Ragged Key Number One

Описание: The Ragged Keys have no individual names, only numbers and the shared designation of being "the Ragged Keys". Number five is the island just north of Boca Chita, where all the birds fly home to roost for the night. Number three has a house on it that dates back to a time before this area was a national park, so those people have a house inside the park. Number two has had most of the soil washed away by hurricanes and there is just some bedrock poking up a few inches above water and the remains of a couple dead trees. Number one is the northernmost of the Ragged Keys and the most exposed to the open ocean. You can find clean ocean water there when the tide is coming in. This is the best time to go in the water since the outgoing tide brings a lot of contaminated water from biscayne Bay past there. The island had been developed and you can still see posts from a dock, a seawall surrounds the entire island, there are a lot of pilings where a wood house once stood and some low ruins of other concrete walls nearby. Today, birds roost and nest on the island. People occasionally camp there if they are not into the party atmosphere at Boca Chita. There is a deep water channel leading from the farthest marker buoys on the channel to Boca Chita to the west beach at Ragged Key number one. I visited on an exceptional day. There are only a few days each summer when the ocean is completely flat with no waves or ripples at all. I could see everything on the bottom in the glassy-calm water. Earlier in the trip I tried to start the dinghy motor but failed, so I rowed the dinghy ashore to explore this island.