Sailing with Lala

From Down South !!!!!!!
It's been almost two weeks since I was on the computer. We are not in Palmetto any more; we are cruising at last, sort of. Our crew, Uncle Paul arrived as planned, but the boat wasn't ready yet for departure. We were still waiting for some equipment, and I was installing SSB radio for our long range communication. If I only knew how complex this was going to be, doubt it if I was going to do it. We found the buyer for our car, so now we are homeless with no car, but we are not boat less. It was sad to say good bye to Palmetto and the boat yard. Lala was very busy making thank you and good buy cards. Last evening we sat down together with Jonathan, our next boat neighbour and the admiral presented him with a bottle of ice wine. He was always so kind to us, very helpful and listing to his stories was just a treat, especially to Misiu. We were also very happy that it was him who untied our dock lines and set us of. We left Snead Island just before noon and motor for the first few hours until the wind pick up. Watching the sunsets and sunrises from the boat was a treat. The same like sailing at night was almost magical. The Admiral and the kids took the sea sickness medicine, and only Misiu and Lala "fed the fish", and only once. We had favourable winds all the way to Tortugas, on one tack for over forty hours. It was very emotional to see our first destination; the fort just looked way out of place in here. There were only two other boats in the anchorage, one sailboat from Chicago and a big catamaran from Australia. Right after lunch we launched the dinghy and went exploring. It is unreal to see how big this structure is. They used 16 million brick to build it and not one shot was ever fired from here. There was a warning about another cold front approaching, so we hoped in the dinghy and went back to the boat. And sure enough, it came right after we stepped on deck. The wind started to blow at 20 knots, followed by heavy rain, and I'm telling you, it was the mother of all rains. The forecast doesn't look rosy, one cold front after another, nothing else we can do, just sits and wait. Together with us are four fishing boats that took the cover here. Everybody is saying that this is the best shelter around. The fishermen are all Cubans. After one week of waiting, Uncle Paul took a ferry to Key West so he could catch his plane home. It was very emotional for all of us and we all had tears in our eyes when he was leaving ,because who knows when we are going to see him again. It was sad to be only 80 miles from Cuba and not be able to go there. Today we are in our tenth day here, and is still blowing 20 and up knots and blowing from the wrong direction. We go to the fort every day and made lots of friends. Sue and Greg who are volunteers with National Parks, Kate at the book store who lets us use her computer to send messages that we are still alive. I took some food to the fishermen and got two big Groupers in exchange, what a delicious fish. They were really suffering here because they were out of cigarettes and beer. So yesterday they got tired of waiting and went home, hope the made it safely. Two other fishing boats are still here and yesterday I went to ask them if they need the ride to shore or need any provisions, but they were OK and gave me fish too. When playing with an SSB Radio, by accident I got on a channel for south Florida cruisers net. We checked in and had our first radio transmission, quite an excitement .The people on the net were jealous that we are being stack here, as for fact is one of the nicest places in all of Florida. Dry Tortugas is a cluster of seven tiny islands. The place where we are, is sort of lagoon surrounded by Garden Key where the fort stands, Bush Key which is a bird sanctuary and of limits to anyone. There is over sixty thousand birds nesting there at the moment and the rookery from there goes day and night, so it is a really nice place to be stack at. Also yesterday at the beach we bumped into a family with thirteen year old boy who's also home schooled and Misiu had a buddy to chat with. They are from Maine and came to Fort Jefferson to restore two canons. Within fifteen minutes from meeting them we were in their living quarters, drinking beer, eating supper and watching sunset. Two of them are wooden boat builders from Maine, so it's obvious what we were talking about all evening. Jonathan, the guy in charge is a conservatory person and had traveled a lot, including a few cities in Poland. Yesterday it was boat clean up, everything was put back in place, clean, washed. I'm in charge now in washing the dishes. Misiu was doing an excellent job, but using too much water, so we switched to sea water for washing and cleaning. I also found dishwashing very therapeutic and like doing it. Misiu is very pleased with the switch over. After lunch we all went to the