Sailing, fishing and windsurfing

Eventually my parents figured out the whole sailing thing.  Ran aground a few more times, but it's all a part of the process.  We eventually anchored in the Big Basin off of the Lorelei in Islamorada.  The Lorelei Tiki Bar became our home.  We discovered people dropped coins and jewelery in between the cracks on the dock.  Especially by the washer and dryer units and the cigarette machine.  We'd be on our hands and knees between people sitting at the bar.  I think they were used to us and drunk so they paid no attention to us.  Eventually, it became a war between my brother and I.  Always fighting over who got a certain spot.  He was smarter than I was and bought something called a grabber.  I was still putting together two straws with a stick of gum.  I stole the grabber at one point and he began locking it up.  Then of course there were the celebrities that hung out there at the time.  Baseball great Ted Williams was always there as he lived down the street.  Robert Garner and George Hamilton frequented while in town shooting a movie.  John Denver frequently went out fishing from there.  And of course George Bush Sr. later on fished from there as well.  I have a story about him but I'll save that for later.  Finally, my parents decided they had enough sailing experience to cross over to the Bahamas.  We pulled up anchor and sailed away.  We anchored off of some of the islands on our way up the coast, fishing, swimming and actually taking baths in the ocean.  We sailed up to West Palm Beach and anchored off an island called Peanut Island.  It was surrounded by a beach with thousands of pink clam shells and a hill in the very middle with a pine forest.  We played there for a few days before it was time to cross the ocean.  This is where I discovered I get sea sick.  I remember we put messages in a bottle, tossed them in the ocean and I proceeded to puke.  So we spent several nights in our tiny boat and little outboard motor with our cat and dog trying to get to the Bahamas.  The dog at one point fell in and we had to turn around to rescue him.  After several attempts my parents realized they did not know what they were doing and we headed back to Islamorada.  My brother and I were home schooled up until this point.  So after a long break of not going to school we had to get up early, dinghy in and walk to the bus stop.  After awhile we ended up docking our boat at the Lorelei and living there for quite sometime.  My parents and their friends would have sailing regattas.  I think it was my dad that started the water balloon fights.  All the boats would sail up close and chuck water balloons at each other.  My dad ended up rigging a balloon launcher off of the stays of the mast with a plastic bowl and elastic bands.  One time I went to go launch it when the wind shifted and the boom hit me knocking me into the water.  I was very afraid of open water and specifically remember being terrified until they could come back and get me.  You have to move your legs to stay afloat but want to curl up into a little ball to try and be less desirable for the sharks.  Often my parents and their friends would anchor their boats off of Cotton Key (an offshore island) to celebrate the holidays.  It was so much fun jumping from boat to boat getting into every one's liquor cabinets.  Special times with my dad that I remember the most were spent fishing.  I specifically remember one day catching 40 snapper and just having a blast.  There was a barracuda that kept eating our fish and at one point I was reeling in my fish I had hooked as fast as I could so the barracuda would not get it only to have it's head hit me in the face as the barracuda had bitten it in half.  We used to take our little boat out to the shallows and snorkel to catch lobster with a net and a stick.  We became experts at finding them and it was almost addictive.  We always turned it into a competition.  Who had the most and the biggest.  Back then you could also often see what they call lobster trains.  This is a line of hundreds lobsters going out at dusk to feed.   My parents bought a windsurfer which my brother and I would take out.  The feeling of being that close to the water and going so fast with the saltwater spray was incredible.  You tend to get tunnel vision and block out everything around you.  It is a natural high and all you can focus on is going faster.  Sometimes dolphins would come up and swim with you.  It was a little scary at first because they were so much bigger than you, but you just kept going.  You tried not to turn or move much because you did not want them to leave.  We got so good at it and were asked to do a photo shoot for a windsurfing book.  I think we were 11 and 12 at the time.  My parents then decided that "Lawanda" was too small of a boat for us and bought a 35 ft wooden Bahamian ketch named Taniko.  My parents made plans to sail to the Bahamas in Taniko with two other couples and their boats.  They were very experienced sailors and had already been several times.  Alot more preparing went into the process this time.  They decided exactly where we would sail across from and also began cooking and canning meals such as chicken and meats.  This time we were really going to do it.

