The Others Of 9/11

The carnage of the bombing thirteen years ago is usually listed as a domestic honor roll yet the hurt inflicted was far more widespread than that. And I don't think this list is complete or comprehensive, as everything about that day seems fuzzy and incomplete; even who died and where they were from can be counted different ways it seems. In the world's oldest republic the citizens of San Marino today mourn Stefano Giorgetti, his country not represented here at all.

Excluding the 19 perpetrators, 373 foreign nationals representing more than 12% of the total number of deaths in the attacks, the majority being British, Dominican, Indian, and South Korean. Without accounting for some cases of dual citizenship, here is a list of their nationalities:

Foreign casualties of the September 11 attacks

Country	Deaths
Argentina	4
Australia	11
Bangladesh	6
Belarus	1
Belgium	1
Bermuda	2
Brazil	3
Canada	24
Chile	1
China	2
Colombia	18
D.R. Congo	2
Dominican Republic	47
Ecuador	13
El Salvador	2
Ethiopia	3
F.R. Yugoslavia	2
France	4
Germany	11
Ghana	2
Guyana	3
Haiti	2
Hong Kong	2
Honduras	1
India	41
Indonesia	1
Ireland	6
Israel	5
Italy	10
Ivory Coast	1
Jamaica	16
Japan	24
Jordan	2
Kenya	1
Lebanon	4
Lithuania	1
Malaysia	3
Mexico	15
Moldova	1
Netherlands	1
New Zealand	2
Nigeria	1
Pakistan	8
Paraguay	2
Peru	5
Philippines	16
Poland	6
Portugal	5
Romania	4
Russia	1
South Africa	2
South Korea	28
Spain	1
Sweden	2
Switzerland	2
Taiwan	1
Trinidad and Tobago	14
Ukraine	1
United Kingdom	67
Uzbekistan	1
Venezuela	1

And as far away as Key West may appear it's  not as though it has fallen off the face of the Earth as the Fire Department here has it's own piece of the Twin Towers.

It's right in front of the main fire station on North Roosevelt Boulevard. Lest we forget.

Posted with Blogsy

Playing African Queen On Sugarloaf Key

There's a fine line between stubbornness and determination, and I dare say the line falls somewhere between success and failure. It's too early to say for sure but it seems possible, nay likely that Robert's inveterate tinkering may have finally struck gold in the search for outboard reliability. We pondered the problem of sudden and complete refusal to run. Robert was convinced it was a fuel problem. I wondered if a carburettor gloat was sticking. I have a grasp of theoretical mechanics but the practical aspect of digging into delicate machinery fills me with trepidation.

Not so Robert who found a carburettor float filled with fuel, where it was supposed to be filled with air. Thus after a while the float would lose buoyancy and shut down the flow of fuel. Eureka! You can see the dark part of the u-shaped float which was filled with gasoline and should have been light gray and filled with air.

The discovery and replacement of the defective float required a test drive which would involve putting oneself into the tender arms of providence and faith that fatal defect had in fact been found and remedied. Off I went, across Cudjoe Bay and up the channel between the mangroves at the southern end of a Sugarloaf Key. I had Tow Boat US's phone number in my cellphone. Just in case, you understand.

Ten minutes after leaving my canal I was deep in the greenery of the main channel, wide and deep, and easy to plane through if you have a mind to. I was into puttering, it was such a lovely day.

Idle speed is a little low on the Yamaha so I had to pay attention to maneuvering close to the bushes but it was running fine, planing across open water at 24 miles an hour (20 knots) according to my brilliant phone GPS app.

Just before the old State Road 939 bridge remnants I turned south off the main channel and took off down what the charts call Tarpon Channel. The opening was side and deep so even though the tide was running strong and fast we powered through the gap quite easily.

There is plenty of room for a 14 foot skiff, and the constant tidal action scours the bottom, so the channel is deep, looking straight down at the sand and weed bottom it looked about six feet most of the time. Deep enough to drown me in any event.

It is a desolate stretch of water winding back and forth like a tormented snake out of sight of anything but green leaves and blue sky.

It is in these peculiar tropical environs that one thinks of movies that play on the strangeness of such surroundings. Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart messing about in the jungles of East Africa comes to mind. They shot The African Queen in Africa for the most part, even though the boat itself is restored and offers yours in Key Largo these days. And it's time I paid it a visit.

They could have filmed it here!

 

 

 

Red mangroves grow out of salt water directly filtering the salt out into their leaves. But it's no place for humans or dogs to take a walk.

Some of the mangroves grow taller, looking from a distance like hillocks but it is an illusion as underneath it's all just salt water. The apparent end of the channel was also an illusion as a sharp ninety degree turn opened up as I got closer.

