The Back Of Bahia Honda

It looked aground as I looked around, I could see the anchor line pointing to shore. Perhaps the low low tide had taken the skipper by surprise though we were coming up on a full moon about then so s/he should have been ready for that. In a north wind anchoring south of the islands is easy and comfortable though why the boat felt the need to be so close inshore I wouldn't know. It was another in a series of good looking days in the Keys, this time near Bahia Honda.
The seas were flat and the view south toward Cuba seemed endless.Tourists sometimes wonder if you can see Cuba's mountains from the Keys but you can't. If you stand at sea level you can see about half a dozen miles depending on your actual height. The calculation is known as height of eye. Multiply your height of eye's square root by 1.17. The easy example is standing with your eye 9 feet above sea level puts your square root at 3 times 1.17 equals three and a half miles. As Cuba is ninety miles away at it's nearest point that puts it out of reach. A 900 foot mountain would be visible from thirty five miles which added to your height of eye would amount to to less than 40 miles. Here endeth the lesson as I have exhausted my meager mathematical skills (and I am not completely certain I have it right but it's close enough). The long and the short is that Cuba is always out of sight.
Cheyenne has been fishing and chewing on the dead carcasses of the fish killed in the Great Cool Down of 2010. The beaches have been littered with corpses and her diet has, as a result become a little too rich in dried fish.The fish are everywhere, slowly returning to their elemental forms. We explored the waterfront at the south end of the old Bahia Honda Bridge. There is what appears to be an old pump station built out of limestone along side the original, decrepit water pipe that the Navy installed in World War Two to supply the Navy Base in Key West with a regular supply of water.

The pipeline is rather the worse for wear which is okay as the new pipe runs alongside the Highway. It was of course a larger diameter pipe that they installed when it was built alongside the new highway in 1982. Considering the shortage of water in the aquifer in South Florida and the burgeoning population I'd recommend using a rainwater recovery system like the one that came with my house. But drinking rain water scares a lot of people. Conchs used to do it all the time in the good old days when everyone had a cistern. I was so involved in taking the picture I only freaked out about Cheyenne on the precipice after she was well away from the edge. She is smarter than she looks, and I enjoy her sense of adventure. The "new" Bahia Honda bridge is on the left.I rode the old bridge on my Vespa in 1981 and have no photos nor any memory of the journey. I was young and I try not to blame my former self for my inability to record the journeys of my life.The new bridge is a very inviting four lane but the Highway Patrol is well aware of how tedious the drive on the approaches can be and because of their frequent fines in the area as people speed up on the wide bridge, this area is sometimes known as the "Lower Keys toll booth":Seven weeks ago Cheyenne was in a cage at the pound:
Now the Lower Keys are her backyard. We spent a happy 45 minutes exploring the sliver of West Summerland Key shown in the picture below.It is a never ending source of amazement to me that these islands are so under explored by residents and visitors. Which I concede is just as well or else we'd be standing shoulder to shoulder and I enjoy the solitude