Hemingway's House ... And Cats!

Just look at the toes!!

I really wanted to see Hemingway's house, mainly because of the cats and their uber-freaky toe mutations. Previously, however, Vlad told me that there was no way that he was paying $12.50 to go to some tourist trap overrun with polydactyl felines (it probably doesn't help that the cat is is also his least favorite animal). If I had really wanted to see the famous writer's abode, he said, I should have done it with my mom when I had the chance. Cold hearted, no?. But I managed to trick him into it with the lure of discount tickets that happened to only be $.50 off. There goes the cruising budget.

Then, to compound the horror, I made him go on a guided tour. I think, though no doubt others disagree, that the guided tour has a sort of campy charm. It involves a group of total strangers led around by another total stranger who tells them interesting factoids like how Hemingway's second wife replaced all the ceiling fans with heat-producing chandeliers, leaving the tour guide quite uncomfortable during the summer months. Or something like that. We learned all about Hemingway's affairs, how he broke up his second marriage for a stormy and inevitably doomed romance with a young, blonde reporter in Cuba, his writing and drinking schedule, how his intense depression worsened after Castro stole all his stuff, how he fished and bummed around with locals possibly getting juicy details for his novels. And of course, we stalked cats. I don't think I've ever seen lazier cats. Not a single one moved a six-toed paw the entire time we were on the guided tour.

The sign says not to sit on the furniture, but this cat just has to be the rebel.

More sleeping. 

Hemingway's writing nook.

Nice casa, no? 

So how did Hemingway get all these six-toed cats? Well, they're all the progeny of one prolific animal named Snowball. Snowball was a present to Hemingway's kids, and Hemingway liked the six-toed thing so much he successfully bred more cats with extra toes. It probably helped that he was a cat fancier.

Despite all the trickery and even despite the fact that Vlad kept saying the cats looked inbred, which is tough to argue with but still not polite to point out, we were thoroughly entertained at the Casa de Hemingway. And I got to check out his book collection. Just between us, Hemingway read Steinbeck.

Key Lime Pie

Obviously, my Aunt Susan makes the best key lime pie. Period. End of Story. But I'd have to say that the pie at Pepe's Cafe ain't half bad either. Pepe's is this restaurant near the docks on Caroline Street that I had been curious about since I first noticed its paint-chipped facade and washed out sign that says "Open Under Old Management." Seriously, the building looks like it's seen way better days, which is understandable since it was built in the early 1900s.

Then, I read also read about Pepe's in a New York Times travel article about where to find the best key lime pie in the Keys, and our fate was sealed. Despite its crumbling exterior, the inside of the restaurant is unbelievably adorable. Little tables dotted the outdoor patio, with trees growing up through the floor, and the largest bougainvillea I've ever seen provided shade for a large chunk of the tables. Of course, in true Key West fashion, there was a gift section where you could buy t-shirts.

The pie was pretty dang scrumptious, and we spied this red-wing blackbird, who, like every other animal on the planet, refused to let me take its picture. This is the only not blurry shot I got.

Isn't this a massive bougainvillea?

I was trying to be artsy with this one.

I find that I force Vlad to do all kinds of touristy stuff. Key lime pie. Hemingway's bar. I even convinced him to do a circumnavigation of the island with me on our bicycles, which was super fun. But I had to use trickery to get him to go to Hemingway's House. He refused to pay the $12.50 per person admission fee, which I admit is highway robbery, but the place is chock full of six-toed cats! I mean, we had to go. Details and six-toed cat pictures to come.

Anchoring Is a Drag

Anchors where they should be - dug in to the sea floor.

Well, it finally happened. Last weekend, we woke up to the whirring/whining of the anchor alarm, which sounds almost insect-like, alerting us to the fact that our anchor was no longer in the spot we had so carefully placed it. Rain was pouring down in buckets, and the wind was blowing 20 knots. After a couple of attempts, we got it re-set and settled back in to enjoy a little precipitation. But then the winds changed.

Key West is an interesting anchorage. I mean, we like it because the scenery is spectacular, and you get to watch all the action off of Mallory Square while eating magnificent grilled Key West pink shrimp complete with mangoes, cilantro, Vidalia onions and jalepeno all wrapped in a corn tortilla. Delish. Last night, we got to watch the Coast Guard have a water cannon fight with the sunset cruise boats and several dolphins playing in the harbor all from the comfort of our cockpit.