Tarpon Creek is all oxbows and the channel winds back and forth requiring sharp turns and patience. This is actually a ninety degree angle rendered thus by the camera:

Getting closer of open water dead clumps of seagrass start to appear everywhere, as annoying here as on open water. Except here I didn't get my prop clogged by the stuff which was nice.

 

This small side channel could be explored in a kayak:

Human intervention helps keep the main channel navigable, as shown by these saw marks:

I did not see much wildlife, a flash of white over the trees and the bird was gone. For the rest of the trip, nothing. To see wildlife you generally have to linger...next time I'd bring shade and more time to lounge around in a comfortable beach chair to see who or what might happen by.

As it was the test ride was over so when we came out into open water...

...it was time to head home.

Rain threatened vaguely, giving a little drama to the return run across Cudjoe Bay.

So far so good, no imminent engine failure.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Key West's Palm Reader

The news item below comes from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, a country noted for oil exploration, carnival celebrations and lively newspapers, in the British tradition. The news from this newspaper is surprising and shocking. Not that I go in for palmistry but he was a fixture on Duval Street and now he's dead. As much as it's a cliche, you really don't know when your time is up, so act accordingly.

Florida man killed in San Fernando

By Trevor Watson

Story Created: Sep 9, 2014 at 10:31 AM ECT

Story Updated: Sep 9, 2014 at 11:06 AM ECT 

FAMED Hindu palm reader Mahadeo Jerrybandhan was shot and killed in an apparent robbery attempt at his family's home in San Fernando last night.

Jerrybandhan, a resident of Key West Florida, was shot in a bedroom of his son's home at Cooper Street, where he was vacationing.

Family members said they heard a single shot at around 9.30p.m. and found Jerrybandhan dead. It is suspected that the killer hid in an overgrown lot across the road from family house.

Jerrybandhan, 74, lived at Key West, Florida, and was a respected and much sought after palmist.

The Police Service issued a statement today, making no reference to the murder, but reported responding to a shooting, and finding a loaded gun and marijuana at a nearby pan yard.

The Police Service stated: Around 11:30 pm on Monday 8th September 2014, a party of police officers attached to the Southern Division under the supervision of Constable Richardson was on mobile patrol when they received information relative to a report of shooting at Cooper Street, San Fernando. The officers immediately responded and upon reaching in the vicinity of Pleasantville Avenue, Pleasantville they became suspicious of an opened pan yard gate. The officers made checks in the area and carried out a search on the premises. Subsequently the officers found one black plastic bag containing one Revolver with six rounds of ammunition and a plastic bucket containing a black bag with several packets of Marijuana weighing 3.76kg with an estimated street value of $56,400.00 dollars. Enquires are continuing. 

Abandoned Boats In The Keys

Driving out of Key West I saw this beached lump of fiberglass resting comfortably on the grass. It appears to be a wreck that has been hauled to shore at vast taxpayer expense, hopefully to be removed, sawn up into little pieces and buried forever in a mainland landfill. The problem of derelict boats is huge in  the Keys, where people come and dream of a cheap life in the tropics and find themselves living an unnatural life in a fiberglass bleach bottle in one of the many anchorages around these islands. They laughingly call themselves sailors, but they aren't; they are liveaboards, people who can no more travel by boat than  by magic carpet.

This sad wreck could have looked like this perhaps, a home for a while, then abandoned by an owner who went to the hospital, to jail, or back North to relatives willing to give them a second chance:

Life at anchor is a romantic possibility but the tedium of maintaining the boat, dragging drinking water out to the boat and then taking your trash back to shore, plus finding a way to commute to a job and sitting out hot weather and wet rainy weather in a space the size of a broom closet can wear on the most well intentioned boater. So, slowly slowly the boats get abandoned.

And, once abandoned their fittings below the waterline inevitably corrode or the hulls fill with rainwater and slip beneath the waves. Only, the waters around here are shallow enough that the sunken former homes present less the appearance of the Titanic and more the appearance of a random iceberg. And they can be just as lethal, unlit at night and not easily seen even by day. So the particularly egregious ones get hauled to shore, cut into pieces and hauled away at vast public expense. Monroe County estimates  it spends north of $150,000 a year  clearing these boats.

The problem is the boats are someone's property and as much as they need to be removed the county has to go through complex reporting requirements to establish they are abandoned. No one wants the government taking private property willy-nilly, I guess! Then there is the problem of fiberglass which is completely indestructible and doesn't deteriorate in sun, saltwater, or under the effects of radioactive  fallout. It is the world's least biodegradable product ever. A boat built in 1970 will be as solid and sailable, all other things being equal, as the day it was built. Amazing stuff, but really hard to get rid of; a permanent mixture of resin glue and glass fiber strands hardened and never again to decompose!

Monroe County has an  office dedicated to the removal of these boats, but they can't keep up. The blight it seems will never quite go away.