beach, hang around with our "cannonries friends", me and Misiu snorkelled. We were both surprised how good the snorkelling is here, especially by the moat. I forgot to mention that the fort living has a moat too. It's a sea wall that is around 8 feet wide, 4 feet above the water line and roughly 30 feet from the fort's outer walls. We saw whole bunch of tropical fish, living coral, and sea urchins. In the evenings, after supper and cleaning we make tea and have a "movie night". Lala is usually deciding what we are going to watch, so most of the times we get to watch cartoons. Yesterday was an exception and we watched "Pirates of The Caribbean". Lala got a little excited as the pirate's hide out was in Tortuga too. Tuesday morning and still blowing 20 knots, but there is a break in the forecast for Friday and Saturday, the wind should come down to 10 knots. Woke up yesterday early in the morning and something was wrong, it was quiet, the wind had finally come down. It was, sunny, worm, it was beautiful. We spend almost the whole day at the beach, mostly snorkelling. Later in a day another boat came in and I and Misiu went to say hi. The invaded all of us for supper. It was a treat, homemade burgers; we didn't have any meat in over a week. I was trying to convince the crew to hop over to Havana, as is only ninety miles from here, but they say no, because of our shortage of supplies. Misiu won't take another week without his meat; he got to have his ribs. We supposed to be leaving this afternoon for Key West, but it was such a nice day, that we postponed it until tomorrow morning. We'll make a stopover at Marquises Key, spend the night there and sail on Saturday to Key West. We said good bye to many good people we have met at Fort Jefferson, the park's stuff, the ferry's captains and their crew who wave to us every morning, the volunteers Sue and Greg, the group from Main and many more. We took of around 7:00 and there was a scarce right in the channel out from Garden Key. All of a sudden I saw a submerged object in our way, throw the wheel hard to port trying to avoid the collision and at this moment "the submerged" object jumped, we almost hit a sleeping dolphin. The wind was around ten knots, just right and the sailing was beautiful. The waters here, as far as you can see are covered with crab or prawn pots, so we had to basically slalom all the way between them and were thankful for changing our decision for not doing this passage at night. Later in the afternoon the winds died and we started to motor. But the highline of the day was when I saw another "submerged object", but this one was brown in color and didn't know what to think of it, until it got closer; it was a huge leather back turtle just paddling along. The last two hours was motoring in dark and fog, another abnormality for this area. We quickly learned how to operate the radar and were thankful for having it. So here we are, anchored of Marquises Keys, that we didn't see it yet and probably won't if the fog stays. Happy Valentine's Day! The boat is all decorated for the occasion, thanks to Lala. We all got Valentines cards that she was making for the last few days. Woke up in the dense fog again, everything is wet, on VHF weather they said humidity is at 97%. Later in the morning the fog has lifted and we saw the key. We were anchored almost a mile away. We could see lots of sports fishing boats all around us. The `` hook`` goes up and of we go again, heading for Key West. We saw more turtles, they must be migrating somewhere. The winds were OK, so we sailed most of the time, except when in the channels in Key West. Arriving here was spectacular, the fog completely gone, sunny and warm, boats of all kinds everywhere including two tall ships under sail. We headed to the anchorage recommended to us by Garry, whom we met in Tortugas. It was such a weird feeling to see a city life again. We were so hungry that the dinghy was back in the water in record time and we were going downtown. As soon as we arrived at the dock, the fast ferries that run to Tortugas got there too and we were greeted by their crew members everywhere. One of them recommended to us a sea food restaurant and few minutes later were seating at ``Alonzo's``, celebrating Valentine's Day and the completion of our first leg of the trip. Everything was so yummy and lots of it. Soon later we were strolling the streets of Key West and were simply amazed. There were thousands of people on the streets, all the restaurants and stores wide open late into the evening, life music everywhere, streets packed with cars, motorcycles and all sorts of electric carts, the Admiral was in heaven and said there is no way she`s getting out of here soon. So it looks like we`ll be here for a while, doing repairs, fixing leaks and maybe look for extra crew to help us with another passage, but we haven`t decided where yet.
SV LALA and crew