Mission Accomplished!

The spearhead of our assault on the keys during the first week was completely successful – we caught them entirely by surprise! The same question was asked each morning, “What are we doing today Jack?” The answer was always the same – “Try to take over the Keys!” So we took our new arrivals – Ryan and Elisa -on an amphibious landing manouver to Bahia Honda State Park. We sailed to the park and slipped into the docking bay entirely unnoticed. It was too late when they saw the “jolly roger” hoisted! We dined on ice cream and hot-dogs and waded the beach looking for sea life.

It was a beautiful day we saw several conchs, crabs, a small ray, sargent majors, and other small fish and many sea birds. Janet and I also located a geocache in the butterfly garden and deposited some of our pirate booty! I think we retrieved a plastic skeleton that now terrifies unsuspecting passengers on the Raging Queen.

The next day we invaded Little Sand Island in the Coupon Bite Archipelago.

It was a great afternoon – Ryan and Elisa snorkeled, Janet read and Joan sunned as they were targeted by the most fearsome and bothersome of keys pests – THE DREADED KEYS SAND TERRIORS! They show sort shrift for any organism that is unlucky enough to be slower than these swift rapacious feral hounds. They surround and fling tons of sand on their hapless victims. After they are sure that every square inch is covered with sand they stealthily undermine the victim’s beach chair by digging behind it and thus toppling them! The insidious beasts then mercilessly trample them! Oh the humanity! The only thing that may save anyone is if a sandwich is removed from the cooler.

Later in the week the National Oceanic forecast stated that the gulf stream had approached to within 5 nautical miles south of Looe Key Reef! The wind was a stiff 15 knots from the east so the Gulf current was a scant 12 nautical miles away from our port at a fast broad reach! This doesn’t happen very often when we are in the keys so we decided to go for it. The Gulf current holds specific allure since its extremely warm waters harbor warmer water pelagic species of big game fish such as mahi mahi, sailfish, marlin and wahoo! It also has a tendency to kick up tall messy waves warring with the onshore currents. But the hearty crew fortified by a cooler of sandwiches, beer, soft-drinks, and snacks fearlessly sallied forth! The gulf current was spectacular as ever – deep cobalt blue with 8 to 10 foot messy seas that belched forth acres of iridescent flying fish! Absolutely beautiful! We also saw many sea turtles and some porpoise on the way out. Ryan hooked into and boated the first fish but we were all a little disappointed that it was a good sized king mackerel, but it fought well taking several 100 yard runs. On our final tack back to port Ryan hooked into a nice mahi mahi and handed the rod to me to land and Joan took over the tiller while I fought the fish. The crew worked like a well oiled fishing machine! After a momentous battle I gaffed the beauty and remanded her to our cold fish locker. It was a team effort entirely. My hands were shaking for about 10 minutes until I accessed The Queen’s store of grog! We dined on the fair beauty that eve, one large fillet in beer batter and the other blackened. The fish easily fed six hungry crew. It was a great day.

The week ended all to soon and we had to say adieu to Joan, Ryan and Elisa. But we were soon invaded by four members of the Baxter clan – the subject of my next blog.

 The Gang of 5 Invade!

