The day started around 6:15AM. The dilemma of the morning was whether or not to go under the Long Key Bridge, and take the short cut over to the west coast of Florida, or to go on down to Marathon, get fuel, and take a longer trip, but with less chance of running aground. After looking at the weather, which included 10-15knot winds out of the northeast, I decided to take the longer route. While I might have been able to get through at 6’ draft, I figured that the NE winds would drive the water out of the Florida Bay, making depths on the ICW questionable.
We had the anchor up and were under way around 7:30AM (which is local sunrise), and headed the 27 miles down to Marathon.
The ride was uneventful, other than a threat of rain, and we arrived around 10:40PM at Boot Key Harbor in Marathon. We stopped to top of our diesel tanks before the run north. I am hopeful that we can make it to Longboat Key without another fuel stop.
The lady at the fuel dock in Marathon had just moved down from Tampa. She and her husband sold everything, bought a motor trawler, and headed south to the Keys. They had planned to go to Key West, but when the got to Marathon, they decided to stay put! As we were talking to her, it turns out that she used to live in Garland, TX. This is where Vic is from, where her family is all located, and where we also have a condo..small world.
We pushed off from the Marina around 11AM and headed back out for the run up to the west coast of Florida. As were were leaving Boot Harbor, we caught these two birds stretching their wings.
We would cross under the 65’ section of the Seven Mile Bridge south of Marathon. This would be a our LAST fixed bridge before arriving in Longboat Key...Now all we have is one draw bridge at the north end of Longboat...I need to go back and figure out how many bridges we dealt with in this journey..maybe after we get in on Monday...
Once under the Bridge at Moser Channel, we took a heading of almost due north to make the long run in open water across the Florida Bay. We also spent almost the entire ride zigzagging around lobster and crab pots.. We were out of sight of land for about 2 hours....but not of these darn things. They were everywhere!
It was a long LONG trip across...this is how Vic was able to deal with the problem....
Our plan for the evening was to anchor in Little Shark River, which is part of the Florida Everglades National Park. After a 36 nm ride ( 41.5 statute miles) we arrived and dropped anchor at 4:30PM. The ride up from Marathon to the Little Shark was uneventful, other than an occasional porpoise hitching a ride on our wake..I love to watch them, but have had problems photographing them...but there were many of them today..and they would sit about 2 foot off of the aft quarter of the boat, just riding the wake..really neat animals!
We were warned that once in the Little Shark River, that there are alligators on the banks (although we have yet to see them), and that we should not plan on swimming!..not a problem tonight.
One issue being this far out in the middle of no where is that there is no cell coverage, no TV, minimal radio (although we have XM on the boat). I do have Diret TV onboard, but the receiver went south about 10 days ago, and after talking with them, it appears to be a decoder chip in the receiver..so no TV tonight..guess it will be a good night to just read.
Tonight we had an early dinner..before 6PM and decided to close up the boat as the mosquitos are veracious around here. It is in the low 80s this evening and very humid. I have the generator running and the AC turned on. Last night we started out this way, but I shut down the generator around midnight and just opened the hatches. I felt as if I had slept in a sauna when I got up this morning. Tonight, we will just let it run!
Tomorrow, the plan is to go outside quickly and head up to the south end of Sanibel Island. This is about 85 nautical miles. This should be a 10-11 hour run, depending on tides and currents. With luck, this will leave us about 70 nm on Monday.
I am writing this on my word processor this evening as I cannot access the internet. Once we are up towards Marco Island tomorrow, I should be able to get it posted..
Tonight we are about 1412 statute miles into the trip...now that we have a better sense of the last bit of this trip, we have about 172 statue miles to go to the end!...Today for the first time, I can sense the end of this journey...and I am looking forward to our arrival in Longboat Key
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