CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR: KEY LARGO OR BUST, AND THE AMAZING ALAN VISIT

CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR: KEY LARGO OR BUST, AND THE AMAZING ALAN VISIT

He’s back! The Admiral is back in Key Largo. Spiny lobsters, be afraid, be very afraid. The Admiral knows where you live and he spent years honing the skills to trap you. And if he doesn’t get back into the game, Gary’s “Take It or Leave It” is still prowling the reefs, putting down 3500 traps on the ocean floor to entice you into a life of blue plate specials. We’re in lobster country, so of course for dinner the Admiral had clams, I had crab cakes and Alan had the fish special, hogfish. We dined at Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen in honor of Alan’s first visit to Key Largo. But I get ahead of myself. Let me back up to Sunday, the day we left Marathon at 7 a.m., looking at a stormy sky, both behind us and in front of us.

Sunday was not the ideal day to be traveling on the Atlantic Ocean in Hawk Channel between Marathon and Key Largo. The NOAA weather report kept getting worse for that day, starting with mildly choppy seas near the coast to very choppy seas and small craft warnings throughout the day. Almost as soon as we left the Marathon Marina, we heard: “Securite, securite, securite – small craft advisory for Hawk Channel, winds up to 30 knots from the northwest. Oh my. This was not looking good. Monday looked just as bad, but Tuesday looked great with no wind, no chops, just smooth cruising. However, there was the economic imperative driving us out of our safe haven next to the fuel dock at the marina. Other boats – bigger boats – more $$$$ boats—were arriving Monday to take our coveted place on the face dock. Never mind that we had been told we could extend our reservation until Tuesday and that WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO MOVE. Turns out that when you get this guarantee from a mere employee of the dock master, who is looking directly at the reservations calendar, that is not good enough for the dock master. The employee had apparently on been working at the marina for two weeks. This is something I was supposed to divine from talking with her. How foolish I was to accept her guarantee of the face dock until Tuesday. Oh well, that is now water under the 7 mile long Marathon Bridge. We moved on into uncertain waters, so that the dock master could get her windfall from the bigger boats.

As it turned out, the gods were smiling upon us on Sunday, for the dire predictions of strong winds and very choppy seas did not come true. The storm clouds behind us stayed behind us and the storm clouds in front of us appeared to melt away before our eyes, as the mighty sun came out and blasted them into next week. It was a very lovely day in Hawk Channel. The waters turned turquoise. You could see through the clear water to the bottom of the ocean. It was a Caribbean cruise all day. This was my first full day on the Atlantic and, once I realized that it was going to be an enjoyable 50 nautical miles to Key Largo, I was stoked. The Admiral and I had independently charted our course to the same waypoints, and our calculations matched. So we were pretty darned sure that we would stay on course. Every marker was where it was supposed to be, and there were no course deviations necessary. This navigation gig is growing on me. There is no greater thrill than seeing the next marker exactly where you had expected to see it, after traveling 10 nautical miles without any markers whatsoever. This used to be magic to me, but now I get it: plot the latitude and longitude of a waypoint, calculate the course, and it’s no longer magic, it’s simple math. Yes, I still have plenty to learn, but it’s nice to celebrate any progress I make in my tortuous path to captaincy.

I have not yet had the pleasure/pain of bringing Slow Motion into a marina and docking her. Thank God that was not my assignment on Sunday. We had put off our arrival at Key Largo for a week, because high tide was early in the day, and we needed high tide to make it through the shallow channel to the Key Largo Resorts Marina. High tide was about 1 p.m. on Sunday, and we planned to arrive around 1:30 p.m. The Admiral called Candi, the dock master at Key Largo, and she instructed us to wait until all the commercial vessels had left the channel and headed out to the ocean. She said they would all be gone by 1:30 p.m. We did as instructed and did not enter the channel until 1:30. We had seen the Princess (a big glass bottomed tourist boat) leave and we saw a diving boat leave. There was another boat in front of us, so we announced our presence in the channel at the jetty and said we were coming in. No one shouted “Wait!”, so we kept on heading into the channel and into the canal that leads to the marina.

