Salty

The Blue Heaven is now in Ocean Reef Club Key Largo. The original plan was to fish a few days out of Marathon before heading here on Thursday. But The weather forecast has increased the winds till Thursday now. Twenty to Thirty KT winds are not conducive to fishing. So this morning Kyle and I got up and eased our way up the Keys to Key Largo. The Boss is suppose to fly in Thursday to here now. If the winds do back down we will fish here for a few days. The ride up from Marathon was crappy. The winds at sunrise were lite, but as we stuck our nose out into Hawks Channel It increased quickly. We had 30 kt winds the entire way up here. Even though we were going real slow, We took brutal amounts of spray. The seas were only 4 foot but each wave seemed to envelop the boat in a shroud of salty spray. I had salt in places I did not know I had. I took a shower and it feels like I still have salt in my ears.  The boat was worse. it took Kyle and I hours to get all the salt off of the old girl.

As I am typing this, A boat load of drinking spring breakers just tried to dock their daddys boat. I think they hit every piling on the way in and whacked the cement dock pretty good. Whew! 

So We are at Ocean Reef Club. ORC is a large private yacht club. It is very exclusive. Most boat crews call it Ocean Grief club. The reason for that is that Crews from boats can not use the facility's on property such as pools, restaurants, clubs .... Crews can not even wash their boats with no shirt on. But It is a very nice place and I can understand the strictness of it all. ( oh did I say that a boat load of spring breakers with girls in bikinis and guys with no shirts just crashed daddies boat. )??? LOL The Marina is extremely nice here. They provide gas grills at the base of each dock and everything here is very well maintained. There is a " Crew Club" on property. It opens at 6 pm each night and has a pool table and is a good place to go just to get off of the boat. 

While running the boat here today we heard a call come over the radio. The coastguard reported that one of their planes had spotted an overloaded cuban raft adrift in the Florida straights. The straights are the body of water between Cuba and the Keys.   The position was 60 miles to the south west of us. The weather and distance negated anything we could do.  If we had 4 foot seas inside the reef and thirty kt winds, The seas outside the reef and in the gulf stream had to be 12-14 feet. It was very sobering to sit and listen to that radio transmission. A prayer goes out to the souls adrift on that raft trying to make it to freedom and a better place.  When you think that things are bad with your life and you dont get what you want, Think about those poor souls on that raft that had it so bad they are willing to risk what little they had to get to the United states. As of 1 pm when I turned off the radio no one had found the raft again and no ships off shore had been able to render assistance.

  When I fired up the motors this morning, I found that the Computer display that shows the critical information on the port engine was not working. It just has a checkered pattern on it. Once again, I would rather break all this stuff while I am here stateside...... And It is covered by warranty. 

I am sitting on the bow of the boat with a Red cup containing an adult beverage. the radio is playing some light jazz from a boat near by. ( Bob James I think)  It is real pretty up here. The sun has been setting as I wrote this. It was only to be out done by the beauty of all the yachts packed into the marina. I love sitting and watching an afternoon come alive on the docks. The sun has gone just about all the way down now. The breeze has freshened just a bit and I am getting cold. I think I will take one more shower to get all the salt that I missed in the first shower.