Covid-19

So it’s March 13th and the bars on Duval St. are open and seems worried about the Covid-19 pandemic but that will change by the end of this post.

Five Days

Preppy flew back to Boston yesterday but I rented my slip here in Key West for another five days. I was happy that Teresa had decided to drive down for the weekend so we could spend that time together. We started our weekend by hoping on the scooters and hitting Duval St.

1st stop Pinchers Crab Shack.

There was a woman playing guitar and she was great.

She kept us laughing the whole time

We were enjoying some beer, margaritas and bang bang shrimp (wow those were good).

The table is covered with brown paper which I keep spilling IPA on

It’s happy hour so they bring you 2 IPAs every time you order one 😉

I’m not sure how we missed the “Bucket of Fun” on that menu?

At one point a patron of the bar was proposing to the the guitar player by offering her a roll of toilet paper. At first it looked like he was going to win her over with the roll but she was clearly holding out for more.

You can see our scooter handlebars behind the singer and it was time to jump on them and go exploring Key West before this happy hour slows us down. So off we went scootering.

Southernmost Point Buoy

When in Key West, you must stop at the Southernmost Point Buoy and take a picture. There was a line to take a picture so we figured we’d simply stand in the street and take a selfie with the famous buoy.

Tuck & Roll

I forgot to mention to Teresa that when scootering, you cannot take your hands off the handlebars for any reason. Cow Key Channel Bridge (pictured below) was the scene of the horrific crash. Rather than wait for the med flight to arrive, Teresa agreed to scooter back to MV Simple Life where I would bandage her back together.

Boat Cruise

The next day was warm and sunny so we figured we’d untie Simple Life and slip away from the dock for a boat ride around Key West.

You can see the northern tip of Fleming Key behind us. Fleming Key and bridge that connects it to Key West are part of a section of the Naval Air Station Key West called “Trumbo Point” and are inaccessible to civilians without US Navy clearance.

Duval St Take Two

The next day we explored Key West again. This time via Uber and somehow we still wound back up at Pinchers. Teresa was born and raised in Florida and grew up on seafood. I think she’s working on converting me into a seafood guy. We had just enough time for one last obligatory selfie before our Uber arrived to take us back to Simple Life.

I pretty sure the 2for1s were flowing this night 😉

It was a weekend to remember.

Publix Run

The next day I put on my backpack climbed into the dinghy and set out across the shallow bay to Publix supermarket. Figuring I could carry four times as many groceries in the dinghy than the scooter, my plan seemed to make sense. The plan was to land the dinghy along the roadway in front of Publix. This resupply mission would ultimately fail. I had drastically underestimated just how shallow the water was around Salt Pond Keys and especially as you get close to the roadway.

Dinghy path shown in red from marina on right to Publix at the bottom

Feeling defeated, I returned to the marina tied the dinghy up and hopped on my scooter for multiple resupply runs. It was March 16th and people were still shopping without masks or protective gear.

While Simple Life has a fridge and freezer with a separate sub-zero freezer I could load up on perishables and simply freeze them but like most boaters I prefer to stock the pantry full of non-perishables.

Good thing I stocked up on beer because on March 17th at 5PM on St. Paddy’s Day, the FL Keys shut down all the bars due to Covid-19. My plans to enjoy a few IPAs @ Irish Kevin’s on Duval St. died a few hours before it would have started. Maybe another time?

Dinghy Fishing

I’m now back at the boat and tired from all the lugging food & beer on the scooter. The night was warm so I figured it was a great night to go fishing in the dinghy.

Plenty of height to squeeze the dink under Cow Key Channel bridge

On my last night in Key West I was reading on Facebook a post from a fellow trawler guy who motored past a a 63′ Viking sport fishing boat aground on a jetty. He snapped this photo in the early morning before the sun came up.

Seems the boat ran into the jetty in the night. I felt horrible for the captain of MV Fuelish Pleasure as this kind of thing can happen to any captain when you lose situational awareness. Sometimes when it’s pitch black out and you have the brightness of the chartplotter turned way down it’s hard to see all the chart detail. Add to that the boat is bouncing up and down and it’s easy to make a mistake in the dark.

The captain may have been trying to pass between two shallow spots on the chart and might not have noticed the thin line that depicts a rock jetty. It’s very easy to do.

