ACCIDENTAL RESCUE
My childhood was filled with stories of the hurricane-battered ships lost between the Tortugas and the Marquesas, the most famous being the Nuestra Señora de Atocha. I tried to imagine that passage, leaving from Cuba for Spain and running afoul of a storm, littering the treasures of the Spanish Empire strewn across the seafloor. I gazed down at the cobalt water, amazed that I could see bottom.
My husband, Mike and I had many expectations for our short trip to the Dry Tortugas aboard Stacy’s World, our 47-foot Concorde motor cruiser, but rescuing three Cuban refugees in 15-foot seas was not one of them.
Traveling to the westernmost islands in the Florida Keys was a childhood dream of mine. I could remember my mother telling stories about untouched reefs, shipwrecks full of gold and a haunted fort surrounded by pristine waters teeming with turtles and tropical fish. Maybe it was my father’s refusal to travel anywhere he couldn’t reach by car, or perhaps it was the 70 miles of open water between Key West and Garden Key, but the cluster of seven islands seemed as impossibly far away in reality as they were in
