The story begins the day before, Wednesday the 11th at 3 am when my alarm clock went off awaking me from deep sleep, and preparation for the 6 hour drive to the Keys. I had my boat already hooked up to the truck in the driveway, with all my tropical fish collecting nets and containers, my diving gear, breakdown tools, spare tires, water in a cooler, fishing rods, and a whole truck full of necessary items needed for a weeks trip to the Keys.
Turning on the coffee pot, brushing the teeth, and a quick shower, Susie (my labrador retriever) and I were ready for the long haul down to the rock mine in the Everglades to collect some seed rock to place on our aquaculture lease in the Keys.
At the last moment my girlfriend decided not to make this trip (a good thing) as her job had her tied up for the week, so it was Susie and I on the road at 3:30 am, heading south on interstate 75 toward the rock mine. Coffee thermos in hand and with Jimmy Buffet in the CD player, we made about 75 miles per hour and good time down to Bonita Springs, where I always stop at the Waffle House for an early morning breakfast, to get the strength to pick up 2500 pounds of seed rock.
After breakfast and on the road again it is just 25 miles to Naples where US Highway 41 intersects I-75 and begins it's long trail across the Florida Everglades. I always like this part of the trip as it is though the unspoiled Everglades, where animal and bird life abounds, and it is just getting light, providing a beautiful sunrise to the east in front of me, the birds starting to fly, the alligators coming out to capture some sun to heat their cold blooded bodies. Out of coffee by now and fully pumped up to gather the rock, it is just 80 miles across the glades and on to the rock mine.
Arriving at the mine I get the truck, trailer and boat weighed on the scale before roaming around the 1000 acre site, picking the most beautiful seed rock available in the world. Sometimes there is abundant rock to pick from, sometimes it takes all day to collect the load. This was a good day as I had the load in about four hours, beautiful rock, some as small as my hand some weighing 100-200 pounds, for those really large aquariums. Driving across the scale again I see I have just over 2500 pounds on the new boat.
Exiting the mine it is now a two hour drive down to Plantation Key where I stay with my friends Clark and Linda Lou Jones. Getting through Homestead and Florida City, you encounter "The Stretch" a 20 mile two lane highway leading into the Keys. The first Key is Key Largo and as I cross the Jewfish Creek drawbridge, you are officially in The Fabulous Florida Keys!
Rounding the last corner before Key Largo I notice the trees and signs are blown down and destroyed, as tropical storm Mitch had just come to visit the week before. The damage was amazing, homes blown apart, many giant trees down, debris everywhere, many sunk boats in the canals. This was a lot of damage compared to Hurricane George that brushed the Keys a few weeks before. Did little damage on land, but destroyed the reef with his100 MPH sustained winds for 12 hours.
Driving along in disbelief I wondered what was left of our aquaculture site, just behind Crocker Reef. It's only another 20 miles on down to Tavernier and Plantation Key, my destination. It is now early afternoon, and the plan was to get there early enough to be able to launch the boat, get out to our site, deploy the rock, make a dive to arrange it and do some offshore fishing for dinner. Unfortunately the wind was gusting 15-20 knots, and seas were 6-8 feet making it impossible to get out as it was too rough.
I launched the boat, brought it down the canal and tied up behind Clarks house. I noticed the boat was sitting rather low in the water with the load of rock on. This was the first trip for this boat to the Keys as my last vessel had split her hull on a similar trip and was unusable. I had used this boat, a T-Craft two days before in Tampa taking a load of rock out to our aquaculture site off Tampa, where we have 4 million pounds of live rock under production since 1993. She had performed well getting right up on top and running well with a load of rock on.
The next morning I was up with Clark, a ballyhoo fisherman, at 5 am, a little coffee and he was off to his boat and me to mine. The weather was a little better, they were calling for 4-6 foot waves inside the reef where our site is. So out the canal, through Florida Bay, down Tavernier Creek where it is about 4.5 miles to the site. The ride was OK until I got to the last marker, the headpin to Tavernier Creek. The seas were quite rough, but I was able to keep her at speed, crashing through the waves, heading out.
