Mommas....

I was doing chores on the boat last weekend, sweating my ass off in the midday heat chasing down a short in the bilge pump circuit, when an odd, recurring "phoosh" led me up on deck to investigate. In the water, a few feet from Moon, a momma manatee and two calves were making circles around the dock. She looked at me for a moment, measuring the threat that I might pose to her kids, I suppose, and then went back to her lazy loops between the boats.

I went back down below and grabbed the video camera and got a few minutes of her nursing the kids while what might have been daddy manatee drifted nearby. The folks that live in the marina said they hadn't seen her for several weeks, and had assumed she and the babies had moved out of the sound and into the Atlantic.

This momma probably weighs close to a thousand pounds, nearly as much as a full grown grizzly bear, but she and the rest of the manatee clan are quiet and peaceful creatures. They exude an innocence and calm that can be quite tranquilizing, and I spent an hour or so hanging out on the dock watching them paddle around the lagoon. I sprayed some water from the hose for them, and after drinking their fill they headed out toward the sound.

It won't be long before the water here warms up to the point that she'll want to head out looking for cooler places, leading the family through the sound and out into the open water where she'll need to decide whether to head north around the island and into Biscayne Bay or south to the cut at Tavernier Key that leads into Florida Bay and the gulf........

Satellite photos of the Gulf show the slick smearing farther by the day from the location of the leak, and it's only a matter of time before the loop current picks up the oil and sends it toward the Keys. I've read that the oil could reach the Keys by mid-June, and if the flow from the leak doesn't get stopped soon there could be enough oil to cover the seagrass beds and mangroves that are the feeding grounds for manatees like these, as well as all of the birds, fish, turtles, crabs, lobsters, eels, and corals that make the Keys the paradise that it is.

There is certain irony to the fact that this accident happened right before Earth Day, isn't there?

And tomorrow is Mother's day.

A day that we set aside to honor, pamper, and cater to Mothers, whether they are our own or not. I am blessed to have had a kind, smart, funny, and caring mother, and I am certain that most of the good qualities I posess as a person today are due mostly to her good genes and better example. I miss her tremendously, but I feel her presence often......

I'm also lucky to know some amazing, strong women who are exceptional mothers to their own children, and the world is a better place for their presence in it.

There's a sad parallel between Earth Day and Mother's Day, isn't there?....we set aside a day for honor and respect, but too often go back to our normal habits and ignore or forget all of the reasons those special days were created in the first place.

I hope everyone has a happy Mother's Day, including you, momma manatee.

And I hope that we all can remember to make every day Mother's Day, and Earth Day, because they both deserve it, and so do we.....

Night Pour

Sunrise

Sunset

Catching up....again

But enough about me.......

How are you?

Help for Haiti

I read today that more than 200,000 people are thought to have been killed in the earthquake in Haiti, and another 1.5 people million are homeless. It's impossible to sit here and not want to do something to help, so at work we've started a fundraising effort to have some quick impact and have also started brainstorming about other ways to help with the longer term needs. If anyone has any ideas about either approach please let me know. Everybody probably already knows how to donate money for the cause but I added a button for the Red Cross just in case.....

Kids and dogs

Change of command

Saturday was a sad day at the Crazy Cave, friends and neighbors....I rowed out to Reprieve for the last time that morning under a clear blue sky. I've known for a while now that with my move to Orlando there's just no way I would be able to give her the attention she needs. For the last several weeks I've been looking for a new skipper for her, preferrably someone who has kids and loves to sail but just doesn't have the means to get into a boat. With the limited time I'll have in the next three years I'll be spending time on Moon getting her ready for The Trip, and I just can't let Reprieve sit on her mooring without being there to do the maintenance she needs and keep her in good shape....which was made abundantly clear when I got out to her. The pirates had been there some time over the last two weeks, broken the hasp on the companionway, and looted her. They took the outboard, the VHF, the CD player, the batteries, and one of the solar panels. They made off with the portable depth finder and anemometer, the inverter, boat hook, tool boxes, compass, barometer, clock, light fixtures, life jackets, charts, dishes, food, and rum. Damn it they took the rum! They also took a couple of changes of clothes I had stashed in the hanging locker and all the back issues of Latitudes & Attitudes magazine. And left beer cans and cigarrette butts in the cockpit. It hurts, man. It really hurts. It's bad enough that I'm letting her go to someone else, which, corny as it sounds, feels almost like I'm betraying her (although she's going to a good man). But for her to have been violated like this in the last days that she was in my care, after as much fun and escape as she had provided me, just ain't right. I'm not normally one to wish ill to anyone else, but I hope those bastards get drunk on that rum and fall down go boom. They did leave the sals, though. And two anchors and all of the sheets & halyards and the tiller. She still sails! And the man who's taking over her care and command is a good guy, a lifelong Keys person who will enjoy her and take care of her. I'm sure he and his kids will have many adventures on her, and she'll take good care of them along the way like she did for me. It was hard to leave her and row back to shore, but as I watched her shrinking in the distance behind me I remembered the many great sailing days, peaceful nights on the hook out in the bay, and calm afternoons sitting in the cockpit with a book or just daydreaming over the rail.....

Here's a memory, one of many, of sailing her on the bay...it was a beautiful day with winds pushing 20 knots. I had spent the night at Nest Key and was on my way back to the anchorage. She was running free, a reef in the main and the skinny jib on the forestay, perfectly balanced and holding her course like she new the way home.

Fair winds little friend.

Not all who wander.....

