SHARK TO KEY WEST

It’s summer, 1996. We’re two retired guys, sitting in the shade in front of our boats, sipping our cooling beverages.

“Let’s take The Shark to Florida this winter. We can trailer it down early on, leave it with Walter in Key West, and use it any time we feel the Toronto winter’s getting us down.”

“Great idea! But what will my wife say?”

“Morven will love it! Christmas in Florida: sunshine instead of snow, and flamingos rather than a fourth grade class with attitude!. And the March break’ll be a second honeymoon for you.”

John was right. Permission was granted and the project begun. We were to leave in November; in late October we snugged the boat down on a borrowed trailer, and left the rig in the Club parking lot ready to leave as soon as we set the date. Setting the date turned out to be much more difficult than we anticipated.

At first I couldn’t leave right away, but we’d be able to depart in a couple of weeks. Then John got an offer he couldn’t refuse; a delivery trip across the Caribbean from Guatemala to Florida. While the poor lad was suffering aboard a 43 foot yacht, I was asked to don my thespian persona and rehearse a play for production after his return. Thus our departure was forever being postponed. But it was always imminent, so imminent, indeed, that to cover the boat would be a waste of effort - (more of this anon). Ultimately John, Morven and I hitched up the trailer at the beginning of the March break - so much for Christmas in Florida - and sped southward, leaving the snow and ice behind us. (If you make this trip, when choosing a place for the night beware of “dry” counties in Kentucky and anywhere in Georgia on a Sunday.)

Three and a half days later we were on one of the northernmost Keys, outside the gates of a marina, disconsolately reading the notice that advised us that it would be closed for another two days. Advice from a Shark sailor in Toronto who had already made this trip led us here. We knew that this marina had launched a shark and had launched it free. But two whole days! No, we wanted to be sailing on that incredibly blue water. We moved on to another marina. And another. And another. They all charged hundreds of dollars to launch and haul the boat and thousands to park the car and trailer!

“Let me invite Fred and Asta for drinks,” said John. Fred lives at the Ocean Reef Club where he keeps the 43 foot Bristol that John had helped bring back from Guatemala. By the second drink, we had free accommodation for the car and trailer and by the end of the afternoon we had found a launching ramp, trundled the trailer down it and floated The Shark off into salt water. ( Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie).

Separately and together, Fred and Asta saved our cruise. When we opened the boat, we reaped what we had sewn in not covering it over the winter. The accumulated snow with which we left Toronto had melted and migrated to the interior. On the cabin sole there was a foot of water that had got there via the mattresses and bedding. Fred and Asta put us up and found us a dock at their condominium for the two days needed to dry out. And not just any old dock; this one came with a friendly manatee, as Morven discovered to her astonishment when it popped its head up beside her!

We left Ocean Reef on Friday bound for the Coral Reef YC in Miami, distant some 20nm. In brilliant sunshine, a soldier’s breeze carried us north at five knots under genoa alone. After four hours we were happily counting off the posts - (that part of the Keys is so featureless and the water so shallow that pilotage is reduced to keeping between the posts) - until we reached the one where we were to turn west for Dinner Creek, when we observed a sausage cloud approaching from that direction. We blessed our good fortune in having no mainsail to hand, for before we could have done so, with no more warning than a couple of little williwaws, the cold front knocked us on our ear. The sun vanished, visibility became a scant 100 yards and the clouds seemed determined to restore, at 0 degrees Celsius, all the fresh water we had evaporated from the boat, as we hurtled off at hull speed into the gloom.

Dinner Creek lay tantalisingly out of reach, some two miles directly to windward at the end of a very narrow, marked channel. All we could do was reach madly back and forth on the course we had been steering when the light went out and wait for conditions to improve. Hours, it seemed, passed before the wind decreased enough and we could see enough to motor gingerly westward. We crept into Coral Reef Yacht Club, cold, wet and promising to give more weight to future weather forecasts. The Star class were competing for the Bacardi Cup out of the club that week and had cancelled Friday’s racing in view of the predicted weather.

