I have pointed out that summer is here and the sun is starting to beat down strongly upon us all. Daily temperatures are getting up around 90 degrees (32C) and the humidity is going up too. It's the time of year when hats become a requirement, though I should say that visitors to Key West even in winter like to cover themselves in tropical head gear even under the weakest of winter sun. Some people can carry off the straw hatted look quite well:
Other people like to look dapper in their fedoras:
I am not much of a fan of head gear so I like sunscreen to protect my mediterranean skin from the sun, others prefer something more ample and possibly floppy:
Wait a minute, that hardly qualifies as floppy compared to some people:
I used to have a straw hat years ago, a seven dollar Albertsons special and it survived a trip to the Bahamas, but too many dunkings while getting in and out of the dinghy put paid to it. My second straw hat got torn to shreds riding my Honda scooter back and forth to my boat captain's job, where I really needed it day after day panting on the water. A bit like this guy:
Other people seem to take good care of their straw hats:
Some people express their personality with a palm frond hat purchased from the weavers on Duval Street:
And sometimes that isn't enough so they embellish them further:
My headgear of choice is something like this under the cargo net, even though it's not a legal requirement in Florida for riders over 21, and I don't always wear it, or it's open faced cousin every time I ride:
And though I do wear a baseball cap from time to time, one has to acknowledge it doesn't give much cover from the cancer-inducing rays of the sun:
On the other hand people who wear visors, I don't get at all.
But there again perhaps they just like wearing something on their heads, in equal proportion to how much I don't. I was struck recently by headgear while watching an old episode of Sherlock Holmes which I had ordered from Netflix. It was the excellent Jeremy Brett series and I noticed how much people bothered with hats, a different hat for each different outfit with gloves to match. Then we went to see the Red Barn's last live theater production of the year and the patron sitting next to me, a man probably no older than thirty years of age, kept his baseball cap on throughout the production. I have a tendency when I go indoors be it only to eat or see a movie or a play, to remove my headgear, and in this day and age I have no idea who rates as most eccentric, him or me.I don't much like fora on the Internet and don't participate much on websites where people are busy posting rapid fire comments, but in my nocturnal web wanderings I came across a group of people who expressed enthusiasm about vactioning in Key West. To get to read their comments I had to register and that led to an invitation to meet one of them last week, as Shazbo17 reads this blog from time to time. Which meeting was quite an education as I discovered there are several dozen of them who gather from all over the country and talk about I'm not sure what. A fondness for vactioning in Key West seems a rather narrow basis for friendship but they were all terribly hail-fellow-well-met with each other at Conch Republic Seafood. And several were wearing hats, which was convenient for me at the time:
And Shazbo who posed in her topee:
Key West Spirit is an interesting web site, if like me, you had never thought Key West alone would be enough to sustain an interest between a group of strangers. Of course my Key West is a good deal different from theirs which appears to be powered a great deal by alcohol, if reports of their visits to the city are to be believed.
And Shazbo who posed in her topee:Key West Spirit is an interesting web site, if like me, you had never thought Key West alone would be enough to sustain an interest between a group of strangers. Of course my Key West is a good deal different from theirs which appears to be powered a great deal by alcohol, if reports of their visits to the city are to be believed..
And in closing this essay a few variegated headgear wearers I came across recently:
Neither a bowler nor a derby and certainly not a deer stalker among the lot of them.
Neither a bowler nor a derby and certainly not a deer stalker among the lot of them.
We breezed merrily past my house slumbering on the edge of the canal, my bed still warm and ready to welcome me back... 
...but I was on my way, inexorably to see the Vandenberg get sunk, with twenty one alcohol starved passengers and four crew: 
The bloody marys were handed out minutes after we left the dock before the sun was properly in the sky: 
Had I started in with the alcohol at that ungodly hour I'd have been asleep before we arrived at the Vandenberg's anchorage at 8:45 am.
The sixty-five year old ship sat facing into the southeast breeze, alone and rather forlorn like a leper in quarantine surrounded by a growing armada of spectator boats...
...kept at bay by anxious law enforcement, lest we get infected by the explosives on board the old ship, or get sucked in by the undertow of her death throes.
She was fussed over before the final fatal explosive injection by a couple of tugs shuffling back and forth and puffing self important black clouds eerily prescient of the final snorts of deadly smoke that accompanied the explosions that would sink her:
And ate a hearty lunch:
Captain Robert put us in the ideal spot,
...upwind and on the side away from the Key West shore where most of the spectator boats gathered. We watched and waited for the ten o'clock deadline: 
One old guy, already liberally greased at nine in the morning, asked me if I was excited, a question that put me unaccountably in mind of Jack riepe, but I was a) more curious than excited about the sinking, and b) I do not have riepe's ability to carry off a social gaffe with aplomb and I would probably just have ended up offending the drunk old geezer had i mentioned the thoughts his question put in mind. I looked around for things to photograph and came across a flock of spectator boats that had grown around us while we ate, waiting for the execution of the death sentence:
Then there were the notables and state lawmakers riding around on the Ft Myers Ferry, the Express Cat, which was allowed to pass exceptionally close to the dying ship in the waiting period:
And there was the Coastguard running around keeping people organized:
While the state Fish and Wildlife commission had a helicopter keeping journalists, aloft in their own helicopters, at a safe distance: 
The last humans stepped off the Vandenberg at 9:50am and the ship stood to anchor like the condemned prisoner alone on the gurney awaiting the moment. Then farce intervened as a sea turtle or two plodded across the stage interrupting the drama, but finally all was squared away.
A horn sounded and a red flare went up five minutes before the end, followed by a final red warning flare at one minute, then there was a loud dull thud and smoke billowed from the bow of the ship:
Followed closely by a puff of smoke from the smokestack at the stern.
It was like one final death struggle from the now engine-less ship, that last defiant puff from the engine room, and the hull, drilled out with holes all along its length, described with a certain lack of dignity as resembling a Swiss cheese, started to take on water.
The first explosion came at 10:24, the last bubble burst on the surface by 10:27 and then there was nothing left to look at but a placid sea, all returned to normal, after the completion of a text book sinking. It was my Memorial Day, watching the ship that transported troops in 1944 (then named General Taylor) disappear out of sight. On the Kokomo Cat II the party got underway with renewed ferocity, the open bar sloshing margaritas right and left, along with wine and beer for the aging libertines kept safe by the cheerful crew: 
And then home. I didn't know what to expect when we went out to watch the ship sink, and surrounded by noise and levity it was hard to put together two thoughts, which may have been the point. I dropped off a twenty dollar tip in the jar; the crew deserved it. For my part I was, in the final analysis glad to have been there. 
I have no idea if this sinking was worth the conservative estimate of nine million dollars it cost to carry out, but I'd like to think that long after I'm dead and people are still diving on the wreck, if they wonder what it was like the day it sank, I would be able to tell them.
It was 82 degrees (33C) and hazy with a light south breeze with a very slight swell ruffling the surface. The Vandenberg, all rusty and sieve-like went down exactly as intended, a slight list forward, but upright and steady all the way.