Rite of Passage (#30)

All is well. We gingerly put the boat back in the water where it floated. Seizing on our good fortune, we cast off. As we rounded Boot Key, a large Hawksbill turtle appeared off of our bow. I took that as another good sign. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be in the Bahamas in a matter of days. Even Otto, our auto-pilot, is working. He only acted up once. Perhaps the Captain pushed the wrong button. We spun around 360 degrees like a circus boat.
The seas aren’t too high. That suits me. I get horrendous sea sickness and am on a new drug, Meclizine. I makes me a bit drowsy. And my hands numb. OK, I also hear voices. But I’m not seasick and that’s what counts.
We anchored between Long Key and Craig Key the first night, which is the exact spot where the Labor day Hurricane of 1935 roared through. It was a duzzy; the strongest recorded hurricane ever to hit land.* Around five hundred people died. That was about half of the population then. Most were unemployed veterans sent down to work on the new highway. (A lot is made about why they weren’t evacuated.) The rest were locals. They knew hurricanes. But they’d never seen anything like this. It wasn’t the 200+ m.p.h. winds that got them. It was the water.
Rather than build bridges across the natural channels, the railroad engineers just filled them in. It was cheaper. When the pressure from the oncoming storm raised the water level, it had no channels to flow into. It hit eighteen feet on islands three feet above sea level. That meant seaweed hanging off the tops of phone poles. Those who didn’t drown were swept into Florida Bay and the Everglades. Bodies were found for months afterwards. Some were on islands where they’d survived for a while.
But it’s not hurricane season yet, so I can sit and enjoy the breeze and the waves as they slap against our freshly painted hull. The voices have stopped for now. Maybe the Meclizine is wearing off. Or maybe it was leaving those five hundred poor souls in our wake.
*The barometric pressure was 26.65”. The second lowest reading ever recorded. I have no idea why I remember that.