May 12, 2012 — Key West, FL
Back at a dock in civilization. Showers! Connectivity! People. Bustle. I miss the cleanliness and clarity of being at anchor, but we had to head back to ship Joe off to his life.
The trip back was pretty uneventful. We cleared the mooring pretty quickly after getting up — not waiting for breakfast, which Denise produced under way. After exiting the channel from the Dry Tortugas under power, we raised the sails and tried to catch a couple of boats in the distance that had left earlier. We did pretty well until the boats managed to point impossibly higher than Pearl, and the wind dropped, and we lost them over the horizon.
Sails down, engines on, we picked a direct line back to Key West. Passing the boats from earlier in the day around Boca Grande, we discovered they were motorsailing.
We got to Key West around sunset, and what a fabulous sunset it was. It couldn’t have been a better ending to a fun weekend trip. I can’t wait to head back.