Read This Blog! Because everyone is entitled to my opinion.

We lived in South Florida for our first eight years together but never visited Key West. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake, because we’ve had a great time today!

We started with a Harbor and Dolphin cruise with Barefoot Billy on a small catamaran. Captain Zack got things off to a good start by playing the entire Gilligan’s Island theme as we sailed away from the dock and past Houseboat Row and into the channel, where there was a whole group of jet-skiers enjoying themselves.

We continued sailing along Fleming Key, where we saw dolphins and a couple of floating AirBnBs (I don’t think I’d want to stay in one of those).

Some of the local homeless population lives on the mangrove islands near the harbor – Captain Zack pointed out one place where they’ve set up solar panels and even have had Christmas lights on display for the last couple of years.

We sailed past the Coast Guard base and the Special Forces training area, then past Fort Zachary Taylor (it’s a state park and beach) and past the listening station (still watching for missile launches from Cuba).

We sailed as far as the Southernmost Point marker before it was time to return to the harbor; there were lots of iguanas sunning themselves on the grass by the Coast Guard officer housing.

We had lunch on the American Glory before departing for our second sailing trip of the day, this time on the Schooner America 2.0. The skipper took us out of the harbor on power, then the crew rigged the sails…and there wasn’t enough wind, so we “sailed” under power for the whole 90 minutes. It was a splendid afternoon anyway.

Diane and I walked back to the ship, with only a few stops along the way, including Kermit’s Key Lime Shop, where we picked up a couple of slices of excellent Key Lime pie.

The American Glory was docked right in front of Mallory Square where the nightly Sunset Celebration takes place; we had to sail away so the crowd could see the spectacle clearly. We watched from the ship, a few miles out at sea…same sunset, fewer people.

After sunset, we returned to Mallory Square; we’ll be here until tomorrow afternoon.

American Cruise Lines introduced a new ship design, the “Coastal Cat”, last year. Our ship for this cruise, American Glory, is one of the first four they built – and according to the captain, it’s also one of the last four they’re going to build.

The problem is the opening at the front of the ship – oncoming waves can accumulate there with no outlet, so the ship has to rise to let the water out…and then it crashes down. It doesn’t take huge waves to trigger the effect, as everyone on the ship discovered at 2am.

Conditions improved after a couple of hours, but there were a lot of bleary eyes at breakfast.

We only had one excursion planned for today, a dolphin-watching cruise on the Dolphin Explorer. They’ve been studying the resident dolphins for more than a decade, so unlike a whale-watching cruise, they were sure we’d get to see dolphins up close…and they were right.