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Morning rolls in and before breakfast, bathing suits, flippers, snorkels, and the grey dinghy bring all of us to shore. Sun glows up the thin strip of white sand, hemmed by brown seaweed washed up by the tide. A few of us go up to the remnant old highway, an engineering feat that broke the financial back of the railroad guru who financed it when a hurricane or some Florida catastrophe struck it just a decade or so after it was finished. Brown pelicans fly above the palm trees moving in the morning breeze and the water in the shallows shift between cyan, azure, and teal. We point and exclaim to each other over our SV Trade Wind flying its Jolly Roger, excited to say to each other, “That’s
our boat!”
To get back to the boat, I decide to snorkel with flippers (both borrowed). This is my first time since we’ve left that we’ve really had the chance to swim. Too many mishaps and chilly weather before! I am not a strong swimmer, but I refuse to be on a sailing trip in Florida and not enjoy the water so I gird my bikinied loins and flipper/snorkel up. The
water is chilly but after living on the West Coast for nearly three years and experiencing the ice water that is the Pacific, I feel fairly comfortable in my bikini. There’s not much to see unfortunately; the water is turbid, yellowish through my goggles, with only waving seaweed visible.
Sailing, reading, crossing into the Bay Side (underneath the highway which we clear by about three feet!), sailing, reading, sun-bathing. Cormorants and sometimes pelicans perch atop an avenue of day markers that we carefully sail through; we can see the sandy bottom where other boats have carved into. We anchor at Bamboo Key where I can see white heron splotches and other winged inhabitants flap around the mangrove trees. Snorkel again, dinner, playing Uno, sleep, sunshine, sailing, reading, sun-bathing, repeat.
For our last afternoon on the water, we head to Lignumvitae State Park which has a botanical walk (always a bonus for nerdy ecologist-types) and a historical building but when we swim/dinghy-ride our way to shore, we find that the majority of the park is open only via guided tours, which have ended for the day, and it’s half an hour before the entire park closes. We peruse the
snorkeling
And we suddenly regressed to 7-year-olds historical building (unimpressive former home of the former private owners of the island) and set off again just an island over to anchor at Shell Key.
But the shortening of the afternoon’s activities proves to be a blessing in disguise. For the first time the entire trip we’ve anchored with plenty of daylight left. We take advantage. We can’t go over to Shell Key because it’s entirely off-limits to the public. We joke about how, as scientists, we should go over there and claim we’re doing “preliminary studies.” The guide-books tell us there’s a freshwater pond in the middle, completely enclosed by mangroves which would be pretty darn cool to visit and poke around in. But we’re law-abiding citizens…and not very motivated to get back in the dinghy and row. So we turn the I-pods on, pour some drinks and dance. We pass around one of the I-pods and every one chooses a song, unknown to the others, to make us laugh, to make us shake it. We calm for a moment to watch the unadorned Florida Keys sunset. Pastels ringing the buttercup yellow sun.
And then we go back to dancing. And eating. And then it’s the
Dancing
Last night on the boat! night before a full moon! We change to our swimsuits once again, barely dry from an earlier swim. We descend the back-ladder, yelping a bit at the chill water but determined to have a “moonlit swim.” Paddle around, splash a bit, pose for pictures, having no idea when the flash will go off and hoping your chin is above water when it does. Dry off before the night breeze hits you. We don’t want to go to sleep, knowing the morning will only mean we have to return the boat which means return home which means return to work. Ah well. C’est la vie. It is a good way to end the Adventure.
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