Total Miles Traveled 1507
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I’m not making any excuses for how long it’s been since my last update, what can I say, the fun meter is on high and we’re in Key West!
A view from our boat at Stock Island Marina Village and the Perry Hotel at sunset.
We had a great time visiting our friends at Fort Myers,
and a special thanks to David and Barbara for providing a great dock for us to
hang out over the holidays. On January 5th,
we moved about 11 miles to the Fort Myers City Marina, visiting friends and
preparing for our adventure to Key West.
We departed the marina January 6th at daybreak and cruised 59 miles to an anchorage at Marco Island, FL. This is a well-protected anchorage and short dinghy ride to a Winn Dixie grocery store…..with a dinghy dock. We held up here for 4 days waiting for a weather window to move to Marathon, FL and to visit our friends Merrill, Jan, and Tim from Indiana.
We had planned to leave Marco Island at daybreak on January 11th but we had a negative low tide and didn’t leave our anchorage until 9 a.m... During normal conditions there are high and low tides, but the wind and moon phases can affect the normal tidal swing. The approach to the anchorage has a few very shallow sections so leaving before a normal low tide was not worth the risk.
Our cruising conditions heading south from Marco Island were perfect. We normally cruise about 60 miles from Marco Island to a protected anchorage on Little Shark River, but with the exceptional conditions on the Gulf of Mexico, and with no change in the overnight forecast, we anchored about 3 miles offshore near Big Sable Creek.
On January 12th we departed our anchorage at daybreak and cruised 47 miles to Boot Key Harbor at Marathon, FL. Our friends that we have traveled with since the river system are here so we wanted to visit with them before continuing on to Key West. Randy and Sherri m/v Priorities, Charlie and Robin m/v The Lower Place, Steve and Libby m/v San Souci, and Steve and Jan m/v Forever Young.
Boot Key Harbor has a mooring field that is operated by the city of Marathon. There are 216 mooring balls that can be rented but they are normally full in January. They also have a few slips at the marina but they are usually full. They will not take reservations so you have to be in the harbor and call them before they will assign a mooring ball. If none are available, you have an option to anchor until something opens up. Anchoring space in the harbor is very limited and also usually full. When we arrived, everything was full and there were 8 people on the waiting list. Randy and Sherri have been here since early December and are on a mooring ball and told us a boat had recently left that was anchored in front of them outside of the mooring field. We maneuvered our way through the field and dropped the hook giving us plenty of swing room and a hundred feet or so from the closest boat. The next day we dropped the dinghy and spent the afternoon visiting our friends. Everything was great until we returned to the boat.
As we arrived at the boat we saw this sticker on the window
and according to the city marina we have to be anchored 150 feet from the
mooring field boundary, which isn’t marked on the waterway. If we moved to this distance from our
anchorage we would be in less than 5 feet of water, which is the draft of our
boat. It just so happened the city had
one open slip available for our size boat at the marina….hmmm? Since it was getting late, and we were only
going to be here 2 more days, we took the slip.
Our favorite “must stop” when visiting Marathon, Berdine’s on the water, with an awesome deep fried key lime pie.
We departed Boot Key Harbor on January 15th and cruised 44 miles to Stock Island Marina Village; this will be our home until March 15th. Our friends Mike and Jan m/v Trust Me, from our home port at Green Turtle Bay are here and arrived in early December.
