May 15, 2006 - Back in the USA...

We'd been apprehensive about the passage from Mexico to Florida. The currents in the Yucatan Channel are very strong, and not all of them go in your direction. If the wind has any north in it at all, it combines with the current to produce wicked seas. It's rarely an easy passage.

But we lucked out. It wasn't perfect, we were still beating and close reaching most of the way, but it was fairly comfortable and very fast. We arrived about 18 hours earlier than we'd planned. The passage took three days. Off the northwest coast of Cuba, we had a beautiful sunrise, and then later watched a marlin swim lazily by, yards from the boat, with his dorsal fin wagging out of the water. We put our fishing lines in and almost immediately hooked a Mahi Mahi (we'd already caught an enormous tunny just out of Isla)!

Good Hope lost their autopilot the first day out, so we'd been staying close to them to be their "navigational aid": they had to hand steer and it's much easier to steer towards an object than to stare at the compass for hours. On the third day, near dusk, we rounded the sea bouy and headed for Key West. Good Hope radioed over and played Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" over the mic... there's Good Hope rounding the sea bouy, and Zora at the next marker:

The first thing we noticed about Key West (before we even got there!) is that it is justly famous for it's sunsets. We witnessed some spectacular ones.

We'd come in from the west, and as we neared the main channel at Key West it was dark. It was also the hour when all the sunset cruise charters come in, and the narrow channel was filled with milling boats. A hundred feet away the cruise ships and waterfront bars were blasting music. There were millions of lights. For tired sailors who've seen nothing but the sea for three days, it was total mayhem!!! We managed to get through the throngs, however, and get ourselves anchored. Clearing back in to the US was surprisingly easy (considering the state of Homeland Protection post-9/11) compared to other countries we've visited. We were a bit overwhelmed by culture shock as we walked the streets of Key West. It felt very, very weird to be back in the United States.