Captain's Log

Skinwalker Log, March 30, 2008, Sunday, 0730 hrs

Lying at anchor off Gilberts, Jewfish Creek, Key Largo, Florida

Just thinking the words, Florida Keys, lightens the load.

We may be running hard and tight many days down the hills with the twins Leila and Liela vibrating with excitement, pumping turns to the wheels, but as soon as we see the grass splotched sand over coral near the Yacht Channel cut through the reef in Florida Bay things begin to mellow.

The boat slows due to the drag of the shallow water like running in Jello, as your mate nervously reminds you that you’re going to run aground at any second. Maybe, maybe not. Don’t look at the depth gauge; feel it in the helm, hear it, and know it’s all good.

The mind soars up peaks and settles into the cruiser’s mist of thick contentment. The arms and legs are distilled into the essence of motion or simply none at all as your world winds down to accommodate the new felt pleasures elicited by every incoming sensation from here, the inside of the Florida Keys. Many think Key West, Marathon, Islamorada and Key Largo are simply beautiful vistas or are denoted by the wonders of Keys music: The likes of Michael McCloud, Kenny Chesney or even the old guy Jimmy Buffet. Everybody knows about the wonders of sunny protected harbors and warm weather, but Skinwalker is drawn to those not so legendary institutions of higher and lower learning, where we got friends instantly.

Our life in the lower keys always curls like the tail of a lazy tourist town bar dog to the Schooner Wharf Bar for a few hours of Michael McCloud whose songs explain the Keys , maybe the Turtle Kraal for some shell fish and later the droll, rock heavy, blue collar jolt of the Green Parrot of Key West. Go inside, get a beer and watch.

How can one forego the sweet surrendering of the No Name Pub from flesh to pizza and which isn’t on No Name Key but close enough to be called on No Name Key, which oddly enough has a name.

The Dockside of Marathon almost a publico edificio for cruisers from around the world and from days gone by.
Islamorada’s is the gem of the middle keys and the infamousness of the Lorelei holds the essence of tikiness. The Whistle Stop is a walk down the street for a change in atmosphere where the beer is cold with cheap plentiful grub and the smoky gritty darkness of a Hemingway pub.

Lest you should pass out of the Keys without the pleasure of a tiki bar anchor out on a breeze-kissed spring weekend near Gilberts and enjoy the entertainment of the go-fast boats from Miami trying to park in a 2 knot current and, heck, might as well grab a beer and listen to the band playing which isn’t too bad when they all show up.

If you forgot to stop your last chance is Alabama Jacks buried in its secret location up the water road from Jewfish Creek.
Cruising the Keys, and I am talking about the inside track, not that silly Hawk Channel, but the inside track protected, shallow, with anchorages everywhere and enough tiki bars to encourage the most serious cowboy to crack a smile.

Tiki bars are where you meet the real people of the world: A man with one leg carrying the other, who will later forget just where he did put it, a person with a parrot on their head that may not be real, patriots of Cuba waiting for freedom, an Aussie from a meager looking sailboat, kinda floating, he hopes, in the bay, a women speaking with a pure upper class accent doing a gymnastic routine while talking to a piling on the dock. Boozers, bikers, bimbos and chicks who keep falling out of there shirts, talking to pretty boys wearing tight pants and damn fine women all dressed up in drag. There are philosophers, writers of poems, ballads and short, short stories and notes to the blond at the end of the bar. There are gray haired, long hairs, greasy haired and no haired tourist just loving it all. There are short people with complexes, tall men that say shucks, and loads of proud women who like strutting their stuff. There’s a women so big she can’t fit in her car and a famous young twin that’s only three foot tall. As McCloud sings: “There are guys that like guys and girls that like girls” and some other great folk who may bend their gender and always share smiles. Then there are those odd folks like us who live on their boat and travel the world or maybe they don’t.

I must tell you there just ain’t too many places like the Florida Keys, I have traveled and looked and found some of these, but I always come back to these marvelous keys. Why my voice started rhyming I haven’t a clue, but if you travel the Keys strangeness happens to you.

Lynn & Wayne Flatt