Rangers, Campers, Boat People and Other Types

The vast majority of people who visit Dry Tortugas are day-trippers.  They come by seaplane in groups of up to 10, or by the Yankee Freedom Ferry as we did.  In either case, they leave by 3:00 p.m.

When they leave, the island takes on a quiet, deserted character.  Other than the wildlife, all that may be left on the island are perhaps 4 National Park Service rangers and staff, a couple scientific field researchers, maybe 16 campers, and a handful of visitors who anchor near the island on private boats and come over from their boats by dinghy to swim, snorkel or stroll.  The island is big enough that these few people just melt into it and, as campers, we felt like we had the island to ourselves.

The two groups of other humans we got to know best were the other campers and the boaters.  We got to know the campers personally.  This was easy because our campsites were snuggled right up to each other in and around a small grove of trees.  It wasn't as easy to get to know the boat people, but they always provided entertainment of some sort.

CAMPERS

Let's start with the campers first.  We had no photos of these folks because, believe it or not, we were so busy chatting with the other campers that we forgot to take any photos.  Toni has since sent a few of her pictures, so without any further ado.

Among others, we met:

               Nigel, an Aussie hailing most recently from Houston.

               Toni, a mathematics professor, and Jim, her husband, an architect.  Fin, a college student and extraordinary yoga practitioner.

               Mark, an artist, jeweler and avid photographer.

In describing them, how can we do justice to these wonderful people?  Every one of them had a hearty sense of humor, and much of the conversation was friendly joshing.  All love the outdoors, and we enjoyed hearing everyone's tales of adventure snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, bicycling or otherwise engaging in contact sport with Mother Nature.

We decided Fin gets the award for the Most Courageous Camper due to his performance on Wednesday night.  Several of us heard that he knew something about the Night Sky and constellations, so we twisted his arm to conduct a star seminar that night.  Sometime after dark, we gathered in the Group Campsite and Overflow Campsite area.  Before we began the formal star talk, Fin brought out some wondrous little sling arrow helicopter toys.  He used a rubber band to shoot them into the air.  A little blue LED light on the toy would light, and as it reached its apex, flexible plastic blades would unfold and cause it to spin as it fell to the ground, appearing to change color as it spinned.  These were wondrous little gadgets.  The wind kept almost blowing them into the Fort's moat near where we were gathered, but, somehow, miraculously, Fin avoided disaster.  Putting the little helicopters away, Fin proceeded to instruct our little group on the mysteries of Orion and his belt, the Pleiades, Beetlegeuse, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Polaris, the North Star.  We finished up the seminar with a walk around the moat wall to look for what Ranger Dave called "tarpon worms" but probably are not really called that - we'll simply call them bioluminescent invertebrates (check out our blog entry on Dry Tortugas wildlife to see what these are).  The rest of the story unfolded the next day after the Great Watering Ceremony described below.

BOAT PEOPLE

The boaters could not be easily categorized.  Each had their own unique story.

The Notafrigate People.  Perhaps the most unusual were the occupants of this HUGE vessel on which was perched a helicopter.  We had trouble, at first, deciding whether it was military, research or some other non-private type of boat, but, after learning it was a private yacht, we christened it "Notafrigate":

Word had it (third-hand, by way of mysterious sources) that the owners were South American.  We saw mysterious comings and going each day by the helicopter.  The crew were Aussie and English.  A young mother and her nannie brought some children to the beach each afternoon, accompanied by boat crew to carry everything.  Two 20-something women in bikinis spent one afternoon paddleboarding the perhaps quarter mile distance from Notafrigate to our island, and then back.  One of them had some experience, but the other seemed to be a novice.  When she hit the current of the channel, it kept pushing her away from the boat, and she didn't seem to know how to right her course or to maintain her course straight toward Notafrigate.  The poor girl seemed to be tiring, tried to paddle sitting down, and then even jumped in the water and tried to swim and pull the board toward their yacht, all to no avail.  Finally, she triumphed over the current and the two women could be seen clambering aboard their monstrous vessel.

The Catamaran People.  Another family occupied this catamaran, viewed through one of the portals of Fort Jefferson. 

They had two young sons perhaps 8 and 6 years old.  As soon as the Yankee Freedom left with all the day trippers, the family crossed from their catamaran by dinghy to our dock and walked over to the beach where we snorkeled.  They swam, snorkeled and generally relaxed.  Clearly, it gave these active young boys a chance to get some activity out of their systems.

The Great Watering Ceremony.  This leaves, however, the story of Tom and Mary, the North Carolinian boaters, who suffered the ill fortune of having one of their fresh water tanks compromised, leaving them with very little drinking water.  Word of this crisis got to the nerve center of our little Island Mafia (otherwise known as Nigel), who promptly organized a mercy mission to provide drinking water to the hapless boaters.

Mark rousted up a bunch of water, as did we and some of the other campers.  Word was passed to the North Carolinians to come and pick up the charitable booty anytime after 8 a.m. on Thursday, the day of our departure.  At the appointed time, they arrived, only to find Don Nigel presiding over a bountiful store of water!  Then commenced the storied "Great Watering Ceremony" - not to be missed.  Don Nigel first blessed the water and sprinkled it on the lucky recipients, then allowed them to kneel and kiss his ring.  The entire ceremony was witnessed by Kathy in her official capacity as Notary Public.  Here is a photo of the very moment preceding the kissing of the golden ring:

With the ceremonies completed, the North Carolinians prepared to trot off happily to their dinghy with enough water to see them back to port.

The Great Flare Imbroglio.  HOWEVER, before the North Carolinians left, idle conversation led us to discover that the night before (the night of our star seminar with Fin), they had seen what looked like boat distress flares.  They debated whether some boaters were in mortal distress, but considered the possibility that the flares had come from our campground, because they could only see that the flares had risen from behind our campground trees.  They were concerned, however, that the flares could have come from one of several fishing boats in the water beyond our campground.  They finally decided that they shouldn't take any chances if there was a risk of danger to life, so they called the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard, in turn, taking this very seriously, called the National Park Service staff on the island to check out whether any flares had been seen.  A park ranger came down and - lo and behold - saw Fin shooting off his little rubber band slingshot helicopter lights.  Mystery solved.  The NPS seemed to take it in stride and in good humor because they never said anything to Fin or the rest of us.