Wow it has been a long time since the old blog was updated!! We got sidetracked in Cocoa, FL working on well…work!! Lets see the last we left you was with our trip back from the Northwest Caribbean….

We had to put into the Dry Tortugas which was absolutely fantastic. Just what the captain and crew needed a few days to rest, swim, explore and dry out the boat. As said earlier 3 of the 4 boats we headed back with put in here and all had issues, even the boat that carried onto Key West had problems but they were able to power much faster than the rest of us enabling them to make into port safely in daylight.

The anchorage was quite crowded as many boats had made for this harbor to wait out high winds.

Fort Jefferson is actually located on Garden Key. Built in the mid-1800’s, with over 16 million bricks, this is America’s largest coastal fort.

The Islands were first discovered by Spaniard Ponce De Leon in 1513. First named Las Tortugas(The Turtles) due to the abundance of sea turtles.The word 'Dry' was soon added to mariners' charts to warn of the lack of fresh water.

There is no provisioning here. No fresh water, groceries, or fuel. Many boats skip this as it is easy to get “trapped” waiting for the right winds to carry on either to Key West or to the Banana Republic.

Since the days of Spanish exploration, the reefs and shoals of the Dry Tortugas have been a serious hazard to navigation and the site of hundreds of shipwrecks. U.S. military attention was drawn to the keys in the early 1800's due to their strategic location in the Florida Straits. The first construction on Garden Key, in 1825, was a lighthouse to warn sailors of rocky shoals. Construction of Fort Jefferson began in 1846 but the fort was never completed. The United States knew it could control navigation to the Gulf of Mexico and protect Atlantic bound Mississippi River trade by fortifying the Tortugas. Construction continued for over 30 years but the Fort, which covers 11 of the key's 16 acres, was never finished. During the Civil War the fort was a military prison for captured deserters.

It also held the 4 men convicted of complicity in President Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, the most famous being Dr. Samuel Mudd. The Fort was plagued with construction problems and Yellow Fever epidemics. The invention of the rifled cannon made the Fort obsolete, as it's thick walls could now be penetrated. The Army finally abandoned Fort Jefferson in 1874. In 1908 the area became a wildlife refuge to protect nesting birds from egg collectors. In 1935 Fort Jefferson was proclaimed as a National Monument but it was not until 1992 that Dry Tortugas reached it's current status as a National Park to protect both the historical and natural features.

After a couple of days it was time to move onto Key West and properly check back into the country and make our way up to Cocoa, FL where we hoped to pick up some work and do some much needed projects on Echo.......