Adventures with David & Gail

Back in the US, kinda! - We are on US soil! There is no immigration or customs office out here so there is no way to clear into the US. So we are kinda' illegal aliens! But we are flying our Q flag and no one seems to care. Or maybe they don't know what it means. Anyway, we are getting closer to home and we have time to finally enjoy the park.

The Dry Tortugas National Park and Ft. Jefferson are very remote being 60 miles west of Key West. Someone told me it was the least visited park in the system and I believe it. But it is really a cool place. West of here about 3 miles is Loggerhead Key which is really the most southern point of land in the US. We pulled in on a Saturday and the anchorage near the fort was almost full with weekend boats and all the good spots were taken. We went into the shallower water and got an anchor down but didn't really feel comfortable about the set. However, the winds were light so we seemed to be ok. Since it was late and we had been traveling so long we just crashed and waited until the next day to start exploring.

The only way to get here if you are a tourist is by fast ferry from Key West which arrives about 10 am and leaves at 3 pm. The ferry takes about 2 hours to cover the distance. Or you can fly in by float plane which takes only 30 minutes but costs about $300 per person round trip. Or come by private boat like us (but directly from Key West and not all the way around the Caribbean!) If you get into the fort before the ferry comes, it's pretty quiet and you can explore by yourself.

Built in the early 1800's, the fort takes up the whole island of Garden Key. It looks formidable from the outside as it was built with over 10 million bricks (a pork project for some brick rich senator if I ever saw one!) and has walls 12 feet thick but is really a three story shell for gun ports. It was designed to have over 400 cannon aimed at all points. Every "window" that you see is a gun port. The primary objective was to provide a protected anchorage for a fleet of ships to control the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits.

It was never completed and only ever had about 145 guns in place. It never fired a shot in defense. However, it was used as a prison during the Civil War and its most famous prisoner was Dr. Mudd who mended the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth. He is actually remembered more for his service to the fort as a doctor during a sever outbreak of yellow fever during his stay.

During the Spanish American War in 1898, a coaling station was built at the fort for ships traveling between Cuba and Florida. The ruins of these docks are prominent features in the anchorage. But from the beginning, supplying the fort with supplies for construction and basic survival had to come from Mobile or Key West and was a major challenge. The fort was abandoned after the war and finally became a park in the 1990's.

We took one more day to do a dive over at Loggerhead Key. The park ranger recommended diving the Windjammer Wreck on the reef south of the island and said it was only about 20 ft. deep. Actually named the Avanti when wrecked, it is called the Windjammer because it was one of the famous steel hulled Windjammer ships sailing the oceans in the late 1800's. We packed for a dive in the dinghy and took the 4 mile trip across the shoals to the wreck.

Although there was some current on the site, we went in and found the site covered with all types of reef fish. Two things struck us as something we had never seen. We saw lots of big barracuda swimming around the wreck. They were watching us but not intimidating. But they were big. And speaking of big, we saw the largest fish ever on a dive! Under part of the wreck structure in this shallow water was a huge (maybe over 8 feet long and 300 pounds) Goliath Grouper or more commonly called a Jewfish. And (sorry, Myra!) we did not have our underwater camera! Remember we had taken the second camera swimming with the battery door open in the Vivorillo Cays! So we could not get the picture but believe me it was huge and so amazing to see. What a way to finish the last dive of the trip!

But, you remember that we didn't feel good about the anchor set when we arrived. At sunset as we were getting ready for dinner, I noticed a small line of dark clouds approaching and felt there was going to be a wind shift and some gusts coming soon. I knew we might drag our anchor if this happened so I went out front, took the snubber off the anchor chain, and then started the engine just to be safe. Sure enough about a minute later, the winds came up to about 20 kts and WD started sliding sideways and backwards. The guy anchored behind us probably got a little nervous but we were ready, calmly drove forward, picked up the anchor and reset it in a much better spot that had been occupied when we arrived. The 18 months onboard had taught us to be prepared and handle things calmly and without delay. And it was a better anchor anyway! We were good!

A good night sleep and now we were ready to head on back to Miami. We have about 230 miles left to go. We were not in a big hurry but want to get back before Saturday to meet up with our yacht club for the Memorial Day weekend. We had made it to the Dry Tortugas and now it was time to go home!