On January 22, we were up at 0600, pulled anchor while still in the dark, and aided by our powerful spotlight slowly motored out of Marco Island. As we moved offshore, the first hints of light began peeking out to the east behind us. As the sun was rising over Marco Island, Key West was over one hundred miles to our southwest, so we bumped the engines up to run around 10mph to ensure that we would be settled there while it was still daylight.

The pervasive crab pots, which are so vital to Florida’s fishing industry, are the bane of all that cruise these beautiful waters. They are a literal minefield, lying in wait to wrap their floating lines around the passing prop of a boater who is not vigilantly observant, or in some cases, just plain unlucky. Wrapping a crab pot line around your prop can foul the prop so hard that you lose the ability to steer (often requiring a mid-Gulf dive into the water to cut entangled lines free of the prop), and if the snarling of the line around the prop is violent enough, it can even bend the prop shaft. Once a prop shaft is bent it can mean that it is no longer snug against the seal at the point where the prop shaft exits the bottom of the boat, and that my friends, means the boat is at risk of taking on water. Already this season, there has been one report of a boater who ran afoul of a crab pot at night so badly that he lost the ability to steer and started taking on water, either through a compromised prop seal or from waves crashing over the stern of his boat which he could no longer keep properly aligned. He was rescued by the Coast Guard, but his boat is now somewhere on the bottom of the Gulf.

Along this stretch of the coast and Florida Bay, and really all throughout the Keys, crab pots are scattered everywhere, sometimes in a discernable pattern, and sometimes not. At one point that day, we were navigating through a field of at least 50 to 70 that were visible in our near range, and just when we thought we had figured out a rhythm to slip around them, others would randomly appear, having been previously obscured by the waves, the glare of the sun, a smear of grass or seaweed camouflaging its floating marker ball (or worse yet, a black floating marker ball – why, oh why, would anyone use a black float as a marker?). As soon as one crab pot is spotted, we immediately start looking for its “buddies” so we can figure out the pattern and steer clear.  In a nutshell, we spent the entire 107 miles from Marco Island to Key West looking for buddies.

As the day progressed, the wind grew stronger and waves on our quarter beam shifted directly to our beam and increased from a height of one to two feet, becoming three-to-four-foot waves spaced unrelentingly close. We employed our gyro to minimize the motion, but after it spun up, we got an error message, and it spun back down, leaving us with the sea motion. At the helm I started to unconsciously gimbal from the hip, counteracting the motion of the boat reacting to the broad side waves tipping us from side to side. Technically, a “gimbal” is a device (in my case, the unconscious and simultaneous hinging, twisting, and leaning to and from my hips and waist) that permits a body to incline freely in any direction or suspends it so that it will remain level (i.e., in sync with the horizon) when it’s support (the boat) is tipped (in this case, quite dramatically from side to side). I have always naturally, without thought, moved this way in heavy seas, and I believe that accounts for why I never experience seasickness. George is not wired that way, and occasionally suffers in heavy confused seas (on his first day at sea), but fortunately each of our three children seem to have inherited my “gimbaling” gene, which has made all our far-flung family adventures at sea possible over the years. (On a side note, we are gradually acclimating one son-in-law who is prone to severe motion sickness to being on the boat with us; or as our daughter would say, we insist on continuing to torture him. He probably felt queasy just reading my description of gimbaling. The good news, at least for us, is that his children seem to have inherited the gimbaling gene through their mother, so poor Ryan is likely to be asked to suffer through many more boat trips with us in the future.)

As if to compensate for the required drudgery of constant diligence and gimbaling, the sun shone warm and bright, and about forty miles out of Key West the water became a brilliant shade of translucent turquoise, crystal clear near the surface, and increasing in turquoise intensity the further down you looked. We had been in intermittent contact with the dockmaster for the city mooring field in Garrison Bight at Key West, and felt pretty confident that one of their “first-come-first served” mooring balls would be available when we arrived, but he had told us that if we wanted to be able to access the city through the locked gate of the Bight’s mooring field dinghy dock, that we would need to arrive at his office before 5pm to pick up our electronic gate cards. We increased our speed (shortening available reaction time to crab pots and increasing my nerves) to push up our arrival time, factoring in the time it would take us to secure the boat on a mooring, launch the dinghy, drive to the far interior harbor where the dockmaster was located, and complete all the check in paperwork (insurance, ID, boat registrations and payment, yada yada yadda….city bureaucracy requiring a bit more than a private marina, but quite understandable).

After ten plus hours of dodging crab pots while plowing through heavy seas, we decided to hang out on the boat for the evening, grill up some nice steaks, sip a little bourbon and/or red wine, and tackle the city of Key West in the morning. The absolute highlight of our day was coincidentally simultaneous FaceTime calls (one on George’s phone, and one on mine) from our grandchildren in Virginia and our baby grandson in Pensacola. It was the cherry on top of a wonderful day.

We slept peacefully with the boat on the mooring, with only a gentle hull slap, but no noise or jerking from the mooring lines (the solution George came up with in Marco Island continues to pay dividends). We dinghied over to the Bight’s dinghy dock, and DARN IT – after all the hullabaloo to speed up and arrive yesterday before the dockmaster’s office closed, Chris forgot to bring along the electronic gate cards that would allow us to enter and exit the secure dinghy dock! Poor George had to retrace our drive back to the boat to retrieve the gate cards (a not inconsiderable distance), while Chris waited sheepishly on the dock and pondered ways to make it up to him. In the meantime, she inspected all the dinghies without stickers that had been impounded (locked to the dock – the City of Key West means business, as they should).

As we left the lighthouse, we realized we were right around the corner from one of our favorite Key West restaurants, Blue Heaven. It is hard to describe Blue Heaven and why we make a point of visiting there any time we are in Key West. Of course, the food is always wonderful, especially the breakfasts. There is always a waiting list to be seated, but it is worth the wait (and they now own a space across the street where you can listen to live music and relax with a beverage while waiting for your table). Almost all seating at Blue Heaven is outside, on a sand and dirt floor, with some occasional decking underfoot, interspersed by beautiful trees and roosters roaming freely, funky Key West décor, a stage filled with live music, and all enclosed by a tall wooden fence and various paraphernalia hanging from the trees and items strung overhead. The effect of all this creates the illusion that you are sitting inside one of the coolest, coziest restaurants on the island.

After another delicious meal at Blue Heaven, we walked to the northern end of Duvall Street and headed back south. We did get drawn into one shop to buy a decent pair of sunglasses for Chris. I had resisted spending the big bucks to get top of the line polarized sunglasses, but after a month squinting at the reflection on the water and struggling to distinguish the color of navigation marks with my Foster Grants from Walmart, I decided it would be reasonable to invest in something better (In my mind, real estate and boats have been the only things I thought worth spending real money on, and I am finding out that I may have been wrong about that).

We couldn’t hang around after the tour to do more tasting because we wanted to join an afternoon gathering of other Loopers who were in Key West that had been organized at one of the downtown marinas. Once again, it was nice to meet others who are on the Loop and to learn from their stories and tips. We (Chris) decided that we should forego George’s ‘suggestion’ of walking to Mallory Square for sunset (while he was hustling me in that direction I asked enough pointed questions to learn it was about a mile in the wrong direction) and instead walked about a mile back to our dinghy dock, and another restful night on the boat. I am not sure whether I am getting smarter, or George is starting to respond to training. All I know is that I narrowly avoided turning a one mile walk into a three mile after dark slog. Things are starting to look up.

George put together a video of our trip from Marco Island to Key West and our time in Key West. We hope you enjoy our view of this fun city at the southern most point.