New Years Eve in Key West

One of our objectives on this trip was to attend the New Years eve celebrations in Key West. As mentioned before, Key West is a very Bohemian, fun party town, full of beautiful well kept Victorian homes, tropical tree and flower lined streets.

Chris has never been a big fan of New Years eve parties unless they are shared with close friends.  I have always been intrigued by and watched the TV pan around the globe to the best parties in Moscow, Bejing, New York and Key West.   Chris promised to sail us to the Key West Party this year before we went to the Bahamas.  Well we had the best time in Key West.  We sailed down (1 day sail from Marathon) and anchored off Fleming Key just off the channel.  It was quite rolly during the day so we went ashore.  Chris's brother Gary and his wife Heather visited for one overnight.  Then  his sister Leslie and brother-in-law Tim came for two nights, one of which was New Years Eve.  The main street was closed off to most traffic so it was one big street party. 

People were better dressed than I expected.  All the young girls had sparkly tops and high heels, the boys all were cleaned up and even the older chicks (like me) looked nice.  We had a light supper on the boat and then went over to town about 9 pm.  We picked up a refreshment at the Schooner Wharf Bar and walked up a side street to Duval.  We started at the Bourbon Street Bar, where they have the ruby slipper drop at midnight.  They had a stage set up outside with some dancing young men, in their undies. 

We watched them for awhile and collected 20 necklaces thrown from the balconies.  It was fun.  Then we wandered further down the street to Aqua to watch a drag queen show for awhile... Cher and Lady Gaga female impersonators  plus the local queen performed. We went back into the street and threaded our way through the throngs of folks at Sloppy Joes. At Sloppy Joes a Conch shell decends at midnight.  Lots of great music etc.  We went back to the Schooner Bar for the descent of the pirate wench down the 75 foot mast of the Schooner America, again at midnight.

The crowd was a little tamer there. I think people were nervous about falling off the docks into the tarpons  (1.5 metre fish ) that live in the basin.  Then we jumped into the dinghy and returned to the boat.  It was a blast.  It was warm and everyone was happy.  While we were out, no one was barfing drunk, all just having a good time.   Les and Tim were spending the next day in KW but we headed back to Marathon as the forecast would have locked us in there for a week.