Key West, FL to Fort Myers, FL

Total Miles Traveled 1725.2

Our one month reservation at Stock Island Marina Village turned out to be eight weeks.  We just can’t think of a better place to spend the winter…….so we have made reservations for two months next year.

The only downside to this marina is its location between the Key West International Airport and a Naval Air Station.  If the wind is blowing from an east or west direction, the air traffic fly’s over the marina, luckily the planes don’t fly before 7 a.m. or after 9 p.m...  The fact that the Key’s are a narrow band of islands running east and west, I don’t think it would matter what marina you are in, the planes would be flying overhead.

We were able to get the dinghy out a few more times and had a great time on the water with our friends.

 Notice Bob passing around the snack tray, what an awesome group!

We left the sand bar and cruised 3 or 4 miles to a Tiki Bar for lunch at Cow Key.

It hasn’t all been fun and games; we have knocked out a lot of projects during our stay.  When we purchased our boat, it had a clothes washer but not a dryer.  I bought Moni a dryer for her birthday and we installed it above our washer.  You gotta love that Amazon!

We really enjoyed visiting Key West; most places have happy hour specials for food and drink so we usually go downtown four or five times a week. 

One of our favorites...The Green Parrot

 Roosters and hens roam through the restaurants and bars.

Music on the street occasionally.

I had to put this on the blog, these two guys, 70's something, each wore the others sock and shoe.  If it means something, I don't want to know.

We found our favorite Ice Cream shop.

Fixer upper?  Two blocks off of Deval Street, the lot this place sits on is probably worth a half million dollars, houses go for around a million dollars here in old town Key West.

A boat club arrived from Miami several weeks ago, they were all go fast, high horsepower boats, were heard there were going to be 50 of them.  If you look close in the background, they had their own tanker arrive to fill them up with fuel.

Finally, a great weather forecast for the Atlantic and Gulf sides of the Keys, with predicted wave heights of a foot and a half or less.  The only challenge was to convince my better half it would be no problem at all setting out on an 80 mi Gulf crossing on Friday the 13^th.    As luck would have it, we cruised 83 miles to a protected anchorage at Little Shark River without any problems and awesome cruising conditions.

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean on our departure.

Cruising the Gulf of Mexico after going around Key West.

We cruised from Key West to Marco Island with our new friends Randy and Cara on m/v Passages, they are from Ottawa, IL.

On March 14^th we cruised 67 miles to an anchorage at Marco Island.  We anchored here a few days and visited our good friends Merrill and Jan that have a condo nearby.  We spent two days visiting with them and had a great time!

Approaching Marco Island, we're 10-15 miles out and the Gulf is almost flat!

If I had a reason not to be a sail boater, this would probably be one of them, this guy is climbing his mast to either replace his anchor light bulb or some other malfunction.

This guy has a huge waterfront spread, according to the writing on his Tiki Hut, I guess he want's everyone to know it doesn't suck to be him?

The weather has been perfect for cruising, especially on the Gulf.  On Tuesday, March 17^th we cruised 64 miles to Fort Myers, Florida.  We usually stay at a marina here but with all the issues regarding the Coronavirus, we decided to anchor across from the city behind Lofton Island.  We have friends at two different marinas here, and another with a summer home so we took the dinghy over to visit everyone.

We found the anchorage to be full of crab pots, I usually put out 100 foot of chain when we anchor, it was a little difficult finding a spot that we could swing 360 degrees without drifting over a floating marker.  I sat on the back deck one morning and watched this guy run his traps, a one man show and he worked his butt off.  

Our friends David and Barbara “m/v Miss My Money” live about 11 miles up the Okeechobee Waterway from Fort Myers.  They have purchased an empty lot a block or so from their house and have installed a dock with power and water.  On Friday, March 20^th we arrived at their dock and have decided to stay here a week or two to monitor the Coronavirus pandemic.

The boat in front of us is Cat Daddy, a PDQ cameraman that we met in 2016 while doing the loop.  Unfortunately Rafe isn't here, he's back home in Texas.

David and Barbara stopped by in their Volkswagen Thing to see if we needed anything.  David restores Volkswagens when not cruising.  We met them in 2016 in Charleston when they were on their second Loop and spent much of our time crossing Canada with them.

 We don't get lonely though, we have a friend that stops by when you least expect it.

 David and Barbara also have a pontoon boat so we cruised the canals for a couple of hours to look at the houses and boats.  This was a really cool sail boat we passed moored to the homeowners dock.

Our original plan was to cross Florida along the Okeechobee Waterway to the east coast, then head north spending the summer on the Chesapeake Bay.  The seriousness of the Coronavirus nationwide may alter our plans.  All of the beaches, restaurants, and most businesses have closed in this area and we are hearing of marinas up the east coast are closing until further notice.  Since our main purpose for cruising the east coast and the Chesapeake Bay area was to visit the small towns and historical sites, this may not be an option when we get there.  We have reservations at the Capitol Yacht Club in Washington, DC the first week of July and there are no indications that the Coronavirus will not continue to be an issue.  We’ll decide in a week or so if we’ll continue east or turn around and head back up the river system to the Midwest.