There is an aptly named “Crash Corner” in the canal. The boat in front of us made the turn without crashing, and as we started to make the turn, one of the engines stalled. The sea wall was getting closer and closer to us, but the Admiral was up to the task and was able to make the turn with one engine working. Whew! I thought for a moment that the worst was behind us, until I saw a large commercial fishing boat with paying passengers coming straight at us in the narrow canal. There was a place for the commercial boat to pull over to let us get by. For some unknown reason – perhaps hubris – the commercial captain disdained the pull-over courtesy and kept coming at us. We pulled to the starboard side as far as we could without hitting another boat tied up in the canal. And Slow Motion and the commercial boat passed without touching, although I think I could have pulled a few of the passengers off the boat – we were that close. Then we were in the clear, for a Key Largo minute, because the next challenge that loomed was turning and backing into a narrow slip without hitting the boats on either side. This is where an experienced dock master like Candi is worth her weight in diamonds. She jumped on the boat on our starboard side and directed me to “make sure” that the boats did not touch. We both kept the boats apart, as the Admiral backed into the slip. Then Candi told me what lines she wanted and where she wanted them. Our lines were not where they needed to be.  But Candi patiently and calmly talked me through getting the lines to her and helping her to get Slow Motion back into the slip. This was a very rewarding experience. Sure, I felt really incompetent for not knowing what lines to use to get into the slip. But that’s where the kindly dock master, who has an interest in getting boats into slips without any damage to property, excelled. She did not treat me as incompetent. She did not raise her voice, roll her eyes, or complain about me. She just told me what to do – twice if necessary – and we got it done. Hurray for experienced, humane dock masters like Candi!

We are now in the land of the African Queen, the original Bogie/Hepburn potboiler, which is docked right across from us. Several times a day we relive one of the movie scenes as the captain takes a couple of tourists out the canal to the ocean. He says a line of dialogue as he passes by, and it hearkens back to the scene when Bogie has fallen into the drink and arisen with leeches all over his body. Believe it, this was one of the most romantic movies of all time. I don’t think I can get the Admiral on the African Queen. After all, once you’ve starred in your own romance movie, Slow Motion, it’s a step down to join somebody else’s movie set as an extra.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a reality show yet about a cruising couple or a cruising family, or better yet, a cruising family with dogs. Sure, you have The Deadliest Catch and Swamp People, but where are The Cruisers? Can’t you see these blogs being turned into episodes for a television series? People would turn on just to see the latest repairs to the boat and to catch sight of the omnipresent “plumber’s crack” in the repair person, as he bends over the engines to fix the latest hose problem. Imagine what a thrill it would be for a viewer to ride along through dense fog, not knowing if a boat is coming from the other direction and is about to hit you head on. This would be an incredibly instructional show for all budding meteorologists, since at least half the time we’re checking on the weather patterns, talking about the tides and currents, and planning our departures around the winds, or the rain, or whatever storms are brewing on the horizon. There would be abject tragedy, with the loss of a boat in a tropical storm in St. Augustine, and sheer ecstasy, from learning how to tie a bowline and a clove hitch. And don’t forget the history aspect – touring the Revolutionary War and Civil War coastline forts and re-visiting the South’s inhuman, slave-driven way of life by touring the plantations that still dot the countryside. In these environmentally sensitive times, people would be glued to the screen watching the rivers in Florida get more and more polluted, as the major businesses – sugar, citrus – keep rolling along.

The reality show idea is not mine. I have to give credit to Alan, who visited the lobster fishers’ hangout with us last evening and upon leaving “the most chaotic gathering ever” (words of one of the guys hanging out), suggested that Gary and his merry band of lobster fishers and Keys personalities were just waiting to be discovered by a reality show. He’s right. As soon as the Admiral learned that Alan was going to visit, he knew he had to take him to Gary’s, three lots along a canal next to the Pilot House Marina, about a half mile from the marina where Slow Motion is tied up. The Admiral has taken me to Gary’s on many occasions. The best times are when the work day has ended, and everyone is sitting around drinking his beverage of choice on a broken down stool, chair or couch (it has to be broken down, or it won’t be on the lot) and telling stories. Like the day that Mac’s son fell out of the lobster boat, and Mac told the Admiral: “Look at him. He looks just like a baby whale.” It’s just not good form to fall out of a lobster boat when you’re working on it, especially when you are a tad overweight and it takes three crew members to haul you back in. Or when Mac’s son came in with the crew at mid-day, and the crew was going to empty the boat and go right back out, but Mac’s son started walking away. Mac asked him where he was going, and he said he needed to take a quick shower. I guess you had to be there, but that was really, really funny to Mac and the rest of the crew.

