We sailed to the Bahia Honda State Park to spend the day at the beach and the night on the hook.  This is what I thought sailing would be like.

Three things stick out in my mind about Bahia Honda.  First, a gaggle of feisty, fun, cheek pinch worthy Hispanic kids chasing fish and shouting, Feeesh!  Feeesh!  They would squeal and run from floating sea grass and cry, Beach worms!  Beach worms!  And John had them screaming and running when he pointed out the big, hungry, sharp toothed “rock” fish to them.  And this is why fish will be pronounced feeesh from now on.

Smoking hot and making waves in the best bikini picture ever taken of me.

Secondly, we noted a black spot in the sky at sunset.  After much deliberation I googled it to find out it was a Naval Zeppelin thirty five miles southwest on Cudjoe Key.  They call the Zeppelin Fat Albert and he is a tethered radiostat radar system.  He is used for surveillance and counter drug trafficking operations.  Fat Albert has quite the history as he has been floating around since 1980.  Once he broke loose from his tether during a wind storm and flew away.  Some local lobster fisherman chased him and attached him to their boat.  Fat Albert lifted the fisherman, their boat and their 175-power engine way up in the sky  before dumping them into the mud keys.  They lived to tell the tale.

Isn’t it awesome they cut a section in the old bridge to let sailboats come to the anchorage?

Thirdly, I got so excited when we saw blue lights in the water late at night.  They would float by with bright blue tracers.  No, not my style, only wine.  The lights were all sizes between a quarter and a fist.  They were jellyfish.  The light would flash and flicker down.  I’ve read they do this for two reasons.  One, to defend themselves from predators to appear larger.  Maybe they thought Echoes was a big jellyfish eating whale?  I hope not.  Another reason is that they use phosphorescence to absorb energy and slowly release it over time in the form of light.  But I think the scientists have it all wrong.  I think that they are traveling jelly gypsy musicians jamming, singing, dancing, partying and lighting up the sea.