Surreal in Cedar Key

I’ve been a little under the weather for the last several weeks, which may explain my putting off writing this blog piece.

I had a bout with pneumonia a couple weeks before the Cedar Key weekend, and really wasn’t feeling so hot when it was time to go. But my excellent wife Nancy scurried about and found a room a little out of town, so we wouldn’t have to sleep in the deck tent. I decided I could handle a day on the water and the drive to and from Cedar Key. This may have been a mistake, from a health viewpoint.

The drive down went okay, with Nancy doing a lot of the driving. I slept and coughed. Halfway down, at a rest stop, I noticed that one of my trailer hubs was running hot. Not smoking hot, but a lot warmer than the other one. But… I decided to drive on.

We reached Cedar Key, driving through miles of marshland and little islands, a waterscape that fascinated us. It looked like prime territory for a little shallow draft boat, which is why, I suppose, that the small boat get-together is held here. Once in town, we picked up the key to our suite, and were heading back to it when Nancy noticed a sign on the side of a building, offering auto and trailer parts and repairs. We decided to see if they could do something about my hot hub. I stopped and dashed in, because it was almost 5 in the afternoon. As I’d feared, they were getting ready to close, but I told them about my troubles and they said they’d take a look. I backed the trailer into the bay, for once backing in on the first try. The mechanic checked it, said he’d take a stab at it if the parts store next door had the hub in stock. The guy at the parts store found a new hub, and charged me a reasonable price for it, and the mechanic spent a half hour of his own time replacing the bad one. I was amazed at the reasonable price he charged me for labor, and soon we were back at our suite, trailer fixed.

Already I was liking Cedar Key. In many places, I’d have had no luck getting anyone to fix my trailer after hours, and if I had they’d have squeezed my wallet dry. We drove around a little, and admired the village. Cedar Key is an unusual place. There are lots of little inns and hotels, a few restaurants, but not a condo in sight. It’s clearly a tourist trap, but the scenic, friendly, old-fashioned kind, not the chilly corporate kind we have back at home in Fort Walton Beach. We stopped for a bit beside the beach in front of the Faraway Inn, because a number of little boats were anchored there. Our friend Terry Poling came out to welcome us to Cedar Key. He owns a Sea Pearl Tri named Osprey and we sailed together last summer on St. Joseph Bay.

Our room was nice, with a little kichenette, so we ate a supper we’d brought from home, and watched a little TV. I was still feeling pretty rough, but glad we’d made it.

In the morning we took our time getting organized, and while we were getting ready, a guy on a Harley parked next to our rig. He turned out to be Dean Pacetti, who’s building a sister ship to Slider. He’d spotted Slider from the road– not too big a coincidence, since only one road leads into Cedar Key, we’d parked right next to it, and Slider doesn’t look like any other boat. Dean helped us launch, which cost 10 bucks– but is worth it, because the harbormaster will find a place you can leave your vehicle and trailer– not an easy job in a place as small as Cedar Key. There were a lot of boats in town that weekend, not only because of the small boat meet. There was also an airboat group, as well as a race organized by Watertribe for small boats. There were so many trailers that I had to park several blocks away and walk back. There was a rickshaw guy hanging around the ramp who offered to show us where to park and haul me back to the ramp. Unfortunately, he was busy hauling some other lazy bum when I was ready, so I had to find my own parking spot and trudge back to the ramp. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have bothered me, but I was sick enough that I would have really been grateful for a rickshaw ride.

Cedar Key has two ramps in their official launch area. One is a big multilane ramp that launches into a lagoon closed off by a low bridge– really only suitable for power boats. The other single ramp faces the bay, and is better for sailboats, but is fairly narrow. The only major drawback to the bayside ramp is that if a power boat goes by, the wake will come right into the ramp and bounce the boat around pretty violently. Terry Poling told me that he’d launched his Sea Pearl Tri from a concrete apron in front of the Faraway Inn at high tide, and this might be a very good option for a small shallow-draft boat that doesn’t need a steep ramp.

Nancy wanted to wander around town for a bit, so Dean and I set out for Atsena Otie Key, a half mile across the bay, where we could see a number of sails on the beach. We had very light air, but it gradually picked up a little, and I hope Dean got some idea of how Slider sails in decent winds. We sailed past Atsena Otie and across the shallows to the west, and then back to the beach in front of the Faraway Inn, where Dean got off and Nancy embarked.

The rest of the morning and afternoon seems a little blurry in memory. I was feeling so rotten that I didn’t even feel able to wander along the Atsena Otie beach and look at all the beautiful boats there. A lot of folks came up and talked to me, and I gave rides to a few of them. At one point, we got into irons, and were only saved from drifting back into someone’s very nice boat by a couple of guys who came running out and grabbed Slider. Whoever you were, guys, thank you for your quick thinking and your quicker reactions. I can remember bits of a lot of very pleasant conversations, and folks saying nice things about Slider. Someone pointed out Meade Gougeon’s new boat, which appeared to be a large yellow tabletop with a sail. I was told that he’s recently become interested in fishing the flats and this scow was his desiqn for that purpose.

