Florida Keys' Watercolor Kapers

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The end destination of my 750-mile hike from Georgia to Key West was my Uncle Norman and Aunt Dolores' house. From there I roamed around Key West on the single-speed bicycle my Uncle Norman rented for me. I had the opportunity to make many sketches and watercolors.

The topics ranged from boats, historic structures, palm trees, and people, to name a few. This collection sat along with my notes, sketches, photos, and watercolors of my hike for 46 years that I kept stored in a briefcase that somehow stayed with me. After I wrote and published my book, A Walk Across Florida, my sister Denise suggested I put the collection of my Key West watercolors in a book. That is how this sequel came to be.

Each watercolor has become an inspiration for a story. Some of the stories are true. One such example is when I interviewed the captain of the now restored Western Union Cable Repair Schooner. Others are fiction, with both historic and locational facts.

As you read these stories you will experience Key West and the Keys. These stories span the time of the early 1800's to 1969. They even take you back to the beginning of time, in the Cayman Turtle Schooner, when God formed the Cayman Island chain.

You will learn about the unusually beautiful Key West architecture, sponge, trawler and deep sea fishing, Cuba, filibustering, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Second World War espionage, early Keys' wreckers and their ships, schooners, sloops, building of dugout canoes and boats, pelicans, antique Chris-Craft boats, and the Gulf Coast Intercostal Waterway.

The stories impact their topic from six pages to seventy-two pages. As any author will tell you, some stories have a way of taking on a life of their own. So I now offer to you, this collection of Florida Keys' Watercolor Kapers.

Bob