January trip-swimming with manatees

This is Kaitlin doing her Ode To Barbara Manatee song and dance at 5 am.
At 5:30 we had our Manatee Manners video and lesson. We learned that you can only touch a manatee with one hand plus many other rules. My favorite rule is 'no giving any water to the manatees'. Wait, let me think about that a minute, they are in water and how would you give them water anyway?
Andrew in his wet suit
our group, notice the coats- it is 27 degrees
notice the darkness
notice the coats and cold looks on their faces- did I mention it is 27 degrees?
Here they are putting on vests to help them float
getting her game face on
the water temperature is 72 near the springs but colder near the surface and 27 is the air temperature. They said they had trouble catching their breath it was so cold.


John and Marisa

here are Kaitlin and Taylor. They found out early on that the Manatees like bright colored things like K's hair and T's hot pink toenails. Even with the warning that the manatees won't come around you if you are not silent, the girls squealed as the manatees pulled on their toes and the loose belts from their vests. They think they squealed on the same wave length as the manatees talked because the manatees flocked to them.
here is Money the manatee whisperer. They put their little manatee arms -ok, ok, flippers- around his legs and arms. I think they wanted to take him with them.

Here is the inside of our boat. In the back on the left is a dressing room and on the right is the bathroom. We had the whole boat to ourselves which was wonderful. We were able to bring the swimmers out one at a time and all of us could help to get them dry.

Here is my sweet brother, John and his sweet wife Elaine. The first swimmer up was Marisa. And to say she was cold would be an understatement. The captain of the boat helped with her wetsuit and then she put on warm clothes. Even with her warm clothes she was shivering, no, she was SHIVERING. Uncle John had to hold her hot cocoa for her to drink it because she was spilling it with each shiver. When Aunt Elaine realized that Marisa didn't have any socks, Aunt Elaine took off a pair of socks and put them on Marisa. Now mind you, it was still really cold and Aunt Elaine had to take off her shoes to take off a pair of her socks for Marisa. I know that Marisa got her feet warmed up by the socks but Aunt Elaine's actions warmed me up from the inside out.

Barbara Manatee!


ah! daylight
do you see John and Marisa?
our bus
our boat.
Here is Kaitlin with a stuffed Manatee. One of my friends, ElizabethT, thought I said that we were going to swim with Mannequins! We laughed so hard about that. Here is Kaitlin swimming with a manatee mannequin!

We had breakfast after the swim at a local restaurant that our boat captain told us about.
It was great. I got hot cocoa and it warmed me up.