Tuesday: Remember when I told you that Mr. Southern Comfort had been sick after being to Key West? He had been in Sickbay for three days, and when we had boat tails on Antonia with him, it was his first day out. Well – I either caught the Key West Krud from him, or I caught my own version. Stuffed up and throbbing head. All Day. I spent the entire day moving from the bed to the couch to the bed to the couch. At least it was raining outside so we weren’t missing anything on our Key West adventure! So – no pictures today. As they say on Princess Bride, I was mostly dead most of the day.
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Wednesday: My head wasn’t pounding today – YAY! Still stuffy and starting to cough, but I might live. We got the phone call from the Harbormaster that we need to move Island Girl this morning. The Cat that was in our new spot was just getting his lines in and shoving off. The marina guy came by to pump out our holding tank since it would be a lot harder to do in our next spot. As soon as that was done, we untied our lines and moved around the dock to the other side.
It was a bit breezy out, with the wind pushing us into the dock, so it wasn’t going to be an easy task to get the boat off the dock, let alone turn her around to head out the fairway bow first. But we got her pushed her off, and Captain backed us all the way out of the fairway. He has never been a fan of backing up long distances, but the bow thruster has made it much more controllable. The tricky part was that the end of this dock is right at the entrance to the whole harbor so there is always a lot of traffic there. We had to wait for a BIG sail Catameran tour boat to get out of the way, then we could make our turn around and head back in. Down the new fairway and we backed into the new slip, right across from where we just came from. We got all tied up, and within a half hour, the big pretty 85’ yacht with her three crew members came in and got Botti all secured. That was a great game of musical boat slips!
We went out and wandered around town a bit. I found a www.cityofkeywest-fl.gov page that shows the cruise ship schedule. Only one ship in town today, and it’s been here since 7:00am. So we walked down to Mallory Square and all around, then down a few back streets rather than Duval. We found a really cute Brewery in an old house. It’s actually called First Flight Island Restaurant and Brewery, and is in the house where Pan American Airlines started!
It was a really cute place with a nice outdoor courtyard. There was a young man playing guitar and singing which was nice. We sat at the open air bar and Kenny tried one of their beers. I had a hard raspberry tea that was good. They had some pretty creative stuff on their menu.
There were lots of people enjoying lunch.
What a fun find! There are so many great places in this town that are tucked away off of Duval, but most people only stroll down that one street.
After that, we strolled our way down to the Rum Bar. I told you it’s our favorite. It was really crowded today, so I scored us a couple of chairs outside on the front porch. I just had water, feeling like I needed to hydrate and take care of my sick self. We enjoyed visiting with various folks, then found our way back to the boat.
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Thursday: Apparently I overdid myself yesterday, because I was wiped out today. Kenny wasn’t 100% either, so it was another full day of just lounging around sickbay. We keep watching the weather. It has been windy every day! Our reservations here are to leave on Monday. So far, as luck would have it, Monday is still looking like a good travel day – just about the ONLY good travel day this week or next! The wind is going to die down, and hopefully the waves out in the Gulf will die down as well. We’ve been watching several different forecasts trying to decide if Monday or Tuesday will be a better day. We need a really good day for the 100+ miles Key West to Marco Island. Then we need a good morning to get from Marco up to Fort Myers and back into the ICW protected waters. We’ll keep watching.
OK…….
Did you make it home?
Are you recovered from your sickness?
Good grief….we have been following you the whole LOOP and were very lucky to find you via the BOC and live your journey. BUT – you left us high and dry on the Key West adventure.
WASSUP??