Key West Sailing Adventure - Day 6

The roar of jet engines from Navy fighter planes greet us each morning. The Boca Chica Air Naval Training station is just east of us. With the wind from the east the commercial flights from Key West International airport take off right over us too.

It sounds like the Blue Angels are practicing overhead. Not my photo.

The advantage of docking next to the laundry facility is I can sit on deck and watch when people come and go with their laundry. Then I can time my use of the facility when it is empty. The washers and driers use a chip card not quarters. That makes life easier. We used to spend months collecting quarters from our change and going to the bank and buying rolls of quarters to do laundry. No more. Now you buy a laundry chip card for $5.00 from a machine and load money onto it with your credit card. The price of laundry at the Perry Marina is $2.25 for the washer and $2.25 for the drier. The first load of wash costs $9.50 if you include the cost of the chip card. Well worth it for a weeks supply of clean clothes. We also discovered there is a shower and rest room attached to the laundry building. This slip location is looking better all the time.

Priscilla and I took the noon hotel shuttle bus to downtown Key West. You need to be early if you want a seat. The driver tends to depart early if the bus is full. It is a 25 minute ride from the hotel to the A & B Lobster House restaurant on Front Street. We walked to a dive shop and bought some attachment rings for our grandson’s snorkel. The wind is blowing so hard that when someone opened the door to the store it blew the displays over. We spoke to one shop keeper that had to close her store because the wind was blowing all of her merchandise around. We walked over to Duval Street. There are so many bars on Duval Street they call it doing the Duval crawl.

The hotel shuttle bus. Don’t be late!

Our ultimate destination was the Blue Heaven restaurant for lunch. Blue Heaven is located several blocks off of Duval street near the Bahama Village section. We have been going to Blue Heaven for over twenty years. We like it so much Priscilla named our blue Pearson 39 sailboat Blue Heaven. Their motto is “Blue Heaven, you do not have to die to get there.” The advantage for us is we could buy Blue Heaven logo caps and T-shirts for our sailboat crew from their gift shop.

Blue Heaven has expanded since our last visit they bought the house next door and another one across the street. They moved the gift shop next door and expanded the outdoor seating in the back yard. The space across the street is set up as holding area for guests waiting to be seated. They have come a long way. The other highlight of dining at Blue Heaven is the chickens are free range and peck for food next to the tables and the baby chicks chirp peep, peep, peep. We had a delightful brunch. I had a shrimp eggs benedict and Pricilla had an egg sandwich.

Blue Heaven - showers $1.00, to watch $2.00

We walked back to the A & B Lobster House to get the hotel shuttle bus. The bus arrived 10 minutes early and immediately filled up. The driver would not depart early even tho there was no more room on the bus. He said people call and complain if they miss the bus. Like I said, don’t be late.

You are in the right place to catch the hotel bus.

We had a quiet night on the boat even tho the wind was howling. The wind provided a nice breeze through the boat. We hope our fellow cruisers are safe on anchor back at Man O War harbor off Fleming Key. They must have a few stories to tell.

This Navionics screen shot shows our 9.9 mile course from Man O War Harbor in Key West to the Perry Hotel and Marin’s on Stock Island. Don’t cut the corner on the west end. The water gets very thin there.