Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Boat Marina, Fort Walton Beach Florida
Woke up and it was 20 degrees. The Evening Star was unloading her catch and I got dressed in the long johns grabbed the camera and took several photos of the unloading process. It is very manual. Robert was down in the hold. He would fill up a 15 gal plastic bucket with fish and hand them up to a deck hand. The deck hand would then lift tout he plastic basket of fish on to the tail gate of the refrigerated truck. Then the trucker loader would position the fish in a larger square container. I took several hours to unload 3000 pounds of Red Snapper.
Once the Evening Star was unloaded, they motored back to the end of our dock. Robert asked me if I would like some fish. I told him yes! He gave me 6 Trigger fish. I asked him if he would be kind enough to teach me how to clean a Trigger. He demonstrated how to filet the fish. He then showed me how to skin the fish and cut out the bones from the fillets. Once the fish were cleaned I cooked bout 8 fillets in olive oil and made Trigger Fish sandwiches. This was the freshest fish and most delicious that I had ever eaten!! Robert tells me that Trigger is his favorite fish and is not as well know as snapper. They got $3.00 per pound for the snapper they caught. Roberts cut was about $900.00
There are several boats in the Marina that are headed east to Panama City, Carrabelle and southern Florida. All of us are “weathered” in port because of the low Artic Blast temperatures. It is cold on land and as the fisherman told us it is even colder on the water. The boaters all have little electric space heaters that adequately heat the cabins of out boats. The problem is that once we leave the marina, we leave the electricity that powers the heaters. So the collective wisdom is to stay in the marina and wait for the temps to rise.
Late in the afternoon Tug and I decided to walk into town and do some shopping. We needed some spices for the fish. On the way we stopped at the public dock in Fort Walton Beach. This Marina is famous for two reasons. First reason is The Cty of Ft Walton Beach has a nice public dock and gives boaters a free one night stay at the dock. A great idea as most boaters head to town and spend money on provisions and eat in the restaurants.. The second reason the dock is well known is that it is a place where the homeless folks hand out. Tug and I talked to a couple of homeless Viet Nan Vets. After hearing their stories, we headed to the food store. Tug bought these tow guys lasagna dinners. When we returned to the City Dock with the food they two homeless guys had moved on. We returned to the boat and ate their dinners.
Tug has a heart the size of the Gulf of Mexico. He befriended a couple of homeless folks and got them a motel room for a week so that they would not be exposed to the freezing temps. I told him that he was working his way into a front row seat in heaven.
Tug headed back to Adventure about 10PM and I once again positioned the space heater aft and crawled into my freezing cold sleeping bag and fell asleep thinking that I was glad to have a comfortable place to sleep.