{"id":4188,"date":"2015-03-04T15:51:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T15:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=4188"},"modified":"2015-03-04T15:51:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T15:51:07","slug":"turtle-rehab-florida-keys-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=4188","title":{"rendered":"Turtle rehab, Florida Keys style."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Wednesday morning here in Marathon and, not surprisingly, it\u2019s plenty warm and sunny.\u00a0 It seems that the unseasonably cool weather that we were facing a few weeks ago has given way to tropical temperatures and I have to say that it\u2019s not hard to take for us snowbirds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though we are now beginning to sweat a bit about our plans to get Pandora north to North Carolina where she will stay while she\u2019s on the market,\u00a0 we are feeling pretty dug in here in the Keys.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I prefer it to the Bahamas as it just isn\u2019t the crystal clear perfect blue water that we love.\u00a0 However, it is good to be in easy touch with family.<\/p>\n

Our boys are both pretty busy with Christopher headed of to San Francisco for a few months as he works on starting a business and Rob, on top of a grueling work travel schedule, is planning a wedding. And anyone who\u2019s planned one, knows that they tend to take a life of their own.<\/p>\n

On top of that, my mother has been in the hospital and we decided to move her into a more permanent nursing home from her assisted living apartment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One way or the other, there\u2019s plenty going on so it\u2019s good to be within easy, and affordable, cell range, something that\u2019s \u00a0we never have in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

So, our thoughts turn north even though we have nearly 6 weeks till our April 15th<\/sup> deadline when we have to head off to a friend\u2019s son\u2019s wedding.\u00a0 One way or the other, lots of fun stuff to plan for and around.\u00a0 And, on top of it all we will have to catch a weather window\u00a0 soon to get back to the Ft Lauderdale area and north to the Carolinas, about 800 miles north from Marathon.<\/p>\n

So, enough about what\u2019s happening next, how about yesterday?<\/p>\n

Yesterday we saw turtles, lots of turtles.\u00a0 It was great.\u00a0 We visited the Turtle Hospital,<\/a> a short walk from the City Marina and got a tour from one of the staff.\u00a0 This \u201chospital\u201d is a sanctuary for seaturtles that have been injured in some way, by boat strikes, cold water standings or other problems.\u00a0 They do what they can to rehabilitate injured animals and, if possible, return them to the wild.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fascinating place and it\u2019s clear that the staff is dedicated to doing what they can to protect marine turtles of all kind. \u00a0\u00a0Interestingly, there are only five species of marine turtles worldwide, something that I had never thought about it but assumed that there were many more.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t go into too much detail except to say that it was a fascinating tour which included a lecture as well as an opportunity to see and even feed live turtles.<\/p>\n

By far the most abundant type in the wild is the Green Turtle and there were plenty of them to see.\u00a0 They are called \u201cgreen\u201d as their meat is that color.\u00a0 They are vegetarians and we each were given an opportunity to feed them lettuce and green pepper. \u00a0They were quite beautiful. \u00a0\u00a0We have seen many of these while sailing but it was great to see them up close.\"\"<\/a>It was also interesting to see the color variation, even among the same species.\u00a0\u00a0 Some were not as brightly colored.\"\"<\/a><\/span>Most were more juvenile, less than two feet long but there was one hatchling there. \u00a0Very cute.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>It seems that some turtles hatch on the beaches and get confused by lights from shore and end up walking toward land instead of heading out to sea.\u00a0 Baby turtles spend their youth in the \u201cSargasso sea\u201d about 6o miles east of Florida and don\u2019t come back into coastal waters until they are larger and can defend themselves.\u00a0 As you can imagine, the fatality rate of tiny hatchlings making their way from the beach and 60 miles out to sea is very high.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a pretty good group on the tour and we were each able to feed the turtles, who loved that, as we surrounded one of the tanks. \u00a0Here’s Brenda doing her part with enthusiastic turtles each trying to get their fair share.\u00a0\"\"<\/a>The markings on their heads and shells is quite beautiful.<\/span>\"\"<\/a>It was also interesting to see some of the very large iquanas that lived on the property.\u00a0 This guy was clearly a dominant male and seemed pretty sure of himself.\"\"<\/a><\/span>They do great work at the \u201chospital\u201d and are doing a good job of getting the word out to visitors about saving these wonderful creatures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of \u201clocals\u201d, I have mentioned the number of cruisers that hang out here in Marathon.\u00a0 How about this shot of the dinghy dock, one of two at the city marina.\u00a0 This will give you a pretty good idea of just how many cruisers are here.\u00a0 And, this is only one of the docks and these are only the dinks that are ashore at any given time.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>It\u2019s amazing just how many boats there are, and they never leave.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, I got a call from a friend last evening, as Brenda and I were watching the sunset, who wanted to tell me that while we were good friends he wasn\u2019t thinking good thoughts about me at that particular moment as he slogged his way through an ice storm on his way home from work.<\/p>\n

Nope, no ice here except in my G&T but I guess I\u2019ll leave it at that as I have some errands to run and want to be sure that I am able to get a spot on the dock without pushing aside one of those pesky dinks.\u00a0\u00a0 Just like the \u201cturtle hospital\u201d this place is looking a lot like \u201csenior rehab\u201d for all of us \u201csnowbirds\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Wednesday morning here in Marathon and, not surprisingly, it\u2019s plenty warm and sunny.\u00a0 It seems that the unseasonably cool weather that we were facing a few weeks ago has given way to tropical temperatures and I have to say that it\u2019s not hard to take for us snowbirds. Even though we are now beginning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4197,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions\/4197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}