Marathon on a Monday mooring

Who's this in my harbor?

I was wondering the same thing.

Jan.21-Feb.8


 We’re on a mooring ball with 226 other boaters in Boot Key Harbor City Marina in Marathon. (The marina’s slogan: “Where mooring is a ball.”) Another nearly dozen boaters are on a waiting list. About 75 percent of the mariners here are sail boaters.
 Marathon is in the heart of the Keys, between Key Largo and Key West, with waters the color of turquoise.
 We had jumped off the ICW - and into the ocean -- at Port Everglades (Ft. Lauderdale) and motored to No Name Harbor at the tip of Cape Florida and spent the night. The next day we went to Rodriguez Key, a small island near the main string of keys that offers almost no protection; fortunately very little was needed. The next day, we continued to Boot Key (Marathon).
 We decided to stay here for a month to wait for seasonal winds to settle down in the Bahamas. One week was spent at the nearby Keys boat yard as Epilogue underwent what Philip called psychiatric evaluation -- the boat’s two heads (or rather, the holding tank) needed work. Philip and Tom, at the boat yard, came up with an ingenious solution to fix it and it seems to be working.
 Some cities have their own snow removal equipment. Marathon has its own pump-out boats. Hoses on the boats suck out visiting boaters’ equivalent of an outhouse (for free) once a week. How’d you like that job?


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 Marathon is low-key, so to speak. We dinghy (did you know it’s a verb?)to visit friends at other marinas here and have found a great sandy beach. The water is warm and its finally bathing suit weather - as long as we stay clear of the beautiful floating “blue bottle” or Portuguese Man o’ War. Their sting can be deadly.
  We attempted to go out three miles in the ocean to Sombrero Key today to snorkel. It was so rough that both cats got sicker than dogs. Poor little guys are more ICW felines than ocean cats!
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 Like Stuart, Marathon is the home of some two dozen Krogenites. It’s a close-knit group (a “cult,” sez Philip). We meet for breakfast every Tuesday. Last week there was a surprise 50th wedding anniversary party for Betsy and Martin Basch, owners of Krogen 42 “Molly Blossom.” Earlier in the day, eight of us women took a shopping and lunch road trip to Islamorada where our conversations tended to focus on boating topics -- like the newest vacuum flush toilets and snub lines.

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 Joshua Nelson calls himself the KKK’s “worst nightmare.” He’s black and Jewish. A full-time Hebrew school teacher, he’s also a Jewish Gospel singer in the tradition of Mahalia Jackson. He’s performed for Oprah Winfrey and Ariel Sharon.
  Nelson sang at the 2nd annual Florida Keys Traditional Music Festival here Jan 28-30. Also performing were the BeauSoleil Cajun Trio from Lafayette, La., Linda Lay & Springfield Exit from Winchester, Va., Brian O’hAirt from Connecticut, Los Texmaniacs from San Antonio, and Elizabeth LaPrelle and Eddie Bond from Fries, Va., (It’s pronounced “Freeze” except in the summer, when it’s “Fries,” Bond joked).
 None of the performers was paid; proceeds went to a local day care center and to National Council for Traditional Arts -- the country’s oldest folk arts organization, founded in 1933.


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 Boaters are a fascinating lot.
 John Holum is a perfect example. He’s chairman of the board for the National Council for the Traditional Arts and started  the music festival here. He and his wife, Barbara, own a 58-foot Krogen, “Solveig IV.” John, a retired attorney, also plays a mean banjo.
 And, oh by the way, John was director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under Bill Clinton. Barbara was a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Clinton.
 Others are equally interesting.
 Dick and Pat Rowley grew up together in the Ashtabula, Ohio, area. The owners of “Galaxy,” a Krogen 58, for the past decade they’ve headed home each summer to run a campground.


But in their previous lives, they owned WZOO-FM and other radio stations that they sold to Clear Channel in 2007. “You’re the first person in 10 years to ask us what we did in our ‘real’ jobs,” Pat said with a laugh.
 Nick Morgan and Sherri Smith are full-time cruisers on their Krogen 39, “Sweet Time.” They were career CIA workers.
 Ohioans Paula Sue and Todd Russell are cruising the Great Loop on their 47-foot Bayliner “Ocean Breeze” with their dog, Charlie. Off the boat, the couple are runners. Charlie sits down after walking a mile and refuses to budge. Paula Sue and Todd, on the other hand, have completed more than 30 marathons each.

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 We’re constantly running into people we know or who know people we know.
 Chris Parker is a weather forecaster for cruisers in Florida and the Bahamas. Boaters swear by his insights, especially when he says there’s a good weather window coming up for the crossing from Florida to the islands. Philip thought he knew Chris. Sure enough, Chris had worked for a summer some years ago as a carpenter in Philip’s Oxford, Md., boatyard. He’s since called Chris to reconnect.
 On Sunday, Philip and I attended St. Columba’s Episcopal Church here in Marathon. We met Peter and Sabine (pronounced “sa-bean”) Sehlinger, who live here part of the year and in Indianapolis after the snow melts. Did they happen to know my friend Victor Childers?(It was one of those silly questions -- like asking a New Yorker, “Do you know happen to know John Smith in Manhattan?”) Turns out the Sehlingers, both professors, are good friends of Victor’s, a retired business school professor.
 A small world, indeed.