The Final Frontier
Naval Air Station Key West on Boca Chica is a lovely place to park a boat but without a car it is lacking convenience. There is almost nothing else on the base besides the marina and the fighter jets that fly here. The other services like the shopping and groceries are on another island. All that is to say, this isn't a permanent home base for me; this also was not my turnaround point. I appreciate isolated places in nature and when I learned about the Dry Torgugas National Park, I was hooked. It's another sixty nautical miles west of Boca Chica and is home to the Civil War era, Fort Jefferson, an outpost, the final frontier of the Florida Keys.
So, on Friday, after three nights at Boca Chica, making friends, doing laundery and a grocery shopping trip (someone was nice enough to give me a ride), I set sail again. Sixty miles is a long stretch to fit in during daylight hours so I decided to make an intermediate stop at the ,uninhabited, Marquesas Keys where I could anchor for the night. It's nice, but with my deep draft wasn't able to get close enough to shore to feel comfortable taking the dingy ashore. I had dinner and called it a night.
Saturday morning I woke up early and set out at dawn, excited for what the day would bring.
A day of great promise delivered early, within the first hour as the sun lit the water into a beautiful blue and a pair of dolphins showed up to greet me and send me on my way. As you can also see, the water was quite calm forcing me to motor all of the 41 remaining miles to Garden Key, the location of Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park.
My first impression of Fort Jefferson is that it's BIG. In the picture there is a large (white) passenger ferry to the left of the fort. The above picture is taken from just north of the green marker you seen at the top of the picture below, a screenshot taken from my navigation app. The depths shown on the map are in feet, Kismet draws 6.4 feet, and you can see why the route, shown by the pink line, goes all the way around the fort. All this shallow water and the fort itself offer good protection from wind and waves when in the anchorage shown at the end of the route.
This would be my and Kismet's home for the next five days and nights. It is amazing that the park had the foresight to allow boats to anchor here, it's a natural harbor but they could have said no to yachts and forced everyone to take the ferry or a sea plane. It's a wonderful gift to be able to stay here in the comfort of a yacht. The only other two options are to camp on the beach, which some people are crazy enough to do, or become a park ranger and work here. I'll stick with the yacht experience.
There's Kismet in the harbor, there were also four other boats here for the five days. There was a guy from Sweden who was on his very first sailing trip after three years of working on his boat when he had time. He had a lot to learn, but I'll give credit where due, he did make it out here, over a hundred miles from Fort Meyers Florida. Another boat from Canada, a boat named Beluga with captain Vince, an Air Force Vet, his wife and their dog, and finally Tony, an Army vet sailing with his dog as well.
Sunday, my second day at Dry Tortugas, I made the three mile trip to see Loggerhead Key with its lighthouse and beautiful beaches. This larger lighthouse was built after the fort to help prevent shipwrecks.
Access to Loggerhead Key is limited to landing a dinghy on the beach and there is one mooring ball that is available for two hours per boat but this enough time to see everything.
Besides the lighthouse, there is also a nice little lighthouse keepers house or maybe a Park Ranger residence; I knocked but no one answered. I was all alone on this little island. After my walk and exploring I tried to do some snorkeling but there was a little too much wind chop and current for me to safely go very far from Kismet but it was still a nice swim. I made the attempt because I knew it would be my last chance for some days to come.
By Sunday evening it was apparent that the weather forecast was correct. Dark clouds filled the sky to the North, a storm was a cumin. This was no surprise to me or anyone else here, it had been discussed at Boca Chica before I left and with Tony and Vince when I arrived at the Fort. It was going to be mostly wind event from the north and going to last about 36 hours. The predictions were pretty accurate. The initial front with the dark clouds brought a couple hours of rain, then that was done.
