After a tiring four days at sea we decided to rest for a day in Key West. The weather conditions for sailing north with winds from the north and high seas are not very good, but hopefully will improve tomorrow.  The top pictures is of us after we finished our walk from the Gulf to the Atlantic along Duval, the main street in Key West.  We spent a few hours walking around the city and purchasing a few needed items at West Marine.  Since we will be doing several overnight sails on our way to Alabama, we purchased four more diesel fuel cans for a total of five and a gas can for our dinghy motor.  We also found some fake grass for Daisy as she’ll need to use the deck when we can’t go ashore.  We went past a pet store and found a clever little water bottle for her.  The bottle tucks into a carrier until you need it and then you just squeeze out some water into the trough of the carrier.  She is thirsty on her walks, so this will be perfect.

It was a beautiful day and we felt refreshed....until......

Since we were going back out to walk Daisy in the evening, we tied the dinghy to the stern, rather than putting it up on the davits.  The anchoring area we are in is very choppy with an extremely strong current.  Each time the tide changes, it gets worse.  This is not a pleasant place to anchor and I’m sure the next time we come through Key West, we’ll either stay at a marina, or find another place to anchor out, although there don’t seem to be any that are protected. At 9:30, I stood up from the saloon couch to answer the phone and yelled to Mark, “Our dinghy is loose!!”

There is a low bridge several hundred feet down this channel we are in, and the dinghy was quickly approaching the bridge, which of course we couldn’t go under.  We were about to lose our brand new dinghy and outboard motor.  Then, in the dark, at 9:30 pm, we saw a person in a dinghy coming under the bridge toward us.  We jumped up and down, waved our arms,  and yelled at him to rescue our dinghy.  It was very dark but he heard us and did just that!  Now, what are the odds that a person in a dinghy would be coming past us in the dark at exactly the time our dinghy broke loose?  There is very little boat traffic by us after dark.  He towed it back to us and refused to accept a check we had for him.  He said it had happened to him and someone helped him out so he was just doing the same.