Circumnavigating Cudjoe Key

The highlight of my day yesterday was getting out on the water and skimming at 23 miles per hour across seas as flat as glass. Perfect.

Robert and I had made a date to get out on a boating trip but the afternoon did not start out well. Not well at all with strong winds heavy rain and black clouds.

But it didn't last and we arranged to rendezvous in the middle of Cudjoe Bay between our homes.

The bay is a wide body of water but quite shallow across the mouth to the south. Robert...

...and Salty Dog...

...had previously taken Dolly on a picnic to our target island north of Cudjoe Key so he had the return route figured. We now wanted to find a southern route out of Cudjoe Bay, across the shallows, and back into Summerland Bay to the east.

My representation of the trip is a bit crude(!) but the thin red line is, more or less the line we followed, a half hour out and a half hour back more or less if you go straight there and back.

We did not go straight anywhere as I drifted off hoping to find a shortcut between Cudjoe and the little mangrove clump south of it called Gopher Key on the chart. Fat chance. Robert sat back on the off chance I had more luck than sense but eventually we gave up trying to cross water six inches deep and got back to the business of making progress.

Robert said he had discovered the only available short cut by following a law enforcement boat one day, so we lined up the number eleven marker at our backs and aimed for a small island on the horizon with a roof in the middle... And found our deep water. Which around here means maybe four feet. Plenty for our little skiffs and their 25 horsepower outboards.

Robert led the way in his late father's 1983 boat and motor and I followed in my rather more modern, lighter and less mechanically noisy Dusky skiff.

There really is something about messing about in boats, especially small ones that brings out the boy in a man. There are minimal regulations for boating, life jackets and flares, a paddle a dive flag and an anchor and all of that is a mixture of rules and common sense. After that you are on your own. No licenses for old farts like us, just experience and good manners and a touch of youthful adventurous spirits. Swallows and Amazons Forever!

We had motors and the Keys to play in, unlike the Swallows and Amazons who were a fifth our age and sailed around England (and Holland, and the Far East) in their adventures. We had to keep an eye out for the convenient landmark called Fat Albert, tethered to the north end of Cudjoe Key.

The US Air a force had announced the end of the anti-smuggling blimp but at last word the Federal weather people at NOAA were going to take it over. Maybe that was a blind and it's a CIA project now...Who knows...We were busy aiming for neighboring Tarpon Belly Key, one of the few islands among all these mangroves that actually is made of dirt and rock.

Dirt and rock is the sum of it at Tarpon Belly, no luxurious sandy beaches so boaters need footwear to get ashore here comfortably as the pebbly shoreline is hell on bare feet.

School's out so even on a Thursday we were not alone. Our boats were undoubtedly the smallest and least crowded among the three or four others there.

Tarpon Belly is cut up by canals...

...and thanks to its dry land component was once used as a base for shrimp farming.

As to why that failed laconic Robert had a one word suggestion why: "Uneconomic."

Robert remembers coming out here and camping back...when...um... One of the wars...the hostage crisis! In 1979 then, the historian in me guessed, remembering my first motorcycle trip to North Africa back then. Robert remembered being twenty at the time, a sparkle in his eye, camping in a mosquito-proof shed built on this cement pad, complete with bunks and netting. All gone now.

The young anglers had caught nothing but a stingray which Robert said he had been forced to try once when caught out at night with no food. Inedible was his verdict.

The cement wreckage was part of the infrastructure of the shrimp farm and Robert says there are the remains of an old truck in the mangroves, remembering an acquaintance who had actually driven the vehicle on the island decades ago when the business was operating.

Salty Dog found a tennis ball.

Robert had a couple of candy bars so we smeared ourselves with melted chocolate in the 85 degree heat, like a couple of truants, standing in the shade of the casuarina trees pondering the wisdom of not being equipped for a swim and not looking forward to a trip home in soaking shorts. Where were our wives when we needed them?

The views through the trees are quite beguiling in this remote place.

Casting off our little boats from the rocky beach was easy.

Robert pointed out the landmarks, we got our bearings and got up on a plane heading west, directly off the beach.

The water was lovely and flat, like skimming across glass.

All shades of blue.

And lots of puffy clouds. This is my kind of boating, no waves, no drama, not at all cold.

We found our bubba sticks and managed to keep out of excessively shallow waters...

Robert showing me the way, from one...

