Dry Tortugas

On a beautiful Sunday morning around 8am, we departed Key West....10-15kt ESE winds with following seas of 2-4ft...finally on our way to the Dry Tortugas in what was a long-planned rendezvous with our Regatta Point Marina (Palmetto, FL) fellow dock-mates. The first leg of the journey was about 20 miles to a group of islands called the Marquesas....uninhabited except for the birds and dolphins....and the abandoned Cuban chugs onshore.

(a borrowed pic from the web)

(a borrowed pic from the web)

Chugs are the handmade-with-anything-ya-got boats that the Cubans chance their lives with in the name of freedom.  It's unknown how many don't actually make it, but judging by the examples, it's probably on the high side.  These boats will carry  around 15-25 people for the 90 mile journey, but crossing the Gulf Stream is not for wimps.....unbelievable.  If they can set foot on American soil, they get to stay and start a new life.  If they're caught out in the water, they're sent back with humiliation to Cuba.  This leads to some of them frantically swimming to shore when land is sighted.

 So close, yet so far.  

We personally have mixed feelings for the bridge being open to Cuba in the future.  
We hope for "grace" in their evolution....not revolution.

We were all alone in this world when we dropped anchor in 12 feet water around 3pm on the west side of the Marquesas in protection of the land from the easterly winds that night.  We had heard about the north/south strong current here, so we gave our Rocna anchor 60 ft of chain rode (5:1 scope)....and she held well as we flipped directions a couple times that night.  Magic visited us that night, as the shifting waters carried globs of neon phosphorescence by our hull....like little glowing green alien beings in a flotilla on their way to a all night party.  Maybe that's my Roswell roots reminding me where I came from.
  
At sunrise we upped anchor to yet another beautiful day of 10-15kt winds directly behind us outta the east....as we're heading due west.  Without a spinnaker or whisker pole for our genoa sail, this meant we had to tack with the wind----to the northwest.....and to the southwest.....we had 40 miles to go (as the bird flies), and at an average of 5 knots per hour, that will take us 8 hours...as the bird flies.  In the end, since we can't fly like a bird,  we got some help from our Yanmar 35HP engine to get us in the last 8 miles.....it's called motor-sailing and we all admittedly do more than we really want to. It ended up taking about 9 hours. But we had contacted our yachtie friends on VHF channel 16 and knew they were already in the anchorage....that cold beer was gonna be the best ever!

Dry Tortugas National Park

It's in the middle of nowhere in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles from the nearest bag of ice and flushing toilet.  It was a group of islands inhabited by turtles when Ponce de Leon first discovered it....and named it Las Tortugas.  Later, it was renamed by another explorer (can't remember this one) to reflect the lack of water on the charts...hence the Dry Tortuga's.  We went into this adventure with open minded expectations and when we first spotted it on the horizon, we thought it was the island----land-ho!  But as we got closer we realized it was a manmade brick monstrosity....called Fort Jefferson.

Ft Jefferson from a mile out

Fiesta anchored with Ft Jefferson....and the perfect clouds

We pulled into the anchorage south of the fort and found 4 boats----our dock mates from Palmetto, already set on the hook and recuperating from their long 29 hour overnight-wild-ride down from the Ft Meyers Beach area....about 110 miles north.

  So fun to see them all again!!!

Left to right---me, Bill from Sola, Margaret/Jim from Well, Why Not?, 

Chris/Linn from Annie-C, Joni/Robert from Rest-A-Shore

Interior grounds of Fort Jefferson

A lighthouse was first built here in 1825,(lots of wrecks in the area) but in 1846, the US started building it's largest fort named after Pres. Jefferson on Garden Key island.  It's this unbelievable hexagon mammoth fortress of 16 million bricks...complete with an array of cannons all the way around......and a moat.....WITH a proverbial 7ft crocodile resident--no one knows how he got there.  We saw him, but he was shy for my camera.

 So the million brick dollar question is.....why?

  

A.  To defend the Mississippi River to NY commerce route---yes.

B.  To defend the Gulf Coast corridor to the Atlantic---yes.

C.  To defend las tortugas (turtles)----not yet...they were actually a main meal

D.  To defend from Cuban Chugs---nope.

It was in Union hands as the Civil War raged, and by 1875 without a shot ever fired in defense, the construction had stopped....because the coral/sand foundation began shifting as much as a foot in places and the million+ gallon-rain-collecting-underground-cisterns had filled with salt water.....oops.  Alas, mother nature wins again. 

As we wandered around the property in our shorts and t-shirts slugging down bottles of water in the 80+ temps, I wondered how the population of 2000 inhabitants dressed in their wool military uniforms and women in layers of long skirts survived these hot and dehydrating conditions.   

    

  

Tim and Margaret

Our fleet of boats amongst the daily tourist seaplanes taking off

The only way to get here is via boat or seaplane.  There is a large National Park ferry that comes over for about 5 hours everyday from Key West with a hundred or more tourists.....they're the ones with splotches of pink on white skin where the sunscreen missed.  By the way, the turquoise water around the park is a protected marine sanctuary making the snorkeling a big attraction holding up to our expectations.

