Wednesday, February 16, 2022
We took the tender into KW for lunch, then we walked to visit the Mel Fischer museum and Hemingway House.
The Mel Fischer Maritime museum was incredible. The first floor was dedicated to the history of the Fischer family’s search for the Atocha. It took the family 16 years to find the Atocha- which might seem like a long time, until you consider that it sunk in 1824 (verify) and had been the subject of various searches over the last several centuries.
The second floor had other points of history- social, political, and maritime history covering Key West’s role in the Cuban Missile crisis, maritime slave trade, and piracy.
The Mel Fischer Maritime Museum contains an extensive collection of artifacts from 17th century shipwrecks, such as the Henrietta Marie, Nuestra Señora de Atocha and Santa Margarita.
After the Mel Fischer Museum, we strolled over to the Hemingway House. It was on our walk over that I learned that Paul’s dad had been good friends with Hemingway, fishing and hunting together in the area around Ketchum, ID. P With a six-year age gap between him and his older brother, Paul said he hadn’t paid attention to his dad’s friendships. Paul said he didn’t learn about his father’s friendship with Hemingway until he was in 50s, when his brother would regale him with stories of sitting with their dad and Hemingway at Hemingway’s kitchen table.
The Hemingway House was a cash only tour ($17/pp), and the property is known for not only sharing the history of Hemingway’s adult life, but also the six toed cats who live on the property, all descendants of the original six-toed cat, Snowball, who had been a gift to Hemingway from ________.
Though I recall reading the two Hemingway books (A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea) as part of high school English classes- I don’t remember learning much about Hemingway himself.
He was married four times- divorcing each time due to his infidelity.
His first wife,, ______ and his second wife ______ were best friends. It was their friendship that caused him to be introduced to ___ , and their torrid affair was the cause of his divorce from . He married _______ less than six months after his first divorce had been finalized. His third wife was well known in her own right- a war correspondent, and the only woman to have been present on Normandy Beach on D-Day.
His third wife, angry at his infidelity, spent the last of his money having a swimming pool installed while he was off philandering. It was, at the time, the only pool within 100 miles of the area. He is famous for saying she spent his last penny on the pool.
When we finished our museum excursions, we ambled about the streets of Key West for a bit, picking up a few last-minute items in anticipation of our sailing trip the next day. Paul *almost* lost me on the streets of Key West, He quickly outdistanced me when I became trapped behind a couple who couldn’t decide which way to go and had blocked the crosswalk with their dithering, causing me to miss the crossing signal. When he realized he had lost me (and the wine, which I was carrying in my backpack), he had lingered until I caught up. After just over five miles of walking, we took an Uber back to the Marina, and loaded up the tender with our groceries to go back out to the Kya Anne.
We spent the night anchored at Man O War harbor, riding out the weather and watching a couple episodes of season 2 of The Chosen. We committed to rising early to head out and called it a night just before 9 pm. It was another glorious and amazing day in Key West.
