Day 3
We spent only two nights and one day at the park. We would have stayed longer but we didn’t like the holding in the anchorage or the weather report. As it turns out nearly all the boats left the day we did so it appeared others felt the same way.
The fort was very interesting. Construction was started in 1846 and was abandoned in 1874 unfinished. The surrounding area, a cluster of seven islands composed of coral reefs and sand make up the Dry Tortugas National Park, an area noted for birds and marine life, and shipwrecks (per park info).
For our visit we dinghied over to the fort in the morning before the ferry (with an army of 165 tourists aboard) arrived to learn a little about how things were set up. The seaplane pilot was already there with his few passengers. He said he makes five trips a day but today he was delayed because of a thunderstorm line between Key West and the Dry Tortugas, which he could not cross with the plane. The storm was moving slowly and the winds were very light so we went back to the boat where Dick dove down and cleaned the prop, which had built up some barnacles after sitting in Marathon so long. It had reduced our engine RPM. Afterwards we had lunch and dinghied out to the brick shipwreck not far from the anchorage. There we snorkeled, saw many coral and fishes, and happened to see one of the biggest lobsters we had ever seen! From there we dinghied the two miles over to Loggerhead Key to tour that beautiful little island. The lighthouse was closed to the public. We returned to Fort Jefferson around 4:30 PM and took the self-guided tour of the areas open to the public. Unfortunately, there are no longer any park provided tours. We were told we could tag along on the ferry boat tour. The fort was built so that over 400 cannons could be installed. It was designed so that any target that got into range could have as many as 125 cannons pointing at it. There were many other interesting things about the fort that made the whole trip very worth while. We have posted some of the more than 200 pictures we took in the Photo Gallery.