11-12 September 2018: Finding Fellow Adventurers

11-12 September 2018: Finding Fellow Adventurers

Tired and dirty from our marathon run from Gulfport to Tampa, Robert and I determined to take a day to rest, clean the boat, and get what provisions we needed.  Breck returned to cooler climes and the warm arms of his lovie in the morning, so for the rest of the trek it would be Team Murphy.

 

We slept late, ate a pancake breakfast, cleaned inside Adventuress, and made a list of things we would need at the marine supply store and the grocery.  By mid-day we were ready for our errands.  However, we were moored at a swanky marina on Anna Marie Island, a swanky resort island.  Anything as pedestrian as a marine supply store or grocery was not on the island, and certainly not within in walking distance, especially on this day.

 

It seemed like the Florida heat conspired to make us even more uncomfortable, and although it was not outrageously hot, it was so humid we felt as if we were being smothered in wet blankets.  Everything was sticky and sweaty.  Even after you showered, you felt wet and dirty.

 

But we needed to get the supplies, so we called a Lyft.  Our driver was a cheery Aussie, the burnished bronze of a white guy who has spent a lifetime in at sea.  To his question of how I was ta-day, I answered hot and sweaty.  I told him that it was not like this at home.  So, of course he asked where home was, and to our very great surprise we found out that he had just come home from a sailing trip around the San Juan Islands.  Well, that got us all talking about boating, and the places we’d been, or where he’d been, or the things we’d done.

 

Before we’d gotten to the marine supply store, we were getting along famously.   Captain John “Whitey” White was an Aussie who had been bitten by the boat bug bad as a young man, after his tour of the South Pacific by motorcycle had stalled out in New Zealand.  He met another man in a bar who eventually asked if he’d want to crew a sailboat to San Francisco.  Sure, Whitey said, and he’s been boating ever since.  Whitey, and his equally interesting wife Max, have been running a charter business now for many years.  They crew the vessel and take a group of vacationers out on a cruise of a lifetime.  Max is a professional chef, PADI dive instructor, and also a certified captain.  Together, Whitey and Max have sailed or boated across the Atlantic, across the Pacific (several times), and locked the Panama Canal eighteen times.

 

By the time we were done with our errands, Whitey had invited us to a talk he had been invited to give about the time his boat hit a container and sank in twenty minutes.  He’d be happy to pick us up. Turns out that Whitey and Max were giving a talk to one of the local boating clubs, this one called Manatee Sailing Association.  The folks of the MSA were very much like our own club, and the commodore, Karen Brazell, even went so far as to say that the sailing club was like family.  Well, we had dinner with them, and heard Whitey and Max talk about their harrowing adventure, the things they did wrong and right, and the business of the club, which one member said was a really party club with a sailing problem.

 

If you’re interested in knowing more about Whitey and Max’s experience hitting a container, and more importantly, how they survived, their book is for sale on their website.  Tropic Wind Yacht Charters.  Whitey says that they get a beer a copy.

 

The website for the Manatee Sailing Association is here.

 

The next day, we needed to make our way south.  There were two ways we could go:  the intracoastal or out in the open water.  Over breakfast and coffee, we looked over the charts.  Before we could finish, we’d already counted something like ten bridges. They were all low enough that we’d have to ask the bridgemaster to open the span, an all of them only opened two times an hour.  At that rate, we’d never make it.  So open water it would be.

 

In the morning, the denizens of Anna Marie Island had come out to inspect Adventuress.  A white egret with black legs and yellow feet stood on the dock, eying us gamely, and very improbably, a baby crab had managed to come up into the cockpit, scaring the holy bejezus out of me by scrabbling over my foot while we were disembarking. Mind you, I half expected us to be mobbed by the wildlife.  There were several slips opposite the dock from us.  They were all grown in with trees and there were all manner of birds and animals in those trees.  One of them snorted like a pig.

 

SOMEONE HAS SOME FANCY STOCKINGS!

