We’re starting to realize that the Garrison Bight mooring field here in Key West is just one disaster after another waiting to happen. With gale force winds predicted, we knew there would be some fireworks around here, so it wasn’t much surprise to wake up one morning to find a boat on top of another one, and nobody living on either. It’s beyond me how people can leave their boats unattended in a place like this. I couldn’t do it, not even for a week.

We watched for a few minutes, then called the marina to let them know, to which they replied, “Yeah, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

A few more minutes, nobody seemed to be doing anything, so I drove over to have a look and see if there was anything I could do. There really wasn’t a lot. The wind was pressing the one boat hard up against the other with winds steady around 30 knots. The broken free boat had his lifelines all tangled up in the other boat’s anchor, and somehow those were the only things keeping them from floating apart. I grabbed all the fenders I could find and got them in between, then tied a line off at each boat’s bow, and one at the stern. That was about all I could do under the circumstances, so I went back to watch.

Back at the boat I posted a picture of it on my OMentoring group. Being the insanely small world that we live in, one of my subscribers piped in that he knew who owned the boat that was still on the mooring ball. He got in touch with the owner, and pretty soon I was on the VHF talking to the Coast Guard and relaying the owner’s information. The Coast Guard, for their part, said they couldn’t do anything and that Tow Boat US was about the only chance of help.

Another hour or so went by and Tow Boat came out, but buzzed right past to go help another boat that’s mooring ball had broken free. After they got him situated they came by, had a look at these two, and then left saying over the VHF that they’d go get a bigger boat and would be back.

An hour after that the boats finally busted free. The front boat swung out so fast with the wind that it snapped the bow line between the two, but then, rather surprisingly, the stern line caught. For about the next half hour the two boats hung there stern-to-stern before Tow Boat finally arrived and got them situated again.

Mooring field drama at its finest.

The next day, still in wild winds, a new boat showed up and went to grab a mooring near us. We watched nervously, but thankful that they were downwind from us. The old couple aboard had a nightmare of a time trying to get the mooring ball, so finally I went out to help them. As I got their lines through the mooring ball for them, smoke began to pour out of their chain locker. Smoke, in general, but especially on a boat, is not something you want to see. The lady screamed and the man ran down below. He came up a few minutes later, having taken a wire cutter to all his battery lines. The smoke stopped, so I guess that was the right move. The mooring field drama wouldn’t quit.

Then this guy yanked a tooth out. I say “yanked” but a more accurate description would probably be “wiggled his tooth for five days until all that was holding it on was a tiny thread of gums.”

At least the wild winds were good for something—long gray beard selfies.

After a few days boat bound, we took the first opportunity to get off and stretch our legs again. Fort Taylor was an okay place to spend some time wandering around.

A lot of green around the fort’s moat.

If our government could make and keep a budget, maybe they could buy a boat and go off cruising in a few years.

Found a nice jukebox at Garbos. Out-of-order, unfortunately.

This is our busiest time of year, with birthdays piled up on top of, and behind, Christmas.

A glimpse of what it’s like to cook on a boat, with kids around. Ouest is keeping an eye on our Easy-Bake Oven.

Nine cookies at a time.

Floor and counter space is always at a premium. Kids are perfectly happy to set up shop six inches behind Mama while she makes dinner.

Enchiladas for Christmas Eve dinner squeezes the available stove top.

Somehow our kids have never had egg nog, and the entire family looked at me like I was completely out of my mind for throwing a carton of it in the shopping cart. I’m the guy in the family who doesn’t eat eggs, so anything with eggs in the name should surely be off-limits, but by the time I was their age I was downing gallons of this stuff at Christmas. It’s basically a creamy sugar IV.

After a few tentative sips, they declared it not bad, but not something they’d ever like to have touch their lips again. Weirdos.

They were happy to set some out for Santa, though, along with his whopping two cookies. A bowl of carrots outside for the reindeer, and it was time for bed.

Christmas Eve got a little crazy, in keeping with the weirdness of the mooring field all week. At midnight I woke to hear Ali yelling, “What are you doing on our boat?” She’s the light sleeper in the family, and is always the first to react. I flew out of bed, smashed my knee coming up the steps, and ran out the door to find six people clambering onto our swim platform with their hands up in the air like they were about to be shot—which, considering the state we are in, is always a pretty distinct possibility when showing up at someone’s door uninvited.

Six drunks in a small dinghy, with a six horsepower motor, had decided it would be fun to carry the party back to their boat in twenty-five knot winds and accompanying waves. Somehow they had flipped over right behind our boat. By some miracle nobody was hurt, but they were a sorry lot by the time they made it onto our boat. One was bawling hysterically, one twenty-six year old was scared to death of how he would explain this to his parents, and the other four were basically bumbling idiots. Three of them belonged on a nearby boat, so I brought them home and left them. The other three were tourists who had just met them at a bar, gotten to the dinghy, ignored their instinct that they were probably going to die that night, and then almost bought it. If they had flipped over in the middle of the bay instead of near the boats there isn’t much doubt that some of them wouldn’t have made it. I took them all the way back in to shore, dropped them off shoeless, without a working phone between them, and pointed them back toward town a ten minute walk down the road. I wished the overgrown child—who was still afraid of his mommy—luck.

In the morning I bailed the water out of their dinghy, which we had managed to tie off to our boat the night before, and towed it back to them. A guy came out, said thanks, and then promised to drop our towel off. An hour later, while I was ashore with Lowe playing with his new Christmas toy, they untied from their mooring and slunk out of the bay, with our towel. Bad karma is coming for that group. Meanwhile, we’ve put enough karma points in the bank, in just one week in this damn mooring field, to last us all season.

Safe to say that we’re ready to move on from here.