Among the keys
Sailing south-west from Miami along the glistening 125-mile chain of islands that make up the Florida Keys is a fascinating voyage. It tracks the wake of Hemingway and many other gringo conquistadors who sought to pacify this region of shifting sandbanks and storm-pummelled beaches where few monuments to men outlast the hurricane season.
The storm season generally runs from June until November and the last one in August 2019 – Hurricane Dorian – destroyed much of the northern Bahamas with 185mph winds. “We run for the mangroves with the boats and spider-tie them across the mangroves,” explains my friend Larry Thorson who keeps his Sabre 34 at a yacht club on Key Largo.
SHOAL DRAFT
Getting intimate with the Keys and the nearby Bahamas is best done on a shoal draft boat, or a lifting keeler – or, as I did recently, on a new Seawind 1260 catamaran from Sailaway Charters. The route begins at the southern end of the 3,000-mile Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) that takes boaters safely south from Boston. The shallow yet beautiful coral-strewn