The arrow points to a thin chart line that is a rock jetty

The chart above is of the St. Mary’s Inlet where this accident occurred. It is right on the Florida – Georgia line between Cumberland Island to the north and Amelia Island to the south. You can see my route line in red where I would was anchored in the Amelia River near the #1 waypoint. I used this route to exit that same inlet in 12 days after leaving Key West. I did a 40 hour solo offshore beginning the morning of 3/27/20. You’ll read about that when I catch up writing these blog posts. I’m glad nobody was injured in this accident.

Downtown Fort Myers

I had been waiting for a good friend of mine, Preppy to fly into Fort Myers. That day has arrived. As soon as he had stowed his bag in the guest stateroom we dropped the Segway scooters on the dock and it was to explore downtown Fort Myers. First stop… Ford’s Garage for a burger and some IPAs.

Ford’s Garage’s bar has a beer cooling feature that I had never seen. It’s a refrigerated chill plate the runs the whole length of the bar. The bartenders and customers place their schooner beer glass on the chill plate to keep their drinks cold. The humid Florida air has the effect of creating a layer of frost on the chill plate that makes a great low friction, melted frost, beer spinning activity. I felt some strange addiction to spinning my IPA. Like a fidget spinner but for an IPA.

IPA spinning addiction… It’s real folks!

Fort Myers Beach

A day after Preppy arrived and my slip rental at Fort Myers Yacht Basin has come to an end. I need to push on to Key West and eventually start making my journey back home to RI. Schedules in long-range transient boating rarely work due to issues with weather, repairs, etc. You must plan to have downtime.

Preppy & I got a late start leaving Fort Myers and made a short cruise to Salty Sam’s in FMB for the night. Fort Myers Beach is a fun location and it was time to put the dink in the water and go out for some drinks. First stop… Matanzas Inn.

Oklahoma!, Oklahoma! It’s not the Safe Word but the bartender’s name!

Back aboard, Preppy wasted no time cooking up Bubba burgers with peppers & onions on buttered buns.

Naples Not Marco Island

We were planning on stopping in Marco Island as a HS friend has a place there and I thought it might be nice to ping her and see if she and husband could meet up for a drink. However, the weather and Covid-19 were not making that a reality.

Windfinder Pro app shows a strong East wind that made our trip a bit lumpy

We decided that we would come in from the Gulf at the Naples inlet and find a place to anchor inside for a day or two until the weather settled. The inlet was rough with breakers on both sides but once inside it was peaceful. We motored all the way into downtown Naples searching for a marina or anchorage deep enough to hold Simple Life’s 5′ draft. Repeatedly we ran into shallows at each anchorage we attempted. With no open slips at marinas either, I thought we’d have to go back out the Naples inlet into a lumpy gulf of Mexico and forge on to Marco Island? However, there was one last anchorage just inside the inlet. Our anchorage of last resort turned out to be safe haven.

Naples Inlet and our anchorage can be seen

This Naples anchorage was peaceful and turned out to the first of two stops along our route to Key West.

Shark River in the Everglades

When we left Naples we set a course directly for the Lower Keys and ultimately, Key West. I have read that Marathon is defined as the “Middle Keys” between Key Largo in the “Upper Keys” and Key West in the “Lower Keys”. The wind was 20+kts out of the East with gusts much higher. The path I had chosen took us quite some distance from the shore and thus gave the wind more water to blow across (properly referred to as “fetch” or the distance traveled by wind or waves across open water). The larger the fetch, the taller the waves. We needed to seek out smaller waves as taking large waves on our beam was not enjoyable. So we decided to make a 90′ turn to port and run head-on into the waves till we were closer to shore before turning southward again. This also meant that we were going to have to anchor somewhere along the shore rather than our original plan to make it to Key West before nightfall.

Our trip from Naples to the Everglades to Key West and then the inside Keys route to Miami and points north

The depths were shallow for a long way in as we approached the Little Shark River anchorage just north of Cape Sable. We found a sailboat anchored here and chatted a bit on the VHF as we dropped anchor. A friendly couple who told us she was local to the Everglades area and he was from Alaska. They said they spend quite a bit of time in this particular anchorage.

The next morning we ran south down the coast till the southern edge of Cape Sable. At this point it was advantageous to do another 90 degree turn, this time to starboard and put the now increasing waves on our stern. The rest of the trip down the lower keys was spent with a following sea.

Caldera or Northwest Channel?