Where does the time go, kids? Sitting on the back deck this evening, listening to the boats running out on the sound and the breeze moving through the palms, I reflected back on June 1, 2004, the day I landed here in the Keys from Denver to start work on the new hospital. Tonight that day seems like a lifetime away. A lot of water has passed under the keel since then, so to speak...several new kids in the family, some good old friends gone, lots of new friends to cherish, and so many memories of so many good times had - hanging out under the thatch roof at the tiki bar or under the bimini on the boat, sipping cold beer while the rain comes in or the sun goes down, scarfing fish tacos on the dock at Calypsos, sailing across the startlingly clear waters out beyond the reef, digging up pirate treasure on deserted islands in the bay, scaring up iguanas in the mangrove jungles, watching the new hospital rise up out of that old potato field, to sample just a few.......

December 2, 2005 I started this little on-line open letter to my friends and family as a way to share a narrative of my experiences and practice my writing skills. Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read what I've put down here, and thanks especially to those of you who have given me your feedback on what you've thought was well done and what was crap. Living here in my little island paradise and having an interesting and challenging job has provided lots of subject matter for the blog, and quite honestly the bigdogblog has only captured a very small fraction of the experiences and adventures I've enjoyed in my time here. Looking back I know there were a lot of cool things going on here that I completely missed out on...running naked with the crazies on Duval Street during Fantasy Fest, witnessing the spectacle that is the Columbus Day Regatta, sailing with the conchs in the Christmas boat parade, for example.....

And now it's time to pack up and head out for a new town, a new job, new adventures.

I've been commuting to Orlando for a couple of months now, tending to the start of the new job there while tying up loose ends down here, but it has finally gotten to the point where I need to suck it up, make the move north, and get settled in to the new routine that awaits me there. No doubt I've been dragging my feet for a while on this, stalling and hoping that some miracle would happen and I'd find a way to be able to stay here forever while I finish getting Moon ready for the Trip. But employment opportunities here are scarce, particularly for folks with as limited a marketable skill set as I have (not many new hospitals get built in sleepy little island towns, dadgummit!).

Part of my stall maneuver includes getting some work done on Everlasting Moon while I have access to a yard I can trust to get her prepped for her eventual move north. Earlier this week a friend and I sailed her on a broad reach the twenty miles or so down the Hawk Channel south to Islamorada with 15-20 knots of wind out of the east and 2-3 foot swells moving in from the reef. It was a glorious day to be on the water - spitting rain early, some brief squalls mid-morning, and clearing to blue skies with a freshening breeze that encouraged us to put a reef in the main before noon. And for added enjoyment, I forgot to put a stopper knot on the jib sheet when we set sail, so when we got to the Snake Creek channel and cranked up the engine and turned back into the breeze to take the sails down to transit the channel under the drawbridge, the free end of the sheet escaped the lead block on the toe rail and tangled itself in the prop, jamming the works and killing the engine. After a few moments of what the hell we realized what had happened, dropped the anchor to keep from getting blown onto the shoals at the mouth of the channel, and studied on what to do next. It didn't take long to understand that we had two choices - call Sea Tow and get towed in to the marina or jump my skinny ass over the side with a mask and a knife and free the prop. Opting for undersea adventure instead of the indignity of having to call for help I hopped into the ocean. Luckily my friend had the presence of mind to suggest that we cut the jib sheet loose above the water line and spare me the excitement of flailing around in the water with a sharp knife in my hand while the barnacle encrusted 11,000 pound boat pitched around in the swell above my head. That was smart thinking, and it still left me with the thrill of swimming under the boat as it rose and fell on the waves while I unwrapped the line from the prop shaft. It took a while to get it done, but after figuring out how to brace myself on the bottom of the boat so that I was going up and down with it the actual freeing of the line wasn't that hard.

Once I got back on the boat I realized that this is exactly why I love being on the water in general and sailing in particular.....every now and then you're going to be confronted with one of these little puzzles that can only be solved with the right combination of skill, knowledge, luck, and physical exertion.

The rest of the sail was memorable but uneventful. The engine started back first try, we cleared the bridge, motored through the channel and into the bay where we picked the same breeze we had on the ocean side. With no swell to fight on the bay side Moon ran with a bone in her teeth the last few miles to the marina. We even got tied up to the dock there with no real excitement.

Today we got the mast and lifelines off, and prep work started for the new standing rigging and refit of the masthead lights and antenna. She comes out of the water Monday for bottom paint and a new stuffing box, cutlass bearing, and repair of whatever else we find under there that needs fixing.



If all goes as planned, she'll go back in the water a week from Monday, and I can sail her back up to her slip the next day before heading to Elkin for the annual family Thanksgiving gala......

I remember riding my bike down the Cherry Creek trail in Denver to the park at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte River in May of 2004, and watching the colliding streams while I studied over my impending departure from the life I had started building there....it had been hard to decide to pack up and leave there just as I was developing a new circle of friends and really getting to know the miles of mountain bike trails and the brew pubs, bookstores, neighborhood hangouts and just plain good and friendly people that make Denver such an inviting place to live. But I did make that decision, opting for the uncertainty of a new place with a solid job and a chance to build something really meaningful over staying put in an awesome place but not knowing what I would do for a living. Things turned out well enough, I think, going the route that I did.

And here I am now at another watershed moment. This time around, though, I'm leaving with more details and a more definitive timeline added to the plan I left Denver with.....work hard, save money, buy a boat, and take off to chase the horizon as soon as possible. It hurts to know that I'm leaving a place that has really come to feel like home, though....hurts more than I can express. But.....

The job in Orlando is going to be a great one. A lot of work, of course, and I'll go ahead an apologize now for all of the bitchin' and moanin' about the job that you're likely to read here over the next three years or so. It's OK to tell me to be quiet about all of that when I get out of line. And I know that there are good people that I'll meet there, and good adventures to be had exploring and getting to know the Orlando area again

So, that's it for now. I hope that you're doing well, that all of the decisions you're faced with are easy or you enjoy puzzling out the answers to the hard ones.....Good night, friends. Be well.