about 3-1/2 hours after leaving our anchorage we pulled into the Stock Island Marina Village in Key West.

Down wind in about 15 knots of breeze with the swells also coming from astern. What a great day to make the run to Key West.

Part of this facility is brand new, so new in fact that the floating docks we are at don’t even appear on Google Earth.  We thought we were going to have to Med-moor (bow attached to a floating buoy and the stern tied to a wall, as that is what the Google Earth picture showed.  Fortunately we are at their new floating concrete docks which are full length.  There is no boat along side us so we were able to use both slips to swing the boat to access the rub rail at the bow.  We were finally able to mount the stainless rubbing strakes that be found at the consignment shop in St. Augustine.

Hopefully the stainless strips will quiet the anchor snubber as it exits the hawse pipe holes and crosses the plastic rub rail.

We are out there somewhere. You really have to look hard to find us.

They have some real big boats in here that make the other big boats look small.

This guy is impeccable.

Late this afternoon a chap and his wife stopped by the boat to chat while we were washing the salt off the topsides.  It turns out that years ago he was associated with selling Pilgrims on the west coast and helped deliver them.  He also used to spend quite a bit of time racing sailboats, from dinghy’s to 1/4 tonners, back when they were popular.  At 80 years old, he was quite spry and they were chartering a trawler for a week to get some experience with different boats as they had the idea they might want to do the Great Loop even though they were southern California residents.  The other thing we had in common was racing Stars.  He said that he never lost a Star boat race.  Of course he only sailed three races and pretty much got lucky each time.  He said that he was able to best Lowell North (back when he still owned and operated North Sails); come to think of it we haven’t lost a race either while sailing our Star.

We are only scheduled to stay two evening here, pretty much because it costs $3.25/ft/night + metered electric + tax.  Tomorrow we meet up with our Lord Nelson Victory Tug friends, Dave and Bicki Howell and head into town.  We will also swing by the mooring field and see what the story is there.  If they have room, we can move there, but if not then it will be time to head back up the Keys.

Dave