3/8 - 3/14 - Marathon, Florida

Our neighbors, Pat Haws and . . .

Charlie Haws, aboard for a four hour tour of Marathon.

Chef George at the Seafood Festival.

Breaking out another box of fish and another pitcher of beer.

Pat working the night shift breading fish.

George's new drinking buddies.

Sunday at the Seafood Festival
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On Monday Charlie and Pat joined us on "Reflection" for a 4 hour tour of the Gulf, Boot Key Harbor, and some of the canals off of Sisters' Creek. On our trip we passed some beautiful homes and we also traveled into a little -known large lagoon immediately behind the club house of the Sombrero Country Club. The guys had found it the day before on their dinghy ride, and with its deep water and abundant anchoring space, it would make a great hurricane hole. We were just surprised that there were no boats there!

Later that evening we all had cocktails aboard followed by dinner at "Cabana Breezes". Charlie and Pat are a terrific couple, and we had many laughs as they both recounted stories of his being a "Paintball" champion, and their years living in Texas and Pennsylvania. They also love the Florida Keys as we do, and we wouldn't be surprised if they joined us here next year either on a boat of their own, or in a condo. The Haws' left on Tuesday afternoon, and we were glad to have had such a good time together with these wonderful neighbors.

We spent the next few days catching up on boat chores, laundry, shopping and in preparation for "Marathon Original Seafood Festival" which was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. It is the largest festival held in the Keys, and is second only to "Fantasy Fest" which is held in October in Key West. It is run by the Organized Fishermen of Florida and the Greater Marathon Chamber of Commerce as a fund-raiser for various local charities and for school scholarships. The expected attendance was 20,000 people.

Besides all kinds of fresh seafood (stone crab, lobster, shrimp, golden crab, raw bar, and mahi-mahi), burger, hot dogs, etc., there were a multitude of vendors, artists, and organizations who had rented booths. In addition, there were lots of rides for the kids, 8 musical groups scheduled for both days, and a Coast Guard military tribute and Naval Jet fly-over on Sunday. Running an event of this size requires an extremely large crew of people working behind the scenes, and when they advertised for volunteers to help work at the Festival, George and I decided that this might be fun. Our assignment was to help out at the Seafood tent from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. on Saturday night.

We arrived at the Festival seafood stand just before 5 p.m. looking for our assignment. The man in-charge asked us if we would like to help bread fish. "Sure", we said, "just show us what to do." We were taken to a tent behind the scenes where we met several commercial fishermen who had been helping out breading fish since early morning. They gave us aprons and rubber gloves and then showed us the rapid fire way to bread fish. We each stood in front of three large pans: the first containing about 20 pounds of pieces of mahi-mahi in a water lime juice solution, the center pan filled with cracker meal with garlic powder and coarse black pepper mixed in, and the last pan holding the finished product.

The hand that picked up the fish was your wet hand, and the hand that breaded the fish was your dry hand, but you must not get them mixed up. So with your wet hand you picked up a piece of fish, shook off the excess water and dropped it into the cracker meal mix. Then with your dry hand you breaded the fish and placed it in the finished pan. Done correctly, the whole process should take no more than a few seconds per piece.

The fish began to fly. Within a couple of minutes the first pan was breaded and another was brought on. There were six of us working in teams of two, each standing across the table from his partner. By the time the Festival closed that night we must have breaded close to a thousand pieces of fish by ourselves!

Helping out had its benefits as we took short breaks every now and then, and while on break you could eat all the fried fish that you wanted and all the beer you could drink. The drinking part went on for some even while not on break! George took full advantage of these perks, and so did the rest of the fisherman working with us. By the end of the night George and the boys were doing shots of Captain Morgan, too! These guys could really put it away - all in the spirit of giving of course!

The next morning the Captain was moving a little slowly (and it wasn't just because of the change to Daylight Savings Time). Pat said she was fine, but that was until she got out of bed and got to feel her sore muscles. After breakfast we both decided that we needed a nap, however, by noon we both rallied and went back to the Festival - this time just to walk around and listen to the music. Neither one of us wanted to see another piece of fried fish, although George did manage to down a couple of beers. We returned early to the boat to continue our recuperation.