A very unique aspect of this particular National Park is the mostly unrestricted roaming freedom they give to the visitor.....there's no guardrails when you walk around the 3rd story ramparts....or "watch your step!" signs with the uneven-toe-stubbing floors.....there's no grate over the open shafts to the water cisterns......there's not even a 

"WARNING! Live crocodile in moat!" sign?!!??

Masonry marvels

Margaret hiking the upper ramparts

More Cuban Chug boats and stories of survival this time

Watch for Tim's next video filmed here--coming soon!

On the island next to the fort is a designated bird sanctuary that is flogged with thousands of Sooty Terns (gulls) and Pelicans.  The raucous was all day and all night. But one of my favorites was the large hovering Magnificent Frigates over the fort with their 7.5ft wingspan and forked tails----they reminded me of prehistoric Teradactyls from the dinosaur age. 

All in all this was one of our most exciting adventures yet....we stayed 5 nights, but could have easily stayed another month.  Don't know if we'll ever go back, because there's so many other adventures to cross off the list.

Our 70 mile return trip back to Key West was one of those "forgettable" motor-slogging--no sail-into-very-large-waves-with-the wind-on-the-nose trips....for two days. 

But, alas, every day is not without an adventure....so about an hour east of Fort Jefferson, Fiesta sprang a fuel leak in a low pressure fuel line between the lift pump and secondary fuel filter---though it was pinpoint small, it was shooting out about 6 inches all over the galley floor.....OFF! with the engine, and UP! with the sails.  

Jim, on Well, Why Not?, radios us asking if we have any "rescue tape" to try and wrap it?  No....we didn't think so... we couldn't think straight about this yet. We tell the other boats to go on, we'll have to sail our way back to Key West....it'll only take 4 days...

or 4 months.  

Jim and Margaret, not willing to leave us behind, have figured out a way to get us this rescue tape in a dry bag, floating on a buoy and attached to a long line.

SuperJim

Picture this....

  we're all in HUGE waves 4-6 ft, (maybe more? largest yet, anyway) hobby-horsing from the top of one to the bottom of the other.   We manage to get Fiesta hove-to in these waves (a sailing maneuver that allows us stability and to pretty much stand still)... meanwhile, on Well, Why Not? ---Margaret is at the helm and Jim on deck, they make three totally heroic passes within 25ft of our boat (watching that our masts don't meet up in the rolling waves) while we stand ready with a boat hook....1st try, tossed too soon.....2nd time, fouled line.....3rd time-the charm---a lobbing hail-mary toss and we got it!  

Margaret, dear Margaret....omg, you ROCK behind that helm!!! I know it made the grey hairs go white or even fall out, but the rescue tape saved the trip and we all persevered for 2 days motoring back to civilization via another beautiful night in the Marquesas.

Meet Margaret and Jim, retired llama ranchers from Minnesota....as new and open-hearted as we are at this high sea adventure thing.  And their stalwartly Morgan 44, Well, Why Not?

Read their story and adventures at www.svwellwhynot.blogspot.com

And our other fun adventure companions, retired 
truck drivers Chris and Linn on Annie-C---a living ark Catalina 34....with their cuter-than-shit dog named Abby....and talking parrot, Katie.

Katie says "What a pretty girl" but learning "Land-ho!"

We spent a few days in Key West wandering the streets looking for key lime pie and 
West Marine (the expensive chain store for marine supplies).  While we waited for our Yanmar fuel line to arrive in the mail, our yachtie friends left a day before us for Marathon. On Friday morning April 17, we left Key West harbor........but, oh no!  
We had totally forgotten it's 
taboo or bad luck to leave a harbor on FRIDAYS!  But luck was with us that day as we had THE best day ever for sailing up to Marathon....winds 15-17kt off our starboard beam gave us 5.5-6 knots speed, waves were like bucking broncos at first and then calmed down to 2-4ft....one tack the whole 8 hours....passing about 10 sailboats heading west (so much for taboo laws)......payback time after all the motoring.


Currently, we are all 3 moored side by side tucked back into the bosom of Boot Key Harbor in Marathon for the next week or two getting our always inevitable repairs and upgrades done. The weather has turned really warm....actually kind of hot....but by the time the harbor residents blow their conch horns at sunset every night, it's cooled down and so lovely to be floating here in Marathon.  Many boats have left this harbor, heading back up the east coast for summer or off to Bimini and beyond to the Bahamas.  

We have finally laid out our future plans.  Our older daughter, Malia, will be flying to the FL Keys on May 1st to check out what her crazy parents have done now....and to assist in getting Fiesta back up north to Palmetto to Regatta Point Marina near the Tampa Bay area, where she'll stay through the summer under our friend Mike Fauser's care .  Then in mid-May we all 3 fly up to Burlington, VT to attend Krista's graduation....double major, Psychology and Global Studies....we are so proud of her!  She has been offered several jobs in health organizations around Vermont and just needs to decide which one.  Tim, myself and Malia will then fly back to Taos to live for the summer into fall....working in some part time seasonal job (got one?) to replenish the cruising kitty for another high seas adventure into the Bahamas next winter.  

What a year we've had.

We have no regrets----only excitement for what's next!