Offshoreonly.com - Bobthebuilder Offshore Bedtime story # 6

The setting is Key West, Florida and approaching mid February, 1994. I had taken two of my Canadian friends Alan and Dave down to Key West from Marco Island on board my Cigarette “Top Gun”. They had both accompanied me on previous trips, including race week in November so they were somewhat familiar with the routine. We flew into Miami on Thursday and drove to Marco Island in a rental car, staying at the condo that evening. Friday morning it was off to Key West in the Top Gun for our guys weekend. The Cigarette appropriately named “No Fear”, had a Raytheon loran chart plotter to help us navigate our way.

We had a great weekend in Key West as you can imagine, and when we woke up the morning of departure, Key West was enveloped in a heavy blanket of of fog. At breakfast we talked it over and decided we would delay leaving for an hour or so to give the fog time to lift. It is normally just a 2 hr trip across the “Gulf” to Marco so we felt there was lots of time to wait it out and catch our 7 PM flight from Miami back to Toronto. By 11 AM the fog had still not lifted and I suggested we try to make our way out the 8 mile length of the North-West Channel and then make a decision whether to start the open water crossing to Marco Island. Several times we found ourselves in the shallow waters on each side of North - West Channel and it seemed like the loran just could not plot fast enough to keep us on track, even though we were just crawling along. We returned to the Hilton docks at least twice to give it a bit more time for the fog to clear.

It was now afternoon and time was starting to look tight to catch our flight. I had some time to think about our predicament and announced a new plan to get us out of Key West. We would run the Hawk Channel to Marathon hugging the inside of the Channel with the thinking being that close to land the fog should be minimal. From Marathon we would turn north, cross 30 miles of Florida Bay, pick up the lower mainland and run up Florida's west coast to Marco. It would be 40 miles longer but in my opinion perfectly doable.

By now the nerves of my crew were somewhat in tatters. LOL Alan decided that he had had enough and bailed out on us to catch a flight from Key West to Miami. He said he would meet us at the Miami airport that evening .......if we made it. His reason was that the next day was Valentines Day and that he and his wife Eileen had “ big plans” and he just had to get home. We passed him his luggage and Dave and I started to put my new plan into action.

It worked perfectly and in an hour we were in Marathon. From there we started heading north across Florida Bay but soon found ourselves in dense fog again. I slowed to my minimum planning speed of about 32 MPH with the drives tucked in and full tabs. I knew that by steering 0 degrees on the compass it would bring us to the lower mainland with the hope being that again the fog would lift when we got close to land. As we are going along, I am trying to assess the risk and somehow satisfy myself that what I was doing was not totally insane. LOL ( I have since learned that one should not try and diagnose oneself on whether they are insane or not ! LOL ) I concluded that there would surely not be any other idiots on the water and that if there were any boats out there, that they would be equipped with radar and get out of our way !! I had forgotten about the crab fishermen! With both of us watching intently over the bow with perhaps a few boat lengths of visibility, we plodded along. All of a sudden about 50 ft off our starboard side a crab boat comes into view with two guys on the back. I can still see the terror in their eyes as we passed by. In the blink of an eye we were soon out of sight. “No Fear” was loud with it's Hawk powered 525's and I cannot imagine what it was like for them to hear us approaching, getting louder and closer and not being able to see us or do anything to protect themselves. You would think that with what I had learned in the previous few years of offshore boating that I would make better decisions than I did that day! The lesson learned that day was “NEVER, NEVER NEVER, RUN ON PLANE THROUGH DENSE FOG !!” (That was incredibly poor judgement on my part, which I came to realize and I have not since, unless I have at least 10 boat lengths of visibility.)

A short while later the lower mainland came into view. The fog lifted and we boogied the 50 miles up the coast to Marco Island. It was now 4PM and going to be very tight to get a rental car and drive the 2 hrs to Miami in time to make our 7 PM flight, but somehow we managed to pull it off. When we arrived at the Air Canada ticket counter we enquired whether our friend Alan had checked in yet. No Alan. It seems all flights in and out of Key West were cancelled from the fog event that day, so Alan was stuck in Key West with no rental cars available. He was able to get out the next day but did not get home in time for Eileen's “big plans” for Valentines Day. Dave and I, on the other hand were home in time to enjoy the day with our wives, while Alan had to explain to Eileen just how it was that we got home and he did not !! Too funny. We tease him about it to this day.

Happy Valentines Day and please boat safely fog or no fog.

Bob