In October, Kathy and Dave Sharp left for their 8 month adventure aboard their boat, So Many Stars, from Newport, RI to the Caribbean. On December 26th we met them for the first time since they left down in the Florida Keys. At 9:30am the morning after Christmas we boarded a flight to Ft Lauderdale, rented a car, and drove the additional 4 hours (which ended up being 6 with traffic) to Stock Island, just north of Key West. The Sharps are currently keeping their boat in a slip at a marina there attached to a beautiful hotel called the Perry Hotel. We spent the next 6 days enjoying the weather, seeing mom mom and pop pop, and just relaxing… it was wonderful.
We took the kayaks out a few times to explore different areas. Here we are going into some mangroves to see what creatures we could see. This day it was mostly fish, but in another day we saw a baby hammerhead shark, hermit crabs, a sea turtle, sting rays, dolphin, and manatee (pics and video below). It was pretty cool.
We took the hotel shuttle into Key West two of the days we were there to explore. Here the girls are standing at the Southernmost point. This was actually Sophie’s second time to this spot – we took her for a vacation when she was just 11 months.
Another day we took the boat to Grande Key, a small island only accessible via boat, where we swam and explored. Look at that water!
For Lauren’s birthday mom mom and pop pop gave her a huge inflatable unicorn (of course!), which they played on for hours.
Hotel Perry had an excellent pool that we had access to as well. The girls swam almost every day. THey’re like little fish. They were totally wrinkled each day when we finally dragged them out of the water.
Here’s a shot of two manatee that we saw in the marina. They were huge and slowly making their way around the boats. It was really cool to watch them.
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We also had dolphin accompany us on one of the trips we took (click on the link above to see the video).
Sadly, the Keys are still recovering from Hurricane Irma, which as totally devastating. Most of the Middle Keys were almost completely knocked out. On the drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Stock Island we saw miles of debris that had been piled by the side of the road. Everything from trees to refrigerators to sides of houses. It was pretty terrible. This pic shows a crane picking up destroyed boats. We saw hundreds of these boats, either still in the water or on land. It will take a while for this region to fully recover.
We headed back home on New Year’s Day and were hit (literally) with below freezing temperatures. When we got home it was 12 degrees with the windchill! Talk about a reality check. But we had the lovely vacation to think about to keep us warm.
Happy 2018!
