Friday, April 23, 2010

Life in Key West

Life in the Keys doesn't get old. I spend my days at work around sail boats and catamarans, my days off are spent snorkeling along beaches and reading in the sand. Work mornings begin with coffee at sunrise and days end well after sunset with beers at the wharf-side bar. Days off are a combination of sail boat repair, searching out good snorkeling beaches, and great times with the wife.

Things certainly stay interesting working as a mate on sail boats. The first thing the owner of the boats I work on said to me, "Hey, there isn't a job description for this job. If I tell you to do something, you do it. Do you get that?" A couple of days ago I fully appreciated that statement as I found myself bleaching out a gnarly galley kitchen that hadn't seen a scrub brush in months. But I guess such is life as the lowest ranking mate in the company. All of the menial tasks on the dock are worth it as soon as the captain yells, "All lines ashore" and we head out for another day out on the water. I was working with a captain a couple of days ago at a very trivial task assigned by the owners, which was menial to say the least, and the captain happened to also have an English degree. We had a chuckle about our shared course of education and commented on the fact that at least with our large vocabulary we knew several synonyms for the word 'menial'.

Mate work on our boats is a fine combination of sailing skills, snorkel instruction, life guarding at the reefs, janitoring, small-talking with tourists, and most importantly bartending. It's an interesting blend of jobs I've held in the past with the definite perk being that the view from my office is always the beautiful ocean, mangrove islands, and historic Key West harbor. All of my time spent sailing aboard the catamarans gets logged in the accumulation of hours towards a captain's license with a sailing endorsement. I guess that is the end goal of everything. It's funny because so many captains, not so much with my company, but with a number of other outfits have a 'holier than thou' attitude towards mates and I have to chuckle because they had to put in their time to get there. They can't pretend that they weren't low mate at one point, because it's all about getting those hours.

I don't really have much to write about. Stories about charter trips out to the reef with tourists, days off spent exploring snorkel spots or rigging my little sloop, and nights spent having beers with my wife at The Green Parrot just aren't ready to be written yet. I'm really getting into spear fishing just offshore at little reefs I can swim out to, but I don't have any great stories or tall tales to report on.

It's funny at how easy it is to ignore the outside world and politics down here. In California we lived in the 'Redwood Curtain' and now we live in the 'Conch Republic'. Last week we actually celebrated the 28th anniversary of the Keys' attempt at seceding from the US of A. It was a week of drag queen races, bar parades, sailing races, and attempts at throwing rolls of toilet paper at the local Coast Guard boats. I get kind of pissed off when I read the national and world news. I'll browse the papers, keep informed enough, but anymore I don't even care. I would much rather read the sailing magazines, think about fine tuning my rig, or talk shop with the other sailors and fishermen on the bar stools next to me.

We'll catch ya'll later. God Bless. Cheers.