CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES -- PART 6

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES:
Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright


IF YOU GO:

Prices start at $35 per person for a four-hour sightseeing cruise. An eight-hour sightseeing cruise is $50 per person. Two-hour sunset cruises are $20 per person.

Fishing charters cost $250 for a four-hour trip for up to four people, or $350 for an eight-hour trip for up to four people. Additional people are $75 apiece and the boat can accommodate up to a dozen people.

Tranquil Adventures is at 225 Upper Matecumbe Road in Key Largo, which is just a couple blocks off the famed Overseas Highway and less than an hour’s drive from Miami International Airport.

Phone Captain Mick at 305 451-2102 or 888 449-0697.

The website is www.tranquiladventures.com

Wright frequently writes about Travel, Wheelchair Access, Smart Growth and sustainable communities. He recently participated in the prestigious Forum on Land and the Built Environment: The Reinvented City sponsored by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Contact him at: stevewright64@yahoo.com

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES -- PART 5

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES:
Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright

Although Tranquil Adventures prides itself on providing outstanding accessibility, the trip out on the glistening waters has little to do with all the gear that makes it accommodating to people with even severe disabilities.

The trip is about gawking at luxury yachts and sponging boats.

It’s about looking at the last of the little trailer homes on the canals and the giant multistory million dollar houses that are displacing the shacks and trailers from the Keys.

It’s about coasting up the mangrove and seeing a great bird of prey, or a silly-looking pelican, sunning in its branches.

It’s about a stop for Cuban coffee at a mini marina over by the drawbridge.

It’s about tying off in a backwater canal and fishing for snapper.

It’s about docking at a fish joint and going inside for grilled grouper wraps and blackened tuna tacos.

It’s about getting a therapeutic massage around six and watching the fiery orange sun kiss the water’s edge at eight o’clock sunset.

It’s about catching a little fish and deciding to throw him back.

It’s about the relaxing feeling that comes over you when you see Captain Mick at the helm, barefoot and shooting you one of those knowing winks that says “heck yes this is paradise down here in Largo.”

It’s about new friends, old jokes and cold beverages under the Keys’ perpetual summer sun.

TOMORROW: IF YOU GO RESOURCE INFORMATION

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES -- PART 4

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES:
Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright

That Captain Mick also has snorkeling gear and knows the safest places in the Keys to do it in.

With his boat-mounted lift that lowers people into the water from the deck of the boat, he has enabled several mobility-impaired snorkelers.

For those with better range-of-motion, Captain Mick has a pair of sit-on-top ocean kayaks. It’s fun to watch him scramble up the ladder to the roof of his boat, manhandle a bulky kayak, then drop it into the pure blue waters. He can even use the hydraulic lift to ease a kayaker down into his watercraft.

The roof of the boat and its retractable awning provide excellent shade for wheelers and other landlubbers that haven’t quite acquired that Keys-brown tan that seafarers like that Captain have developed.

Better than all the lifts, ramps and improvised gear, is the down to earth conversation with a boater who truly loves the Keys that he has called home for nearly two decades.

Captain Mick loves to tell a big fish tale and see if the gullible rube believes a giant tarpon can be caught with a hollowed out detergent bottle.

He loves to tell a few dirty jokes, then blame them on the Internet (he’s just reporting the news, repeating the emailed groaners that friends send him.)

TOMORROW: THE BEAUTY OF THE FLORIDA KEYS

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES -- PART 3

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES:
Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright

Captain Mick is an improviser. Since pontoon boats don’t typically have a restroom on board, he has come up with the next best thing – an onboard portable flush toilet, shower curtains for privacy and a CD-player for turning up the music to provide an additional layer of sound privacy.

The Captain also loves to improvise tours. A morning run to the reef might morph into an evening cruise that puts you in position to view one of those picture perfect Florida Keys sunsets.

The great thing about Captain Mick’s creativity is that it launches personally tailored accessible journeys.

He is well aware that far too many tours aimed at the disability market deliver tame, boring, one-size-fits-all group tours.

Captain Mick doesn’t like that.

If you want to fish in the morning, sightsee midday and swim in the late afternoon, he can do it.

If you want to clean the fish you caught and fire up the portable grill aboard the 28-foot Malesh, he’s ready to gut n’ grill.

TOMORROW: KAYAKING

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES -- PART 2

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES: Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright

Michael “Captain Mick” Nealey isn’t your blood-kin, but he’s the next best thing. He has taken his love of the sea and his half-century worth of insights into being a person with a disability and created Tranquil Adventures.

The operation is so laid back, you almost forget that Captain Mick isn’t your uncle, so you will have to pay him for the use of his chartered boat. But whether you go out for a half day or a full day on the waters, you’ll soon feel like your skimming over the shallows in the company of a favorite relative.

Captain Mick has the perfect attitude for a fishing (or sightseeing, it costs less to sightsee because you don’t pay for fishing bait and tackle) guide. And he is actively angling for the disabled travel dollar.

The minute you call him, he gives you directions to park on the part of his little
Key Largo lot that gets you closest to the gate, which leads to the dock out back of his home. He wants to make sure you don’t have to negotiate any unnecessary distances in your wheelchair

TOMORROW: FISHING WITH CAPTAIN MICK

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES: Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

CAPTAIN MICK’S WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE TRANQUIL ADVENTURES: Like having a favorite uncle with an accessible pontoon boat in Key Largo

By Steve Wright

What could be better than having a friendly, storytelling uncle with a boat in the Florida Keys?

How about an uncle who has a ramp- and lift-equipped pontoon boat that is perfect for wheelchair users?

It gets even better. This uncle doesn’t just have accessibility equipment, he has insights into the needs of disabled sightseeing and fishing cruisers, because he has post polio syndrome and sometimes uses a wheelchair for his own mobility.

And best of all, this uncle knows every inch of Key Largo from the reef to the bay to the gulf to the mangrove-lined backwaters to the mansion-lined canals. He’s an expert angler and he’s figured out all kinds of ways of rigging fishing poles and equipment to accommodate even high level quadriplegics.

To add icing to the cake, he has a portable ramp that provides access to the docks at the little out of the way fish joints – so you can get fresh Keys seafood in your belly even if you don’t catch enough to grill on board the boat.

And uncle’s subtropical hideaway is located less than an hour’s drive from one of the largest airports in the world, with thousands of convenient flights connecting you to this neck of the woods from just about anyplace.

Add in a hydraulic lift that can lower disabled swimmers into the warm, gentle, shallow waters off Key Largo and an on-board massage table – the uncle, of course, is a licensed massage therapist – and the deal becomes too good to be true. Surely this uncle character is a mythical being. No one person could offer so much appealing to disabled seafarers, could he?

TOMORROW: MEET CAPTAIN MICK
The website is www.tranquiladventures.com

Wright is a Pulitzer-nominated writer who lives in Miami’s Little Havana. Contact him at: stevewright64@yahoo.com