Key West

We stayed on the boat all day Sunday, resting, cleaning and straightening up the boat. The wind picked up to about 20 knots for a couple of hours, then blew at about 15 knots the rest of the day. The anchor seemed to hold without budging. One of the hinges on the companionway door broke and I replaced it. I had noticed it was cracked some time ago and had been looking for a set of replacement hinges, but couldn't find the same kind of hinge. I wound up emailing Tayana and they were able to send me nearly exact replacements. I had them stowed aboard and was planning to replace all of them when I refinish all the teak in the cockpit. The hinges are tightly mortised into the doors and frame and the new hinges were slightly larger than the old ones, so I had to chisel out the mortise a little larger. I was glad I had stowed some chisels and other woodworking tools aboard. Small as the job was, it was fun to do some woodworking on the boat. I only replaced the broken one and will wait to replace the others when I get around to refinishing the teak.

Monday I removed the sheaves (pulleys) from the end of the boom so we could take them to town and look for replacements. The edges of the sheaves were broken and sharp-edged, which had caused the reefing line to part on the trip to Port St. Joe. I had to put more air in the dinghy before we could go to town. Our dinghy is an inflatable and has a very slow leak, so I have to pump it up every few days. When we got to the dinghy dock, it was incredibly crowded, just like the last time I was in Key West. We were able to push and shove our way into the crowd of dinghies and get tied up, though. We went to the West Marine store and they didn't have an exact match for my sheaves, so I bought some that were too big and some that were too small, thinking I would modify them to suit my needs if exact replacements couldn't be found elsewhere. It was mid-afternoon when we left West Marine so we went to Finnegan's Wake Pub to get our daily recommended allowance of Guinness and have a late lunch/early dinner. They had both Guinness and Murphy's on tap, so I had one of each. Nancy and I both had the fish and chips. After we ate, we just strolled around a little and then headed back to the boat. We still wanted to get our Florida driver's licenses, get a couple of immunization shots, visit Customs and Border Protection, and do some sight-seeing, so we called Rob and arranged for him to rent a car one-way from Miami to Key West and meet us here instead of Miami.

Tuesday we went ashore and the dinghy dock wasn't quite as crowded. We went first to Customs and Border Protection. I wanted to make sure I knew the procedure for clearing back in when we return from the Bahamas. Next we went to the Department of Health office to get travel immunizations. We had gotten several in Kansas City, but they didn't have the yellow fever vaccine and we need the booster for Hepatitis. The Department of Health directed us to a different office but said we would have to make an appointment and gave us a number to call. I tried calling several times, but got a recording and left a message. If I don't get a return call by Wednesday, we'll just show up and see if we can make an appointment in person. Next we went to get our driver's licenses. We had to wait quite a while, but we now have official Florida driver's licenses. We will be getting our mail through a mail forwarding service located in Florida, so our domicile of record is now in Florida and we already registered to vote in Florida. We are now officially Floridians. After we left the license office, we went to Los Cubanitos Hardware, an old-town Key West marine hardware store, where I was able to find some exact replacements for the sheaves in the boom. They only had two, and I could have used four, but I can use the two new ones for the first and second reef lines and re-use the best of the original sheaves for the outhaul line. The fourth sheave is not being used as I don't have a third reef point in my main sail. We were quite pleased at not having to jury-rig the sheaves we got at West Marine. We returned the West Marine sheaves and went to Pepe's for dinner. At Pepe's I had the best soup I've ever tasted. It was a mahi-mahi soup with sweet jalapeno peppers. There was a couple at the next table who looked Japanese. I had taken a year of Japanese at the University of Kansas back in 1990. I decided to try speaking to them in Japanese to see if they would understand me. I leaned toward them and asked in Japanese if they were from Japan. The girl's eyes got as big as saucers when I said this and she smiled and babbled something back to me which went completely over my head. All I caught was enough to know she was quite surprised to find a crusty boat bum in Key West speaking Japanese. I replied in Japanese that I didn't understand everything she said, that my Japanese is very poor. Fortunately their English was much better than my Japanese and we pretty much stuck to English after that, although I did dredge up and shake the cobwebs off a few more phrases. He is a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan and will be returning to Japan next year. They drove down from Michigan for a vacation and spent some time in Orlando and just arrived in Key West this morning and will be leaving this evening to return to Michigan. She is from Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. They were very surprised and pleased to hear Japanese in Key West, even as badly mangled as it was. It was fun to try speaking Japanese again after all this time and I felt good that they were able to understand me.

Wednesday was busy. I changed the oil and oil filter in the engine, which is a moderately unpleasant job, but is rather enjoyable when I have some tunes playing and I'm singing along. Unfortunately, my singing makes it even more unpleasant for Nancy, but she is strong and able to tolerate quite a bit of unpleasantness. I also put the last coat of varnish on the teak seat that goes on the stern of the boat. I have been waiting for good weather (warm temperature, no rain, low humidity) to put the last coat on and today was perfect. Nancy put some waterproofing on the front half of the bimini (the canvas awning over the cockpit) and put leather conditioner on the leather chafe protector while I was doing the engine work. We finally went ashore just after noon and went to the clinic where we were supposed to be able to get some immunizations we need. You have to make an appointment to get the immunizations, but they don't answer the phone when you call, and they don't return your message, so we decided to go in person and ask for an appointment. So we get there and there isn't even anyone to talk to face-to-face. There is a phone and you dial an extension to talk with whoever is behind the green curtain. I dial the extension and a lady answers. I ask for an appointment for travel immunizations and she says she can't schedule an appointment because the computer is down. I guess they threw away all the paper and pencils when they bought computers. Anyway, she said she would be able to make us an appointment Friday and I'm wondering how she knows the computer will be working Friday. Maybe it isn't broke, just on vacation and is returning Friday. I gave her my cell phone number and she will call us Friday to make an appointment, though I'm hoping we are on our way to the Bahamas Friday. We left the clinic and toured the Ernest Hemingway house. I had seen it when I was here in April with William, Jamie and Kevin and I enjoyed it the second time as much as the first. Nancy enjoyed it, too. Then we had a late lunch/early dinner at an Irish pub named Bogarts. It is the same place where William and I waited for Kevin and Jamie to get to Key West. We had Guinness, conch fritters and fish & chips. We were both pretty tired by the time we made it back to the boat. Tomorrow should be a moderately slow day, as we've done everything we really wanted to get done here except the immunizations and we can't do that until the computer gets back from vacation. Rob will get here tomorrow early evening.

Thursday we put the new sheaves in the boom and Nancy finished waterproofing the bimini. We packed up all our dirty laundry and went ashore. The lady from the immunization clinic called while we were doing laundry and said we could get our shots at 10:00 Friday. We hauled the laundry back to the boat and then did a little more sightseeing before heading to the pub to meet Rob. We had dinner and a couple of beers and then headed to the boat. It currently looks like Friday will be a good day to start for the Bahamas. The plan as I write this (Friday, early a.m.) is to get immunized, provision, return Rob's rental car, top off the diesel and water tanks, then head for the Bahamas. If we hustle, we can get all of that done and be out in the Florida Straits by mid to late afternoon. Hopefully my next log entry will be from the Bahamas, or perhaps en route to the Bahamas.