When we woke up it was time to head into the city marina and pay for our mooring ball. Sometimes especially after a long trip, rough sail etc, it's nice to tie up to a mooring ball and not have to worry about anchoring. After all the anchoring and hauling of that all chain rode during our trip it was a nice break, the downside of course is paying instead of anchoring for free. Key West city mooring field is reasonably priced at 18 bucks a day which includes facility use, so Colby and I hopped in the dinghy but were having a hard time finding exactly where it was we were supposed to check in. We were lucky enough to find a boat willing to give us directions and then about 5 minutes later one of them actually got in their dinghy and came to show us.
Let me just say this is the most confusing setup I've ever seen. The dinghy dock is about 20 minutes away from our mooring ball and when you get there the office is not on site, it is located across the bridge and in a trailer nowhere near. The gentleman on the boat showed us a trick where we could land our dinghy right next to the office to check in instead of walking to the office. We paid for a couple days but the system was down and they weren't able to program our gate card, shower cards etc. The person working there was nice enough to lend us his with the promise of returning it.
Colby and I picked up Jessica and Peyton then went to shore. From the city dinghy dock it's about a mile walk to downtown and it felt good to get a little ground under our feet and spend a day off the boat. We stopped by the new West Marine store and I got some Rotella oil to top off the engine, it was down a hair from the full line and I like to keep it full. We headed downtown to just walk around and people watch. We did the yuppy thing, Jess and the kids wanted Starbucks and I figured it would be a good place for me to sit and upload pictures of the trip to Facebook on someone else's bandwidth.
Later in the afternoon we made it down to Turtle Krawls for happy hour and ordered entirely too much food. We also got an education on Ceviche which is a way of cooking fish with citrus instead of heat.
We managed to stay off the boat until dark that day, enjoying a warm shower and cool breezy evening. Sleep came easy that night.
The weather for the next couple days looked dicey and I'll admit I was in the mood to be a fair weather sailor. I was waiting for a decent window and didn't feel like getting pounded again or punishing my crew. Jessica was able to get her shift covered at work so it freed up some more time and we enjoyed relaxing. Colby and I made a fuel run the next day and we fiddled around biding our time working on things while we waited for the weather to change. Key West is nothing like Boot Key harbor and we were able to see how good we have it. The facilities in Key West were best described as "prison sheik" with stainless steel toilets and a mirror that's just polished up metal, but at least the water was warm. The facilities in Boot Key harbor where we live are fantastic with over a dozen private bathrooms, all equip'd with showers, toilets and actual glass mirrors! But I understand why when I looked around at the typical character in the anchorages and mooring field, graffiti, trash etc, this was a product of the environment, I'm just glad we were only here for a few days.
We had a great time just re-living our trip, looking at pictures, watching movies and just regrouping as a family. You don't get any closer as a family than living on a boat, this is one of the things I will never regret about our decision to sail off. I will always be able to look back on raising my children and know that I utilized every day I had with them, hanging on to every second before they go off on their own. There is no way I'll regret spending time with them instead of time at an office or back of an ambulance, however life the other way around brought almost instant regret every time I missed a life event. I have given my children another way, another way to live, to think and to survive. They will never be homeless, never enslaved and always free to live how they want. I've given them the knowledge to be independent dreamers, dreamers that don't dream their lives, but live their dreams. If they choose to go out work 50 hours a week in a cubicle they can, but they will at least know there is another way, most people don't ever get that chance. They will not be taught it's the norm to get way into debt, work harder, buy more stuff and get further into debt. Work, buy and die..
Freedom is the new rich, time with family, time by yourself, traveling or following your passion. I consider myself rich because I get time, time with my wife and with my children for the short time they are all mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment