Feb 7 -- Fast Ferry To The Dry Tortugas -- Zero miles (on ILENE)

The fast ferry, seen here at the destination, took us (and up to 198 other folks) the 61.9 nautical miles to this national park at an average speed of almost 25 knots. The passage outbound, starting with check in at 7:15 a.m. was pleasant, with a NE wind and waves on our starboard quarter. Approachiong the island requires a 360 degree circling of the island, counter clockwise. (You can see most of the cruising boats that came here on their own behind the ferry.) There is a faster way to get here than the ferry though:

We met a lovely couple, Suri and Carlos, from Miami They are power boaters and fishermen. They escaped Cuba (before they met) by getting  passes to visit Spain and then obtaining sponsorship into the US from relatives. My father did this in the 1930's, escaping from Hitler's Germany first to France and then obtaining sponsorship into the USA.

The ferry served a big wholesome (not gourmet) buffet breakfast on the way out and a lunch at mid-day, included in the price with coffee and water all day, use of the snorkel equipment, admission to the National Park and guided tours, all for $155 per person. Snorkeling was one of the featured activities and I dressed accordingly, but we did not enter the water for two reasons: (1) too much other stuff to do, such as Ranger Rick's  (his real name) informative talk, and

(2) the wind whipped up waves and created a wind chill.





These pilings which supported a former coal dock were the suggested snorkel place, but not with waves knocking you about.

The ride home was wild, going so fast over the now larger waves on our port bow. Many people got seasick because the huge ferry was leaping and lurching. We returned to shore at 5:15 after a rather full day.

Fort Jefferson fell victim to advances in naval weaponry, particularly rifled cannon, which permitted bigger shells to be thrown further, sort of like when a football pass is thrown with a good spiral.

Dr. Samuel Mudd set the leg of the assassin of President Lincoln. He was convicted of participating in the conspiracy and sentenced to life on this dreary hot dry fortified sandbar.

His sentence was later commuted by President Andrew Johnson in response to a petition by the soldiers, jailers and prisoners here after he saved lives during a yellow fever epidemic.

Fort Jefferson is claimed to be the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere, made of sixteen million bricks: "the Gibraltar of the Gulf."

You can get a sense of its size by looking at the people in front. Its six sides with salients on each corner and its surrounding moat covers most of its sandbar, Garden Key. You would not want to climb the outer seawall, swim across the moat and attack to fort while being gunned down by grape shot from the salients at each end of the side.

Salient with the light house and a 15 inch diameter cannon atop:

Actually there is a taller lighthouse 2.5 miles even further west, on Loggerhead key, seen dead center on the horizon, if you look closely.

Fort Jefferson was built and fortified for a negative reason: to prevent other nations from taking the place if it had not been strongly defended. It was strategically desirable because it commands a position at the far western end of the Keys around which shipping between the Gulf and the Atlantic has to pass and because a little known spot deep enough for anchoring battleships lies three miles north. Not a single shot was ever fired in war from Fort Jefferson.

Dry Tortugas National Park is also a bird sanctuary.

We saw huge frigate birds floating almost satationary on the updrafts that the fort's three story walls create. Next are the first thousand of the 50,000 sootie terns who are coming here from western Africa for the mating season and screeching above the formerly separate and adjacent -- and now recently connected -- Bush Key.

I'm hoping to replace my bird photographs with ones taken by an expert professional photographer with his strong telescopic lens, Richard King, of  richardkingphoto.com.


A fun full day. Lene was right; better by ferry.