Savoring the Florida Keys on a Shoestring

[CPYOA]

Savoring the Florida Keys on a Shoestring by Robert F. "Bob" Burgess

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Backed by towering cumulus, Key West shimmered white and small through the slot between the two little islands immediately west of Key West Bight. Ahead, over our bows, the world was cloudless, the ocean flat and green, delineated only by the thin gray lines of distant mangrove islands.

We were two sailboats, three men and one lady on a 1,200-mile land/sea cruise. A pair of identical 16-foot Com-Pac sailboats were serving as our homes for two and a half weeks. On land or sea, we were living aboard the boats, a practical arrangement, it seemed, in these days of runaway inflation. With me on Nomad was sailing and diving buddy Mike Wisenbaker. Aboard Drifter were Jim and Cathy Pullen. We had trailed the two boats from our homes in northern Florida.

We had sailed inland lakes, bays and Gulf coastal waters, but this was our first serious offshore cruise. We wanted to see if four people, trailering small sailboats and sailing offshore, could enjoy the same delights as our big-boat brethren cruising halfway around the world.

So far, it had been a complete success. On land, in various camping areas where we stopped for the night, the boats made ideal "campers," outfitted as they were with Velcro-attached mosquito nets over their hatches and small electric cabin fans to dispel the heat of the tropical nights.

At Pennekamp Coral Reef Park off Key Largo, we sailed 5 miles out to Molasses Reef to scuba dive, only to find milky water and 7-foot seas. It was a nice wing-and-wing ride back to the park. Dockside facilities are limited in Pennekamp. Later we learned that for a $1 overnight parking fee we could leave our car and moor in sheltered mangrove areas close to the coast, but be fortified against the attacks of winged varmints. Just south of the park are other quiet anchorages. But be ready to spring alert shortly after sunrise when a DC-3 repeatedly buzzes the place spewing clouds of insecticide on all life below.

Whether going or coming in the keys, our nights of camping ashore never were disturbed by anything or anyone. Camping per se may be forbidden in rest areas, but trailer boats overnighting in these places are a common sight. The price is right too.

We easily could have spent weeks or even months sailing around the convoluted 100-mile-long archipelago of Florida Keys. The whole area is fascinating. The clear water abounds in lobster (in season) and saltwater fish. Trailer-sailors, not requiring the luxuries of the marinas, can live off these waters and cruise them as economically as they wish. Come the "sure-nuff" energy crunch, there may come a great decline in power boating everywhere, including the Keys. But because of what those waters have to offer, they should become even more popular with sailors.

For the moment, however, we were not interested in sail-exploring the upper keys. We had our sights set on more remote islands<a complex of uninhabited mangrove islands about 22 miles west of Key West. They're called the Marquesas Keys. The round trip, about 50 miles of sailing, was plotted to take us through a series of ocean shallows called "The Lakes," because the water between the mangrove islands seldom is more than 6 feet deep. However, it is an area of fast crosscurrents and mean tidal cuts. Once we left Key West, if by any chance we missed the Marquesas, the next dots of land, the Dry Tortugas, would not appear for about another 40 miles further west.

So it was with some care that we prepared our boats for this first offshore 50 mile passage, lavishing the same kind of attention to details one might associate with a 5,000-mile cruise.

How successfully we could cruise compactly in comfort was due largely to the kind of pocket cruisers we owned, the sties sailing, tremendously seaworthy Com-Pac yachts. Picture a 16-foot, 1,100 pound displacement sloop resembling Carl Alberg's Cape Dory Typhoon but with an 18-inch, shoal-draft fixed keel. Embellish that picture with fore-and-aft stowage, two 8-foot-long berths and a cushioned cockpit convertible to an almost queen-sized berth for two more. Surround it all with a hull without a flat surface on it; then imagine a gentle sheer (but don't let your mind's eye dwell too long on the curve of her bow or it might induce the kind of dry-throated appreciation usually reserved for exquisitely-wrought lines of a more feminine nature).

