May 10 2011
It’s been 6-months since our last update but other than periodic excursions into town, not much has happened. Teresa works full time running the ships store at Sunset Marina and loves it. I do boat chores, plan our social calendar, dabble at writing and dream about future voyages. I also love my “job,” and both of us love Key West.
For those new to this site, we live aboard our boat, s/v Lastdance at the Naval Station marina on Boca Chica Key. It’s just 6-miles from the honky-tonk atmosphere of Duval Street and with almost every store in Key West offering “local” and “military” discounts, we go there often. Turtle Kraals, a great restaurant in Old town offers a free “bucket-of-ribs” to all military every Tuesday, so we try to take advantage of the offer but we also order of side-dishes and drinks and then tip well.
We had an annual visit in January by our good friend Captain Mark who gets a luxurious suite at the Marriot with a full kitchen so we do an Italian dinner and invite friends from the base and town. I have a blast cooking for 6-8 friends and we all drink tons of good red wine.
We celebrated my birthday here on the base at the Navigator Bar with a tradition started by Teresa last year of hosting an open bar for our friends; fortunately, we get Happy Hour pricing. The next day we sailed to Fleming Key for 2-days of alone-time but we took along our dinghy so we could go ashore for our regular Thursday morning breakfast at Schooner Wharf with Lou, Rebecca, Art and Brenda.
A week later I crewed aboard s/v POW-MIA in the January Wreckers Race. This is a monthly 5 race series in which everything from 14’-catamarans to 100’ schooners compete in a no holds barred race from Key West Bight to Sand Key lighthouse, 6-miles away. The only rule is; there are no rules! s/v POW-MIA is far from a racing boat but with Capt Squeak piling on all kinds of sails, we did pretty good and placed 8th overall, not too shabby for an aging 34’ ketch.
After the race, the real excitement occurred while sailing back to Boca Chica. With darkness an hour away, Squeak spotted a reflection on the water to seaward. Looking through binoculars; we saw that it was a small boat with 2 figures paddling furiously against the wind and waves so we altered course and after 15-minutes we came alongside a tiny rowboat. It was taking on water and in it was 2 boys, their lips crusted white from dehydration and exhausted from paddling and bailing. They were jubilant to see us and we soon had them aboard and their boat in tow.
They’d gone fishing off Cow Key in the morning and while occupied with catching fish, including a small shark, the rising wind had blown them far from shore. They didn’t have a radio or cell phone and the boat had no anchor or oars, just 2 paddles. By the time we found them, they were 5-miles out and close to Western Sambo reef. Had Squeak not seen them and had they survived the night and following days, the next stop for them would have been the Yucatan Peninsular, 340-miles to the west. In the building wind and waves in such a small boat, it’s highly doubtful they would have survived even the night, let alone in the boisterous Gulf of Mexico. Kudos to Squeak, thanks to him, two jerky kids get to wear big boy pants someday!
My son Christopher was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in March so I drove up to North Carolina to spend a few days with him and his family in February. I returned to Key West in time for Margarita Day and then the excitement of finding a large salt water crocodile on our little island. Later in the month my cousins Carol, Laurie and Laurie’s husband Randy came to Key West aboard their motor yacht, m/v Wastin Aweigh to celebrate Randy’s 60th birthday. Randy has a cool birthday tradition, he treats his friends and family to dinner so Teresa
and I got to eat in some very nice restaurants for a change.
With Christopher’s deployment date looming, I returned to North Carolina in March to see my son off to war for the 4th time in 8 years. We had a good visit but at 11 pm on the last day I drove him to Camp LeJeune and watched him board a bus with his fellow Marines, all armed and in full combat gear. It was very difficult and I couldn’t help but think that America is asking way too much of our brave warriors. Godspeed Chris, come home safe and sound!
I returned to Key West in time to watch Teresa participate in the 1st annual Dinghy Ladies Regatta, I mean Ladies Dinghy Regatta. The event began with an opening ceremony of tropical drink, drinking. Once prepped, the ladies embarked into their respective dinghies, fired up engines and paraded around the marina giggling and laughing as the tropical drink drinking took full effect. An hour later the 5-dinghies rafted together, secured to a mooring and partied well past sunset before returning to the docks and the waiting arms of husbands.
In April, Teresa’s daughter Ashley and her boyfriend Matt visited us for nearly a week of Duval Street pub crawling. After picking them up at the airport at 10 pm, we took them to Hogs Breath Saloon for a nightcap before taking them to their hotel. Within moments of toasting with margaritas in hand, Ashley called out, “I think something’s crawling up my leg!” Eager to be mom again, Teresa began feeling Ashley’s leg through her jeans and quickly trapped a huge moving “bump,” now about knee high.
“Oh my god, it’s big,” she said.
Where everyone I know including myself would have been tearing off their clothes in the crowded bar, Ashley remain surprisingly calm. After I suggested they go to the bathroom and take off the jeans, Ashley hobbled off to the nearby toilet with Teresa in tow and hanging tightly on to the “thing” under Ashley’s jeans.
A moment later, we heard Teresa scream in the toilet. Then Ashley and then another woman let out loud yells that drowned out the band. Matt and I waited with baited breath until they came out and described what happened.
“It was huge,” said Ashley.
“Really huge,” said Teresa as she spread her thumb and index finger to indicate the size of the thing.
I said, “What was it?”
“It was a roach,” they replied in unison. “A huge roach!”
I said, “We call them palmetto bugs here, it sounds much nicer.”
Ashley shuddered and took a gulp of her margarita. “I don’t care what you call it, it was huge and it gives me the creeps.”
Matt asked, “Who was the other person who screamed?” Teresa and Ashley laughed. “It was a woman in one of the stalls; when we got the bug out of the jeans, it ran under the door to her stall.” We laughed and finished our drinks but not without constantly looking on the floor for more crawling creatures.
We filled the rest of their visit with water activities, bar hopping and seeking out the best conch fritters in town. There was a mini air show at the base so Matt and Ashley got to see a vintage WW II Corsair and the latest F-18 jets both up close and in flight. The last day of their visit we had a picnic on the beach here at the marina so they got to meet all of our friends and enjoy a slow and easy day before returning north to Raleigh the next day.
Sadly, May saw the departure of many of our marina friends sailing north for the summer. We’re glad to be staying in Key West this year but I’ll miss the voyage back to Chesapeake Bay which is always an adventure and challenge. The small group of us remaining here kicked off the summer by attending the annual drag races and a week later, the bed races on Duval Street. We then celebrated Teresa’s birthday with a shrimp scampi dinner and champagne aboard Lastdance. A few days later enjoyed our annual Kentucky Derby party up at the Navigator.
As we sit in the proverbial belly of the beast, we’re hoping for a VERY quiet hurricane season so we should have nothing more exciting to report next time other than how hot it got here in paradise. Have a great summer y’all!
