A View of Boot Key Harbor
We had the first good night of sleep aboard the boat that night. It was probably because a.) we were in a marina, where we didn't have to worry about the anchor dragging in a thunderstorm, and b.) we ran the little cabin fan all night because we weren't worried about draining the boat's one little battery. In retrospect, we should have plugged into the dock's electrical outlet that night, but, being a tiny little boat with tiny electrical needs, we had decided not to. Plus, when we'd docked, we'd discovered that the one cable we had (basically just a long outdoor extension cord, not one of the bigger, thicker 30 AMP cables that most sailboats use), wasn't long enough to reach all the way to the dock with the tide being so low. We'd been relying on a small solar panel to keep the battery charged, and so far it seemed to be working. Running the little fan that night almost felt like the luxury of air conditioning. Will let me sleep on the side with the fan (normally, by default, his side), and I had no trouble drifting off.
We'd eaten dinner at the second-floor bar at Burdines, which offered a menu of Florida Keys fare and cheap wine and beer. After eating hot dogs off the grill for the previous two nights, the burgers and fries and key lime pie (fried key lime pie...a strange idea but tasty nevertheless) went down well. From the restaurant, we'd had a view of Boot Key Harbor, and all of its boats. "Do you think people live on all those boats?" Will had asked.
"No. Most of them are probably more or less in storage. But I bet people live on quite a few." The boats came in every shape and size, and every state of array or disarray. Some were rafted to each other, and looked like floating versions of redneck backyards (just substitute random dinghies and kayaks and vessels for the old cars and trucks up on cinder blocks). "You can really tell, in a place like this, who is proud of their boat and who just sees it as a way to live or a free place to stay for a while."
"True." I knew, from the way Will had so carefully painted Annabel Lee and the way he cared for her (minus a few incidences of griping when it was time to scrub the decks after a long day of sailing) that he was proud of out little vessel. Will was the kind of person who realized that the way you took care of things on the outside was a direct reflection of the kind of person you were on the inside. I'm not saying that looks are important or denying the truth in the old saying that "you can't judge a book by its cover," but I do believe that you should have some pride about your surroundings. After all, this was one of the reasons that I loved my husband. He understood things like that, and I could never see him letting Annabel Lee go to the point that some of these boats had gone.
The next morning, we awoke to the final full day of our adventure. We started off by a cruise through Boot Key Harbor, so we could look at all the boats – the pretty ones and the ugly ones – and admire them all for what they were.
- ◀ Offshore
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