Brady's Dinghy Survey

Some people in Key West, like us, live on their boats.  They anchor out in an area close to the harbor. 

One of those little white dots in the distance is our boat at anchor.

  Once you have an anchor set you do not want to pull it up every day to go into shore because there is not enough room in the harbor for everyone to take their boats in to shore every day, and it is too much work to pull up the re-set the anchor everyday.  So, you use a smaller boat called a dingy to go to and from port.   A dingy is a small boat that can be powered three different ways: with an engine, with oars or with sails.  An outboard is an engine with a throttle and a propeller.  There are different kinds of dinghies.  Some are are inflatables, and some are hard dinghies.  An inflatable is a dingy that is filled with air, and is made out of rubber fabric.  Hard dinghies are made of wood or fiberglass.  Our dingy is a Boston Whaler, made out of foam and fiberglass, with a 15 horsepower Yamaha outboard engine.  

Our dinghy.

Key West Bight dinghy dock.

There are a lot of dinghies (and outboards) at the dingy dock, so I decided to do a survey on all the different brands of outboards at the Key West Bight dinghy dock.  There were 57 dinghies at the dingy dock on March 20, 2013.  They did not all have outboards, four were row boats.  I found that there were 18 Yamaha, 12 Mercury, 8 Tohatsu, 4 Nissan,  2 Honda, 2 Mariner, 2 Johnson and 1 Suzuki.  There were 4 unknown engines that did not have names on them.  There were also 4 row boats.   

I made a bar graph and a pie chart of my results. Here it is:

  

Now you know that our dingy is like our family car.  And sometimes I get to drive it!    

                              By: Brady, age 11

Brady driving the family car.

Still Here

Yes.  In answer to the inquiries, we are STILL in Key West.  Yes, we had planned and hoped to be well on our way by now - off sailing along, exploring new places.  And, to be honest, we are all hankering to leave KW, despite our enduring love for this little island paradise.  We really want to be on our way to foreign ports and foreign adventures.  Boat projects have taken more time than we would like, and Dev’s work back in CA had made demands of his time more than we anticipated, and as a result he’s had to fly back on a number of occasions to take care o’ business.  So, we are still here on our mooring in the harbor.   

But, despite our desire to sail away from here weeks ago, if you’ve got to be “stuck” somewhere for a few months, this aint a bad place to be.  In fact, if you had asked me a year ago if I would like to hang out/live on the boat in Key West for a couple of months I’d have said, no screamed, “Absolutely!  Let’s go!”   It’s a great spot with plenty of interesting things to do, see, and experience.  So, yes, it’s true - we haven’t gone very far in terms of milage yet.  But we ARE cruising.  We ARE experiencing new things, learning and exploring, encountering a variety of wildlife - adventuring - even if we are still in Key West.  And we will be on our way soon enough.

Meanwhile, here’s a little taste of some our Key West Adventures.

A calm morning of fishing.

Another moment of calm.

Butterfly at the Butterfly Museum.

Sophie always wants to get in with us.

Sophie watching the snorkeling boys.

Blowing the conch at sunset.

Jump.

Swimming at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park beach.

Cannonball Run.

Cannon sitting.

We could have reached in and patted the manatees
swimming off the dingy dock.

Manatee lovin.

Snorkel time.

 Ready for a swim.

Doing the wave.

Catch and release........

......unfortunately for the little fishy, the released became a barracuda meal.

Birds of all kinds, Sea Turtles, Spotted Eagle Rays, Manatees, Dophins.....all things that we see every day.

The end of another beautiful day.  Is that a green flash?

Daily dolphin sightings!

This mama dolphin (we see her with her baby quite often) has an
interestingly deformed fin.

Jamie with his special Atocha coin necklace.
 (Thanks Poppa!)

Sunnin.

Hangin.

A series of "northers" have come through.  It gets windy and cold.  Like in the 60's!  Brrrrrr.  :)

Sunset cruisers. 

This 'N' That, with Pictures

Forgive us, but this post is short on verbiage, longer on visuals...

Here's a smattering of recent pics from the last few weeks:

Dev arrived back in Florida from a work trip to CA, and was greeted at the dock by the family in the "family car".

 We drove up to the Miami Boat Show, the biggest boat show in the world. We met Leon Slikkers, founder of Tiara Yachts.  Leon is the father of Dev's college roommate Tom Slikkers, who is now CEO of Tiara.  Leon started the company in his garage, and through hard work and quality boat building over many years, has created a legacy of fine yachts.

                                                Free boat show driving lessons.

 When we grow rich, we might get a big catamaran!  This Gunboat 66 might work.

 It was a wonderful surprise to run into Sylvia and Stan Dabney.  We met them at the Miami Boat Show over 20 years ago when we were first looking to buy a boat.  They own a Valiant 40 and are cruisers who spent a great deal of time answering all of our questions over many months and we owe them a great deal.  It was great to see them again!

                                            Boy. Dog.

                                                     Dog.  Boy.

                                 The water in Key West has so many unique colors.

 Jamie learns to drive the dinghy.   9' Boston Whaler with a 15 hp Yamaha outboard.

                                         Just another (amazing) sunset.

                                        Tooling around taking sunset pictures.

                                                    The dinghy dock in Key West.

 Visiting from Newport Beach, California on a cruise ship, Chase Greer and Jesse Blanchard were classmates of Brady last year.
 

 Visiting moms Michele Greer and Joanne Blanchard catch up with Alisa on the latest news from home.

 This bird landed on our rigging and hopped around the boat for a few minutes with a piercing, beeping call.  It looked a little like a redwing blackbird but is probably a rooster in disguise.

 The kids line up for a photo.  Jamie, Brady, Oliver, Jesse, Chase, Nikki, Kenzie, Martin.

 Putting on the mainsail on the boat requires inserting battens into the sail to keep it from flogging.

                                     Our new staysail boom weight.  

 Sunset dinghy ride with our boat friends Oliver (8) and Martin (5) from the sailing cat "Anticipation".

                                  
                                            Jamie working on his tan.

 This creature sailed by the boat.  Not to be trifled with....Portugese Man o' War will give you a sting you won't soon forget.

                  Another view of the sailor.

                                              Pirate Cat hanging on our wall.

                                              Relaxing.

            The Keys are home to some, well,  interesting people.

            A man and his dog.  Interesting people with interesting pets.

                    More creative transportation.

                         Boys on a boom.

Version number 3487 of the Lego Travel Lift.

 This Tilefish was hanging out near our swim step today, so we gently guided him into our net for a photo and then let him go.

 We raise our dinghy on a halyard every night for security and safety.  Oh, and to keep it from making noise banging against the hull in the morning when we are sleeping!

Family portrait just after launching from the boatyard.