A Gannet In Marathon

Marathon has a rather cool motorcycle rental shop which  seems to have weathered Hurricane Irma:

 Pigeon Key has re-opened for business out of a trailer:

But  my business took me to the  boatyard for a quick check of the circumnavigating Moore 24, a lightweight racing boat designed for the downwind "sledding" in California coastal conditions.

 It's owner Webb Chiles is on his sixth time round the world on about as small a boat as you can imagine though he did once get almost all the way round on an open boat. Check this LINK .

I climbed the ladder and found myself surveying his tiny domain 24 feet long and three quarters of the way around the world. 

 I feel an awesome responsibility doing the minimal stuff I do as Chiles admires this boat a great deal.

 From Wikipedia:

Gannets are seabirds comprising the genus Morus, in the family Sulidae, closely related to boobies. "Gannet" is derived from Old English ganot "strong or masculine", ultimately from the same Old Germanic root as "gander".^[1] Morus is derived from Ancient Greek moros, "foolish", due to the lack of fear shown by breeding gannets and boobies allowing them to be easily killed.^[2]

The gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads; black-tipped wings; and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to 2 metres (6.6 ft). The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.

Gannets hunt fish by diving into the sea from a height and pursuing their prey underwater. Gannets have a number of adaptations which enable them to do this:

• no external nostrils, they are located inside the mouth instead;
• air sacs in the face and chest under the skin which act like bubble wrapping, cushioning the impact with the water;
• positioning of the eyes far enough forward on the face for binocular vision, allowing them to judge distances accurately.

Gannets can dive from a height of 30 metres (98 ft), achieving speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most airborne birds.

The gannet's supposed capacity for eating large quantities of fish has led to "gannet" becoming a description of somebody with a voracious appetite.

It's not a lot of boat for such a journey but so far so good.

I met my wife for wings at Marathon Grill and Ale House where they have local beers from Key West and Islamorada Brewing Company (Iguana Bait? quite delicious and not all IPA bitter) 

We had a beer each and 16  wings of different flavors for less than 20 bucks according to my accountant.

And so homeward over the seven mile bridge:

And there was a full moon when my patient small brown companion needed to stretch his short active legs. 

A pleasant Friday afternoon.

Keys Fisheries

It happened that the day of the Big Wind, Monday, Rusty and I drove my wife to her job in Marathon where she had previously left her car. There's a walk Rusty likes past the commercial fishing traps which are full of smells, and I like it especially when I want to look at open water. Monday was good for that and i got a bunch of windy day pictures:

 Waiting out the 30+ mph winds:

 Fishing flaots tied down to not fly away:

Lobster pots by the hundred:

 The pier at Keys Fisheries which is also the breakwater for the marina:

 Last night we came for dinner and it was quite a bit calmer though the sunset was obscured by plastic windows to keep the breeze out of the oyster bar area upstairs. 

 Rusty and smokers (at the table next door) are permitted in this essentially outdoor bar. He was perfect as usual. 

My sister-in-law liked her Funky Buddha beer and oysters, a dish I find about as appetizing as it looks, cold snot flavored with sea salt. The fact the oysters are alive and are to be stunned with lemon makes the whole operation even more ghastly in my opinion, which is not shared by most people, I am aware.

 The crab claws were goodm the smoked fish superlative and the mussels were excellent. 

You turn north at the Stuffed Pig on Highway One in Marathon to find this place at the dead end. It's well worth it. They are famous for their lobster reuben sandwich and it really is quite good too.  

I was sorry we had to leave, I could have lingered over a Funky Buddha too.

Burdines, Marathon

It's an oldie but goody, Burdines on the water in Marathon. I think of this place as the survivor, the place to go for lunch when my wife and I are feeling a bit nostalgic. 

It's a bar and gas station for boats, it sits on the waterway from open water to the Boot Key Harbor anchorage which is the destination for anyone living on a  boat looking for a cheap place to stop for a while.

You can see tons of boat at anchor or on city moorings crowded into the big oval of well protected water, probably the most secure anchorage in the Lower Keys. There's nowhere like Boot Key Harbor in Key West and I venture to say most boaters wouldn't mind if there were. Key West is a city of exposed anchorages and long dinghy rides to shore.