Morven flew back to Toronto at 0700 the next morning. I couldn’t help but recall Burns’ “To a Mouse” as I ruefully contemplated our “best-laid scheme”. There she went, returning to work after a “second honeymoon” cruising the Keys for a week in the sun. Her week’s cruise consisted of three days in the car, three days rigging, drying and cleaning the boat, one lovely day’s sail and one in which it blew old boots. Moreover, there are occasions when three is an excellent number but honeymoon, by definition, is not such a one.

John and I devoted Saturday and Sunday to the now familiar task of drying out - the boat, I hasten to add! Luckily, that weekend at the Yacht Club, activity was at a minimum and sunshine at a maximum, hence we were able to display the contents of The Shark in a manner reminiscent of a community yard sale. John spent the drying time identifying possible sites of leaks in the deck, lights and cabin top while I enthusiastically applied sealant to these places. When we turned in on Sunday night, our ship was dry and tight and the forecast favourable.

We were told that Monday’s wind was unusual in that it came from the north. It remained in that direction for the nine hours needed to reach Jewfish Creek. We set the spinnaker as soon as we turned south out of Dinner Creek and handed it some 45nm later. I should point out that our downwind sail area is regularly augmented by a Martini parasol with a frisbee-like section and fringed end-plate. There is no doubt that this unusual addition enhanced our performance every time it was deployed. John has photographs of it in action; anyone interested in duplicating it might be able to obtain copies from him c/o this paper.

Tuesday’s wind was even more unusual in that it was still northerly. Extra sail area was not needed today; in fact even the genoa was not much used in the ten hours we took to cover the 60nm to Faro Blanco.

Wednesday dawned with that wind again from its “unusual” direction, but now in the over twenty knot range. We decided that we couldn’t possibly leave until we had done several loads of washing and by then we were too exhausted to think of hauling halyards and sheets. The spindrift and 3ft waves in the marina had no part in our decision not to sail that day.

On Thursday, with the wind from its now usual unusual direction and under ten knots in strength, The Shark, under spinnaker, full main and parasol, set off on the 45nm remaining to Key West. In the afternoon, the wind dropped and we were obliged to motor in order to avoid entering an unfamiliar port after dark. We called Walter and had dinner with him and his wife before spending the night in harbour on the Atlantic side of Key West.

The next day, following Walter’s directions, we motored the ten miles around the southern end of Key West to the snuggest little anchorage imaginable and tied up alongside the pier at the Key West Sailing Club. The club very generously gave us free run of the whole place for our entire stay!

For our return trip to Miami, the wind very kindly reverted to its usual direction thus allowing us to make the entire journey downwind; except for our first day. That day, we left Key West SC rounded the southern shore and poked our nose into Drake’s Channel to the east. Faced with the prospect of a forty mile beat into a 15 knot breeze, we decided that our departure had been a little premature and elected to anchor in the lee of a pleasantly wooded island in a spot adjacent to a large motor boat whose stern was firmly aground. This fact aroused our curiosity and we passed whatever time was left over from doing nothing in observing this phenomenon. We eventually realised that it permitted really easy access to shore, for the water at the foot of the after steps was only waist deep at high tide and none of the young people living aboard seemed to bother with clothes. Who needs TV on board in circumstances like these?

Earlier in the week I had read in a sailing magazine that some Boy Scouts in a chartered boat had been outraged to see a passing yacht heave a large dog over the side and motor off, leaving the dog in the water. The Scouts had rescued the unfortunate beast and taken its case to the police and the humane society. They aroused much sympathy and indignation until a local sailor heard the tale and enlightened them. The particular island off which their dog had been abandoned was used by yachtsmen going for a day’s sail as a kind of holiday camp for dogs. The animals spent the day ashore, sniffing backsides or playing pinochle or whatever dogs do, and their owners would stop on their return trip, row ashore and retrieve their mutts. A classic case of helping the old lady across the street, I thought.

At intervals during the day, when no ladies were visible on the grounded motor boat, I would see a black dog on the shore. Hours of intermittent observation told me that it was old, unhappy and lost and probably dying of thirst. I was about to go ashore and rescue it, when I glanced at our chart. Yes, this was the Dogs’ Club Med island! And I was never a Boy Scout.

Clearly, it was time to go home!