When I saw her sister at a boat show, it was love. So I went to Clearwater, Florida, to meet her makers-Clark Mills, master boatwright and designer of the Suncat and Windmill, the man with the idea; Buck Thomas, former builder of the South Coast 22, the man with the know-how, and an inventor-turned-manufacturer; and Les Hutchins, the man with the dream. I drove home with a new Com-Pac in tow.

To sustain creature comforts, I added a lightweight rollaway Bimini top; an indoor/outdoor carpeted cockpit floorboard which, when raised and cushioned, converts the 7-foot, 5-inch cockpit into an airy berth; a 1-1/2-horse outboard; a 12-volt electrical system for running lights, spotlight, anchor light and stereo radio/tape system; kerosene lights; food storage and cooking units stored aft and made available by pulling ropes; book and chart racks; a solar shower; self-steering and bow-pulpit steering gear (for sitting far forward with an icy beverage and watching the bottom go by).

For the keys trip, I packed carefully. Considering the cargo, I felt a little like Manry loading Tinkerbelle. However, I was more than pleased to find the whole load trailered very nicely behind my Pinto. We averaged 22 miles per gallon, due largely, I suspect, to the Com-Pac's nicely-balanced, long-tongued trailer.

While it seemed that we were heavily loaded, I figured that because we were to be several days away from civilization, we had better be able to handle any emergency from a shark bite to a broken stay< both of which I previously had experienced. Despite familiarity with our charts and navigation gear, what we were not prepared for was orienting ourselves to the peculiar "landmarks" we found west of Key West.

Less than a mile and a half from Key West we experienced momentary confusion about our take-off point and the proper identification of the mangroves ahead. As we sailed around looking for Can "17", it occurred to us that if we didn't get started right, there was a good chance we might not end up right. We studied the charts with all their scattered keys, then looked out at the large, pancake-flat gray shapes spotted around our water horizon. Everything looked alike; there was no way to tell the keys apart. I groaned. My God, I thought, whoever heard of anyone getting lost practically in the harbor? We wallowed around trying to get our bearings. There seemed to be too many islands and too many markers that didn't make it to our charts. "I don't see any of these things," growled Mike, glancing from the chart to the islands and back again. "I think they left some of them out." "That can't be," I argued. "If there's an island, it's got to be on the chart." Finally, we found. "17", from which we had pre-plotted our course. Once we oriented the chart to that point, we realized what had happened. Our chart's scale had confused us. We could see so much more on the horizon than we could on our large-scale chart. Switching to a smaller-scale chart was still confusing until we realized we were being fooled by sea-level perspective. For example, Mule Key, Archer Key and Big Mullet Key all seemed the same distance away until we saw that only Mule Key was close. The others were many miles away. The visual tip-off was in the color of the keys. Those closest were a brighter green; those further away a grayish green. Once we understood the problem, we quickly identified the keys by their size and color. With that knowledge we were off and running.

We left Mule Key to port. It was a pleasant reach and Archer Key grew larger and greener. The eel-grass green bottom seldom changed its depth or texture, the long, slender blades streaming southward with the outgoing tide. Just north of Barracouta Key I passed the tiller to Mike and took our line of position with the hand-bearing compass off the east side of Barracouta and the northwest side of Woman Key, about 4 miles ahead. Triangulating the bearings on the chart showed we were right on course. To the north, we identified the gray shapes of Little Mullet and Big Mullet Keys.

By late afternoon we reached Boca Grande Key and the 6-mile-wide channel separating us from the Marquesas. We were only about 4 feet above the water; still we could see those islands and others in a kind of surrealistic mirage hovering just over the horizon, tethered like flattened barrage balloons by shimmering dark lines. Treetops, we suspected.

We anchored Nomad and Jim and Cathy's Drifter within wading distance of the beach. Mike set off to explore the island on foot. Cathy wisely enclosed the Drifter's cockpit with a sheet clothespinned to the Bimini. Because this trip was the Pullens honeymoon, Mike and I decided the enclosure was not entirely intended as a sunshade. That night we fried small grouper fillets and the mangrove snappers that Jim and I speared while snorkeling under Boca Grande's tangled roots.

