Mangroves

It was sunset. I know that because I was there and because the sun sets to the left when you are looking north. Otherwise there isn't a landmark to be seen on the trail. That's life in the Florida Keys. 

Oh wait, the setting sun has illuminated the lacy threads of a cobweb. Pretty cool.

And then there is the setting sun shining across the ...mud. The effect of low tide. Oddly enough much of the Keys are affected more by tides than by rain. The water you will see in these pictures is actually salty and not even your (my) dog will drink it.

Mangroves either a0 on fire or b0 illuminated at a low angle by the sun:

Red mangroves living happily in ocean water.

What tangled webs we weave when first we practice to grow among the mangroves. 

I really like the still windless days coming this next blazingly hot summer, if only because I can never get enough of the mangrove reflections. These aren't terrible but the water is still slightly ruffled.

The rich red sunset in a cloudless sky. There is a blimp, the only blimp in the Keys operated by the air force over Cudjoe Key and known jocularly as Fat Albert.

And that is another mangrove walk in the history books.

Panama Canal

I may have reported this since the original posting in 2007. But it remains a happy memory of a journey all too long ago. N o reason not to repost I dare say so here it is.

Panama 1999

We transited the Panama Canal on our sailboat Miki G in the Fall of the year the US finally pulled out of that operation.

I doubt the Autoridad in charge these days would be too impressed were we to return and expect a transit for our 34-foot catamaran through the canal. These days its a self funding operation and every transit has to pay for itself and sailboats are very low on the totem pole. Our buddy Anna rode through with us to check out how she and her husband Ian were going to cope with their boat Joss. We had a minor crash later when the tug we tied up to left us in the lurch and we were slightly beaten up as we were dragged through the lock sideways by the currents. Damage was minor but we stared death in the face for a few awful minutes.

Days later Joss made it through fine, though I was always worrying about what had happened to us as we locked through on their trip. Ian confided in me later that he couldn't get the image out of his mind of Miki G swirling helplessly through the lock like a leaf down a drain.

We were weeks ahead of the hand-over to full Panamanian control of the Canal, but years later I did meet the skipper of the last boat to be issued a US transit permit as the seconds ticked up to the noon hour December 30th 1999. Ghost, a suitably elderly wooden sailboat that I believe was shipped back from Marathon here in the Keys, to the owner's home in Marin County California.

When people find out we sailed our Gemini catamaran from California to Florida they are always fascinated by our transit ($500, two days, and the dogs behaved impeccably!), but we remain fascinated by the country of Panama at large.

Miki G moored for several weeks at the now defunct Pedro Miguel Boat Club, next to the Pedro Miguel locks on Lake Miraflores. The marina used to be a Canal Zone perk, but during the US Administration it was also an excellent place to tie upto make repairs and rest from the culturally arduous business of cruising Latin America. Pedro Miguel was an English speaking, boater friendly, oasis even in the years after the Zone was ended and Americans only stayed on to help transition to Panamanian Administration. However the Autoridad del Canal de Panama has shut the place down after a long legal battle and pictures such as this can no longer be taken because the club is gone (plus we sold the boat to a friend in Key West who isn't interested in cruising right now!). One of these days I'm going to write an entry about all the place I've been that no longer exist. A depressingly long list, indicating an excessively long and well traveled life I think, even though the places themselves weren't that great; the USSR and East Germany high on the lackluster destinations I Have Known.

Panama started for us when we rounded the cape separating Costa Rica from Panama one dark and windy night. We blew into Panama full tilt and never got over how much we wanted to be there. The river trip to the second largest city in the country David ("Dah" with the emphasis on the "i" ) was an amazing maze to navigate. Non sailors often think rivers are refuges but we found that jungle river to be a pain in the ass with massive tides, floating debris and low overhanging branches, not to mention sandbars and few places to  drop the  anchor.I keep this picture framed in my office to remind me of our mad cap adventures trying to find places to walk the dogs away from the prying eyes of the officious Customs agent who was determined to enforce Panama's 'no pets ashore' rule. Emma, our Labrador stuck close to me while Debs, our Husky dived into the bushes like the little explorer he always was. Everyone in the rest of the country ignored the quarantine rule and we took the dogs everywhere with us, into Panama City, into Darien by rental car, and up into the mountains in the middle of the country.

