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May 2007 |
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22 May - Key West & Sarasota, Florida
Click here to see the Key West pictures
Whilst in Key West we had a couple of cold fronts come through, which not only made it pretty chilly, it also caused a few boats to drag around the anchorage. We met a very nice family on a trawler, that seems to drag around the harbour any time the wind picked up! One minute they were anchored in front of us, the next day they were behind us, the next to the side of us and so on and so forth! Another English guy we met had the misfortune of dragging into a very expensive catamaran, smashing one of his fingers up in the process. The guy who owned the catamaran told him that because of the damage the boat would have to be hauled out and it was going to cost him $17,000, his choices were to give the money or wait until the lawyers got involved! The hospital then charged him around $1000 for an X-ray a few stitches and a bandage .... Hey! Welcome to America!!!! The poor guy paid the $17,000 (he only paid $10,000 for his own boat!!) Its a far cry from what we are used to, where the boaters look after each other.
We have also never heard so many mayday calls on VHF 16, you must get at least 20 a day, with boats capsizing and people going missing. We never had any of that where we have been, if you did have a problem, you either sort it out for yourself or other boaters help, there is no one to call for help!
We weren't too keen on Key West, everything seems to be about money and having lots of big stuff; making money, and how to get more money. It is definitely a different world from the UK, all the adverts on the radio are crazy attorney's adverts about who you can sue, ad's for self help books, how to make money quick cd's, and to loose weight without having to cut down on food or do any exercise, its ludicrous I can't believe the public go in for it all but they obviously do. We were thinking of writing a self help book entitled 'How to engage your own brain, you too can stop buying self help books'!
The other thing that we didn't like was the plastic waste in the restaurants. You can pay a substantial amount in a restaurant for a drink and a meal and it all come out to you on throw away plastic plates and plastic knives and forks (which I heard one restaurant staff member seriously call silver wear!!!) Your beer then comes in the squishy festival type plastic cups where you loose half of the drink when you pick the cup up!! If I'm paying $8 a beer, I would like it in a proper glass please!!!! Not to mention the amount of plastic waste that gets thrown away on a daily basis.
I aught not to moan too much straight away, we have only been here a little while and Key West is a big tourist destination, so I suppose it was to be expected. On the up side we love the library's, they are all pretty huge, with free internet and all sorts of magazines and places to sit and read, you could stay in there all day long.
On to Manatee River & Sarasota
Next we decided to move up the West Coast to Sarasota, our friends Dimitri and Meri used to live here and gave it great reviews and a lot of contacts to meet up with. The journey up took us 2 nights, it should have only taken 1 but the wind died on us and we ended up flopping about for a while, but the sea was so calm it was a nice way to spend a couple of days. We were originally going to enter the Sarasota bay though the New Pass entrance. We called up for local knowledge on the VHF and Tow Boat US helpfully answered and said that he thought the pass might be too shallow for us and to go down to Long Boat Pass. This was another 10 miles up the coast, but we thought better to be safe than sorry, so carried on going.
When we reached the pass we decided to skip this too and carried on around the corner to Manatee River, which upon entering Stuart actually did see a Manatee!! I of course completely missed it! The entrance to the river is very well marked although pretty shallow and a slim channel, this was the time when the wind decided to pick up on us and to my displeasure, we went zooming through the channel at 7 knots! Now Stuart has a saying that if we are unsure of depths or at all worried about an entrance that we should just take it slowly, then if we do bump ground the least possible damage will be done. It appears all that goes to pot when you are looking cool!!! He didn't want to take the sails down because we looked too cool sailing that fast down the channel as if we knew what we were doing!!?
Click here to see the Manatee River pictures
This is a really nice anchorage and reminded me a little of Guatemala, with the mangroves full of birds all around you (that is if you turn your back to the millionaires houses on the other side!) All down the river there are ridiculously huge mansions, we never saw a single person in or around any of them, just a gardener mowing the lawn!
