Conch Republic

We are underway across the southeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico, just west of Florida Bay, headed for an anchorage in Shark River from Key West. Shark River is in Everglades National Park, and I have my spiffy new lifetime National Parks Pass to cover the entrance fee, and my boating certificate from the park to allow us to operate there.

Vector at the dock, Key West Bight Marina.

It's a long day, some 10-11 hours under way, and then we'll be in the middle of nowhere, with three or four more hops up to the Tampa Bay region, but the only alternative was a 30-hour overnight. That's normally not a problem for us, but we made the decision to head up the west coast at the very last minute, and we need more advance warning to sync our sleep schedules to the overnight watch schedule. Also, dodging pot floats in the dark is both a pain and stressful.

We arrived to Key West shortly after my last post, proceeded directly to our assigned slip (map), and lined up to back in. I had 15 knots of wind on the port beam for a port-side tie, so backing in was a bit of a challenge. That involved using the starboard rub rails up against a pair of pilings separating us from the next slip. All well and good, but we miscalculated slightly and I ended up knocking the BBQ grill off the starboard rail as I backed in. It landed on the deck, upside-down, with a mighty crash. Fortunately, a small ding in the deck paint was the only damage to the boat.

Tango Uniform.

We had booked two weeks at the marina, where the weekly rate is roughly five times the daily rate. In the middle of our stay we decided we were enjoying it enough this time around to try to extend to a third week, but the best they could do was another four nights, at the daily rate, which took us all the way to yesterday morning.

It's chick season in Key West. We saw them all over town.

We've been to Key West numerous times, staying at this very marina several times, out in the anchorage a number of times, and even at the high-zoot Galleon marina across the way once. I can honestly say that this visit was the least crowded we have ever seen Key West. Free scooter parking, often tight in town, was widely available, there was room every day at the normally always-overfull dinghy dock, and we sauntered right in to pretty much every restaurant. I'm not sure why.

Key West is a scooter-friendly town, with free designated scooter parking all over the place, and specially marked spots for them in all the shopping centers. We put my scooter down the day after we arrived, and with scooters everywhere, we also started looking for a replacement for Louise's scooter, which we sold a couple of months ago. Most of the scooters here are 50s, of course, and we wanted at least a 125.

Helpful instructions in the rest room at Harpoon Harry's.

We ended up taking a used one off the lot at the big scooter dealer in town, which carries the SYM/Lance brand of Taiwanese models. Louise is now the proud owner of a Lance Cabo 200i, which is a 170cc fuel-injected model similar to mine. The dealer gave us a 30-day warranty of sorts, so we tried to ride it all over the island for a week as a shakedown. We found a missing bolt, and the built-in USB charging port was inoperative, and they fixed both of those things.

Louise's new scoot, before sale. I'll need to clean up the poultice corrosion on all this aluminum; every Cabo in town looked just like this.

Among the many scooter excursions were a couple of trips to the auto parts store, where I needed fresh coolant for the main engine, a wiper blade, and a spark plug for my scooter, the lone decent bagel joint in town, Goldman's, Home Depot, and the grocery stores for provisions and distilled water to go along with the coolant.

I tackled projects pretty much every day. That included replacing the tap water in the main engine, from the pump replacement in Marathon, with fresh coolant. Key West has an excellent and convenient recycling program and I was able to offload all the used coolant from the project right there near the marina. Of course, I had to fix the BBQ as well, which involved ordering a new HDPE cutting board on Amazon to replace the one that shattered into pieces, and also reattaching one side of the lid handle with JB Weld. I also took the opportunity to remove the element and clean the whole thing out.

It fits! I think Louise is enjoying the peppier bike; I will enjoy not having to work on a carburetor.

The main engine was long overdue for a valve adjustment, something I am only willing to tackle while secured to a dock; the engine is considerably quieter now without all the valve clatter. I also replaced the main engine oil, again with convenient access to recycling for the used oil, filters, and sorbents.

The other big project that has been waiting for dock time was a persistent fuel leak on the generator. I had previously tracked it down to a banjo bolt in the return line, but the head stripped rather than the bolt coming quietly, so we needed dock power in case I broke something during extraction. I had to take all the injector lines off the engine to get a tool onto the bolt head but eventually I got it out. I found a generic replacement which seems to have cured the problem, but I need a few hours of run time to be sure. Lots of fuel-soaked sorbents went to recycling once I was done.

The recalcitrant banjo bolt. The composite rubber-over-metal washer has extruded well down into the banjo; I think that was the source of the leak.

With a good Amazon address and some extra time I converted our Starlink terminal to DC power, which saves maybe 15% of the power consumption. It consumes over a kWh per day, so the power saving is measurable. I converted more of the house lighting to LED, and I replaced some corroded lifting tackle for the dinghy. I also replaced the grab line on our life ring, which had disintegrated in the weather for the third time.

Replacement bolt, left, has a bigger head so I am less likely to round it off.

