Tuesday, February 19, 2013 – Cabbage Key:

            Let it be known by all that the SCC tradition of raising and lowering the colors is alive and well in Florida!  After we were comfortably settled in our anchorage yesterday evening and minding our own business with all good intentions of taking down our ensign around about the time of dusk, we all of a sudden at 6:30 p.m. heard the throaty, foghorn sound of a conch shell.  Bob immediately jumped up and ran aft hollering, “Oh, the colors!”  Whereupon I looked over at our friend’s boat and there was Phil blowing the conch shell for all he was worth!

            So as one good turn deserves another, promptly at 8:00 a.m. (and may I say that I saw no movement on our friend’s boat at this time of the morning), we put out our ensign and promptly blew our boat’s horn until we saw a furtive figure come out into the cockpit next door with their ensign.  Finally, all colors properly displayed!

            After all this activity, some phone calls ensued back and forth as to what everyone’s plan for the day was, and we all agreed that it would be fun to head on over to Cabbage Key.  Our friends planned on sailing, so they left a couple hours ahead of us, and we tagged along at about 11:30 a.m. planning to be anchored by about 1:00 p.m. when we planned to get together for a “hot dog” lunch.

A pelican swimming by our boat looking for breakfast

            The tides in this area are really strange.  Some days you can have four tides and on other days you can have only two.  I’m not particularly good at figuring out the tides, so this makes it especially hard for me.  I just want someone to give me a piece of paper that says the times when the tide is high and low.  All I know is that there wasn’t much water in our anchorage last night, and there wasn’t much water in it this morning either, but we got out without any trouble, and there seemed to be more water in the channel leaving Captiva than when we came in.  It didn’t take us long to get to Cabbage Key at all.  There were a lot of boaters on the water, and most of them weren’t particularly concerned about their wake or anybody else’s, but we still had to dodge some pretty good ones on our way here.

Our friends sailing on the jib

            Cabbage Key has an interesting history.  There is an inn on the island that used to be the home of Alan Rinehart who was the son of Mary Rinehart, the American mystery writer.  Now you can stay at the inn or in one of several “cottages” on the island.  They serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and tomorrow we are going to try and go there for lunch and take in the “nature walk.”

            Once we dropped the hook and got settled, our friends came over in their dinghy, and we cooked hot dogs on the grill and ate lunch up on our flybridge.  The weather is still cool, but beautiful, and we were back in shorts and t-shirts.  We talked boats and “stuff” for awhile and then parted company for the day.  Tomorrow we will get together again to explore the island.  Our friends should be good tour guides as they have been here before and have already shared some fun stories about their past experiences here.

Coming by dinghy for lunch

            We had an unsettling and interesting “cat” incident yesterday while we were anchored in Roosevelt Channel.  Basically, for reasons I don’t think I will ever know, I think Lucy had a psychotic cat episode!  As I wrote yesterday, we were enjoying the sun up on the flybridge when Lucy decided to come up and join us.  She found a sunny spot, and I thought she was going to roast herself alive!  Maybe she actually got heatstroke!  Anyway, while she was sunning herself, I noticed that she had a lot of loose fur, and I thought she would enjoy being brushed (well, she’s always enjoyed it before!), so I went down and got the cat brush.  By the time I started to come back up to the flybridge, she was sitting on the steps.  She saw me coming, and she saw the cat brush in my hand, and I don’t know what happened, but she looked at me like I had turned into a prehistoric tyrannosaurus, and the cat brush was a claw that I was going to disembowel her with!  She hissed at me, not once but twice, then she took off for parts unknown!  She has never hissed at me!  I don’t know what on earth got into her little brain, but she hasn’t been the same since.  I did capture her this morning and clipped her little kitty cat claws as it has been awhile since I gave her a trim, and this annoyed her immensely.  She has been hiding under the covers basically ever since, but I am hoping she will get back to her old (normal??) self soon.

            We have now travelled over 1500 miles, and we still have a little more to go before we turn around!  Bob is now diligently working on the return trip which I am sure will be just as interesting as it was getting here.  The days go by so fast, and I can’t believe the end of today is here.  It is 5:00 already, and I guess I better start thinking about dinner.

            Hmmmmm…I think we may be getting ready for the conch shell routine again…