Last night was a typical Key West evening, have a few rum cocktails at "The Hurricane Hole" when the phone rang. It was a friend who's transmission had just failed as he approached Boca Chica Channel from the Atlantic side. Being the good friends that we are, the three of us boarded my dinghy and headed off on another adventure. Understand that there was no moon last night and the channel was black as can be. As we were about to exit Cow Key Channel a mangrove caught my eye and I killed power, and hit reverse, slowing the dinghy to an abrupt stop. Nothing damaged, but it did get our attention . Undaunted we get underway again and into the Atlantic we go. Not a quarter of a mile later the motor comes to an abrupt stop, so we look to the Stern and we see a trap ball floating by the motor shaft. We raise the motor, unwrap the trap line and we are underway again. We finally get to our friends sail boat and try to push is craft , but the fast moving tidal current keeps wanting to spin the boat around in circles. We wisely decided to throw an anchor and call for a tow-boat to bring him in.
While waiting for the tow-boat to arrive, we are noticed by some of the local live-aboard neighbors and we let them know that all is well and the tow-boat is on the way. Finally we see the lights of the tow-boat coming down the channel and we hook up with the tow-boat and we are underway again. Well do you remember the tidal current I mentioned earlier? It caught the sail boat again and hooked it on a sand bar. The tow boat wasn't able to move the boat alone, so we put the bow of the dinghy against the bow of the sailboat and started to push. After a few minutes of this combination of the tow-boat and the dinghy pushing and tugging the sailboat started to move. We followed the boats into the harbour and assisted in getting the sailboat into it's slip and the adventure was almost over, almost.
Did I tell you we had to go back out into the Atlantic and get back to the Hurricane Hole to revitalize the buzz that was lost in this adventure? The trip back to the Hurricane hole was really unexciting, which was how it needed to be, we had enough of an adventure for one evening. Back at the Hurricane Hole the evening was still underway and all the friends kept the merriment going til it was time to retreat to my boat for a much needed night's sleep. By the way, we all help each other here in the keys under any conditions, that is what friends do. The buzz was revitalized and all's well that ends well rumstyled. ;o)
