Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Vespa ET4
A Christmas Card From Key West
Here's a thought that came to me walking the docks in Key West, remembering my own life spent afloat.
Imagine a romantic life on the water anchored out, between Fleming Key and Christmas Tree Island, your floating home bobbing to its anchor, bow to the wind, wavelets lapping the hull in the still of a crisp winter's night. Candles are burning in the cabin giving a warm glow to the cold night air, the silence of the Christmas night is broken only by the guttering of the flames in synch with the patter of the water outside the thin hull of the boat...perfect!
Except it's a long hard row in the dark, across the vast empty great void of the night on water as black as the sky. Behind you the light of the city and the colorful people it contains, including your friends, is swallowed up in that very cold impenetrable night. You are as lonely as an astronaut in outer space in your little boat-module. And you've got dinghy butt, a well known discomfort for liveaboards who get water slop into their little craft as they head to or from shore and end up spending the day in wet shorts, or arrive home dripping salt water into the cabin...
Temper all romantic notions with a cold hard dose of reality. That's why you are on this page, in spite of yourself. I shall not lead you wrong.