A beautiful day on the reef yesterday, with zero-knot winds and sunny skies. The entire day was dreamy snorkeling conditions, and then the fog rolled in around 4pm and everything changed. If you are familiar with weather patterns in Key West, then you know that winter is a bit windier out there. So when it’s zero to five knot winds in January, it’s ideal for a day of Key West snorkeling. From areas west of Sand Key Light, notable sea life we spotted included a curious sea turtle who drifted very close to see what we were doing, some very strange looking amoeba-like floating things, some colorful reef fish darting around a beautiful coral structure, and some zippy schools of bar jacks.
Then suddenly around 4pm with just about an hour and a half of daylight left, the sky to the north changed from the blue color it had been all day, to a pearl-grey. There was a clear horizontal line low in the sky, which kept moving closer. At first I thought it was a rainstorm moving in, and the line was the bottom of the rain cloud. You could see a color line on the water too, just below the line of pearl gray color.
At this time, we were at the Western Dry Rocks, which has a stick. The stick became difficult to see as the lines came closer, and I realized it wasn’t rain but fog. Within minutes the stick was no longer visible and, afraid the snorkelers would soon also disappear, I got everyone in the boat and we all headed home. It was foggy all the way home, and not until we were very close to Key West could we make out the beach at Fort Zachary State Park.
There was a wedding at the State Park, taking wedding photos, I guess. And the sunset celebration, which should have been in full swing, looked sparsely attended. The sunset cruise boats were drifting really slowly around the harbor, staying close in with their sweatshirt-clad passengers. Bummer sunset!
