Sailing the Open Seas Of My Mind
- Wild Dirt
- Nov 8, 2021
- 3 min read
By Alexander Kwapis
Shelter-in-place gotcha feeling like you’re on a boat out at sea? At times I feel a little self-contained like I’m on a sailboat. Then it got me reminiscing of sailing and scuba diving in the Florida Keys.
Photo courtesy of Kwapis Family
In 1998, four teenage Venture Crew scouts, of the Boy Scouts of America, and three adult advisors spent two weeks at The B.S.A. High Adventure Sea Base in the Florida Keys, in search of a high sea voyage, scuba diving, and helping build artificial reefs. The previous year I joined the Boy Scouts and quickly ran through the ranks, becoming Senior Patrol Leader. The same year as this high adventure trip entered into the B.S.A’s Order of the Arrow. Also that same year, our troop swelled from only five youths the year I joined to over fifty by the end of my second year in the troop. Needless to say, I was busy.
Photo courtesy of Kwapis Family
In the middle of all that, for months before shipping out to the Sea Base, I was working hard towards my PADI scuba diving certification. Studying after school and taking classes with my father and other adults who were getting their certificates too. This might be very normal for those youths living in warm weather coastal towns. However, I was in Michigan, and it was the middle of winter when I was taking my courses and learning to dive into swimming pools. Later as part of my final physical tests to receive my certification, I went down to a water-filled gravel quarry in Ohio.
When I finally arrived at the Sea Base, I was officially a PADI certified scuba diver before I even had my driver’s license. We spent the first eight days of diving and building artificial reefs. I remember waking up early to the hot and humid ocean sun. The smell of salt and sunscreen. The taste of fresh seafood. The feeling of being in the vastness of the ocean.
This was my first time diving in the open ocean, and it was magical and scary at the same time. A barracuda swam between my fins, I dove near nurse sharks and saw eels swimming amongst the coral. I scuba dived over ten times on the trip. One night we descended on what seemed like the cliff edge of an abyss. Octopi and other sea creatures were electric in the darkness of the ocean at night.
Photo courtesy of Kwapis Family
The second week started with meeting our Coast Guard-licensed captain, a retired white grandfather who owned our home away from home for the next week and chartered it to the Scouts. We boarded the forty-five-ish foot Antares, named after the brightest star in the Scorpius constellation, and we started our Coral Reef Sailing trip. While the Sea Base was located at Islamorada, Florida, at the end of Lower Matecumbe Key, we started and ended our trip at Bahia Honda State Park. All week we hopped from reef to reef with a mid-week stop in Key West. Our sailing yacht had a self-contained galley and dining area where we would cook our meals provided by the Sea Base. We snorkeled several times a day in the Florida Reef Tract within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. We also went lobster diving every day and ate fresh lobster for every meal on the tip. Our crew got really efficient at snorkeling around the reefs in search of lobsters. Going down in pairs, we would hunt for lobsters. Using the buddy system, we would use a stick to tap in front of the lobster to get their attention. We would position a net behind the creatures. As we taped the stick closer, the lobster would shoot backward away from the stick and inadvertently be captured in our net. Over and over again for a week, we had grilled lobster. I never ate lobster before this trip, and for ten years after, I didn’t either. And since eating lobster again, I’ve never tasted anything as good as my own fresh catch.
Come back again for part two of Sailing the Open Seas Of My Mind where I continue reminiscing about my sailing trip. For everyone, its been a different way of life while sheltering-in-place, and I am glad I can look back on fond memories like this.
