205 Ocean Drive

This is the third house in the keys that is destined for a make-over. Here's a picture of our new boat. It's a cat-hull (obviously) which makes for a dramatically smoother ride in rough seas.

Here's one of the small ones, learning how to bowride.

If I had a faster camera, this would be a shot of him doing a flip in mid-air, but alas.

Here's the fourth Keys house, which is a real pile of trash. Surprisingly it doesn't look as bad from the water--I can assure you, it's even more hideous from the road. Inside, it's a gross, derelict frame house put on stilts. The big question now is--try to fix it up, or tear it down and put a new modular house on top? The dock is also very rickety, and somewhat detached from land. The rear balcony is also sinking into the earth because there's no foundations under those stilts (which are also too small to support a roof of that size). Also, that small storage shed was overrun with cockroaches last time I checked. Charming, isn't it?

While out fishing, a sea turtle came up to check us out. Typically, turtles will see a boat and immediately dive for cover. This was a stupid juvenile (probably 5-10 years old) that didn't know any better, and hung around our boat for at least 20 or 30 minutes. It was pretty funny, because he wasn't particularly afraid of us, but the seas were rough (3-6') so sometimes he'd swim up near our boat, but a big wave would go by and push him towards it so he'd get scared and retreat, only to repeat it all over again. In this picture, you can see him zeroing in on a baby portuguese man o' war, as turtles love to eat jellyfish (see? I told you they were stupid. Where there's no sense there's no feeling).