I was in too trouty a state of mind to take any pictures, which is why there were no pictures here at first. Lots of folks took pictures of Slider, and some of them were kind enough to offer me copies. The wind picked up as the day progressed until it was blowing pretty good. Nancy and I sailed out toward some of the other little islands and talked about what an interesting place it would be to visit when we had the time and inclination to do some exploring.

By about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I was worn out pretty thoroughly, so we went back to the beach by the Faraway and anchored off. We secured the boat between two anchors, so that there would be no danger of bumping any of the other boats anchored off the beach. Then we wandered into town looking for a place to eat dinner.

It’s often a good idea to ask a local about good places to eat, so I asked a somewhat forlorn-looking rickshaw guy where we could get a decent meal. He recommended a place just over the lagoon bridge called the Rusty Rim. This proved to be the low point of our visit to Cedar Key. Apparently, this was the worst place we could have picked, though it did have a fine view of the fishing pier and the bay. Nancy’s shrimp was Not Good, and my grouper tasted as if it had been preserved in formaldehyde prior to deep frying.

After this unpleasant experience, all I wanted to do was go back to our room and collapse, so that’s what we did, deciding to give the Saturday night get-together a pass. I gradually recovered a bit, and we got to watch the 7th game in the Celtic/Bulls series.

At this point, I began to think about what a mob scene it was going to be on Sunday, with so many boats having to haul out. I’d sailed just about all I thought I could sail, and all I wanted was to go be sick at home. It occurred to me that, as the ramp appeared to be open all night, there was nothing preventing me from sailing the boat over there and loading her up. Nancy wasn’t extremely happy with this idea, because she wasn’t sure I was strong enough to do it, but eventually I talked her into it.

So, a little after midnight, we went back to the beach at the Faraway Inn, where we’d anchored Slider that afternoon. The tide had come in, and the water was waist deep by the time I reached the boat. Here I discovered a problem– I was too weak to get up the swim ladder. It only drops a little below the surface, which is fine in the shallow water we usually anchor in. Unfortunately, in the deeper water, and without the strength to grab the mast and pull myself up, I had a tough time. Finally I was able to get my knee in the lowest rung and heave myself aboard. I think I’ll have to add a loop of line to the ladder to give folks a way to get to that first rung when conditions are not ideal.

Nancy drove the car and trailer over to the ramp to wait for me.

In the dark, sorting things out was not easy, but I raised the anchors and paddled out into the darkness of the bay. The wind was very light, and one of my spotlights promptly died, so I decided to conserve the other in case someone was out in the dark besides me. We very slowly sailed round the corner of the key and down the southeastern shoreline. We rarely moved faster than a knot or a knot and a half, but Slider is a good ghoster and never stopped moving. It was a weirdly magical night, with the lights of Cedar Key to port and the dark ocean to starboard. I felt a sort of strange feverish contentment, and somehow being so sick focused all my attention on the here and now. Every sensation seemed cranked up to maximum intensity. As I cleared the first point and sailed toward the fishing pier, I could hear a local band at one of the waterfront bars, covering Jimi Hendrix, one of the icons of my youth. The band was actually pretty good, and the music seemed oddly suitable.

We crept slowly down the shore, and by the time we were off the fishing pier, it was closing time, and the band shut down. Now it was almost completely silent, except for the faint ripple of the bow wave and the creak of the boom jaws against the mast. It struck me that this was probably the best part of the trip– right then and there– and I wished Nancy could have been with me.

A porpoise broke the water and blew out its breath not five feet from me, scaring the living crap out of me, but it was just another gift of the night. By the time I reached the ramp and sailed up to the dock, I was almost disappointed that the sail was over. I was afraid Nancy might have been worried about me, but she’d seen that the bay was pretty glassy, and expected me to take a while.

By the time the boat was on the trailer, it was after 2 a.m., but I was as happy as I’d been for the whole trip. In every sailing trip, there will be one experience that stands out as emblematic. My night sail from one side of Cedar Key to the other was it, for me.

In the morning we slept late, set out for home, and luxuriated in breakfast biscuits in the first good-sized town. I’d had a good time, but when we got home, I was very glad to be there. When I got a peek at Slider’s starboard side, I discovered that sometime between the afternoon and that night, somebody had bumped into her and left scrapes and dings and a few splinters all down her side. She got scuffed up a lot more in those few hours than she had in the previous year. But the damage isn’t too bad, and won’t be too difficult to fix.

I’m still sicker than a dying dog, two weeks later. I was so sick I missed the Florida 120, an event I’d really been looking forward to. But I’ll probably live, and if I do, I’ll remember our little trip to Cedar Key for the rest of my life.

May 19, 2009

Fort Walton Beach