JACKIE B III Going Loopy

Our next set of visitors came from Michigan.  Cindy and John were up for anything so that’s what we did! Their first day was a rainy day but that didn’t stop us. We had breakfast at Blue Heaven. It was once a bordello then a boxing venue where matches were occasionally refereed by Ernest Hemingway. Today it’s unique restaurant with chickens and cats wandering around the courtyard. We were lucky to get a table with a roof! After the weather cleared, we  went back to the southern most point. There, Mike tried to point even further south. There were beautiful fishing vessels off shore. John received a special welcome at the Butterfly Garden. The butterflies were abundant and colorful. The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square features many street performers.  I was lucky enough to be chosen out of the crowd to be a juggler's assistant. This video shows snippets of the knife throwing part of the act. Even though I missed getting the knives to him, we parted as friends. Cindy a...

Mike and I had some time between guests to explore.  This time went out on our paddle boards. This was my first of many encounters with a nurse shark.  The are basically more afraid of me that I am of them…Now. We paddled out of the marina under the bridge and over to what some people call the sub pens.  They aren’t really but it makes for a nice tall tale to explain the 7- 20 foot deep ditches.  We think the navy was getting material for the runways at Boca Chica.  The water in the ditches is really clear and there are turtles, Barracuda and thousands of fish you can see even from the surface. We made plans to bring all our guests out here with the dinghy since it is so close to the marina. We brought Mikes cousins out first on their first day. Then we brought them to a Sip and Salsa night at the Navy Community center on Sigsbee Island. We’re the four people on the right in the photo. I was excited to bring them down to the wharf. Here they are: Barbie and John...

  We were so excited to have our friend Ellen and her boyfriend Louie come down from Northern Florida for a visit. Ellen’s daughter Blair was Jackie’s best friend. We were able to offer them a beautiful sunset nearly every night! We enjoyed dipping our toes in the water at the beach while Mike entertained us with his kiteboard antics. Mike and Ellen took the Brownie out looking for lobster in the harbor. No luck though. We spent a day in Key West together with lunch at the Wharf, and walking about town.  We stopped in the Key West Museum of Art and History at the Custom House. It has a fabulous exhibit on the railway and a local artist, Santiago’s sketches for Earnest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.  We also had drinks at several popular spots.  We stopped at the Southernmost Point Brew Pub, Key West First Legal Rum Distillery, Rick’s, Captain Tony’s (Hemingway’s hangout) and finished with happy hour at the Mansion. Needless to say, our “Duvall Crawl” left us a ...

We finally arrived in Key West and will be here for a month.  We are expecting quite a few visitors while we are here. The entrance to the harbor was straight and deep Thanks to the Navy carving out the coral for building the runway. These Tarpon were in our slip to greet us.  They are around 4-5 feet long and continued as regular visitors. We headed over to the beach side bar to check it out. And enjoyed our first spectacular sunset. We walked back to the boat and the sky remained beautiful.  Looks as if our daily decision will be sunset from the beach or the boat? We rode our bicycles into Key West on our first full day here. We went to Divers Direct to learn about the Brownie Air system for diving then we went to lunch at the Wharf.  This is where we saw our first Manatee since being in Florida. The Tarpon were also numerous and quite active feeding on the fishermen’s cleaning remains. We were thrilled and honored to greet our friends Jerry and Denice on Nevadatud...

This is a long awaited day.  We are crossing the straights of florida to get to the Florida Keys. We needed a weather window with calm seas. And we got them.  We also got fog! It was a bit scary. I sat out on the bow with headphones. As the fog lifted we began to see a “fog-bow” As the sun came up it was shining through the fog water droplets to form a bow similar to a rain bow. This was some of the calmest waters we have been on on the entire loop and we’re in wide open water. Even our cell phones didn’t work out here. This was the view from our slip at Marlin Bay in Marathon. We saw our first iguanas. The birds were quite at home in the pool area. A highlight of theirs stop was meeting up with our friends from our first year on the loop; Dan and Deb from “Razor’s Edge.” They are Gold Loopers now and came back down to Florida. It was so much fun to see them! They even showed us the ropes for playing daily pickle ball at the community courts there. Mike was able to kite board ...