Fort Myers, FL to Key West, FL

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 5^th, 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 6^th 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 11^th 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 12^th 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 15^th and cruised 44 miles to Stock Island Marina Village; this will be our home until March 15^th.  Our friends Mike and Jan m/v Trust Me, from our home port at Green Turtle Bay are here and arrived in early December. 

We saw this stingray doing the back stroke during a dinghy ride.

Sunken boat on our dinghy ride to the Stoned Crab restaurant. 

Sharks!  These nurse sharks were hanging out near the entrance of the Hurricane Hole restaurant, one of our favorite dinghy rides for lunch.

Fresh Lobster waiting to be ordered from the Stoned Crab restaurant.

Jelly fish behind our boat one morning.

Happy Birthday!  Breakfast at the Blue Heaven Restaurant Key West.

Ahhh, fresh Gulf shrimp at Key West.

These shrimp boats are moored across the waterway from our marina.

I installed this hydro-fin on our dinghy motor, this helps get us on plane faster with more than 2 people in the dinghy.

Full moon at the marina, as you can see, we almost needed a shoehorn to get into our slip.

Moni made a special Valentine's day Breakfast........

Our current plan is to leave here March 15th and work our way back up the west coast of Florida to Fort Myers, where we will spend a few weeks before heading back up the rivers later this spring.