We woke up early for a full day of exploring Fort Jefferson. Breakfast consisted of eggs, cheese, onions and jalapeño Spam, wrapped in a tortilla shell with some habanero hot sauce. When cooking on a boat you become a master at one skillet/pan meals and this was a family favorite.
After breakfast and a great cup of percolated coffee we hopped in the dinghy and went to shore to explore For Jefferson and the rest of the small island.
We went inside the Fort and took the self guided tour, got to know several of the rangers and got some inside information on parts of the Fort. Fort Jefferson was used as a prison in the Civil War and was home to the famous Dr Mudd. If you've ever heard the expression "his name is Mudd" this is where it originates. Dr Mudd (read about Dr Mudd) was the Dr that set John Wilkes Booth's leg after the assassination of President Lincoln.
Inside "The Big Magazine" which was used for housing artillery shells
Cuban rafts left at the fort from recent landings
Inner Ft Jefferson
Hermit crabs everywhere, even inside the fort
The bakery where food was prepared in a huge oven. The prisoners of the time swore the ingredients included sticks and bugs.
We were able to check on Kainoa as she rested in the anchorage.
This was actually the first field trip of the kids school year. It was a great history lesson on a historic site most people don't get to visit, at least not in this way, on our own boat with unlimited time. The fort is very open for exploration and there are very few restrictions on where you can go or what you can see. The living quarters are off limits but almost everything else is wide open. When you get to the top level there are no rails, no fences and nothing to stop you from taking a 3 story tumble to the bottom. In a world of law suits and hand holding nanny mentality, it was a much welcome experience.
The fort was designed so that over 100 guns such as the one above could be pointed at the same target at one time.
Inner sanctum of Fort Jefferson
A couple times a day the sea plane flies in and lands right in the channel next to our boat and takes off there as well. Several times we saw the plane take off and land in rough weather and thought, I'd rather be on a boat!
Tom was dinghying back to his boat and got up close and personal with the sea plane.
Huge tarpon swimming around the Ft Wall
The water is so clear this was taken standing on the wall and zoomed in.
Our dinghy sitting on the beach
After a full day of exploring the island we settled in for the night and I made chili in our pressure cooker with some cornbread on the side. The pressure cooker is one of the single most important additions to our boat. It allows us to conserve propane by cooking things in less than 1/4 of the time it would take normally. For example a pot roast that would take hours can be done in under 30 minutes! So my chili has that all day crockpot taste in 20 minutes, priceless.
The sunset was less then stellar and that night we got rocked by some nasty storms with wind gusts around 40mph I sat up watching my Ipads navigation app and anchor alarm, ready to jump up if the anchor started to drag. This is part of the reason I went with an oversized anchor with lots of chain, it proved to be worth it's weight in gold during our stay and not once during the entire trip did we drag an inch.
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