...to the next. I was noting landmarks and directions as I have only approached Tarpon Belly from the west when I lived on Ramrod Key.

Droning across the flats at 23mph according to the speedometer app on my phone. I had a Verizon signal the entire trip which was nice.

Waterfront homes on Sugarloaf Key, facing east:

Highway One on Bow Channel which is where I frequently like to walk Cheyenne on the old Flagler bridge, now for pedestrians and bicycles (and Labradors). It was too hot to take Cheyenne exploring by  boat though now I know the route I think I will take her for a walk on Tarpon Belly later in the year.

The waters tend to not appear very deep they are so clear:

We parted ways in Cudjoe Bay again and I sped across the water back to my canal.

To wake my dog, fast asleep in the air conditioning.

I sent my wife in California pictures and she was suitably jealous so all in all it was a splendid outing. Thank you Robert.

More to come no doubt, as Robert has my boat running perfectly. Great stuff! This is why we live in the Lower Keys!

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Florida Mountains

The great Florida wildlife photographer Clyde Butcher coined the term Florida Mountains to describe the extraordinary piles of moisture that build up over the Sunshine State, particularly in summer. Every rainy season I plan to snag some pictures of these great fluffy masses overhead. This week for whatever reason I got a few that I liked. This first one was crossing the Niles Channel Bridge, forty feet up, from the car which I paused briefly to get what I could of the extraordinary light at 6:30 in the morning.

Cheyenne was ready for her morning walk and was running around on the deck (she has her own dog for to come and go as she pleases) when she heard the motorcycle pull up. We started by going to the pool on a Ramrod Key. She got busy walking and sniffing. I looked aloft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheyenne spent the first two days home from the three week road trip sleeping. It's hot and humid this year, especially so it seems compared to years past so for the Labrador it is rather a lot to take on, especially considering she just spent three delightful weeks in winters conditions in New England, and in the fresh air of the Blue Ridge mountains. She tackles everything with a will, she has years of confinement to make up.

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A Still Night On The Waterfront

Imagine a still night on the Key West waterfront in summer, between midnight and one in the morning, with not a human in sight, and only the gentle breeze for company...I could hear machinery humming on the ships docked around the Navy basin, the place where once submarines were prepared for sea duty. It was warm enough to sweat, yet cooled enough by the breeze to be so pleasant as to induce in me thoughts of sleep. I wandered back and forth on the Inner Mole, taking pictures of the Coastguard Cutter Ingham, now a museum with inconvenient opening hours, and ships docked at the Outer Mole doing whatever it is they have to do. I took my pictures and went back to work refreshed. So much naval activity for such a small island!

Sunrise Trash

Bow Channel in the early morning. I love summers in the Keys, and I had the stillness and the fishing bridge to myself.

Of course I was not completely alone. Cheyenne was busy hunting dead bait fish. She loves them all smelly and dried by the sun.

Wasn't I surprised to get nearly run down by someone seeking not the solace of solitude but brisk sweaty exercise.

There was one dead fish Cheyenne could not reach, the line caught in the power cables leaving the poor soul to dangle for eternity hopefully not snagging some hungry bird in a chain of death by fishhook. 

 Cheyenne is not terribly keen on banana peel or orange rinds but she gave them a look see.  Why oh why cannot these people who seek the munificence of the sea, have the least consideration for the rest of us and throw their trash in one of the many bins put out for their use?

 I found mono filament dumped on the ground ready to snag a bird.

 Check out this perfectly functional hook:

I put it in the trash, unwilling to carry that barb all the way to the end of the bridge and the special mono filament tubes set out for that purpose. That hook wasn't going anywhere once I stuffed it in the trash.

 There are cobwebs of this stuff dangling from the power lines. These people need casting lessons.

 But never mind the human element, nature does fine without us:

Truman Avenue, Night

A quick ride down Truman Avenue to the Dion's chicken and gas station. It wasn't a night for delicious Dion's Fried Chicken but the Vespa ET4 needed premium fuel, about six buck's worth. While I was pumping fuel into the  150cc rocket ship I looked around and marveled at the ways people get around in Key West. The barefoot cyclist riding a home modified tricycle with a plastic box on the back stuffed a plastic grocery bag with supplies into his box and pedaled off, red and white lights keeping him legal and safer. Often you will see groups of scruffy tanned men squatting on the step outside the gas station talking among themselves. To me it is reminiscent of the Third World, those countries trying to develop enough to be like us, where we lock ourselves indoors and conversation is spread by electrons. These men don't bother me or anyone else, they talk and enjoy the warm night air. There was no one at Dion's so I moved off down Truman, my destination unknown.