Later that night, the tide swept out so swiftly that one glance at the water was enough to make Mike swear we were dragging anchor. But we had set the 6-pound lightweight anchor by hand in a good sand and grass bottom 15 feet down and with a 100-foot long rode. "Look at the silhouette of the island," I told Mike. But even then, when he could tell we were not dragging, it was difficult to dispel the illusion of our movement. Jim and Cathy chose to get out of the mill race by moving Drifter closer ashore, but voracious black gnats chased them back into deep water.

Shortly after sunrise, we ran across the choppy Boca Grande channel toward the Marquesas mirage. Named for the Spanish Marquis de Caldereita, who arrived there in 1623 with a salvage party searching for the treasure galleon Atocha that foundered offshore the year before, the 11 main mangrove islands of the group sprawl across a 3-mile-round area of shallow, emerald-hued water whose August water temperature averaged 90°.

Running Wore a brisk breeze, Mike and I hated to break our gait as the islands loomed large and lush ahead of us. Aiming for the narrow dogleg channel into the shallow Mooney Harbor where depths averaged 3 feet, we decided to sail through the group. It was a lesson in water reading.

Inside, the water shaded from green to brown with the extreme shoals a kind of amber-gray. The trick was to stay in the deepest channel, snaking through the flats. An occasional grounding sent us over the side into knee-deep water over a crusty marl bottom. A hearty heave on the boat and we slurped through the crust into hip deep marl about as fragrant as a cesspool. Needless to say, we quickly learned to avoid grounding. Behind us, Jim and Cathy picked their devious way through the same odoriferous shoals.

After 3 miles of tricky maneuvering, we emerged on the northwest side of the Marquesas and sailed northward. Noon found us beaching the boats in the shallows of a tidal swash between islands. Lunch over, we went ashore to explore. Surprisingly, there was no sandy beach, only a hard, flaky marl. Thick, bushy growth dotted with occasional spider lilies flanked the forest of mangroves. One tall coconut palm leaned askew over the water as the sea slowly but surely worked to claim it. Seabirds abounded, mostly gulls, terns and anhingas. Although the islands are a wildlife refuge, they offered little refuge for the occasional pelicans we saw dangling lifelessly from tree limbs, their feet hopelessly entangled in monofilament fishing line.

Late that afternoon we sailed onto the northernmost beach of the main island to find a single, rickety wood dock backed by a pair of lonely palm trees. Again we explored, trying to reach a hidden lagoon through an impenetrable jungle of mangroves. Defeated, we returned to the beach where I picked up a piece of broken pottery later identified by an archeologist, Duncan Mathewson, as the same type of pottery found offshore where Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors Company was searching for the Atocha. What was this fragment doing on the north shore of the Marquesas? Was the main treasure closer perhaps to the island than the treasure hunters suspected? It was an intriguing thought. Instead of continuing on around the main key, which on the chart showed no interesting break in the miles of continuous mangroves, we decided to sail back the way we had come that day, perhaps ending up by dark at a particular west end peninsula we had passed.

The amber sun already was low in the sky as we sailed on a light breeze back toward deeper water. In the process, Mike and I ran aground so securely that with the outgoing tide, Jim had to swim over and help push Nomad into deeper water. Shortly afterward, we were ghosting along together less than a mile offshore when I glanced down through the clear 10-foot depths and spotted rocks and ridges.

Mike must have thought I had lost my mind when I lunged forward to kick over the anchor. I shouted one word<bugs !< and Pullen didn't have to be told twice. Later, Cathy said he dropped the anchor with one hand, snatched up his fins, mask and gloves with the other and went over the side with all canvas flying and the boat not even settled to her hook.

We were equally swift into the water. The next 15 or 20 minutes were a blur of frantic diving, grabbing, chasing, gasping, struggling activities that bagged us each several fine spiny lobsters before we- ran out of light.