We were looking to get out of the following sea and into Key West. I decided to take the narrow and winding Calda Channel which I had successfully navigated in 2018. It’s much faster to take this channel then have to continue west till you get to the larger, much deeper Northwest Channel. The NW Channel is used by the Key West Express high speed ferries that run between Fort Myers Beach or Marco Island and Key West.

Big waves and shallow water are not a captains friend. Still traversing the Calda Channel would shave off over an hour of travel. However, we only made it to the first Green #1 Daymark before we slowly ran aground. The shallow water alarm is set at 6′ and it was blaring away. I backed up and attempted to poke the bow around to see if I could find deeper water and a path further into Calda Channel. No luck! We had to spin in the wind & waves and make our way further west to the official Northwest Channel. (see picture below)

As we entered the proper Key West Northwest Channel we found plenty of water and a wide easy to navigate channel (pictured below)

There are two ways into Key West.

1. Key West Main Channel as it is called which comes in from Hawk’s Channel which runs the whole south side of the Florida Keys.

2. The NorthWest Channel that comes in from the inside of the Lower Keys or Gulf of Mexico.

As we approached the end of the NW Channel where it meets the Key West Main Channel we saw the cruise ship which is often docked in port. It was March 9th and Covid-19 virus infections were increasing in each US state. We could only guess that the people we saw on the room balconies were crew disinfecting rooms and not passengers?

As we passed this cruise ship I’m guessing the people aboard during the Covid-19 pandemic were disinfecting it?

Wisteria Island

Now in the main channel we are passing Tank & Wisteria Islands (pictured above on left side of Key West). All around Wisteria Island is the Key West Anchorage and the boats here are mostly permanent liveaboards. Sadly, their boats are often lost to frequent hurricanes ex. Wilma, Irma, etc. Many who homes got sunk moved onto Wisteria Island and setup tents to live. There is a legal battle about who owns Wisteria Island and if it is dangerous. I have wanted to dinghy over to the island but have never done so yet. What is the truth about this island? Is it safe? IDK

Feel good story about the Children who grew up on Wisteria Island after the 2005 Hurricane season shipwrecked them – 10 min

Is Wisteria Island safe? IDK But when $ is involved you can expect corruption – 10 mins long

When you motor through the anchorage you will be amused at how creative some are with building floating log cabins or sheds to hold the things they need. It reminds me of the 1995 movie Waterworld.

I had called several marinas and finally booked a 10 day reservation at Sunset Marina on Stock Island. Stock Island is the first island as you leave Key West.

Sunset Marina

Nobody from the marina was there to catch our lines but a couple cleaning the bottom of their boat were kind enough to catch a line as we backed in.

Once tied up at the dock it was time for some IPA and steaks.

Pub Crawl

Then drop the scooters on the dock and ride into Duval St. in Key West for some bar hoping.

Scooters

Exploring Key West on scooters is a blast. Have I mentioned that I believe the pair of scooters was a perfect addition to MV Simple Life? I bought them on Amazon if anyone is interested.

Now driving around on a scooter with a big dorky helmet can look a little silly but be sure to make sure your friend has not stuck childish pins in your helmet to make it look even worse. I did not notice this pin until I had already driven all around Duval St.

Beer Run Turned Police Crash

Even funnier was what happened on our way scootering back to the boat from a beer run. So Preppy and I are scootering past a pair of policemen who are sitting on the hood of their car which is blocking the road that leads to our boat. I’m not sure of the legality of scootering down the road so you try to avoid any law enforcement of such behavior. So I’m in the lead and I say “hello officers” as I speed by the front of them and prepare to stop and take a hard left turn onto the sidewalk. It’s in that moment that I hear Preppy look over at them and say “Hi guys” as I feel Preppy slam into the back of me now that I stopped to turn. It sends me flying forward on the scooter off the sidewalk and into the grass but somehow I managed to stay up even with a 20 lb. backpack full of beer. I knew the right thing to do in that moment was… DON’T STOP. Just keep on scooting like nothing happened. I was dying laughing but I’ll bet not as hard as the two officers!

Preppy Fly Home

When the day came for Preppy to fly out we called an Uber and walked past the tarpon swimming in the marina

It was lots of fun having Preppy aboard but he must get back to New England especially with this Covid-19 Pandemic worsening.

Tag: Covid-19

Key West Reloaded