The disadvantage of living in the sub tropics is that the blood thins. It really does, though some people think its a joke. When temperatures drop below seventy (local zero) it starts to feel seriously cold. The lowest recorded temperature in Key West was 41 degrees and I have seen 50 degrees (10 Celsius)on the thermometer which was as cold as I ever want to see again. Thus it is that when people from Up North come down to splash on the beach in December and revel in temperatures around 70 degrees locals are wearing sweaters and boots and dusting off their winter wardrobes. When I read of people motorcycling on a lovely 40 degree day I shudder. So for me, swimming season is when the water is 80 degrees, preferably higher.
We're not quite there but we are definitely getting close. Last week I put the boat in the water and tied it up at the dock behind my house. Having a house on a canal is a wonderful thing, and sea waters are close enough to 80 degrees now that swimming will be an almost daily activity till the second cold front of the Fall. Choosing between the motorcycle and the boat for recreation will cause me some severe indecision between now and November.
My house lies about a quarter mile from the open waters of Newfound Harbor along a canal that is bordered by quite a few homes and mangrove bushes. It seems crowded but it's quite wide enough for the snorkeling boat that leaves from Looe Key Resort each day and takes a few dozen people out to the reef 7 miles south of Newfound Harbor. My neighbors keep some pretty impressive boats at their docks:
When we bought the house my wife and I decided we wanted to scale back and get something small and simple to tie up at our dock, a boat that we could use with very little effort or preparation each day. We ended up with a 14-foot used Dusky self bailing center console, and it has no lights or electronics. We have a 25 horsepower Yamaha that can push the boat up to 23 miles per hour, as I have measured it. For a sailor used to lumbering along at 6 mph such speeds still seem astronomical. The Yamaha also uses very little fuel which these days makes casual boating very easy to enjoy:
In addition to not enjoying getting blind drunk every day I dislike fishing which puts me in the minority camp in the Keys as far as recreation goes! I love to swim though and having the ability to jump in the boat and go for a quick swim any day of the week is a big part of the pleasure of summer for me. My wife gets home at say 3, we get in the boat and go swim till 4:30 and I have time to shower off the salt water and get to work by 6 pm. That's another great reason to work nights, the afternoons are still mine to go swimming... On my days off it stays light till past 8pm this time of year so we can be out on the water for a long time in the evenings. This is the corner of the canal as it turns out into the open waters:
That's Newfound Harbor beyond the channel markers, an almost circular body of water whose shores give wave protection from any direction the wind blows. Our neighborhood association planted a bunch of official looking channel markers after Hurricane Wilma trashed the old ones. The channel is cut from coral rock and is only wide enough for one boat at a time:
But once out there is an abundance of places to drop the anchor and enjoy the water:
In the distance here is Little Palm Resort, at the entrance to Newfound Harbor, where they charge up to $1200 for one night in one of their cabins. It's a resort where wealthy famous people sometimes commandeer the whole island all for themselves to live for a week in privacy the way I live all the time...You can see a big white blob which is a boat tied up to their docks:
Little Palm is actually a very cool spot, much nicer than I imagined it would be before I went there. And for $125 a person you too can take a ride out on their launches (only overnight guests can use their docks) and have a bang up brunch on a Sunday morning. Its sounds grossly extravagant and it is, but once a year we treat ourselves (with a locals discount. Hey my wife is an absolute bulldog when it comes to sniffing out those discounts!). You get the usual buffet choices and the chef cooks up as many sampler breakfasts as you can order and eat. Unlimited gluttony, as it were.Swimming season is here at last, and soon it will arrive no doubt in Minnesota's ten thousand kettles and at the beaches of Cape May and Cape Hatteras and all the way to South Padre Island. For me this is where I like to plant my swimming flag, amid the mangrove islands of Newfound Harbor:
Ten minutes away from my house. 
3 comments:
why is your swimming flag red? Doesn't that mean no swimming?
I was wondering if I should have said something about this. In the rest of the world (the metric world) people use the "A" flag from the marine flag codes, a blue and white pennant. We in the non-metric US use a red flag with a white horizontal stripe to mark a diver or swimmer.
Actually, that was not what I was asking. I did some research and now understand your response. What I was actually referring to is a flag flown on a beach to indicate if swimming is safe, etc. I've seen red, yellow, and green (always solid). Not knowing anything about boaring, I assumed you would use the same flags. Thanks for your response - it seems I'm always learning something.
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