The initial two hours were the most interesting with the wind and rain and Canadians dragging anchor right on by me. They went past like their anchor wasn't even in the water. Then I realized I was dragging too, but much more slowly, maybe a few feet per minute, but it quickly became obvious that I would have to reset the anchor while the wind and rain was blowing 30 knots. It was windy enough that the rain drops were stinging my face as I worked on the bow to bring up my anchor. The problem was evident when it came up, there was a ball of sand and grass so large I couldn't see the anchor itself. I left it dangling two feet below the surface while I repositioned the boat in the harbor and by the time I got back to the bow the anchor was clean. I dropped it again, now I would have to wait to see if I would get lucky and it would hold. The bottom of this harbor is known for bad holding due to the silty coral based sand but the other three boats were doing fine, so there was hope. The Canadians had to let their anchor go and tried to grab the mooring, but couldn't. So they went to the dock and tied up. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. All was fine due to the circumstances.
When Monday morning came it was dry and windy. Kismet was in the same place I left her, but I knew this already because I had checked on things every hour of the night and my GPS anchor alarm was running and would alert me if we went out of the radius of the anchor chain I had let out. It was rough in the harbor and I had no intention of attempting to go ashore; but Tony did. I wondered why in the world he would be out there until I saw his German-Sheppard, Tali, happily jump onto the beach. He told me later that he would bring her to shore at least twice a day even when sailing a passage and usually more because she wouldn't relieve herself on the boat. I spend the day on the boat writing, fixing some things, fixing meals and fixing to go to bed early after the previous night.
Tuesday came with less drama and things were going back to normal. The Ferry arrived on schedule, which it didn't the day before and the sea planes came a little later than usual but they made it eventually too. I met with Vince and Tony on shore and discussed the storm, as sailors do.
Then I toured the fort again to make sure I didn't miss anything; I had. Tucked in dark corners of the fort were a chapel, a bakery and the cell that held Dr. Mudd who was a prisoner but earned the admiration of everyone at the fort for being true to the doctors' Hippocratic oath and taking care of all who required his help.
The Dry Torgugas and Fort Jefferson have an interesting history that starts with Ponce de Leon discovering the islands in 1513 and naming them Torgugas for all the turtles in the area, Dry Torgugas was coined shortly after when charts were drawn of the area to indicate no fresh water was to be found on the islands. For over three hundred years the islands were mostly ignored until United States decided it would be advantageous to have some control and protection of the shipping routes between the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Mississippi river. Construction of the fort began in 1846, continued for thirty years and was it was never officially finished. It is the third largest fort in the United States and occupies 16 acres. It is the largest brick structure in the western hemisphere and its construction required 16 million bricks! There are many beautiful details to see in the fort's construction with all the arches, some of which can be seen in the picture above. The top of the outer wall has an overhang to keep rain water from eroding the wall. Also, brilliantly, most of the "basement" of the fort is a cistern for storing collected rain to be used for drinking water.
During the American Civil War the fort stayed under Union control and while it was not the focus of any battles it did become a military prison for captured deserters and four men involved with the assassination of President Lincoln. The army abandoned the fort in 1874 but it didn't become a National Park until 1992.
Wednesday arrived with a beautiful sunrise and lit up the fort like a gem. These moments make the trip worth while.
I also, finally, got a look at the levitation that had been lurking under my boat all week. There were dozens of small fish relaxing in the shadow of my boat and I could usually see an enormous tail sticking out as well but never got a look at what it was until I threw my cleaning bucket over the side to fetch some water to rinse the deck. A six to seven foot long Goliath Grouper emerged to asses the edibility of said bucket and then, disappointed, promptly went back to hiding. A short while after that I briefly saw a sea turtle in the harbor but was unable to get a picture in time.
Until next time dear readers.
If you use the No Foreign Lands app or website you can use this link to see where Kismet is exploring.
Is it the sailor bringing out the storyteller in you, Adam. Or, have you always been a great storyteller and I just didn't notice.
ReplyDeleteWonderful details. Though, of course, I did look up Ft. Jefferson, which I hadn't heard of until you text a photo of it a week or so ago. Interesting history, especially the part about Dr. Samuel Mudd who was convicted of conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln.
Kismet puts you in such intimate contact with sea life, and you speak well of how much you appreciate all those experiences -- from the giant groupers to the teaming terns.
Looking forward to see what comes next.
Stay safe.