On the not so funny side, but classic for this odd mélange of incredibly hard workers and Keys wannabes, was the day that friends of Gary’s son wanted to help him out (he needed surgery) by taking his boat out to the ocean to pick up his traps. The boat had not been started for five months, so it behooved the would-be do-gooders to check the fluids. No matter, they just turned on the engines, and guess what – the boat was in gear. And guess again, they didn’t know how to take it out of gear. And they didn’t know how to stop it. So the boat started moving very rapidly across the water. One guy managed to turn it toward the canal, but as they headed down the narrow canal they crashed into one boat and totaled another. Bad Samaritans. Today Gary’s son is getting surgery, and he’s out of commission, so someone who knows what they’re doing has to get his traps out of the water before the end of the spiny lobster season, March 31. This is where the Florida law becomes oppressive. There is a strict law against anyone taking the traps of another fisher out of the water. However, there is an exception, when the owner of the traps becomes disabled and needs help. Double however, the exception allows just one person to recover the disabled person’s traps, and, here’s the kicker, the law allows him only five days to do it. Take it or Leave it. Now I finally understand why Gary gave his boat that name.

As we took our leave of this reality show waiting to happen, the Captain was telling a young guy that he would be allowed to work as crew tomorrow if he showed up at 8 a.m. sober. “If you’re drunk, you’re not going with us.” It’s the Keys, Baby. Just to paint a little picture of the gathering: You had Sam, the sandy, short-haired lab mix (Gary’s dog, a real peach) and another lab mix (black) fighting over a wool glove, which Alan was throwing in the air for them to catch. You had a little five year old girl in ringlets a la Shirley Temple, who arrived with a guy (presumably her father) in a pickup. You had the guys who wanted to work tomorrow. You had the regular crew, a guy with long gray hair braided down his back who rode away on his bicycle. You had Gary in his woolen blue and red Gators beanie and white rubber boots. You had Fred, the former captain of the Princess glass-bottomed tourist boat. I don’t think Omar and the Cubans were there, but they might have been. All the seats were taken, and the number of seats had grown to 10 at least. More than three conversations were going on at once. The little girl, like Goldilocks, was trying out every chair. This gathering is held every work night under a “roof” held up by poles. You don’t really need a newspaper in Key Largo, if you attend this group every night. Everything that is newsworthy works its way into the conversation, along with the most incredible tales of the spiny lobster fishing industry. So, yes, Alan, this would be a great reality show. In fact, it IS a great reality show. Maybe someday television will discover it.

As part of his immersion into the culture of Key Largo, Alan drove us to Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen, which has been in business since 1976. This is longevity for the Keys. Mrs. Mac’s has every vanity license plate from every state and Canadian province nailed to the walls and the ceilings and on the outer walls as well. Have you ever seen "TBDMN" on a license? Well, Mrs. Mac’s has it – Tight Butts Drive Me Nuts. Go figure. But the essence of Mrs. Mac’s is her cuisine, not her license plates. Our 19 year old waiter, who grew up in Key Largo eating at Mrs. Mac’s, was extremely exuberant about the things the kitchen had to offer last night – from the prime rib roast beef (the Tuesday night special every week) to the hogfish dinner, and of course everything on the pink menu page of Mrs. Mac’s daily specialties. The Admiral ordered his usual clam basket, I ordered the crab cake basket and Alan ordered the hogfish special with salad and baked potato. Alan noted in passing that his desire to visit us was so strong that he passed on a Cadillac sponsored “all you can eat” stone crab feast at the Doral PGA tournament just to come to Key Largo. We knew Mrs. Mac’s would make him realize that he had chosen wisely. The hogfish was fine, but Alan opined that he might have enjoyed the crab basket a little more, once he tasted the crab cake and the scrumptious silver dollar sized Fried potatoes that come with it. It was when the key lime pie, the signature dessert of Mrs. Mac’s, was delivered – and devoured – that Alan KNEW he had not sacrificed a thing to be with us. In his words, the key lime custard was dense, rich, piquant and ever so cool to the lips and mouth. It was, in a word, refreshing. But the crust – THE CRUST – never has there been a richer Graham cracker, certainly not at Costco, crushed into a thick, but crumbly and moist, cushion for the custard. The result was an extraordinarily satisfying key lime pie, one to write about in blogs and elsewhere. Once again, you did it, Mrs. Mac, you earned a new devotee.

We sent Alan back to the Big City with a smile on his face. All in all, it had been a good day for him, with the news that he had been awarded another “Golf Oscar” from the Golf Writers Association, with interviews with the two Masters playoff contenders from last year recreating their stunning last round, and rounding it off with a Taste of Key Largo. About this latest golf writing award, it is Alan’s sixth, putting him one behind my hero and his, Rick Reilly. All of our plans in the Warriors Oakland Coliseum parking lot when he was ten years old about his writing for Sports Illustrated when he grew up have come to fruition, and I’m so proud of him and his continuing success. Now if we can only get his equally accomplished sister, Louisa, to come visit us, I’m sure we can send her away with a smile too.