 I saw the pottery shining through the window at the Key West Pottery shop. I stopped and approached with camera in hand, something like a moth drawn to light. Lovely stuff.

Next door I found an old fashioned barber's shop. I must have walked and ridden past a thousand times and never noticed it. I did this time. 

I found this picture on the Web at Foursquare and have to confess I am intrigued. Sometimes I wish I had to cut my hair more often, but I have an old fashioned place on Big Pine I have come to like just fine.

If you wonder at the number of hair dressing joints in the Keys, then you might also wonder at the number of  bicycle shops here as well. And local businesses do like to decorate their dumpsters, happily:

 I like taking pictures of piles of bicycles. It must be Aspergers and geometric almost random patterns or something. Doing it at night in the half light at Island Bikes was even better.

I went down to Duval Street to take pictures but it wasn't the night. The place was crowded and as I rode north on the famous street all I could see were crowds of drunks, on the sidewalks, on bicycles peeling off into traffic and the hubbub of the crowds, the sight of a man in underwear lounging outside the Bourbon was enough to remind me that I don't live in a  Fellini film and I needed peace and quiet for my lunch break. Some other night perhaps for Duval, as I had my pictures of the quiet corner of Key West I had not expected to stumble across.

The Conch Republic's Leading Edge

67 year old Peter Anderson, the self-styled and widely admired "Secretary General of the Conch Republic" died last week from a cancer that had reduced him literally to a shadow of his former florid self. It's a powerful force of Nature that can fell a man who seemed unable to stop himself from operating at full flow at all times in life. He reveled in his role as cheerleader for the mythical Conch Republic, generally described more as a state of mind, and less of a place.

He somehow turned the Ruritanian ideal of an independent republic, created in a dispute with Federal authorities in 1982, into a way if life and a successful business. This sort of enterprise never ceases to boggle the mind. I only really became fully aware of this man's enterprise when he filed suit against imitators in the Upper Keys. That battle ended less with stale Cuban bread at dawn and more with a businesslike agreement.

He sold knick knacks as one does in these touristy times, but he went one further and sold travel documents, charging extra for "diplomatic passports." You will read that they were sometimes used as the real thing but I have heard of only one documentated case of a Conch Republic passport being used to get a desperate traveler home. Once is enough in the jollity of myth making.

These pictures from the Facebook page of the man who romped through life in Key West.

While one historic leading edge got dulled this past week, next week could see Key West following on it's role in leading the Sunshine State out of the darkness of old fashioned fear into the sunlit uplands of marriage equality. Every time I want to throw in the voting towel, the Republican Party manages to do something crass or cruel, enough that I am reminded there is a difference, and even though Democrats are spineless and clueless on the big issues, on social progress they are worth supporting. A role that has made its mark in Wikipedia already:

On July 17, 2014, Judge Garcia issued a ruling in Huntsman in favor of the plaintiff same-sex couple and those similarly situated. The judge, in declaring that Florida's same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, found that:

• Baker v. Nelson had lost its precedential value,
• substantive due process guarantees marriage and liberty as fundamental rights,
• liberty in marriage is an individual right that cannot be submitted to popular vote, and
• same-sex marriage is not a new right as "societal norms and traditions have kept same-sex couples from marrying," similar to the way women had previously been deprived of biting rights, and interracial couples of the right to marry.

Judge Garcia also noted that Florida's same-sex marriage ban denies couples equal protection under the law under both heightened scrutiny and (although the defendants do not put a basis forward) rational basis analysis. Amici argue a rational basis of procreation and child welfare, but the judge rejects these notions, despite not even having to, as Amici "do not have standing to raise issues that have not been raised by the parties."

While Judge Garcia did not get to the question of out-of-state recognition as the plaintiffs lacked standing as to that issue, he ordered Monroe County to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning July 22, 2014. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a notice of appeal with the state Third Dustrict Court of Appealthe same day. This automatically stays enforcement of Garcia's ruling.

The picture above is from here: Steve Rothaus' Gay South Florida. Letting these two dudes and thousands like them get married is going to have zero impact on my heterosexual marriage. The Defense Of Marriage Act is defense of bigotry. A pox on Pam Bondi and her appeal.

 

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