blog
The First Year
A year ago, we were just getting set up at our new residence here in the Florida Keys, which was itself just surrendered to its owner a week ago. We now reside a few miles away from that original place, in Cudjoe Key. From wearing shorts, to living on seafood, to navigating through the ocean, it has been a time where things on the "Never Done That" list are crossed off almost daily. Hot summers, hurricanes, mosquitos, and land crabs have utterly failed to persuade me that this place is anything other than breathtaking.
Think we'll stick around a while.
-Chris
Cudjoe Transit
I had long ago noticed that there were two ways to bring the boat to the new house in eastern Cudjoe Key: Break it down and strap it to the roof of the Honda Element (thus requiring an engine cart and two kayak straps for transit), or simply motor it through the ocean, all the way to Cudjoe. The latter hadn't been a particularly favored plan, because it seemed a bit adventurous, compared to the relative safety and security of strapping everything to the Honda and rolling down the highway with it like everything else.
But that was before this day. It was my 32nd birthday, and I was strongly urged to spend it at least partly enjoying the boat. Boat, eh? The engine cart would probably arrive today via UPS, but then again it'd be fun to gas the boat up, and the NOAA predicted sub-1-foot seas for our corner of the ocean, the wind was calm, and there wasn't a storm for a few hundred miles in any direction. And I'd studied the route carefully in the past, I knew it would be relatively simple:
Start at left, exit to the ocean through Sugarloaf Creek, turn left at the open ocean, have fun planing the boat until I see the markers for Bow Channel, then follow them until I could see the far side of Cudjoe, then aim for it. I estimated 3 hours time, and half a tank of gas from my 3-gallon gas tank.
I gassed up the boat's gas tank, left the Honda Element at Grace's workplace, and walked to the ole Bay Point place, where the boat was tied up. Bailed water out of it, sprayed myself down with Skin So Soft, put on my pith helmet, and I was on my way. I pushed off of the seawall at 12:58pm, circled around Bay Point, and aimed out into Lower Sugarloaf Sound for what proved to be a picture-perfect ride. By 1:33pm, I was near the two sticks that show the location of the pass leading to Sugarloaf Creek,
And soon after, I was navigating through the twists and turns of Sugarloaf Creek (Click Here For Video):
Then, I crossed into the open ocean, which was, as the NOAA promised, very calm, even by Lower Keys standards. This was where I cranked the throttle all the way up and the boat planed very quickly. So quickly, that I did not even notice this until reviewing video footage:
The dark, curling object ahead to port, is a nurse shark. Hard to see from this still, but clearly discernable in the few video frames in which he appears. Otherwise, the water is mine:
But soon, Cudjoe Key comes into view, along with the channel markers of Bow Channel, around 2:17pm:
After a quick glance at the waterproof chart I'd brought aboard, I managed to find the entrance to the eastern Cudjoe canal sometime around 2:45pm:
The water going into the canal is very shallow, but I didn't hit:
And from here, just a bit of canal cruising (Click Here For Video):
And like that, the Porta-Bote was tied up at its new port, around 3:10pm, for a total of 2 hours and 12 minutes, and only about 1/3rd of a tank of gas. I got home to find the UPS man had left the engine cart, so now I can pull the engine out and give it a good flush and checkup for more grand voyages.
-Chris
A Hero's Welcome
Sunset in western Bay Point. As I putt along at idle in the channel surrounding Bay Point in my 12-foot Porta-Bote, heading towards home, I pass a few families having sunset parties in their backyards. As I wave to them, many of them raise their glasses and cheer. I know they're just being nice, or maybe my bright red face tells the story of a fisherman who's been on the water all day. It feels like a hero's welcome.
About 7 hours earlier, I boated over to Max and Kate's house on the opposite side of the island, where they threw me a tow rope, and I towed them out to sea. Our route was something like this:
The new route I've been practicing is much shorter than the circuitous route I used to use to go to the ocean. From east Bay Point, I head towards Abba Zabba (too far north towards Wells Key and the water gets shallow), turn towards Bird Island, then south through the usual markers, through Sugarloaf Creek, and out to sea. From there, we turned westward and meandered around, spotting patch reefs with our eyes and Max's awesome Costa Del Mar sunglasses. The trip itself sets many personal records: Longest distance travelled, longest time travelled, farthest Porta-Bote trip into open ocean, and probably a few others.
When you're in the ocean just offshore of Saddlebunch on an ideal day, the swells are only 1-2 feet, which is easy to adjust to, even in a flimsy Porta-Bote. The water is between 6 and 10 feet deep, and the name of the game is to sort of scout around and look for patches of brownish rock. They're usually very shallow, some are so shallow that surf breaks on them and makes them easy to spot. Some have bright red coral on them. Most look like narrow dark spots in the water. When one is found, we anchor a short distance from it, and Max and Kate don their snorkel gear and hop off their kayak, speargun in hand.
For now, I don't join them; the voyage itself is enough for me. I can swim, but really nowhere near as well as this situation would demand, and besides, I like playing house on my boat, tidying it up and warning boaters who get a little too close to our dive flag (hand signal, hold up two fingers for two divers, then point to where they're at). They keep me apprised of their situation, exclaiming about the barracuda, nurse sharks, and of course the big game: Snapper and hogfish. By the end of our trip, we've found an enormous reef and they've speared a few good-sized hogfish on it. But it's going on 6:00PM and we've gotta think about getting back.