We really got to enjoy Panama among the Pacific Islands that dot the uninhabited coast. There are beaches, palm trees and crystal clear waters in an immense 300 mile playground where sailors can play Adam and Eve for months and not see the same place twice. We washed up on Isla Contadora in the Perlas Islands, which has an airstrip, hotels, some stores and fuel supplies. A walk was de rigeur through the ritzy neighborhoods where rich Panamanians keep weekend homes. I like this picture, it inverts the usual stereotype of Latin Americans being the gardeners for wealthy white Americans. "Mow yer lawn, guv?"After we got through the Canal we spent several more idylic weeks in the more famous San Blas islands on the Caribbean side of Panama. These Kuna indian islanders practice a low tech medieval lifestyle in their own autonomous province known to them as their Kuna Yala, with their own system of justice and social pecking order, similar to, but more idylic than, a US Indian Reservation. These islands resembled the Keys somewhat, in as much as they had coconuts, narrow sandy beaches and lots of scrub vegetation. We sailors gathered in calm anchorages and hung out barbequing under the stars, telling stories, swimming and playing cards until our supplies ran out and we had a private plane fly us out the fixings for a massive Thanksgiving dinner in November 1999. Believe me, we were absolutely bulging with thanks that memorable desert island holiday.Teaching kids to pet the dogs (with treats of course!) on the Rio Diablo/Corazon de Jesus footbridge in the Kuna Yala. Kids are kids in the most remote places and Labradors do like their treats.

Panama was a hell of a place, far more varied and interesting than Costa Rica with a greater percentage of land given over to parks and all the benefits iof a money laundering economy with excellent banking (they use the US dollar for their currency) and superb medical facilities. Retirement? Who knows!

Night Ruminations

My wife and I went into isolation at home on the Ides of March and since then she has been teaching from home and I have been working at the police station where masks and social distancing have been strictly enforced. 

So now, a year later we are vaccinated and hoping to see a few normal activities creep back into our lives. It seems to be coming down to a race between vaccinations and virus variants at the moment and south Florida has been at the forefront of the Covid news with reports of widespread Spring Break crowds.

So I find myself trying to avoid early morning bar crowds more out of habit than necessity, still walking the side streets looking for shapes and colors I have failed to notice in a  year of wandering these largely empty streets. 

I find it miraculous any of these small galleries and businesses are still open after this crazy year but here we are. 

Island Books is displaying local authors, Key West themes and so forth. I have no data to back up my feelings on this subject but it seems to me that the writers of older generations who have cycled out of the Keys to families and communities Up North are not being replaced by younger writers. The easy target to blame is the high cost of living.

There again the way people publish and even the way they write has been going through all kinds of changes so I suppose it's fair to imagine that communities of writers will not look the way they did in the past. 

I find it rather odd to realize that the beginning of this century might very well have been the tail end of the golden age in Key West, the period that grew out of Ernest Hemingway's forced stay in 1928, which in itself grew into a decade long residence. Truman Capote, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Thomas McGuane and heaven knows how many names one can add...where are their heirs? Do they have any? Not in Key West it seems like, nor shall they.

I look at the shops on Duval, the chains which are the only outlets that can afford the rent, the restaurants that hang in despite the difficulties of a pandemic. The champagne winters spent in the tropical heat  do not necessarily translate into long under populated summers, 92 in the shade... of drama  and good stories needing to be told.  

I have enjoyed the slowed down life of the pandemic, not least because I have been paid the whole way through as has my wife and work feeds the monster of daily life. Lockdowns haven't translated into long cold dark winter days staring at the walls. Life in the Keys has been reaffirmed as privilege in some ways, and I have taken note.

Above you see the building that has been three bars for as long as I can remember, and below Lucy's that came to Key West, moved, closed and now announces they are coming back, if indeed they were ever gone. That's the way it is, even when the prophets of doom tell us Key West is sinking under the hammer blow of economic failure. 

Irish Kevin's is still the southernmost Irish pub, as they retell it, the bar that stays put alongside Ricks and Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's and the Bull and Hog's Breath and so forth. So when things gets back to normal what changes for me who doesn't go downtown to drink?

Live theater and movie theaters, friends and music and a dinner out every now and then, the loss finally of masks, the crowds, more things and people to photograph, change might even be in the air.

The homeless guys will still sit on the margins, at least until Duval Street is organized. The project manager of the company hired to review possible changes has moved to another job so the studies proposed for Duval are currently in limbo. But it seems likely there will be much talk of changing Duval and much opposition as there always is. 

Cruise ships will one day return. They are running some experimental cruises in the Caribbean apparently, and by doing that they are avoiding US ports to circumvent the US ban on cruises. I guess we shall wait and watch and be glad other people are willing to give it a try. I had hoped to go to Europe this Fall to see my family prior to my retirement but Europe remains a shambles with closed borders, hardly any vaccinations and continuous lockdowns. So much for that...

I took the photograph below on the three hundred block of Duval. The building seen in daylight is just another sloping roof but in the half light with the tree shadows it gained to my eye and exotic distant air, a Balkan building, a place not like Key West at all. 

Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, or my camera, or perhaps lockdown is having more of an effect on my mind that I think. Six months from now...another six months and we may understand more!

Off Duval

I have been taking advantage of the bright sun and clear skies to check out downtown while the temperatures are cool and the skies are bright. I can't often be here at sunrise or sunset so in the middle of the day the light tends to be harsher and the shadows stronger which lends itself to black and white.

I also like to sidestep the popular views of Key West, Paradise, USA, especially during the pandemic looking for my own views . 

Sometimes I surprise myself, and were you to quiz me I would never have guessed this was an alley off the middle of Duval Street!

Fire Station 2 on Simonton Street where I parked.

And a few houses along the way back to the car.

The alley from the city parking lot to the 600 block of Duval. Always picturesque.

Waterfront

The Railway Condos as seen from the ground on Grinnell Street are clearly newer construction, modern with parking underneath the units and decent landscaping.

However when seen from the top of the parking garage on the other side of Grinnell, the eagle eyed observer will note the even taller and more imposing block of Steam Plant condos. The difference? About $1.4 million to buy the different units. 

Originally the Steam Plant units built in a converted steam to electricity generating plant were offered at nearly three million each with private elevators from the basement garage and private pools on the rooftops but times were tough apparently and some lucky buyers got cut price condos before they sold out. The Railway Condos are named for Flagler's railway which ended up in a terminus built on excavated soil up the street at what is now the Coastguard Base. They were sold as price controlled affordable quarter million dollar homes for local workers. 

The Steam Plant used to generate electricity for the city and spewed waste water into the harbor near where the loving couple above were sitting and enjoying the view. Those lovely waters used to be known as the toxic triangle thanks to the steam plant effluent. I had a friend who kept his boat on the seawall and he thought it was easier than living at anchor. True enough but that wasn't convenience I wanted and I stayed in the purer waters outside the harbor.

Nowadays the old shrimp boat free-for-all in the Bight has become a sedate and proper recreational boat harbor with several marinas dotted around inside the breakwaters. The public is welcome to walk the city owned boardwalk but rules abound.

The city very cleverly kept ownership of the Bight and rented space out to the various businesses which pay rent to the city. It was a smart deal, a reminder that Key West does not have to give everything it values away.

Bight in nautical terms means an indentation in the coastline suitable for a harbor, but most people don't know that. So instead of a "bite" the city now owns an "Historic Seaport" which sounds much more appealing. I suppose that's one reason I will stick to calling this the Key West Bight. 

The city offers dinghy dockage for a modest fee of $96 a month which gives people who live at anchor easy access to downtown. Actually Key West offers quite a few facilities beyond docking your boat if you live cheap at anchor. The homeless and hopeless have access to soup kitchens, sleeping space for the homeless, mental health facilities and low/no cost medical and dental clinics. People in house sometimes conflate  living on a  boat with being homeless...

From the city's website:

• Dinghy Dockage Rates: $7.15 per day or $31.90 per week or $95.70 per month (13 foot maximum)
• Private Dinghy Slip: $192.50 per month
• Shower Use: $24.20 per week or $71.50 per month plus $25.00 for the key deposit

On a bright sunny day with modest winds and tiny ripples it looks lovely. On a hot thundery summer's night in a tropical downpour the commute may look less attractive and in winter cold fronts can honk the waves over the breakwater.

It may not be sailing for sure, but it is cheap living in a notoriously pricey town. A boat, an anchor, a bicycle and a desire to look hardy and romantic keeps the dreamers coming. Soon they stop sailing and they sit at anchor more and more involved in town issues and working while less and less sailing and exploring takes place.

And if perchance you do head out best send the crew forward to bring in the lines and fenders. Its a romantic life all right!

Always lots to see at The Bight  Key West's Old Historic Seaport...

Turtle Kraals is being transformed into the Boathouse which occupied a space further round the harbor.  Slowly the historic connections to turtle slaughter and commercial fishing will evaporate from the waterfront entirely.

Fishing too can be a spectator sport now, a selfie opportunity, a moment of fun.

The hard drinking, hard fishing commercial fishermen with Cuban accents and white shorty rubber boots ("Stock Island Nikes" is their ironic name) are relegated to the next island over where you can see them behind fencing, like creatures in a  zoo preparing their traps and living their lives oblivious to the tourist mecca of the historic Key West Bight.

I took these photos a few years back but nothing much has changed.  

It's not the tourist water front of the Historic Seaport.

Hemingway wrote about this world of boating in To Have And To Have Not except in his day, during the Great Depression, fishing drama played out in Key West.

Five miles and a different world.