This is pretty much the scene every night.

Unfortunately, while our anchorage beside Wisteria Key scores high on the entertainment scale, it's kind of lacking on some other key fronts. For one thing, the holding isn't the best. There's also quite a bit of current that likes to spin us as well as a lot of wake from powerboats going by (Vlad is considering getting a paintball gun.) But all of those things we could have and had survived. That is, until the wind started blowing from the west. At 37 knots.

The island has no protected anchorages from a west wind, and boats were going everywhere. Boats got beached on sandbars and got blown into the shore. One even wound up on the jetties, shiver the thought. We didn't do too terribly, though we did drag about 25 feet which was just enough to get us close too close to the channel. The Coast Guard came by and told us we were dragging, so we decided to re-set the anchor. I went to the bow, but because the wind was blowing so much and the waves were bouncing us all around I couldn't get the big metal hook that holds our anchor chain in place off of the chain. Oh, and did I mention that we didn't get much sleep the night before because we were so worried about the wind and the dragging. Yeah, not the best of circumstances.

Anyway, Vlad goes up to try it out. We both tried to help each other by driving the boat slowly forward, thereby creating slack in the anchor chain, but being the novices we are and in not so great conditions that maneuver wasn't working too well. Then, this happened.

As Vlad was manhandling the anchor chain, his foot slipped and hit the button that powers the windlass (which is the electric winch that brings up our anchor) and his pinkie finger was pulled up into the windlass, mangling it in a pretty horrendous way. Of course, we didn't go to the doctor because Vlad claims that you can't stitch up a wound like that. He first thought was that he had lost his finger, so it definitely could have been worse.

Anyway, we got him bandaged up with butterfly strips, and then, to continue the not-so-comic comedy of errors, he decides to go to town to pick up a few things we need. We started up the engine on the boat in case the anchor dragged again while he was gone, and I proceeded to sit there for the next 30 minutes positive that we were moving inexorably closer to every nearby obstacle. Vlad made it back to the boat before we ran into anything, tied up the dinghy and climbed back aboard. Alas, though, the line we had for the dinghy had kind of a long tail - long enough to reach our propeller, which it promptly wrapped around.

So now we are in quite the pickle. Vlad's hand had been through a meat grinder. It's still gusting 25 to 30 knots from a bad direction, and we have an incapacitated engine. Vlad considered getting in the water to cut off the line, but there was a lot of current and swell and wind. He didn't think it looked safe for either one of us. Not to mention that his hand was a bloody mess. So he made what I consider to be a very fine executive decision. He called the Key West Bight Marina, which is where we dock our dinghy, and asked for a slip. And then he called BoatUS and asked for a tow. (The tow boat people took a while. Evidently, they were having a busy day!)

We spent the next few days happily ensconced at the marina. Though staying at the marina was very expensive (transient rates are more than $100 a day), the folks at the marina were super nice, and it gave Vlad's hand a little time to heal without infection or further strain, well worth the money, I think.

One more funny thing. My brother texted me saying something like, "Heard you went to the 'drag race' this weekend." I couldn't figure out how he knew that conditions down here had been so rough, and I immediately called him, spending 20 minutes regaling him with our anchoring woes. At the end of our conversation, though, he said that he had actually meant a different drag race. It being Key West and all, there was a drag queen race on Saturday. It sounds like it was way more fun than the one we were in!

If you want more anchoring stories, here's another tale of trouble from Pacific Sailors.

Finding Hemingway's Bar

Finding Hemingway's bar is harder than you might think. It's location is ambiguous, and there's a certain amount of booze involved. However, as you can tell from the rosy expressions on our faces, we gave it our best shot.

According to the Hemingway Research Center, Hemingway really dug Key West. He actually said, "It's the best place I've ever been anytime, anywhere, flowers, tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms ... Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks." During the 30s, he lived here, wrote here, fished here and, yes, drank here, I'm assuming in copious amounts. Vlad and I attempted to follow in his footsteps - minus the absinthe, the knife tricks, the writing of great literature and the copious amounts of drinking - so we went to have a pina colada at Sloppy Joe's, a Key West hotspot on Duval Street that claims to be Hemingway's bar.

