I got seriously side-tracked by life... Where were we? Key West! (an vague overview)

We fit an awful lot of adventure into our 2-3 years in Key West. I can honestly say that it is one of the few places we've lived that I would love to go back to. 

Here's what you need to know about Key West. It's tiny. Really. Go Google it. I'll wait....
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Now zoom out until you can see the bottom of Florida and Cuba.
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See what I mean? It's small. It's a tiny island. Now here's what you need to know about Sigsbee Island. It's WAY smaller and connected to Key West by a tiny two lane road. Now... see where the pin is stuck? THAT is an even smaller island attached by a road on the west and a footbridge on the north to Sigsbee. It basically consisted of a road that looped the island with rows of duplexes on either side.

We lived on the non-water side of the road, but it was okay because all of the waterfront houses on the Key West side had docks and they were 'public' property. Everyone was allowed to use them. I fell in love with the ocean while we lived here and I still love the ocean.

Key West and Sigsbee Island.

Living on this island as a kid was great. Once we got settled in and made all the new friends there was no end to the things that we found to entertain us. Everyone had fishing poles and drag nets, so on most days I would be found over on the dock fishing. I don't remember actually catching anything other than junk fish off that dock though. We used to get the tiniest hooks we could find and see who could catch a needlefish for grins and giggles. I don't think any of us ever did... If we weren't fishing off the dock, we were using a drag net on the shore to catch minnows for bait.

At night we were on the shore with a hand net, shining a flashlight into the water looking for glowing eyes. We would scoop up shrimp and whatever else glowed at us. One night we scooped up an eel that we didn't know what to do with but usually it was just shrimp which we sold to my dad. Dad made the mistake of offering us actual money for live shrimp to be used as bait. They were alive when we sold them to him but usually dead by the next morning.

On the Key West side there was a lot of shallow water. The only deep water was right next to Sigsbee Island so boats could get in to the dock areas. The majority of the water between the two islands was one to two feet deep, maybe 3 feet in parts. Thanks to Google you can see what I'm talking about here:

All the pale green/blue is the shallows and that tiny bit of land in the lower right is Key West.

You can see on the picture how they dredged out the area around the island to make the water deeper for boats to get in and out. We used to call that the 'drop off' because, well... the bottom dropped off. It was a sudden drop. If you were walking in the shallows and took a wrong step you would be in over your head. We used to tell stories about what might live in the deep part. Scary stories. Sea monster stories. None of us ever went swimming out there. Monsters lived down in the depths. We were all quite sure of this.

One month dad borrowed a little Boston Whaler 2-3 person sailboat from a friend who was going on vacation. He took us sailing over in those shallows on the other side of the drop off. It was really cool once we got clear of the monster infested deep water. The shallows were so clear that you could see everything that was living down there and got more interesting when we got closer to the mangroves (green blobs on the satellite picture above).

The mangroves were really pretty neat  Having never lived in the tropics before I naturally assumed that trees needed to be on land. They need dirt and they need fresh water. Fresh. Water. Here are these huge trees growing in the middle of the shallow salt water with no sold ground under them. The fish loved them because they offered shelter from the bigger fish. They would have been a lot neater if my dad hadn't started making up stories about strange animals that only lived in the mangroves and how they would jump from the branches onto unsuspecting boats that got too close and gnaw on children...


Next time I think I will go into more boat stuff, because you know that my dad wasn't going to live on this island and NOT have a boat!