Dry Totugas, FL

Our first stop in USA was the islands of Dry Tortugas (Turtles).  
 24 37.61 N 82 52.24 W
The entire main island is taken up with Fort Jefferson. There are two anchorages – one out to the east which was large and had 3 larger boats anchored within, the small anchorage is right in front of the Fort and that is where we went – we squeezed amongst smaller boats right on the edge of the sand bar – a bit tight but there was no wind whatsoever, extremely calm conditions and good holding –hummm – that night a storm brewed and the calm anchorage turned into a boiling turmoil of water and foam.  

All boats in the anchorage turned lights on to be “seen” and everyone was up in wet weather gear watching in case either they dragged anchor or someone dragged near them.  The winds were gusty with gusts up to 45 knots and kept changing direction.  At times we were very close to a cute little boat next to us aptly named “Sweet Pea” so Don stayed by the wheel with the motor running in case we had to motor away from him.  This went on for most of the night – not something we wanted after 48 hrs of sailing with very little sleep.  The noise of the wind was so strong that Don and I had to yell at each other to be heard, other boats were very hard to see because of the torrential rain – fishing boats came into the harbor to escape the weather – unfortunately one anchored in front of us, dragged his anchor, tripped ours that sent us back 50 mtrs or so before our anchor re-hooked itself – by now we were only metres off the jetty to the Fort – I could have jumped across.  It meant that we were away from Sweet Pea but I stayed up for the rest of the night watching in case the jetty got any closer.  


Boats arrived the next day with torn sails and horror stories.  One boat in our anchorage did drag out to the east anchorage then wedged itself on a coral shelf, it took many hours to get them off with no apparent damage.  We met up with friends we met in Bocas del Toro (Moira and Dick on Equinox) and Providencia (Maureen and Ollie on Pandora) – the sailing community is becoming very small.  We moved our boat to a larger spot and immediately a new arrival took our spot – he was larger than our boat so I wondered how he would get on if the storm blew up again – Sweet Pea left !!!

We spent a couple of days exploring the fort and left in a convoy as soon as the winds were favorable.  We were a little concerned about walking on USA soil without formally checking into the country but the Park Rangers here didn't seem concerned with that aspect.