 

ANOTHER DAY… ANOTHER STOWAWAY.

 

 

Our second decision of the day was whether to take on more fuel or pump out.  By now the tide was running low, and the safe clearance we’d had when we came into the slip was draining away.  We also had a pretty stiff breeze to contend with.  We made a plan that we’d come out of our slip and hold in the fairway.  At that time, Robert could make the call based on wind, water depth, and space to maneuver whether we’d go to the fuel dock.  We slid out of our slip, the wind trying to grind us up against the pylons driven on the port side of the slip, made the turn into the fairway without getting blown too far out of position, and held for a moment.  We were in five feet of water.  No bueno.  We waved off.  Tomorrow or maybe the next day, we will have to pump out.

 

 

We headed out into the Gulf again and proceeded south.  The wind was fair and the seas calm, but again the humidity was a constant sticky presence.  On this day, the sun never really came out.  A damp gray haziness hung over most of the day.  Towards the afternoon, the calming seas reflected back only a uniform gray, making the world seem oddly out of focus.

 

It was about mid-day that we started seeing the dead fish.  And then, after we had spotted the first one, they were everywhere.  The whiteness of their bellies spreading all over their fishy corpses, they were all bent with rigor.  Mile after mile we traveled with the dead whiteness contrasting with the sickly green of the water.  By 1400 hours, we started smelling the odor of dead fish.  We’d been warned that the “red” tide smell was also bad for people, containing some of the same toxins that killed all those fish.    We headed inside Adventuress and buttoned her up, turning on the AC to keep comfortable.

 

Eventually, we stopped seeing dead fish, and the odor passed.  We came back out to be more comfortable in the breeze on the flying bridge.  We got to our evening marina with almost an hour of daylight to spare.

 

Cabbage Key was cute.  Quaint, circa 1930s whitewashed buildings sat nestled in the lush green Florida foliage.  The marina had asked if they would expect us for dinner at their restaurant when we called for a slip.  On land, there was a marker placed there by the Historical Society.  It said that Cabbage Key had been in continuous habitation by the Native Americans of the area until the 1930s, when the land was taken over.  The restaurant is on top of an Indian shell mound, and I noted somewhat cynically that it appeared that only the white structures (no pun intended) were historical, because there were no Native American structures.

 

When we pulled in, we saw two old boaters taking their leisure on the cockpit come out on the dock to help us.  It was the first time we had other boaters come out to handle lines for us on our journey.

 

I say boaters, because there is a big difference between boaters and people who own boats.  Boaters seem belong to a community and will be there with a helping hand out even if you’re complete strangers.  People who own boats, well, they don’t know the Code.  (As I write this, I’m chuckling to myself, remembering the Pirate Code from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Parlay?)

 

At any rate, these two gentlemen had been taking the evening air on their cockpit, and were happy to admire our boat, ask where we were coming from, where we were bound.  One of them apologized for the Florida humidity.  They offered us a welcome glass of chilled white wine to celebrate our landing.  All in all, it was very pleasant.

 

We returned the favor by helping another boat come in.  They were not as … skilled.  The captain hit the dock twice before he got her in the slip.  They didn’t have a single fender out, and the (poor) boat looked rode hard, put away wet.

 

It takes all kinds, I guess.

 

By this time, it was full dark.  I had dinner put together, and we ate on the fly bridge.  It was front row seating to yet another light show.  Four separate thunderstorms were converging on our location but were yet some miles away.  We watched for an hour while the thunderheads lit the night sky with a truly insane number of lightning strikes.  Yellow, orange, and blue and white bolt after bolt.  Sometimes we could see the bolts hitting the ground, but mostly the lightning was from cloud to cloud.  At one point, we counted multiple strikes a second.  Eventually, the storms came close enough that we started hearing the thunder and the wind picked up, and we knew it was time to go inside.

360 OF CABBAGE KEY… BEFORE THE LIGHT SHOW

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