The Dry Tortugas Adventures – Part 3 ... “Lazy Days”

The Dry Tortugas Adventures – Part 3 ... “Lazy Days”

Saturday 27th February – Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Dawn has arrived on our fifth day at Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas. After the excitement of the journey and the injured sailor on the second night it’s been a quiet and mostly relaxing experience, a lazy time. In the mornings we have taken our dinghy into shore, landing on the beach at Fort Jefferson and spent a few hours wandering around the fort, exploring, taking photos and looking at the birds. 

The fort itself is quite extensive and the main walls are laid out in a hexagon completely surrounded by a moat. Inside the walls the land is grassy with a few trees. You can access most sections of the walls at ground level, second floor and the open roof. It’s actually quite spooky up on the top because you are ~ 50 feet up with sheer drops to the moat on the outside and the courtyard on the inside and there are no barriers to stop you going off the edge. Some of the brickwork is in poor condition and so only the foolhardy would go right to the edge, but the views out over the ocean are spectacular. The water is a palette of blues and turquoises, reflecting various depths of water and there are a few sandy keys dotted around. Most of these sandy keys are off limits due to sea-bird or turtle nesting. The sea birds are incredible. There are nesting colonies of Frigate birds, Brown Noddy and Sooty terns. This is the only place in the USA that you can see the latter two species. We have also seen a couple of Roseatte terns and lots of more common gulls, terns and pelicans. The air is constantly filled with the sound of these birds and there are literally thousands of Sooty terns and Brown Noddy. During the day there are dozens of frigate birds soaring above and around the fort. During the spring you can see all sorts of migrating birds and in particular during March - April if there is bad weather you can get large fall-out of birds who drop in to avoid adverse winds. Unfortunately it’s a little early for the migration so we haven’t seen too many land birds (Northern Parula, blue headed vireo, Sharp shinned hawk, Chimney Swift, Palm warbler etc.). The island is completely dry but the National Park service do put out water for the migrating birds in the spring.

Every day two seaplanes ferry passengers to and from Key West. The first load arrive about 8.30 am and last depart around 4.00 pm. When we first arrived here the fast ferry service had been suspended due to engine problems. However, that resumed on Saturday so the ferry arrives at 10.30 am with maybe 50 – 100 passengers and departs again at ~ 2.30 pm. We have taken to returning to the boat for the middle part of the day and having a leisurely lunch and maybe a siesta! Later in the afternoon we have gone back to shore, taken short dinghy ride or gone snorkeling. We have only snorkeled the areas off Garden Key, which were fine but not spectacular by Bahamas or Caribbean standards. There are some wrecks that can be dived or snorkeled and some reefs off Loggerhead Key, but these are up to three miles away and we have not been brave enough to venture that far in the dinghy, in part because it has been somewhat windy and choppy. Over the weekend a high-pressure system moved off the east coast of the USA resulting in stronger East – South East winds down here in the Keys. Winds were predicted to be around 20 knots but we mostly saw 15 knots. However, there has been a small craft advisory in place over the weekend and the anchorage is notorious for variable holding and so we have not felt as relaxed on the boat as we might otherwise have been. The depths in the main channel are 30 feet but they shoal to < 5 feet around the periphery. We ended up re-anchoring because of concerns from the boat in front of us that he would be too close if he let out more chain. We dropped the hook in 13 feet of water and then fell back into 27 feet depth with 120 feet of chain deployed. Overall the weather has been better than expected and although a little choppy at times in the anchorage we have felt reasonably secure and haven’t dragged at all.

Today will be our last day here and we will spend much of the time getting ready for our return journey. We will deflate and stow the dinghy on the foredeck, tidy up a little and prepare some food for the journey. The winds are expected to go south tonight and then clock round to west and northwest. So hopefully we will not have to beat our way back to the east. Our plan is to get to Marathon (100 miles east) by Thursday night, perhaps in one push, before another could front comes through at the weekend.

Over the past few days we kept saying to each other how fantastic the Dry Tortugas are and how happy we are that we made the effort to come here. It truly is a spectacle to be seen and heard.

Mike

24 37.574 N, 82 52 294 W

Brown Noddy portrait - the Dry Tortugas is the only place in the continental USA that you will see these birds

Brown Noddy on the old north dock relics

Brown Noddy in flight

Sooty tern hovering over the nesting area - No shortage of subjects (there can be up to 80,000 sooty terns nesting in this area later in teh spring / summer) but very hard to get them in the frame and in focus. This shot using 500 mm lens at 1 / 1250 of a second.

Sooty Tern - again this is the only place in the continental USA that you will see these birds

Male frigate bird

Female frigate bird

Sunrise over Long Key where the frigate birds nest - this photo gives you a sense of just how many birds there are around here - mostly sooty terns and Brown Noddy in this picture

A flight of brown pelicans goes by at sunset

The fort offers some great geometric views along the inside of the walls

Gun batteries occupied this space on the second level

I couldn't resist this abstract shot - double exposure with the camera rotated 180 degrees between shots then developed as the color negative

Our final, most spectacular sunset at Garden Key anchorage in near calm conditions