According the Sloppy Joe's menu (hey, it's a better source than Wikipedia, right?), Hemingway was BFF with Joe Russell, the original proprietor, and Hemingway even came up with the name Sloppy Joe's. Russell opened up shop the day after Prohibition ended, and he originally called his establishment The Blind Pig, until he added a dance floor at which point the bar became The Silver Slipper.

At first, I was a bit unimpressed with Hemingway's christening abilities. I mean, here's a scion of English literature naming something Sloppy Joe's. However, once I heard the previous names, I realized that Hemingway had definitely stepped it up a notch from The Blind Pig days. Plus, he stole the name from a place in Havana known as "Whatever-the-word-is-for-'sloppy'-in-Spanish Jose's."

As it turns out, though, our pina colada sipping in Sloppy Joe's was all for naught because this wasn't actually the bar that Hemingway hung out in, according to a woman who worked in the restaurant's gift shop. (Interesting aside, it seems like every bar in Key West has a gift shop that sells, you guessed it, bad t-shirts.) Sloppy Joe's moved locations, but the original Sloppy Joe's building is still standing and is still a bar.

Of course, we had to go investigate. The bar where Hemingway hung out is now called Captain Tony's Saloon and does not serve pina colada's. Instead, it sells a dangerous mixture of rum, gin and fruit juice called Pirate's Punch. Arrrr, indeed.

The inside of Captain Tony's was more like what I had pictured Hemingway's bar resembling. It was dark with low ceilings and had Key West's hanging tree growing up through the middle of it. However, the decor was not quite what I expected. The walls were layered with yellowing business cards stapled five deep and crusty dollar bills, and many a bra dangled from the rafters.

The hanging tree.

A lot of bras. Too many, one might say.

Somehow I doubt the bras were around when Hemingway drank here. Vlad and I were sitting quietly at the bar sipping our Pirate's Punch and discussing how much money in women's lingerie was floating above our heads when we were approached by a harried looking woman carrying a giant handbag who asked us frantically if we'd seen Patrice. Unfortunately, Patrice had passed out in the bathroom. She couldn't stand up, and the bartenders called an ambulance. Evidently, the bartenders also had no idea where she'd come from because they hadn't served her and no one had seen her come in. The situation elicited a lot of jokes from the other patrons. Stuff like, "I'll have what she had ... Or maybe half of that." Perhaps there weren't any bras hanging from the ceiling when Hemingway hung out here, but I bet you there was the occasional Patrice.

Captain Tony's has seen its share of famous people. In fact, this is the very spot where Jimmy Buffett got his start. He came into the bar and asked Captain Tony if he could play a few songs when the band took a rest. Captain Tony said yes, gave him $10 and three Budweisers, and the rest as they say is history. Buffett then campaigned for Captain Tony on his many mayoral races, which the captain finally won in the late 80s on an antidevelopment platform.

Maybe it was all the Pirate's Punch, but I got a warm fuzzy feeling while reading Captain Tony's obituary they had framed on the wall. He seemed like the kind of guy Hemingway would have liked to have owning the old Sloppy Joe's - an amazing fisherman, a habitual gambler, a chain smoker, married five times with 13 kids and a genuine character. Also, I'm blaming the Pirate's Punch for this photo that Vlad took in the men's restroom.

The bar framed the spot where Buffett scrawled a few lines of "The Last Mango in Paris" above the urinal. Too bad they didn't get the first lines of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," too. I guess Hemingway wasn't as into graffiti.  

Key West

I heart Cuban coffee.

At first when we got to Key West, I thought this place was tourist hell, and Vlad still says it's the land of bad t-shirts. You know the kind: "I went to Key West and all I got was this (fill in sexually explicit/drunken wisecrack here)." But I knew something was all right about the southernmost city in the United States when I woke up early the first morning, poked my head out of the companionway and heard a rooster crowing from somewhere in the middle of town.