The place that stores the Raging Queen is only open during the week (no exceptions BTW). We made the momentous decision to drive straight through to the keys leaving Thursday morning and (hopefully) arriving there Friday in time to retrieve the Queen from stir and get her in the water facilitating our nefarious plans for marine mayhem. We all packed extremely light. But I still crammed the CRV with three people two rasty little Tibetan terrors  (Joan, Janeeto – evil one nee of planet Janetron, Baxter, Bart, and me), an outboard motor, fishing equipment, snorkeling gear, dog food/treats and all other manner of “stuff”! Have any of you heard Gordon Marks’ definition  of a blivet???? It certainly applied here! - Two pounds of shit in a one pound container! But get this I was able to make a bed on top of the stack with the boys’ two doggie beds (they didn’t get “the pack light memo” or just ignored it I am not sure which) and a 6″ piece of foam! Janet slept like a baby (albeit a colicky vituperative and cranky baby with the mumps and a side order of chicken pox!) as Me and Joan piloted our way south. Janet awoke bright and early to take over the wee hours of the night driving duties and Iron Man Joan retained “shot gun” and kept Janet bright for a long haul drive. I slept without any incident in the back because I am an uncomplaining and extremely adaptable sort never thinking of my own needs and forever sacrificing… (canonization is slated for early April – I urge you to get your miracles, anecdotes and testimonials in to father Guido Sarducci at Vatican City before the rush folks) till morn. We all put on our shorts and sandals and sallied forth on to the unsuspecting Florida peninsula! We made excellent time but our well thought out plans were nearly dashed as we realized that -DUH DUH DUM – Joan (I can’t go over the speed limit and dassn’t pass anyone and must draft any slow moving hay wagons – Newton) was driving the last leg in the Keys. Janet was ripping vast patches of fur from her scalp – blood was welling in my mouth as I nearly bit off my tongue and Joan said, “I thought the speed limit was 15 mph through out the Keys – why are all these little old purple haired Jewish women speeding past us on tricycles????” But persevere we did as I thought (incorrectly in retrospect) that it would probably take more time to switch drivers than continue forward. But to everyone’s surprise (except Andre Marzetti Iva) we did get to the house and boat storage in time to retrieve the beloved Raging Queen!

The Queen weathered the previous summer in fine fettle and we unloaded and rigged her the next day without major mishap. I added a pulley on the top of the mast this year to run lines next to the back stay so that we could hoist various flags on our voyage to signal our intentions to other vessels. Cool stuff indeed!

Ying came down for the entire month this year and really spiked the per-capita vodka consumption rate for southern Florida! I went to meet him in Key West 10:30 when he was to fly in Sunday night (danger Will Robinson! Liquor, hot go go boys and free range Ying, very volatile and corrupting influences indeed) but the island of Key West was FOGGED IN!! Very strange! Ying was forced to land in Miami and make his way to Ramrod Base by bus later in the night and I was stranded all alone in Key West with a fist full of one dollar bills! So I immediately came home. Perhaps I will recount my adventures that evening in a screen play – watch for at your local theaters in the next few years. Hmmmm Adventures in Foggy Bottom???

First day on the Queen – was nearly windless and in the 80’s. Baxter TWD and Bart were so hot that we wrapped them in wet towels. They immediately thought that they were the “caped crusaders”! We went to the channel near Little Palm Island (slum resort) and “Grunt  Woman Janet” showed us how to catch grunts and pinfish. We secured a good number of the little devils to be run through the bass-o-matic and frozen for shark chum. On our return it would have been customary for any sport fishing vessels such as The Raging Queen to raise flags announcing our prodigious catch but unfortunately the flag makers don’t produce grunt or pinfish flags! This odious oversight will be corrected next year as I – Captain Jack – will produce a line of sport fish flags for the proletariat! Grunt – pinfish – ballyhoo – sand perch - bonnet head shark – nurse shark – sand shark - lane snapper – mangrove snapper – hogfish – seagulls -pelicans - Miller beer – Coors beer – cocktails and last but not least for the “Great Snaguula Slick” a bottom hookup flag! Hmm bottom hookup – this flag might be a good seller in Key West.

In the insuing days the wind picked up and the temperature held so the conditions were fantastic. Bart took to the sea like a sea dog should – and he looked fucking adorable in his life preserver! Its an interesting commentary on what we hold dear in our lives when the only things in the boat that we go to great ends to keep safe are our dogs!

On a day of screaming easterly winds we tucked in behind “bird island” and got these fine shots of some frigate birds perched there and Joan hooked and brought to the boat a fine sand shark. It wasn’t to be on the menu that night and was pretty big to bring into the boat so discretion being the better part of valor was released. I would put it at about 3.5 feet long and probably around 40 pounds. Nice fish! If Joan has any pictures of it I’ll try and post them.

My Birthday was an absolute hoot – wind conditions were perfect and Joan piloted the boat whilst I caught and nice group of mackerel. A middling sized king and a nice Spanish. The king was a real screamer and and made several smoking runs before I boated the beauty! Happy Birthday to me – Happy Birthday to me …

 It was a delightful week! the boys settled in and the Queen revelled in being back in the briny deep! We also noticed that the salt air was nourishing Bart’s sense of style and just seemed to feed his faux-hawk!

Week two next Blog.