Of course, the new scooter also required attention. I had to remove brush guards (for real -- on a scooter) from the handlebars in order that the lifting and tie-down tackle would work, and I mounted Louise's tail trunk. The dealer kindly swapped the factory grab bar on the back for the accessory package rack from one of the bikes in their enormous rental fleet so I could mount the trunk. We also updated the first aid kits in both scooters while we had them out.

A couple of weeks at a dock makes it possible to schedule other work, and we had a day worker come by to wash the boat, and a diver to clean the bottom and inspect everything. All is good down there, but our outermost layer of black paint is mostly gone and the bottom is now ship-bottom red.

The Margaritaville cruise ship, as seen on my way from the anchorage yesterday. One of many to call here, but this one seems like a homecoming.

Our very good friends Dorsey and Bruce were in town aboard their lovely vessel Esmeralde, docked over at the Galleon, and we had several nice evenings with them. That included one where we met them at Roostica out on Stock Island, giving Louise's new scoot some additional workout, which was followed by a nice walk around Boyd's campground, where we've all stayed in RVs at one time or another. One evening they introduced us to their long-time friend Chris, who is one of those larger-than-life characters from the boating world, and we look forward to seeing him again somewhere along the line. And, of course, we got a bit of dog love from terriers Maisie and Ollie.

We tried to walk a bit every morning, and I've been continuing with my physical therapy. We had near-perfect weather for almost the entire stay, and I was in shorts up until the last day or two. On Tuesday, though, a storm moved through that dumped an all-time record amount of rain on Key West in just a few hours. Parts of town flooded; the water was two feet deep in Harpoon Harry's just a block from our dock. Our scooters were on higher ground and only saw a couple of inches, though others were less fortunate. It was wild, and afterwards I waded through town in my watermen's boots taking photos.

Harpoon Harry's as the water recedes. An hour earlier it was another foot deep; an hour later the street was dry.

One of the great things about Key West is that you can stay here for a month and never eat at the same joint twice. We hit most of our old favorites, and added a couple to the list, including Mangia Mangia!, a decent Italian place a bit away from the crowds, Misohappy, a Thai and sushi place where Bruce and Dorsey brought us with Chris, which was quite good, the Celtic Conch, where you have to squeeze in between the live music acts if you want to talk over one of their many drafts, and Jack Flats, which is a "why bother" place that's been here forever, drawn in by a free beer (barely worth it). Dishonorable mention to the Southernmost Pint, whose only redeeming quality is the name, and the Wicked Lick, whose ice cream was both expensive and terrible.

White watermen boots I bought for TS Colin a decade ago.

Old favorites we revisited this time included La Trattoria, Harpoon Harry's (breakfast and dinner), The Boat House, Waterfront Brewery, Onlywood (Caroline location), Amigos, Bruschetta Francesca, Roostica, Carolines (giant burgers), Old Town Mexican (who puts too much squash in the fajitas), Pepe's, and Fogarty's.

No Conch Tour Train today.

We somehow missed the Cuban Coffee Queen on this visit, usually a standby for us for breakfast, but we did get excellent breakfast sandwiches a couple of times at the Fisherman's Cafe, which is a walk-up stand in spite of the name, and had a traditional diner breakfast, complete with mimosa, at Harpoon Harry's just a day after they flooded. We also got pastries at Old Town Bakery, which is always packed. It would not be a visit to Key West without a stop at Fausto's Market, which is overpriced but convenient.

Mind your wake! I had to jump back up on higher ground several times to keep the wakes from overtopping my boots.

We rolled the new scooter out to the dock Tuesday to see what it was going to take to squeeze it on deck, since it's 5" longer than the old one. Just lifting it was a challenge; the handlebars are so wide that our usual lifting harness did not fit, and I had to root around for some combination of straps to do the trick. Once up on deck, it was not as tight a fit ahead of the dinghy as I had feared, but we do have to lift the back end to swing it into place. We loaded the other scooter yesterday and it's a tight fit at the handlebars, but it all worked out. I'll need new tackle, and maybe to remove the bar-end weights.

Yesterday we settled up and left the dock at checkout time and headed out to the anchorage. With east wind we decided to try anchoring west of Wisteria Island (map), a popular anchorage, so that I would not have to thread my way between Wisteria and Tank Islands in the dark this morning. That turned out to be a bad choice, as we rolled all night. We tendered back ashore for a final dinner with Dorsey and Bruce, followed by final dog petting and tearful goodbyes.

Kelly the sloth, Louise's pillion, with the loot, gifted by Esmeralde.

This morning we weighed anchor at civil twilight and got underway. We had a nice push behind us out the Northwest Channel, and favorable current for the first half of the trip. As I wrap up tying in our final hours we have a knot against us. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, we will continue up the coast to Marco Island.

Update: We are anchored in Ponce de Leon Bay, just off the Shark River entrance (map). I had to stop working on the post well offshore due to shallows and pot floats. I was hoping to make it all the way in to Little Shark River, which is well-protected, for the night, but tomorrow morning's tide is three quarters of a foot below zero, and we started running over 8' soundings at a tide of +2'. We'd be stuck in there until well after 10am tomorrow, and we have a nine hour day ahead of us.