So we go back in the way we came out, stopping at their house to filet the hogfish, and they let me keep it all: The trip was all the reward they required, and besides, they were going fishing for dolphin (tuna) tomorrow, and they really appreciate all the assistance I gave them. Wow, that's over fifty bucks worth of hogfish filets. Thanks! But by now it's going on 7:45PM, the sun will be setting in just 15 minutes, and it's best to get the small, unlit Porta-Bote home before civil twilight, so I hurry back out and get on my way.
I wasn't the hero who spearfished this bounty, so why can't I keep the stupid grin off my face, or hold back the feelings of accomplishment? I am returning a hero.
-Chris
Lower Sugarloaf Farewell
My lease here in Saddlebunch will be up in a few weeks, and I'm already partly moved to my new place 7 miles up US-1 on Cudjoe Key. I'm going to miss Lower Sugarloaf Sound very much. It was here that I learned everything I needed to know about kayaking and inshore powerboating, banged my prop on shallows, wondered if I'd ever find a good route to the ocean (I did), wondered if I'd ever understand what makes the water rise and fall, because it sure ain't tides (I did). Nobody ever masters the sea, not even a mostly-tame inshore bay like Lower Sugarloaf Sound, but I came to understand it, because it was my training ground.
The water is high again, a full foot higher than it was in winter, so I'm banging my prop a lot less, if at all. The sound does obey tides, but only minimally, some days only an inch or two either way. What it likes most, is atmospheric precipitation: After a rainy day or two, the water level comes right up. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, this is exactly how Florida Bay behaves, and atmospheric precipitation is its primary source of inflow too. Lower Sugarloaf Sound is not Florida Bay, but it exhibits many of the same behaviors, to the point that what holds true for one, is probably true for the other.
The water isn't extremely salty, and can thus properly be called brackish, an assertion I make primarily due to the presence of sizeable populations of blue crabs (particularly to the northwest), which prefer salinity that isn't much greater than tap water. Four crabs are known to inhabit the waters: Blue crabs, stone crabs, flame box crabs, and golden crabs. And those are just the ones I know about. You're also bound to find fairly large mangrove snapper, along with smaller sergeant majors, right off the seawalls. As you get closer to Sugarloaf Creek and the salinity begins to increase, you'll also see large snook. I've also seen spanish mackerel here.
Today, I took a trip to good ole Abba Zabba. It only took 20 minutes. I planed over the shallows, and didn't bang the prop once. I went along this route:
Which is to say I started out in West Bay Point, hugged the channel around to the eastern side to the mouth of the Boulder Drive canal, then aimed almost directly at Abba Zabba, because the shallows there can be crossed at high tide, or pretty much anytime the water is high like it is now, regardless of what the tide tables say. I then planed the boat all the way to the sandy beachhead and used the bow line to tug it hard ashore. It took 20 minutes, which is a record. It was 45 minutes by kayak, an hour with the Torqeedo.
Again, I'm going to miss this place, miss our love-hate relationship, miss banging my prop and gritting my teeth every 10 minutes, or worse, having to paddle out of the shallows until I could put the prop back down again. This is how I learned all the basics of negotiating the shallows of the Florida Keys. But now I have a new nemesis. Introducing Cudjoe Bay:
Now, I haven't seen detailed soundings of Cudjoe Bay, but from the Google Earth satellite image, I almost don't need them. The darker waters are shallower, and those brown ridges will be fine for trapping crabs, maybe even blues. I can't say for sure, but Cudjoe appears to be more tidal than Lower Sugarloaf Sound, because there's less obstruction between it and the open ocean. The channel that goes up under that bridge, leads to Johnston Key Channel, where I once caught a lot of mangrove snapper and subsequently had an amazing fresh fish curry. Farther south of the image is an outlet to the ocean, where hogfish can presumably be speared in rocky areas. I do know that, looking off the (canal) seawall of my new place, I can see absolutely enormous mangrove snapper and parrotfish. I also look forward to voyages as far as Lois Key.
As you may imagine, I'll keep you updated.
-Chris
Light Italian Baked Hogfish
We really love hogfish. Every few days we call the Eaton Street Seafood Market to ask if they have hogfish to set aside for us to come get. Failing that (and it does fail, because hogfish has to be spearfished by a diver usually and the water's been rough lately), we go to the Hogfish Bar and Grill in Stock Island. Until today, one of my favorite things to do to hogfish had been Hogfish Parmesan. It works exactly like chicken parmesan, because hogfish and chicken are mostly interchangeable ingredients: Coat the hogfish with egg, then bread crumb with parmesan cheese, fry it, then bake it over pasta with sauce with some mozzarella to melt over the top.
There's two things wrong with Hogfish Parmesan, however: The first is that it contains a ghastly number of calories per serving if done richly. Far more serious, however, is the fact that you can Parmesan a gym sock and still have it come out tasting delicious; I mean to say that the majesty of the hogfish is overpowered by the Parmesan steamroller, which seems a bit of a waste of the finest fish in the Atlantic.
To address these concerns, let me introduce Light Italian Baked Hogfish:
This is a non-fried version of the dish that saves a few hundred calories per serving, and is also less Parmesan and more Hogfish, to make better use of the gift of hogfish.
Instead of using egg as our adhesive, I started by melting 1 tbsp of butter (100 calories total) in a glass 9x9, then dipping the filets in it to coat them. Then I lightly dusted them with breadcrumb and parmesan cheese on both sides. Then, threw them back into the 9x9 and put a very small amount of sauce and mozzarella on top, and baked them in a 350-degree preheated oven for a little over 20 minutes. The picture shows it served over Uncle Ben's brown rice.
The result is fabulous: The Parmesan is toned down and the hogfish is allowed to speak more clearly with its buttery, flakey goodness. Now put those saved calories to use and wash it down with some Key West Sunset Ale.
-Chris