February 18, 2022
It was a leisurely morning and afternoon spent heading out to the Dry Tortugas. Shortly after leaving the Marquesas, we heard a loud BOOM. I was looking around in every direction, trying to figure out where it came from, but could see nothing. Paul told me that the area has a naval training area of some type, so it is more than likely that what we heard was a navy Jet as it broke the sound barrier.
The wind refused to cooperate, so we motored the whole way, maintaining a speed of approximately 5 knots. I manned the helm for a lot of the trip, so I am proud of that accomplishment. You might think it’s mindless, especially with all of today’s modern technology, and it’s true that we did engage the autopilot for an hour or two. However, we had to always keep our eyes on the water due to the sheer number of buoys anchoring crab pots… It was like the old game Frogger, and I found myself constantly turning Kya Anne port and starboard to avoid all the buoy lines that kept showing up in our path.
We made it into the Dry Tortugas/Fort Jefferson around 3:30 in the afternoon, and my pictures cannot fully capture how captivating the view is.
We registered at the NPS office on Ft. Jefferson and talked with a patient Park Ranger who answered a lot of our questions. Since it was late in the afternoon, we decided to hold off on our tour until Saturday and returned to Kya Anne.
Once back on the Kya Anne, Paul put on his snorkel gear and hit the water, doing some cleaning of the underside of Kya Anne. I finally hopped in the water, hoping something from my swimming lessons 2+ years ago had stuck. I practiced my backstroke, sidestroke and crawl. All were serviceable, though my crawl was considerably more like dragging myself through the water. All in all, it didn’t take long to tire myself out and I dragged myself back to the boat deck to rinse off, dry off and rest.
We had a dinner of curried lentils and vegetables and wrapped up the evening with a game of Three Thirteen.
