Sailing the Florida Keys

Excerpts from Sailing the Florida Keys by John M. Grimsrud

Jim and Mary Flood;

Jim and Mary Flood were the owners of a twin-engine sport fishing boat named Mistress… Jim’s reason for owning the Mistress was to have headquarters for a dockside party…With a glib Irish wit and party mentality, Jim poured all visitors his potent high-octane and nearly lethal concoction that Jim jokingly called “cherry bounce.” It felt like 200 proof!

Jim had worked for Household Finance in Chicago and later Collagen Water Company where he made enough dough…Jim owned five different planes that included a DC-3 and a Piper Aztec before he came to the sunny southland to lay back. Jim drove the biggest Lincoln Continental available and owned the biggest house on the block…in the high-rent district. Jim joined the sailing community when he bought a classic Crocker designed 40-foot sailboat named Puffin with a dinghy aptly named Huffin.

Jim Flood aboard Puffin in, Melbourne Harbor.

Puffin

Jim and Mary Flood … anchored…south of Melbourne with their Puffin…his spiffy yacht that now looked like a show room specimen with its meticulous paint and varnish work. We had a fabulous time together catching fish for our dinner. Jim had a knack for landing trout, and Jane had the talent to cook.

When Jim and Mary got ready to leave, I gave a demonstration of how to sail up their anchor without using the engine…I pointed Jim’s pristine yacht in the proper direction, sheeted in the sails for optimum speed and performance, handed the helm over to Jim, and I got into my dinghy giving Jim and Mary a thumbs-up when they briskly sprinted off on a beam reach. We were later told this was the very best sail they ever had.

Jim, a scientific wine maker: Jim’s exact and precise procedures for making wine were without dispute the only acceptable way to make wine. Jim and Mary came to our boat for dinner, and Mary went to great lengths to compliment Jane on her exquisite wine…would not quit her praise… Jane is a fine wine maker…what made this incident hilarious was that the wine was made using Welch’s concentrated grape juice… we had heard Jim go extremes to profess his scornful disdain for wine made from concentrated grape juice. We knew that Jim knew this was concentrate wine, and we could sense him smoldering. Mary either knew this was wine from concentrate and was giving her husband the business or if she did not know, then Jim knew we were just getting a chance to see him squirm.

Another Jim Flood wine story: Jim told Jane that we needed to take advantage of the prolific fox grapes to be harvested in the area. We talked to our friend Harold and asked if he knew of any fox grapes. next we were off on another all-day excursion into the county down the back roads that just happened to yield lots of fox grapes and a number of taverns where Harold was well known. Jane followed Jim’s exact winemaking instructions with the fox grapes and sugar, but in the end we wound up with the driest mouth puckering wine ever produced aboard Dursmirg or for that matter the driest red wine we have ever sampled. When Jane gave Jim a glass of the finished wine to sample, Jim’s comment to Jane was: “It's always considered a good idea to wash the feet before stomping, and in good society it is considered that the shoes as well as the socks should be removed. If the socks have been worn for more than two weeks, they have a tendency to add certain piquancy to the finished product, though after the first bottle or so the unique flavors tend to disappear.”

End of excerpts.

We met Jim and Mary Flood on our yearly excursions to south Florida aboard our live-aboard sailboat Dursmirg. We made the Indian River area and Melbourne a regular anchoring stopover. The boating community included the Floods plus many others who became our life-long friends. Mary passed away a few years ago, but Jim is still ticking and keeps the jokes flowing.

These interesting people and many fascinating places are part of our Travels of Dursmirg sailing series. The Indian River is included in Sailing the Florida Keys, Volume 3. 

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