Quick Key West Trip

2/8/2017 - Looper Dinner at Local Restaurant

Heat and humidity moved in for the day reaching a high for the day at 89 degrees. Many people complained when we were here in Marathon last year about temperatures in the 60s with a northerly wind. I was not one of them. In fact whenever I had to ride my bike to the food store and back, I thanked my lucky stars I did not have to deal with extreme heat. To circulate the air and get a bit of a breeze, I turned on two small fans we brought with us from NJ and another that came with the boat.

Having soaked the lock mechanisms from each of the two side-entry doors in penetrating oil for two days, Clark tackled trying to get the keys to turn in the locks. Finally, after hours of fiddling with them, he actually got the key to turn in one. Excited to have some level of success, he moved on to the second one, and things rapidly went downhill from there. During his attempt to clean the inner workings of the lock, he pulled the cylinder out too far, and something fell into place such that he could neither push it back in or pull it out.

We spent the next hour or so searching online for a Marathon locksmith and calling around to find one to fix the lock.  Unfortunately, Marathon does not have a locksmith that is not a mobile unit. The only person in the area said he could come the next day, and his minimum fee for the visit was $150. Clark finally called a locksmith in Key West who said he would fix the lock for $15. He immediately decided the hour drive each way was well worth the trip.

Having failed to complete the lock job, Clark moved on to the installation of the stripper component missing from our winch. Through conversations with our boat broker, Clark established that the missing stripper caused the anchor line to wrap around the winch instead of dropping into the rope locker. We had a few interesting comments from other boaters when Clark told them he had to buy a stripper for the boat!

When Clark placed the order for the stripper, he talked to the manufacturer and the supplier of the component. During those conversations, he established that a required screw came as part of the stripper packaging. Well, when the package showed up, no screw! He called the manufacturer, again, who offered to send the screw. Since Clark wanted to get the part installed, he decided he could purchase the screw locally once he found out it takes a standard one-inch #10 size that he could buy in West Marine.

We jumped in the car (last year we would have walked) and drove to the West Marine. The store is just across the street, but as with walking, the difficult part of going there is crossing route one. After finally pulling out onto the highway, we were immediately getting off again! We bought the screw and some epoxy packets so Clark can glue more items on the boat whenever one might appear in need of fixing.

Since we completed our West Marine run in record time, we drove on down to the food store for a few necessities. Even though we did not dawdle at either store, almost two hours had gone by when we pulled into the marina parking lot. Since we planned to attend an early-bird, birthday dinner at a local restaurant, we quickly stowed the perishable food and got ready to go out to eat.

Once again we hopped into our car and drove where last year we would have walked. Had it not already been past the designated meeting time to be at the restaurant, we might have considered walking. Since we were already late, it made no sense to even think about walking. When we got to the Steak and Lobster House, we found a group of twelve loopers already seated.

We thought we would know some of the attendees; however, we only knew one of the couples there. Through conversation, we determined that most, if not all of the people at dinner, had completed the loop last year and were, therefore, gold loopers like us. We just never crossed paths during our respective trips. Interestingly, the early-bird menu has not changed since last year! I guess that is a good thing since the menu seems to be much liked by loopers.

Looper, Birthday Dinner for Chica owner
at Marathon Steak and Lobster House

2/9/2017 - Key West Locksmith

We set out after breakfast to travel to Key West to visit the locksmith. Having spoken with the locksmith the day before, Clark established that we could drop off the lock for repair, go eat lunch, and pick the lock up later in the afternoon. This is the second time I have gotten lunch out due to a “repair-while-you-wait” activity related to boat repair – one of the few bonuses of having all these repairs on our agenda.

Knowing that some of our looper friends are currently in Key West, I reached out to Kenny and Jeanne on Day Break to see if they were available for lunch with us. They said yes, and other than figuring out an exact time to meet, we had a rendezvous planned. Clark reminded me that his high-school friend owns a restaurant called Camille’s in Key West, and better yet, we really liked the food when we ate there last February. I was excited for the company and the food!

We found a parking lot for the car and walked to their marina to hook up with them. Clark never made it as far as Kenny’s boat since he found a Krogen Express called Wishing Star and its owner on the dock before he got there. I chatted with Kenny and Jeanne in their boat while we waited for Clark to appear. I finally said we should leave to head to the restaurant because only then would we be able to drag Clark away. Sure enough, when Clark saw us disembarking from Day Break, he concluded his conversation with the KE owner and came over to join us for the walk to the restaurant.

Lunch at Camille’s was as good or better than I remembered. Their menu says their chicken salad is “world famous”. I ordered that and found it to be delicious! We had a lovely visit over lunch and as we completed our meal, Clark got a phone call to tell him the locks were ready to be picked up. Since the locksmith goes out on calls, we called to verify he would be there when we got there in about 30 minutes time.

Afraid to miss the locksmith, Clark decided not to take time walking back to the marina before heading back to our car, so we said our farewells on a street corner and went our separate ways. We picked up our well-lubricated and cleaned locks on our way out of town. The locksmith said they were “full of gunk”! I guess after nine years of never being used once the locks froze up with dirt and salt. The locksmith said we could put Vaseline on the locks to keep the salt out in future.

After we got back to our Marathon marina, Clark immediately picked up on chores where he left off the day before. He sanded and then reinstalled the anemometer / weather vane that he spent several days repairing with epoxy. Since that installation requires he use a step ladder to climb to the highest point on the boat (a little less than 20 feet off the water), I abandoned my novel I wanted to read to assist with the installation and watch over him to make sure he did not topple over the ladder as he climbed up.

After he had the anemometer in place, Clark walked over to see if anyone attended docktails tonight. He did not find anyone at docktails, but he did find out on his wanderings that a Krogen Express had pulled into dock at Faro Blanco today. Of course he went right over to visit and introduce himself. (He met two KE owners in today - wow!) The owners of Joy, who are from Canada, said they remembered Clark from last year when they attended the KE rendezvous here at Faro Blanco, and Clark went around introducing himself to all the various KE owners.

Before retiring for the night, Clark updated and organized his “to do” / “punch list” for the boat. Given a weekend is coming up shortly, he sorted the tasks by ones to be done on a weekday, i.e. tomorrow, versus those that could wait for the weekend. I am anxiously waiting for the WiFi booster parts to arrive so that comes to the top of the installation list. (Sadly, Clark still has to order some of the parts.) WiFi at Faro Blanco leaves a lot to be desired without a booster!