We spent the rest of the night right there. After toasting our success with pewter mugs of icy rum punch, we fired up the lantern, and in its comforting amber glow, began a ritual so simple it is always hard to believe the results are so delightful. We dropped the lobster tails into a pan full of sea water simmering over our single-burner Coleman stove, slid a bar of butter into the inverted lid over the pot and gave it a squirt of fresh key lime juice. Minutes later, the cracked tails were served on our most practical dishware, a pair of Frisbees, with tossed salad and crusty Cuban bread. Dipped into bubbling lime-tangy butter, each bite was a feast. "I wonder what the poor folk are doing tonight," Mike said.

The Pullens turned in early. Mike elected not to go night diving but I slipped over the side with the underwater light to see what kind of denizens prowled our depths. Finning down through a setting made to order for "Jaws," I swept the yellow cone of light back and forth through the inky water. No night-walking lobsters were in sight but what I did see I couldn't believe. The Pullens anchor rode lay across a trench 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. Fitted tightly in that trench was a huge, gray mottled grouper. It would have been senseless to have speared the fish; we needed no meat. But what was he doing there? As I eased closer to see how long the Goliath would hold his ground, he completely disappeared before my eyes! All it took to accomplish this was a gentle fin movement that eased his big frame forward into a cave at one end of the trench. What an escape artist!

After another day along the Marquesas' west coast, during which the Bimini tops were worth their weight in gold, we turned in early because our next day's sail was to be our longest. Having accomplished our goal, we decided to head back to Key West. Prevailing winds were no longer favorable for us to sail back through the lakes unless we wanted to tack and beat every foot of the way, highly undesirable because of the extreme shallows flanking both sides of that area.

The alternative was a course to the northeast on a heading of 053°, bisecting Boca Grande Channel on an open-water leg for the next 16 miles to reach bell buoy "1" leading into the Northwest Channel. From there, we would execute a course change southward to Key West, 8 miles away. The only difficulty I anticipated was that last 8 miles, beating into a light breeze against a strong tidal current. That night we were hit by our first thunderstorm. Although it was more sound than fury, the light show was spectacular. Lightning bolts were crackling around us so thick and fast that I hurriedly clamped jumper cables to the stays and ducked back into our deck berth with a blanket over my head. And that was a mistake. After the storm passed, a swarm of No-see-um black gnats must have picked up our scent from the mangroves a mile away and came zooming out to investigate. I slept through their attack but from the bites on my bare back the next day, they obviously had used it as a feed ground.

At first light, we set off from red buoy "2" beside the Boca Grande Channel and spent a large part of the morning sailing toward our midday course change at the Northwest Channel bell buoy. It was a long, uneventful trip. The real fun began once we passed our marker, angled southward toward Key West, and then beat hour after hour against the strong tidal currents. Repeatedly, Key West seemed outside our grasp. Then, as the breeze calmed, it slipped away from us as we were pushed back up the channel. Trying to figure out different strategies and angles of attack against the currents, we let our boats become widely separated until we were miles apart. Still we kept in contact by the walkie talkies.

Finally, after nine hours of wispy breezes and bullying by the tides, I nursed Nomad as close to Key West as possible and, as the tide began once more working its malevolent way with us, I fired up the faithful 1-1/2-horse outboard and chugged into port. Before long, Jim and Cathy did likewise. Our land/sea safari had been a huge success. Our costs had been minimal. Camping fees ashore averaged about $5 a day. We had no motel costs. Fresh vegetables were our main purchases; we supplied our own seafood. It was an adventure easily within reach of any small boat trailer-sailor. Compact car and boat cruising offers tremendous advantages that may become even more important tomorrow than today. The key word is economy.

Robert Burgess, 52, is a professional writer (children's books, underwater archeology and treasure hunting) who has lived in Florida since 1950. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and educated at Michigan State University, he has owned a Snipe, Sunfish and Hobie Cat. Fluent in four languages, he and his wife, Julia Ann, have spent considerable time in Europe.

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This article was last updated on August 01, 2003.