Key West - We get the bottom scrubbed

The glass bottom boat

The viewing station is down below, forward

There's a new boat on the dock this year that has a glass bottom but with a difference. The boat is named "Ocean Vue Adventures". The glass bottom is enclosed in a light proof chamber so you can see beneath the boat without light interference. As and added advantage, it also has a ring of high powered lights around the glass bottom so it could be used at night. To further enhance the uniqueness of the boat, it also has hydrofoils for high speed transit to the reefs and back. Unfortunately, the boat is not yet ready for Key West, it has a number of things needed to bring it up to Key West inspection standards. It seems like a great idea for those who can't snorkel and especially those who may be interested in night snorkeling but are concerned about entering the water at night. It would be interesting to see how affected some of the passengers would be on a less than flat ocean day down inside the boat, enclosed, looking down at the glass bottom with no view of the ocean to steady yourself.

Our diver - a regular in the area

When we've been in Key West for any length of time, the bottom of the boat needs to be scrubbed. There's no current in the Key West Bight Harbor to clean the bottom naturally since the ablative bottom paint requires some flow of water to renew its surface. The solution used by all in the marina is a diver to manually remove bottom growth. We usually have it done the last week just before we leave so today was close enough since we plan on leaving Thursday for Newfound Harbor pending a good report on Ann from our scheduled doctor's visit on Wednesday. As far as that goes, it was just another day of recovery, nothing dramatic but gradual improvement nevertheless.