Seeing the ocean for the first time

Off we went in our Ryder rental truck with all our possessions, including our German Shepard and Siamese cat.  We drove to Dallas first, where my dad sold his Jaguar to a family that had a game room downstairs with video games and pool tables.  That is the only part I remember from the drive until we got to the Keys.  Seeing the ocean for the first time was incredible.  I was absolutely fascinated with the smell of it and the sound of the seagulls.  Anyone who has experienced this knows what I am talking about.  The ocean is magical.  I have no idea how we ended up in Islamorada.  My parents found a couple selling a 26 ft mahogany sailboat that had been used for racing.  The name was Lawanda.  Stupid name for a boat.  So.....my parents, my brother and I as well as the cat and the dog moved onto this tiny little boat.  Needless to say we no longer had our own rooms.  We each had a bunk with the typical foam mattresses covered in canvas in the back of the boat.  His bunk was on one side of the steps mine was on the other.  And of course, no TV and no phone.  The coolest thing about the whole scenario is my brother and I could not swim.  Imagine a little kid in the middle of the friggin' ocean, seeing it for the first time and not being able to swim.  My parents were trying to teach us so they threw those stupid orange life vests on us (not fashionable) and had us get in the water.  That totally freaked me out.  It was murky and I had watched Jaws before leaving Colorado.  I knew a shark was going to bite my legs off.  My parents had never sailed before or knew anything about boats.  I think that is awesome.  I credit them for being so brave and doing something others would have been to afraid to do.  Especially with a family.  We were anchored off of the basin where Worldwide Sportsman in Islamorada is today.  The first time we tried to sail out of the basin we ran aground.  I saw a pink bird once in the shallows.  My parents thought I was a retard and had imagined it.  Turned out it was a roseate spoonbill and I was not retarded.  It was winter time for the Keys, but being from Colorado we were in our shorts.  It turned out to be a very cold winter in the Keys.  Fish were floating up on shore dead.  It was a good opportunity for my brother to walk around with a stick poking their eyes out.  My parents ended up becoming good friends with the couple that they bought the sailboat from.  They owned Calvert Sails and and it turned out they were pro windsurfers.  Thus our introduction to the world of windsurfing.     

Dallas to The Florida Keys

I was born in Dallas, though normally do not admit it as it is way cooler to say you are from The Florida Keys.  I also was simply born there, no ties and my parents moved while I was still a baby.  A year later my brother was born somewhere in Oklahoma.  Dallas is way cooler.  We then moved to Colorado Springs.  Great memories.  I loved camping in the mountains, fishing for trout, sledding and watching the dog play with porcupines.  We lived in a barn that was converted into a house.  We had chickens and ducks.  The mean old lady (she hated kids) that owned the property lived in a mansion which she allowed to be over run by raccoons.  She actually had a room in the house dedicated to them called the Raccoon Room.  There was a pasture with a not so nice horse named Abe and a nice mule named Molly.  Why this is important I do not know.  Abe did break my arm.  I was trying to catch a rabbit.  I was running after it in the pasture when I heard Abe's hooves.  I kept thinking, "Don't fall."  I fell.  The farm also had goats, more chickens and ducks, geese and a blind bassett hound.  My mom used to try and get us to drink goats milk.  I think because we were poor?  Goat's milk is gross.  My parents used to have this little machine they would put duck eggs in.  For some reason I thought they were trying to make yogurt, apparently it was an incubator.  There was tippee on the property my brother and I used to play in and an apple tree in the back yard.  Sometimes Abe would get out of the pasture to come eat apples and scare the jeepers out of us.  We learned when going through the pasture to run as fast as we could to the fallen tree in the middle of it.  Abe would run after us and sniff around the fallen tree trying to eat us.  He'd get tired, leave and we would run the rest of the way.  There was a horse skeleton off one of the paths, that gave me nightmares.  I still remember my dream of the pasture full of enormous buttermilk pancakes with pools of strawberry syrup.  I was in heaven.  The horse skeleton came alive and it and the mean old lady (who hated kids) chased us.  I think that was my first nightmare.  There was an old hayloft in the pasture we used to play in.  I remember us jumping off the top and finding a Victory Dime from the 1800's in the dirt.  That started my obsession with collecting coins which was later stolen including my precious dime, but that is a later story.  Asparagus grew wild where we lived so of course my parents fed us that as well.  My dad used to catch garden snakes and put them in the aquarium.  Thus I think my fascination with reptiles.  He also at one point had a black widow in a jar, which I think the cat knocked over and killed.  Then, one day, my dad had a dream to buy a sailboat and travel around the world.  We packed everything into a rental truck including my dad's old convertible Jaguar.  I'm not sure if my parents had any idea where we were going.