GREAT FRIENDS

February 2, 2012  Dateline;  Key West, FL USA

Last night Rich, Carol, Michael and Petra had dinner at the Westin Hotel.  The initial plan was to watch the sun set at Mallory Square then go to dinner.  The sunset was blocked by clouds for the second night in a row.  So Rich said that they went off to dinner on the pier and were the last table to leave.  I guess the company was great.  Rich told me that he and Carol had agreed to go to Germany in 2013 to visit with Michael and Petra.  They are going to leave me behind; I guess I can’t fit on to an airplane.

This morning a diver came to look at one of my propellers.  I had picked up a vibration in my starboard propeller on the way down from Marco Island.  My starboard propeller had grabbed a lobster trap line and it wrapped around my shaft and propeller.  The diver cut the line and I am now ready to heads off to Marathon next week.

There is a small island located off of Key West with several homes.  The only way to get there is by water.  So this landing craft goes back and forth to the island carrying garbage trucks, trucks to empty septic holding tanks and any other vehicles that are needed on the island.

When going into the port of a foreign country it is customary to fly the flag of the country on the bow of one’s boat.  Here I am in the Conch Republic. In 1982 the US Border Patrol was going to set up a roadblock to inspect everyone coming or going from the island of Key West.  The citizens said that would hurt the tourism business as well as make the life of the citizens very complex. So, the town of Key West successfully seceded from the US in 1982, and quickly created a nation called the Conch Republic. Following their secession the Conchs (citizens of the Conch Republic) beat Federal Agents with stale Cuban bread.  They rejoined the union after 2 days and requested Federal Aid, which they are still waiting for.  In any event, here is the courtesy flag I am flying for the Conch Republic. The nation’s motto is “We Seceded Where Others Failed”.   April 23 of each year is celebrated as the Conch Republic’s Independence Day.

One of the Conch Republic’s industries before tourism was the harvesting of live sponges.  As an icon of the industry there is a sponge man, no not “Sponge Bob Square Pants”, in front of one of the stores in the main shopping area.  This statute is made from various size sponges.  

Rich saw this truck on the street, nice painting job.

Key West, as I previously mentioned, is a port for many cruise ships. This one came into port this morning.  The Majesty of the Sea, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, is approximately 880 feet long with a beam of 106 feet, weighs 74,077 tons and carries about 3,000 passengers.

The Coast Guard towed this small submarine-like vessel out to sea, a little while later another Coast Guard ship brought it back. Since the drug lords have started using submarines to bring drugs into this country, Rich wondered if this is one of the captured subs and if it is being used to train Coasties to find these small vessels in the big ocean.