Maybe it's from growing up in Arkansas where I'd tell my parents I was going to go play in the chicken yard and they'd ask me to at least put on shoes, but I really like chickens. What other animal eats your scraps, gives you the main ingredient of an omelet and has the most contended clucking known to the animal kingdom? In fact, Vlad actually surprised me with four baby chicks a few years ago, and we named them The Yolker, Stir Fry, Chicken Little and Dairy Queen. Best chickens ever. Alas, we couldn't take them on the boat (though Vlad did offer to build me a coop on the bow), so I had to transport them in the trunk of my car from San Antonio to my dad's house in the Ozarks on what I dubbed the "Chicken Run." One of them - Dairy Queen, I think - laid an egg in route.

Key West is full of chickens. They roam the streets, roost in trees, and have created quite the controversy among the locals. There are even pro and anti chicken factions among Key West residents, which is both awesome and amusing. I can just see the anti-chicken lobby picketing city hall. I'm not sure how you could dislike something that leads to such excellent answers to the age-old joke "why did the chicken cross the road?" Some people just don't have a sense of humor, I guess. However, I will say that the chickens are not willing photographic subjects. They stick to the shadows and always run from me whenever I approach with anything remotely like a camera.

See what I mean? Stinking chickens!

I've also enjoyed the fact that Key West seceded from the Union in the 80s. Texas likes to talk a big game about this subject, but Key West actually walks the walk. Evidently, in 1982 the United States Border Patrol put up a blockade on the one road leading down into the Keys, and the Key Westers decided that if the U.S. government was going to treat the Keys like a foreign country then they might as well become one. So on April 23, the mayor simultaneously "seceded from the Union, declared war, surrendered and demanded Foreign Aid," according to a brochure on the subject. Thus, the Conch Republic was born, as was the brilliant catch phrase "We seceded where others failed." Take that, Texas.

They even have their own flag, and you can get a passport from the Secretary General of the Conch Republic's office. He drives around in this little car:

We've both really enjoyed our time here. It's a little on the expensive side, but we've liked the opportunity to get boat parts while still in the U.S. and the access to day old, dollar pastries at Croissants de France. Deliciousness. We often start our day by getting a cup of coffee at the Cuban Coffee Queen, which is always hopping, taking a walk around the town, and then working on the boat for several hours. Finally, we end our day by looking at stuff like this:

Isn't Bettie pretty in the sunset?

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico: Part 4

All the Cool Stuff We Saw

I feel as though I haven't given the Gulf of Mexico the credit it deserves. I've told you guys all about the storms and the crappy wind and the crappy waves and the vomiting and all the stuff that broke, but I realized I have yet to express just how amazingly cool being out in the middle of the ocean actually was. It's so remarkable, such an intense experience, that to be honest I have trouble coming up with the words to describe it. I would sit on the deck with my brother in the morning, eating instant oatmeal and watching the world go by, except that the world all around is water. The view is always the same, yet always moving. And the water seems so different than it does in a lake or a bay. For one thing, it has the color of a piece of steel when the sun is setting and the deepest blue during the day, and another is that the way that the water moves becomes almost hypnotizing, like total chaos that you know is a product of each specific movement that came before it. Each dip and leap and splash could have happened no other way. 

We sailed over these strange topographical formations in the Gulf, such as the Lund Valley and the Henderson Ridge, but we never saw what they looked like because they were hidden under 5,000 feet of water. David and I saw a weird glowing orb floating in the water, and Vlad spent one late night sailing on completely flat seas at four knots with phosphorescence sparkling everywhere in our wake. He said it looked like magic.

And, of course, we saw dolphins, more than a dozen playing in our bow waves. Each time we looked back we'd see another one rushing up as though they were all saying, "Hey, they're finally going fast enough for us to have some fun!" There were two mommas with their babies as well, and the babies moved in perfect synchronicity with their moms. I have no idea how they do that but, wow, was it neat to watch. Also, I have yet to master photographing dolphins while on a moving boat. It's not as easy as it looks, folks!

David on dolphin watch.

So, see, it's not all throwing up and not showering for a week. It's a whole lot of absolutely incredible too.

Coming into Key West

When we first saw land, I was kind of excited. Not so much that there was land and I could soon have a pina colada - though there was that too - but mainly because the GPS had actually worked, which for some reason I wondered about when we were out there. I mean, it looked like we were going in the right direction, but what if all of our navigation equipment was wrong and we had actually been doing circles 100 miles off the coast of Tallahassee for five days. 

