After spending our first day in Key West soaking up the beautiful sunset at Latitudes, we were ready to spend our next full day in Key West swimming in the amazing ocean.

Luckily for us, Mr. A had organized a water adventure through Fury, a local boat company, where we would be snorkeling, parasailing, and jet skiing all day.

Our trip started bright and early at 9am when we met Fury at the dock to sign our life away.  We literally must have signed at least 20 waivers in order to be able to get on the boat.  Guess jet skis are a little dangerous…oh wait, I already knew that.

Once we agreed not to sue Fury for any injuries, we were set to board their beautiful 65 foot sailing catamaran for our day of fun.

Our first stop was the ship’s breakfast, where we grabbed some fresh fruit, bagels, and muffins, all included in our ticket price, and then we headed up to the sundeck to scout out the perfect spot.

We were blessed with a sunshiny, gorgeous day on the big blue sea—it didn’t even rain once.

Once all the passengers were aboard, we headed out for our 7 mile ride to the only living coral reef in America—the Florida Keys Reef Tract.

On our way out to the open ocean, we passed by the cruise terminal in Key West.

Our captain also took this time to explain a little bit about what we would be seeing and gave us the standard snorkeling safety briefing.  Apparently, the Florida Keys reef runs approximately 220 miles and is the third largest reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Meso-American reef in Belize).  I had no idea.

When we arrived at our snorkeling spot, we were greeted by the most beautiful aqua blue waters that I’ve seen since our days in Antigua.

Getting into the water was super easy since we were in a catamaran.  The crew simply lifted up a few doors and revealed a staircase down to the water.  We just had to slip on our snorkel gear, slide down the stairs, and then swim into the water.

Mr. A brought an old camera of ours into the water in a waterproof case so we could take some shots for you.   They aren’t the best quality but hey we tried.

We spent the whole hour swimming all over the reef trying to find as many different kinds of sea life as possible.

There were tons of fish.  Even a bunch of schools of fish that would swim right up to you.

And then there were jellyfish.

Like this sucker.  We also spent a lot of time swimming around, screaming at, and generally trying to avoid jellyfish.  Luckily, we never got stung.

But mainly, we just stared at this huge school of zebra striped fish.

Until out of the corner of our eye, I saw a huge gray figure trolling along the bottom of the coral.   I had to do a double take.  And when I looked back, it was exactly what I thought it was.

A shark.

I’m not going to lying, we both had an internal mini panic attack when we saw the shark.  All I could think in my head was that we were totally screwed because we were wearing flippers and sharks often mistake flippers for fish.

I immediately hightailed it out of there.

But not before Mr. A took this picture.

Later, we swam over to one of the crew members and told her that we saw a shark.  After explaining what it looked like, she told us it was a nurse shark and we didn’t have anything to worry about.  Supposedly, they are very docile and hardly ever attack.  Whoops.  Guess that’s what I get for being an inexperienced snorkeler.

After settling down from our shark encounter (I mean he was only like 8 feet away from us), we decided to keep snorkeling until eventually our captain called us all back to the boat for lunch.

Once we all loaded in the boat, we headed off to our next location while lunch was being served.  While I loved our whole day on the Fury, lunch definitely left a lot to be desired—we had fried chicken, lunch meat sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad, oreos, and chips ahoy to choose from.  Granted it was included in the price of the ticket and I’m sure lots of people love these “American” classics.  But I’m not too keen on stuffing my face with greasy fried chicken while wearing a two piece bathing suit.  To each their own.

Since the sail time to our next location was about 30 minutes, we opted to take a little nap on the sunning deck.

To me there’s nothing more relaxing than gentle ocean rock.

A quick nap later we arrived at what Fury likes to call adventure land.  Basically, it’s a water park that they’ve created in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.  Here we had 2 hours to rotate between 3 activities, swimming in the ocean and playing with the inflatable toys/kayaking, parasailing, and jet skiing.  They split the boat into groups so that everyone could rotate through the activities without a wait.

Our group started off in the parasailing spot first.  A smaller speed boat picked up our group of 10 from the side of the catamaran and took us for a 45 minute ride.  Each group of 2 got to parasail for about 6 minutes while the others watched down below.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have from this part of the adventure.  We paid Fury to take pictures of us while we were parasailing but the cd they gave us didn’t have any pictures on it (I guess something went wrong when they tried to burn the cd).  We got our money back but we were pictureless.

Let’s just pretend that’s us.

I had been parasailing before but Mr. A hadn’t.  This time was just as enjoyable as the last.  There’s a peace and quiet that comes from being 300 feet up in the air that’s truly unmatched.  I wish I could have stayed up there longer.

Even though the parasailing guys screwed up our pictures, they still have a special place in my heart.  The adorable straw hat you see me wearing in the pictures above actually flew off my head while we were driving around on the boat.  Dirty (he gave this name to himself, not me), one of the crew members, actually volunteered to jump in the water and get my hat.  Seriously, so sweet.  And it made up for him calling me blondie earlier

Once parasailing was over, it was our turn to jet ski.  I was a little apprehensive about this part because I’ve heard of so many people getting hurt jet skiing.  Luckily, Fury has their jet skiing area set up like a Nascar race, where everyone circles in the same direction.  This seemed to make things safer but I was still pretty terrified.

We had fun and no one got hurt.  I’m still not convinced, however, that jet skiing is really as fun as everyone thinks it is…maybe I just spend too much time about worrying about getting hurt.

Once jet skiing was over, we were free to swim in the play zone of the park.  There were fun inflatable toys to climb and jump on and cool waters to swim in.  A nice break from the adrenaline rush of parasailing and jet skiing.

After about 30 minutes of playing, our time in the Gulf of Mexico was up.  We swam back into the boat, where we were greeted with happy hour beers and wine.

And then proceeded to snooze the entire way back to the port.

Mr. A and I both agreed that this was our favorite activity from our entire Key West trip.  While it was pretty expensive (over $100 a person), it was definitely worth it to be able to cram all these fun activities into one day.

If you are in Key West, I definitely recommend taking a trip with Fury and say hi to Dirty for me! (If you are interested in the package we picked it’s called the adventure package)

Have you ever been snorkeling, parasailing, or jet skiing?