Marathon city Marina

Well, we have left Shark River. All it was, was a bend in the river with lots and lots of bugs as the river exits the Everglades, except there were no bugs. (we got lucky) So we hoisted anchor about 7:15am and headed out into 15 to 20 knots of wind. Good sailing, except it (the wind) and waves were behind us. Cannot sail with the wind straight up the stern. So once again we are motorsailing the 41 miles to Marathon. Crab and lobster season opened here 2 Sundays ago and the crabbers have put out tens of thousands of pots with little Styrofoam marker balls out. You cannot move forward for more than a 30 seconds before you have to dodge a crab pot marker. If you saw one crab pot ball you know it had a sister or a brother near by, sometimes even a whole family. They even have them in the approach and exit of the bridge channel. Boy are they a hazard. The crabbers can teach the Navy on how to lay mines if they've a mind to.


As you can see in the picture we are approaching the Moser Channel Bridge. It is 65 feet high at high tide and we are just about 2 hours after low tide. There is some apprehension on our part about going under the bridge and shearing all my attachments off of the top of the mast as our mast is 63.5 feet. As we went under the bridge, the VHF antenna hit and bent but nothing else did. BUT WAS IT SCARY! We arrived close to 3pm in Boot Key harbor for our mooring ball.

Here in the bottom picture is a view of the boat in Boot Key on the ball. There are not many boats here right now. The harbor can hold 226 boats but I would say that there is less than a third of that here now. Next month the snow birds should be starting to arrive.

We were going to sail up to Melbourne to attend a sailing convention but the weather here is getting stinky again. And if we did go north, we would have to turn around after the convention and head back down this way against the Gulf Stream to go to the Bahamas and that wouldn't be easy. So...we have to make a decision on what to do.

To all our friends in the frigid north, enjoy.

Good weather returns

We are heading for Shark River this morning,after 6 days of high winds and rain. We met a very nice couple at Marco Island, they are sailing on Lone Star a CSY 37. We'll be sailing with them to Marathon. Tom and Judy have been sailing for many years so Tom is helping us with our confidence. More later

Up-date Marco Island

We're glad we made the decision to head into Marco Island.  The weather system that is covering us is very winding and rainy, it's over all south Florida. The anchor is holding really good so we went for a short walk to a shopping center. We bought a few grocery's, this is the highest price Publix that I have seen. We arrived back at the boat just in time.  It started to pour and the winds where 22 mph. It's been cloudy for 2 days so the solar panels are not charging the batteries much. We have the engine running and I am using the inverter for the computer. Here are some of the pictures I've posted on facebook.

Under the Sun Shine bridge leaving Tampa....... First sunset at sea

First morning

Change in plan

Thanks to AT & T for cell service 10 miles off shore, we checked the weather. There are going to be 25 to 30 mph winds in the keys this weekend. So we decided to make a detour to Marco Island and anchor in Factory Bay. Right now the winds are about 17 to 23 mph. The anchoring went OK for the first time just needed to let out more chain before backing down. There is a marina here and a lot of nice houses. We'll go a shore when the winds die down. We also had a hard time sleeping. I guess that is something we will have to get use to. Once we anchored we sleep like the dead. I feel so much better. We'll stay here until Thursday that's when all this bad weather will leave. There are stores in walking distance so we will take a walk about later.

* Marco Island first nights sunset, the picture doesn't do it justice it was very pink.

It's 11:30 thrusday night

We are motor sailing at about 5 kts, the moon is full. We love it. And we still have cell phone connection about 9 miles out. I am not able to post any picture, I can on facebook...

Sailing out of Tampa Bay

We are off for an adventure. Yippeeee
Heading for the Keys. We plan to sail over night. We will anchor off Sawyer Key it should take us 2 1/2 days. The wind is not blowing now so we are motoring.

Ready to Go

We are finally ready to head down south. WHOOPEE! At the begining of the week the winds were 10 to 15 mph.  Now they are 25 to 30 mph in the Keys and the seas are 6ft. So we are putting off going until the winds are a little calmer.  We don't need to put ourselves through that on our first trip.  We are going to try and make it to the Seven Seas Cruising Assoc.GAM in Melbourne Fl. by the 12th of Nov. So we will be sailing around the Keys and up the east coast. Please say a little prayer for us :)
I am excited and nervous and it's hard to believe that we are doing this!