Anyway, all my internal fretting was for naught because we were in actuality looking at Key West, though, of course, it took us a long time to make it into the harbor allowing us to hone our after-dark anchoring skills. Here are some pictures I took as we were coming in:

Isn't that the most incredible color of water?

A Surprise Visitor

When my mom was sailing in the Mediterranean during the 70s, she and Bill stopped in Gibraltar to have my older brother David. Just before David was born, my mom was sitting in the cockpit of their boat, and she heard a whistle. But not just any whistle. It was the specific, ear-piercing succession of notes that her dad would use to call her and her two brothers home in the evening. She looked out toward shore, and there stood her brother Jeff waving his arms.

Well, she wanted to do the exact same thing to us when we dropped anchor in Key West, so she and Bob left Arkansas on Thursday and drove to Florida. Unfortunately, our late arrival and the Miami traffic snarled her whistling plan somewhat, but when we anchored I decided to see what all of her cryptic text messages were about. I called her, and she said she was in Key West! I've never been so surprised and excited! When we were more than halfway across the Gulf, I just really wanted to talk to my mom. It's not as if we haven't gone 10 days without talking on the phone before, but for some reason I wanted to hear her voice, to tell her about all the stuff that happened, what went right and what went wrong. I guess she must have heard me even without cell phone service. 

Thanks for driving all that way, Bob!

She and Bob spent the next few days ferrying us around, helping us get our laundry done and generally spoiling us silly. It's funny, but you think that with a trip like this it's all about meeting new people and discovering new places. You never consider how much better it could be if you got to begin that exploration with someone you know. Thanks so much for the surprise, Mom. I'll never forget it. 

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico: Part 3

The Russian

When I checked our progress on Friday evening, the ineffable iPad said we had 477 miles to go. Not quite halfway there, but not bad considering the storms and unfavorable winds. By Saturday, things weren't looking so great. We had made very little progress through the night, and the south-ish tack we were on was incredibly uncomfortable with seas hitting us on the beam creating this yawing effect that made it nearly impossible to sleep. We tried a northeast tack but could get nothing better than due north straight for New Orleans. So then we'd go back to the southeast tack and the sloshing and the rolling. This  happened all day long. 

We weren't getting very far, very fast, but we were still moving. Then, came the Russian. The sun had been down for several hours, and Vlad was on watch with David and I getting some sleep below. All seemed pretty copacetic when a man with a thick Russian accent called out over the crackling VHF, "Wessel, heading 128, speed 2.6 knots, eet eez danger. Eet eez danger."

The Russian hailed again, "Wessel, heading 128, you are danger."

At this point Vlad had woken up David, and they were both in a huddled discussion that went something like this: "Is he talking about us?" "I think he's talking about us." 

Vlad got on the VHF and replied, "This is the sailing vessel heading 128. What do you mean I am danger?"

The Russian responded, "Eet eez danger. You are danger. Am towing five mile cable. Change heading now to 240." 

David said, "That's in literally the opposite direction that we're going. Ask him if we could go north instead."

Vlad asked him if north was an acceptable heading, and the Russian said, "Yes, eez perfect. Will notify you when it eez safe."

I'm not completely positive, but this evening also seemed to be the busiest in terms of shipping traffic that we'd encountered, maybe because we were closer to New Orleans. And the Russian with his five-mile-long cable was causing quite the kerfuffle. Someone from one of the big ships said they weren't picking him up on their AIS, and the Russian was like, "I have not this AIS. Pilot boat maybe, but me, no." Eventually, someone, perhaps the Coast Guard, had enough of these shenanigans because we heard a stern voice boom out from the VHF speaker saying, "Vessel reporting danger, identify yourself."

The Coasties had nothing on that Russian though, because he hounded us for the rest of the night. Vlad would radio him, asking if we could change course back to the southeast, and he would always give the same reply, "No, eet eez danger." We really liked it when he said, "You are danger,"be cause we'd invariably shout out, "No, dude, you are danger." Anyway, this went on for something like eight hours, and he never would give us his heading so that we could work around him. Each time we'd ask his position and heading, the VHF would go silent. I don't know, maybe it was some sort of spy cable, but whatever it was that Russian put us so far off course that we were still behind where we were Friday afternoon on Sunday afternoon, accentuating my moment of "I hate this and the Gulf too," a huff that lasted about 12 hours. 