We took a trip in the dingy down to Bradington and Palmetto. All we found in Bradington was a lot of Attorneys offices, but we found a nice friendly bar in Palmetto and a good supermarket, it seems like a really nice peaceful place. It was only when we got back to the boat and read in the local newspaper that Easter Weekend there had been a shoot out on the beach and 3 people had been killed, and that there is a huge problem around the area with gangs. On average they would have 4-5 drive by shootings a week!!
Off of the anchorage was De Soto National Park, which had a nice little beach and little paths taking you through the mangroves. We saw our first racoon here and also saw a long black snake that nearly bit me!! Apparently it was a Black Runner and they are harmless, but I wasn't to know that when it hissed at me from a tree and put its head back to strike! Stuart in true boy fashion then had to go poking about in the bushes to see if he could find it again.
We spent a couple of days here then took the intra costal through to Sarasota Bay, its funny as I thought getting into anchorages would be much easier in America as they are all marked channels, the only problem being that no on can really tell you how deep they are!! Everything around here is extremely shallow and the bottom can change on a weekly basis epically if there has been bad weather. We hit the bottom twice getting to the anchorage which we thought we would never find as the one we were looking for off of the Sarasota Sailing Squadron doesn't seem to exist! We had to go through 3 lifting bridges on the way and one fixed which had only been built 2 years ago and wasn't on any of our charts. We were very concerned that we may hit the mast on the top, only to realise that distances when you are looking up the mast seem an awful lot nearer than they really are. We realised this when we saw a boat with a much larger mast go under with plenty of head room, then felt a little silly for being worried! We have never come across any bridges on our sailing adventures yet, so this was a new one on us. The lift bridges all seem to have fairly regular opening times though and we went through with 3 other sail boats, so the one at the front did all the radioing to the bridge operators and we just sat back and followed them in.
We finally anchored off of City Island park, which is an anchorage and a mooring field. This turned out to be a pretty good place as it is right in the town centre. The only thing with that though is there are only nice tourist type shops and boutique in the centre, there is one fabulous supermarket called Whole Foods, where everything is organic and they have a amazing deli section (they even sell English Clotted Cream, for you cream teas!!) It just costs an arm and a leg so is not a good place to do your weekly shop if you are on a budget! We have mastered the bus system now though, which I must say is a fantastic service, always on time, easy to use and only 50c per journey. It's not the most convenient way of getting around if you are in a rush or need to go somewhere a little off the beaten track but we have found them very useful and would have been lost without them as they don't have any taxis here!
Click here to see Sarasota pictures
As I said, Demetire and Meri had given us a load of contacts to catch up with here and one of their friends Greta got in touch with us, we met up and she has been amazing. It was funny as when we first communicated with her via email, I asked how deep the passes were as we have a fair sized draft, I then went on to tell her that it was 5.5 meters deep!!! (I did of course mean feet, but my fingers got carried away with me!) When we also told her that we were concerned that we might be dismasted coming under the new bridge. She thought "What the bloody hell are they coming in on an old Spanish Galleon????!!"
Firstly she took us over to the Sailing Squadron and introduced us to the rest of the Motley Crew (a name they have given themselves, which is very appropriate, they are!) She got us a spot on a friends mooring there and came in the boat with us to moor up, she has taken us shopping, out to lunch and racing with the other boaters on the weekly Sunday Motley Races, its been great. Through Greta we have got to meet a load of nice people, have made a lot of good friends and had a lot of fun. We raced Marie twice in the Motley races, first time we were so far back I don't know where we came (light winds, not our fault, a lot of smaller much lighter boats racing against us!) It wasn't last though, which is important to know! The second time we came in 4th so not too bad going. We also raced with another guy called Kenny in the Bird Cay annual race, again fairly light winds and we didn't place well but there were some pretty serious racers out there with all the matching gear and stuff!! We had a great time though and went to the after party that had a fab buffet and band.
Click here to see the pictures of the Sailing Squadron
In our time here we have generally spent our weekends anchored up at the Squadron and the weeks over at the city anchorage so have had the best of both worlds, this Friday we plan to head down to Useppa with the Motley Crew then meet up with friends on Pine Island and my mum and dad!! Can't wait, looking forward to seeing you all :-) xxxx