Marathon February 2024

Total Miles Traveled 1974 since departing Green Turtle Bay, KY

https://share.garmin.com/RickVicars

We boarded the Key West Transit bus for the trip to Key West ($1 each way for seniors) to celebrate Moni’s birthday.  We had a great time with our good friends Steve and Jan (Forever Young), Steve and Libby (San Souci) and Kevin and Jill (Chasing 80).  We were also able to visit with Mike and Jan (Trust Me) on their boat docked downtown. We hit most of our favorite stops:  Irish Kevin's, Smokin Tuna, and the Green Parrot, for great music, food, and drinks.  We experienced something new at the Green Parrot, while the band was playing, an artist painted a picture on a large canvas while keeping in time with the music, he was very good and sold his paintings for several hundred dollars afterwards.

February was a busy month, I’ve been helping Steve on a major engine project, we had a freshwater pump fail, and I had to install new packing to our steering rudders.  It is a boat, and just like a house, things tend to wear out. 

It’s not all work and no fun though, we have our weekly awesome breakfast at the American Legion every Sunday with our friends, Taco Tuesdays, Bocce Ball every Tuesday, and Thursday, Tikki Hut music on Fridays at the City Marina, and our Dockside Bar and Grill at our marina.  Moni’s getting pretty good on the Bocce Ball court.

We attended the 14^th annual Sunset Celebration at the Banana Bay Resort.  We met a lot of good friends that we haven’t seen for awhile and met some new ones.  This is really an awesome boating community

I finally parted with my bicycle; we have hauled it around on our boats since 2015.  We donated Moni’s bike to a friend when we purchased our electric scooters a few years ago, but I had a hard time parting with mine.  I’ve put several hundred miles on it, biking the RAIN (Ride Across INdiana), the Bloomington Hilly Hundred, the River-to-River Relay course (from the Mississippi River to the Ohio River) and several biathlons and biking events.  Times have changed and the scooters are our main source of transportation these days.

We caught this Manatee sleeping while putting around the harbor.  We stopped and waited several minutes and it didn’t come up for air or move, we edged a little closer and it dove to the bottom.

I guess this must be the Boot Key Harbor Junk yard, this boat looks like they collect anything they can find floating through or around the harbor.

We saw these two 40+ foot center consoles fueling up before heading out to the Atlantic for a fishing trip.  One has 5, 400 horsepower engines…..2000 hp and the other 4, 400 hp engines!  We have 300 hp total on our 45-foot boat.  We are much slower, but I think we’ll stick with our fuel bill.

We met some new looper friends and they are selling their boat and purchasing a new one to finish the loop.  It's a 1972 Gulf Star and is in very good shape for it's age.

We will be leaving Marathon around March 15^th, and will be watching for a weather window to travel to Bimini and explore the Exuma’s before returning to Florida around mid-May.

One of our evening views at docktails.