But then the winds changed. 

Life at 25 Degrees

My mom had a barrage of questions for me when we finally arrived in Key West, one of which was "what was your favorite point of sail?" My response was "close haul because that's the only point of sail we did." This reminded me of a phrase in sailing circles - "A gentleman never goes to windward." Well, after this experience, I think Vlad, David and I are in need of some charm school because we were sailing into the wind almost the entire time. 

And there are things about heeling over 25 degrees on the ocean for several days that are different from a four hour sail in the bay. You just don't consider how difficult it is to do things such as cook lunch or use the bathroom or how much of your stuff will end up on the floor. The stuff on the floor thing is very, very bad seamanship and potentially dangerous because if the boat gets knocked down anything not stowed can cause you physical harm by flying through the air and smacking you in the head. We are in the process of going through everything we own and jettisoning as much of it as possible. Lesson learned. 

In order to cook a meal at sea, I had to literally strap myself in to the galley, and by the end of the 10 days I had bruises on my back from where the strap would dig in as we got tossed about. Though it was not the best cooking environment what with the flames and the swinging stove, at least the recipients were pleased with pretty much anything I scrapped together. My Annie's Mac and Cheese with a can of tuna in it got rave reviews. One suggestion I do have is to cook as much stuff ahead of time as possible. I made some lasagna that went over well the first few days. Also, I really liked using the broiler on our stove because the flames were contained, making the multitude of quesadillas I made much less intimidating. 

Sleeping was another thing I hadn't really thought about, but our bed doesn't have a lee cloth or board that keeps you safely in the bed while the boat is heeled over. Yet another item we need to add. Unfortunately, the tack we took was also the one that threatened to tip Vlad and I out onto the floor. I developed a coping strategy that I called "the gecko." This maneuver involved spreading out my arms, legs and even my fingers so that I covered as much surface area as possible. I would then whisper to myself while falling asleep, "Be the gecko. Be the gecko." It kind of worked. Kind of.

What the Heck Do You Do for Ten Days on the Ocean?

I think that picture pretty much sums it up. I read five books: two trashy Anne Rice books, a young adult dystopia novel, a Bill Bryson travel book and a nonfiction piece on French parenting (aside: I've decided that I want to be reincarnated as a French baby. They get to eat fancy cheese in preschool!) David, on the other hand, took the highbrow approach, finishing off two Rudyard Kipling novels, that same Bill Bryson book, and get this - The Sound and the Fury. I mean, way to put me, the English major, to shame. 

Vlad spent his spare time fixing all the stuff that broke and installing - can you believe this? - actually installing various pieces of equipment while underway. He was like a machine, or at least a fixer of one. Here's a quick list of all the stuff that broke within the first week: the mainsail tore out a reef point during the storm, the engine busted a belt and broke in various other ways, the line for the roller furling on the genoa snapped and a shackle that connects the boom to the traveler broke. Vlad and David fixed the mainsail using sticky back and gorilla tape, and they replaced the broken shackle. Vlad fixed all of the engine problems, including more water intake issues, the choke and the broken belt, though his entire torso was covered in bruises from getting bashed about in the engine compartment. He managed to fix the roller furling, while clinging to the bow sprint and getting doused in waves. He installed the sump pump, fixed the radar and even considered installing the macerator while underway before we were like, "No, stop! Please stop!" But he only read a third of a Tom Clancy novel. Slacker. 

More nautical spelunking!

Other than that, we did a lot of staring at the ocean. A lot of staring at the ocean. And if you do too much staring at the ocean, you wind up looking like this:

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico: Part 2

The Rigs

Everyone told us about the rigs. There are hundreds of them rising up out of the series of shelves that descend from the shoreline to the deep Gulf, a testament to human engineering and a reminder of how dependent we are on fossil fuels (btw, thank goodness for our engine, or "iron spinnaker" as one of neighbors in Kemah called it). We were in heavy rig territory the first few days as we attempted to head southeast as best we could. The oil rigs came up out of the water like alien invaders, like we had stepped into "War of the Worlds," though thankfully I wasn't harassed by any visions of Orson Wells. Some of them even made strange sounds like a deep bellowing horn that rang out over the water. 

