We arrived in Key West on Friday afternoon, so we had a whole weekend ahead of us! Saturday morning, we decided to wander to the State Park/Fort that is on the tip of the island. The fort was pretty interesting and the view was beautiful. Later in the evening we had a lovely meal, and did an escape room. There’s one escape room on the island, and the guy working it lives on a boat on anchor and was fun to chat with. We said we were here for a couple weeks and we’d be back to do the other two rooms later on. Sunday we wandered around and tried several bars and restaurants, discovering that the area near the marina was not actually the activity center of the island, it was actually down Duval street on the south end of the island, which we never went to last year. Oops.
We had invited David’s parents to join us on the boat, but unfortunately they were not able to come. My parents had just learned that their new boat was going to be massively delayed in its delivery, so they decided last minute to hop on a plane and join us!
We were working for the first few days of the week, so after they arrived, they largely enjoyed themselves doing several walks around the island, but we did manage to go to see a famous Key West drag show at La Ti Da. It was a one-woman show with live singing and was extremely entertaining!
The next weekend happend to be MLK day, and both David and I had Monday off. Earlier in the week, the weather looked like it might be good enough for us to head to Dry Torguas, which is 70 miles offshore and requires a 3 day weather window. We had tried to visit last year, but did not make it due to poor weather and instead spent a rocky night at Marquesas Key before heading back to Key West! Unfortunately as Friday rolled around, the weather forecast hugely deteriorated overnight, and unfortunately we decided to just stick around in Key West. We did have to move marinas after our first reservation ended – all of 200 ft across the harbor!
On Saturday we had great weather, so we took a walk all the way down Duval Street to the “southernmost point” in the US and saw lots of the famous Key West chickens. Luckily our boat out in the marina is far enough away from land that we do not hear the roosters crowing at all hours of the day :).
I decided that I wanted to buy a souvenir to commemorate our wake crossing in Key West!
On Sunday the predicted storm rolled in, and in about a minute, it went from being humid and warm to pouring rain and strong winds. Luckily the wind was coming directly to our starboard where there was a 170ft mega yacht which mostly protected us from the wind!
We discovered a couple of leaks in the boat from the excessive amount of rain (more rain than we’d seen ever!), and spent the rest of the afternoon tracking down their sources by tearing apart walls in our bedroom and along the stairs in the salon in the process. When everything dried out in the afternoon, we we did some patching up.
On Mum and Dad’s last night, we went out for sushi and for the first time in my life ordered a sushi boat. It was incredible and delicious!
We had a lovely week with Mum and Dad and said goodbye to them while David and I got back to work, planning to remain in Key West at least through the end of the week.