Happy Thanksgiving Day!
22 November 2017 | Anchored off Ft Jefferson, Dry Tortugas
Helen
A terrific lightning show with a thunderstorm passing thru at 3 a.m.. Slept in today. The tour boat and two or three sea planes of tourists arrived early. We motored our dinghy over to the three remaining boats in this anchorage, to see if they would like to meet for Happy Hour. Two of the sailboats planned to leave before sunset, but the third was interested. Then motored to Bush Key to tour Ft. Jefferson Fort. We were able to secure a seat to listen to the tour guide's speech about the history of the Dry Tortugas. Then we boarded the Ferry Boat for lunch. They offered ham, turkey and tuna fish sandwiches, as well as a variety of sliced breads, potato salad, lettuce, tomato and a combination of water melon and strawberries, with chocolate chip cookies and Lays potato chips and beverages. Apparently, the lunch is free for Ferry passengers, of which we told them we were not. It was supposed to cost $7 for lunch, which was a great deal but they told us we didn't have to pay today. How nice was that? They had showers available but we didn't snorkel until later in the day. We came back from our walking tour and had some down time for a change. Then headed back to snorkel. We selected the north side of Bush Key to snorkel based on the winds today. The winds are blowing from the west at 10-15 knots so we are more protected in this anchorage. The visibility was not great and at first we saw only a few fish, but then we headed out of the moat wall and saw lots more coral and a lot of fish too. There were the silver with yellow stripes, some Sargent Majors as well as many tiny fish, swimming in schools. Mark said he saw a fish that had to be 4 feet. I did not see anything like that. We also saw a couple of the purple circular jelly fish that were around a foot in diameter. I had to take a short break as it is raining all of a sudden. Mark ran for the towels. It did not last long. When we got back to Charabia, we took showers off the back steps, with a mammoth grouper in the water. This fish has to be 5 feet long. It actually looked like the size and shape of a dolphin. Mark is doing some research on the radio and water maker instructions.