Despite all the warnings, we never had to deviate course because of a well, though at one point during the first week we found ourselves sans wind and drifting ever closer to one. Again, love that engine! The deep water wells looked more like space stations, perhaps something akin to what Newt Gingrich had envisioned with his whole "let's build a colony on the moon" idea that he proposed a couple of months ago. We did go around what we dubbed the Green Monster, which looked like a giant floating oil refinery complete with a flaming smokestack. I have no idea what that thing was - a ship? an oil well? - but we kept a wide berth. 

The Green Monster!

The Storm

Another useful thing we've learned on this passage is that weather reports aren't really all that accurate. I know the jokes about weather men and all, but it seemed as though they'd gotten much better at their craft since I was a kid. That is no longer my tune. No matter what we checked, it was a whole lot of wrong. When we left on Tuesday, the weather forecast called for isolated thunder storms, clearing up the following day. Imagine my surprise then on Wednesday when I emerged from one of my dry heaving / fetal position sessions to a sky full of dark and brooding clouds behind us. Vlad was at the helm wearing his bright yellow foul weather jacket (I call it his bee suit), and he had just picked up some weather news on the VHF. There was a surprise severe weather warning for up to 60 miles off the coast of Galveston. We were 65 miles off the coast. We skirted past storm clouds, through brief moments of pounding rain, and sailed under a yellow sky with thunderheads racing in front of us on a diagonal path northward and a double rainbow arching overhead. Please don't kill me, but I didn't take a picture! Maybe it was the seasickness or the lightning spreading out like many fingers across the sky threatening to destroy all our electronics but I was just too distracted. I only got one blurry shot of Vlad, but as you can tell by that time it was too dark and the boat was moving too much for anything good.

The Stowaway

Thursday morning Vlad woke me up as the sun was rising, saying I should come see something. To my delight it was the most ungainly bird I'd ever seen, a white egret with legs as thin as pencils. He must have blown in on the storm, and David said he just showed up while he was on watch, landed on the solar panel and proceeded to sit there for half the day. Here's a photo Vlad took when I first woke up:

The egret stayed with us for about 24 hours, flying away whenever we tacked or rudely did something else that disturbed him. Each time he flew, he'd circle the boat a few times and then land in a sprawl of legs and feathers. Pretty comical really. But I guess we irritated him one too many times because eventually he flew off never to return. Or maybe he remembered that he's actually a shore bird and that the gulls might beat him up out here. Whatever the case, I liked him better than the gulls, who invariably showed up whenever we ate a meal. It didn't matter if we were 300 miles from any form of land or only nibbling on a few pistachios those gulls would pop up out of nowhere the second there was any sign of food.  But the birds I really took issue with were the two pelicans that breezed by us when we were getting close to Florida, as if to spite us with how fast they could fly. They went past us, disappearing over the horizon, and then turned around, as if to rub it in our faces, and came back, passing us again without even flapping their wings. They glided faster than we could motor sail. The nerve.

I guess that's the thing with long ocean passages. It's the little things that wind up being compelling. Everything else is just water.  

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico - Part One

Photo credit: Thanks, Raymond!

Leaving Kemah for ports unknown has an anticlimactic feel. You toss off the dock lines, wave goodbye to your neighbors and proceed to spend the next seven hours trying to get out of Galveston Bay. But it's not without its own brand of excitement. You do get the pleasure of navigating one of the busiest shipping channels in the world. More than 7,000 ships and 150,000 barges pass through the Houston Ship Channel each year, and we probably saw every toxic chemical known to man being transported to and from Houston (I can't imagine anyone ever needing that much benzene!). To make matters even more sporting, there's not much wiggle room in the channel. Once outside those red and green markers, the depths drop rapidly, making a shared space with Mr. Benzene your only option. Really though, the ship channel wasn't that bad. We stayed to the far right, kept a sharp watch and only almost got run over once.

We got a late start on Tuesday, and by early evening we were coming past Galveston into the Gulf of Mexico. It had been a little stormy that day, so the winds were brisk with four to six foot seas rolling us about as we tacked back and forth to get beyond the long stone jetties that flank the entrance to the bay. Of course, with each tack we crossed the ship channel again, and though during the day the big ships are impossible to miss, taking up your entire field of vision, at night it was another story. They were like hulking blocks of shadow with three tiny lights on top barreling into the Gulf at 20 knots. I found how difficult they were to see quite disconcerting, and needless to say we got our diminutive butts out of the shipping lane as soon as we got past the jetties, one of which we came a bit too close to for comfort.

