Today we toured town, visiting more than 15 establishments while delivering posters to help promote the Studio’s upcoming events. It was fun to meet some of the owners while doing some volunteer work for the Studios.
Pearl's on United
Coffee and Tea Shop on Duval
And, of course a tour of town would not be complete without a visit to see the new arrivals at one of our favorite destinations:
Dogs on Duval
The English Bulldog was particularly cute sitting on his friends!
While visiting the waterfront today there was strong evidence of the boats returning to town for their annual races starting next week. This was the scene last week:
Boats from overseas?
Was this an international arrival?
There was no particular hints other than the text on the stand holding these boat hulls, but there are supposed to be boats from a number of other countries arriving for the annual regatta. Were these just early arrivals from the UK?
Today it was a little more busy on the waterfront. As the races start next Monday, many of the teams were preparing their boats.
Boats here for the Regatta
A Melges 24
This is one of the smaller boats in competition here – and they still have a crew of 4 or 5, the Melges 24 is a fast racing sports boat.
Some of them require a crane to help setup
The ones arriving on the frames, probably from overseas, required a crane to help lift them upright and setup the mast.
The Race Headquarters - on Caroline St
This year the on-land race headquarters are centered around Kelly’s on Caroline Street. They show their main sponsor prominently and some of the countries from which the 130+ boats hail. For more details go to the Key West 2011 website.
Having been given a tip as we left the library today by what seemed to be one of the housing-challenged members of this community, we prepared to catch sight of the International Space Station as it passed overhead. Waiting for the sun to set, as usual there are always good pictures of the sky, even when there are power lines in the way.
Impressive sunset even with power lines overhead
So the information we were given was that you would be able to see a bright spot in the sky, brighter than any planet or star in view and it would pass from the approximate north-west to the south-east and would take about four minutes to traverse the sky starting about 6:55pm.
Well, other than the moon that looked impressive even behind the partly cloudy sky:
Moon in a partly cloudy sky
this is what we could see:
The International Space Station
Space Station - at least it's not round !
While the pictures are not that exciting, it was really quite amazing to watch this small white light pass over us from North to South in just a few minutes. And it was even more impressive once we looked at the pictures and confirmed that it was not round – so it was not a star or a planet, it must have been the International Space Station passing overhead !