My wife and I found Burdines a couple of decades ago when we stopped off in Boot Key Harbor  for a while. As I recall we had been to the Bahamas and we were thinking Marathon might be a place to stay thanks to the convenience of the lagoon in the middle of the city. Burdines was a  convenient dinghy stoip on the way back for the ship's store where we bought stuff for our boat, and one is always "buying stuff  for the boat."

I walked the docks with Rusty as I waited for my wife to get her lunch break from work and I was reminded what a pretty place this is, even if the people who live on boats work hard to spread their homely clutter everywhere.

More on that later to help digest what is always a solid lunch at Burdines. We always order the same thing. I have been getting the same green chili cheeseburger and my wife gets the greasy Ruben. The sandwiches are invariably solid and delicious and too complicated to eat without a knife and fork. The shared basket of fries are salty and delicious and too much for two people. 

They make a delicious lemonade here or you can get a Red Stripe if you want the proper Caribbean flavor under the straw roof. We went for caffeine and had Pepsis which only come in cans, no draft here. Service is cheerful and prompt.

Oh and dogs are welcome. Rusty was perfectly behaved. He loves being a part of whatever is going on and he watched everything with his usual keen eye. They brought him water and he was polite enough to at least taste it.

The only sandwich I can think of that I eat with cutlery. If you want to go berserk you can eat a deep fried key lime pie which is a tortilla wrapped slice of key lime filling dunked in boiling oil. Delicious and appalling all at once. 

We took another walk my dog and I while my wife high tailed it back to work. I persuaded my wife to go sailing in 1998. We loaded the dogs and took off from San Francisco aiming for Panama. It was an excellent trip and we had a great time but sailing is part of my past now. I don't want to end up using my boat as cheap housing. It may be ingenious to have a vegetable garden on deck but it impedes the use of the boat for its proper purpose.

Living in a  marina is  a lot like living in a  trailer park, minimal privacy, shared shower blocks, low rent encouraging people to moulder on their boats. It's  romantic to call yourself a sailor but in my book you need to go sailing to be a sailor. A boat that doesn't move rots. Admiral Nelson said that so it must be true.

I know what's like to have your life spill out and as hard as I tried to keep my boat trim and ready to sail it always got away from me so when I see the elaborate shore side life I understand. Though in the Keys this is just one way to hang on to the tropical dream and keep it affordable.

And you know what, I still feel the attraction to the romance of sailing. Even now I can remember the thrill of planning the trip, casting off and setting out hoping for decent wind, but not too much, excitement but not too much and an interesting landfall at the end.  It's never like that,  and I know it, but I can still taste the day dream of the perfect passage.  

Besides Rusty would hate boat living and the sea. It's so much easier to be on land with the little tyke. 

The romance of the sea, pure bullshit and always seductive. I think I need to read more Conrad.

We first came to Burdines by dinghy but there was no dedicated dinghy dock back then ( it was snowing and uphill both ways in the good old days). 

There have been plans to develop the neighboring marina so they forced everyone out and the place has remained empty and is steadfastly deteriorating. Marathon has recently got several name brand chain hotels, Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt are all in town and selling out apparently. I expect these docks will become something expensive and nice in the fullness of time.

It's hot out here but there used to be boats side tied along here.

Don't forget to tip. You know the joke about Canadians and canoes? Canoes tip. We used to tell each other that ad nauseam when I was a boat captain. 

Desolate and decaying. The romance of the sea, it looks beautiful under the sun, the water rippling the rusty roof makes you think of some south pacific trading post...

Burdines fills me with nostalgia, memories of times past, when people I knew were docked here, the waitresses were middle aged women who made a life in Marathon and made me think of professional old time waitresses in cafes with rayon aprons and a cheery smile and a joke. They made life on the waterfront a community, and for a while it flourished at Burdines. They are gone, replaced by the usual Slavic imports living God knows where, who knows how many to a room, keeping the Keys working while the rest of us, the weak, beat an unwilling retreat to where life is more affordable.

Rusty is my survivor and his curiosity is insatiable, always checking stuff out, storing his experiences as a dog that's wanted and that has a place. He sniffed it all, as busy storing his memories of Burdines as I have been.

It's just a place to get a sandwich and look at the water. The past is another country, they do things differently there.