That's right about the time that my violent bout of seasickness kicked in, laughing in the face of all the ginger I'd consumed. I won't bore you with the graphic details, but suffice to say I spent the next two days dry heaving and curled up in the fetal position sweating buckets. Vlad was kind enough to turn the fan on for me. Thank goodness my brother came with us because it would have been a pretty horrendous first voyage for Vlad with his only companion, besides the hedgehog, totally incapacitated. I think we might have made it as far as Beaumont.

Once out into the Gulf of Mexico, it took us 10 full days to reach Key West. We traveled more than 1,000 miles, generally heading south, southeast and east, with the occasional north and west thrown in (dang that Russian). The first week we went very slowly due to storms and the wind - which kept pushing us toward the Yucatan (too bad David didn't have his passport). My dad told me later that he went down to my mom's house, and she showed him where we were on the Spot tracker. Not being nautically inclined, he asked my mom if we were making good time, and she replied that it was the worst progress she'd ever seen. She described that first week to me as "like watching paint dry," which wasn't an inaccurate description since we I'm pretty sure we went backwards for two days.

At 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning when we had more miles to go than we did on Friday afternoon, I had generally decided that the whole thing sucked and that I hated the Gulf of Mexico and that I could really use a beer and maybe a sandwich made from something besides peanut butter and jelly. But then we got some wind. What will follow on the blog for the next few days are the highlights of our trip, the things that we found interesting, beautiful, bizarre and frustrating. And I promise I'll explain the Russian.

On a Slow Boat to Key West

After more than 10 days at sea, we finally arrived in Key West and dropped the anchor at 9:00 p.m last night. We had heard that it couldn't be done, that you couldn't make it to Key West from Kemah, Texas, in one straight shot. Vlad, David and I beg to differ. It just takes eleven days instead of seven.

I'll give a detailed post of our trip tomorrow. There will be plenty of tales about the endless close haul, storms at sea, stowaways, baby dolphins, everything that broke, surprise visitors, the Russian, and a nearly averted mutiny over oranges, but for now I really want someone to make me breakfast. A really, really good breakfast. With oranges.

And We're Off!

Don't we look awesome? And tired...

Well, this is it for a week. I want to thank my little brother Aleks for the care package filled with awesome Arkansas t-shirts. Vlad looks excellent in that hot pink AR tank top, and I finally learned what a pirate's favorite state is - Arrrrkansas!

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get our pactor modem up and running (It's some kind of software issue that I have yet to figure out and we have to get Windows on our Mac. Boo!), so, alas, there will be no posts during our crossing. But never fear. I will give you all the full scoop of how the trip went when we get to the Florida Keys in about a week.

Everyone keeps telling us that we won't make it to Key West (something about that fickle wind thing), but we're going to give it a go anyhow. Sounds pretty typical, no? We will miss you guys - friends and family alike - and will talk to you soon.

We love you!

- Vlad, Attila and David

Crossing the Gulf of Mexico

Getting from Galveston to Key West isn't all puppy dogs and sunshine. The wind doesn't typically blow in your favor, and due to geology and the current the wave motion isn't particularly fun either. And, of course, you have to choose your weather window wisely. Currently, it's pouring outside, with rivulets of water running across the hatch. We were planning on heading out tomorrow, but we'll see.

Because the Gulf can be such a daunting proposition and it's our first offshore crossing, I asked some of the lovely ladies of this sailing group I belong to about what we should do to prepare. Here are their words of wisdom:

- Prepare meals ahead of time and bring lots of snacks, including ginger snaps for queasiness. 

- Get plenty of sleep! Thankfully, my older brother David is coming with us on the first crossing, so we should have a decent watch schedule. 

- Bring hot chocolate. Mmmm, hot chocolate. 

- Pack spare sheets and clothes in big zip locks so that you always have something dry.

- Have an amazing time!

We are going to implement all of these suggestions on our cruise, and especially the last one. Does anyone else have thoughts or advice?